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.

Wuthering Heights

If you really want to make progress in reading Wuthering Heights, I can personally recommend getting stuck in a hospital for several hours with no other form of entertainment close at hand. If you are experiencing bouts of dizziness, however, I recommend the LARGE PRINT version.

Obviously, I wasn't reading this classic for fun (book club tyranny prevailed), but I'm trying to look at it as though I were. I spent about a third of Emily Bronte's book, trying to get the Monty Python semaphore version out of my head, then I spent a third of it, really entranced (YES! I can't believe I'm saying that) and then I spent the last ten or so pages thinking that Heathcliff sure was taking a long time to die. Oh, did I give something away?

This was my third reading of the supposed tragic story of Catherine and Heathcliff on the moors. The first reading doesn't count since it was in high school. The second reading was for a college class and it was interesting to reread the marginalia that I felt compelled to add at the time. I wrote things like "boo" or "Lockwood is an idiot." Really useful bits of information.

Lockwood IS an idiot, though. I never liked that he is used to frame the story. I don't care that he's supposed to be our way into hearing the story of the foundling Heathcliff who grows up to be a nasty human being, consummed by his obsession with an equally nasty woman. Why have the old housekeeper retell the story instead of simply telling the story? I suppose that's just some 19th century construct, but I digress. I'm trying to look at this not as a classic, but as a straight story. Did I enjoy it? Would I recommend it?

The short answer is still what it was after the first two readings: no. I do not like any of the characters, I don't like that they all turn out nasty just because they were treated poorly. I'm not saying I like my characters to be like the Disney version of Cinderella, where no matter how mistreated they start off, they remain sweet and get their happy rewards, but still, can there exist one person who compels me to care about their fate? I did like some of the book. I thought it was interesting to see the character of the weakling young Linton--who had seemed as if he might be able to break the cycle of evil between the two houses--turn increasingly awful. He might be the character I liked the least, but he was nicely written. I kept trying to see something good in Heathcliff--honestly, you want to like him--but I suppose Bronte was turning the James Dean, bad boy ideal on it's head (um, I know that seems anachronistic). The brooding, handsome stranger who turns out to be the hero? Nope, not in this book. Heathcliff really has no redeeming qualities, unless you count loyalty.

This is considered a love story. The back of my Signet classic reads: There are few more convincing, less sentimental accounts of passionate love...Well, it's certainly not sentimental, and I guess it is passionate, but the passion is driven by hate. I suspect that so few people read this anymore that it's simply gained a reputation as a true love story by hearsay. All people know is that Cathy and Heathcliff loved each other passionately and were kept apart by status and money. Yeah, whatever. Read Romeo and Juliet. Read Sense and Sensibility, if you must, or Cold Mountain. Or...well, you get the point. There's lots of tragic love out there with characters who are better people when they are together as a couple, and not worse.

If you listen to singer Kate Bush's lyrical summary, you'd think that love beyond the grave was a good thing in this book. If you manage to get through the book (because, for instance, you're trapped in a sterile environment for many hours), you realize that it's really a story of how to make the most of your awful circumstances so that you can really poison the world of those around you. Excellent!

Frankly, the semaphore version is a lot more entertaining.

The Lost Books of the Odyssey

Have you felt guilty for not wanting to tackle The Odyssey? Is it too confusing, or dull, but you feel like an idiot for admitting that and then you're at a cocktail party and it's all talk about the Trojan war (and you don't even know where Troy was located)? You've got the basic story, maybe something you picked up in high school, but wouldn't you like to say something witty (without having to do the work)? Well, Zachary Mason comes to your rescue with an amusing overview (and underview) of Homer's Odyssey, Well, sort of. Don't take it as gospel truth on how things happened over Odysseus' 20 years of fighting and traveling.

Like any collection of shorts, The Lost Books of the Odyssey is uneven, but then, I suppose, The Odyssey itself was disjointed, given that it originated in the oral tradition. What Zachary Mason has done here is tell the side stories he imagines--or amuses himself imagining-- as part of Odysseus' battle at Troy and his long voyage home. Sometimes he tweaks the events, sometimes he tells a new story. So Achilles was unbeatable (thanks to his mom dipping him in the river Styx)? Well, in Mason's version, it was because he was a Golem, created by Odysseus under threat of death. Agamemnon insisted that Odysseus convince Achilles to fight the Trojans or the king would slaughter Odysseus' family. When, to his horror, Odysseus discovers that the great hero had died some time ago (snake bite to the vulnerable heel), Odysseus brings a mud figure to life instead. All goes well, and no one suspects (even though this Achilles seems a bit indiscriminate as to whom he kills), until the Golem falls in love, of sorts, and starts to go a bit gaga.

This is the sort of humor Mason brings in. Odysseus is wily and brave--in most of these--though sometimes he's a bit cowardly--it's not like he wanted to go to war in the first place--but doesn't want to admit to it. He disguises himself as poet a la Homer in "The Iliad of Odysseus" and invents songs about the "hero" Odysseus. These become increasingly popular, songs with titles like "Feint Toward the Heart and Slash the Hamstring." When he returns to Ithaca--as king--Odysseus is 'most generous when [bards] had my songs word-perfect."

My favorite story might be "The Second Assassin" in which Mason imagines that Agamemnon's court is so steeped in bureaucracy that his order to have Odysseus killed (heroes are trouble to a weak king) ends up going to the bravest, strongest man in the kingdom. That is, Odysseus receives news that he must kill Odysseus. Odysseus read [the orders], his face closed, and thanked the messenger, commenting that the intended victim was in for a suprise, and that he was morally certain that no problems would arise on his end. Then, as required, Odysseus sends back regular updates on his progress with the assasination ("I walk among people who know him anbd his habits"). Mason has a lot of fun with this one.

We find out the origin of Circe the witch, we meet the Cyclops and hear his side of the story, we meet a few other characters, seemingly unimportant to the original. Some stories are better than others, though I think with even only a passing knowledge of The Odyssey, this book would be entertaining. You probably do get a lot more out of it if you really know the original story.
In the end, we see the aged Odysseus, setting out again, as Tennyson so well captures in his beautiful poem Ulysses. Only this time, the left-over Ithacans--ancient sailors, still spoiling for adventure--discover that the city of Troy has been turned into a sort of theme park. The old men enjoy themselves actually, free of the demands of a 10-year war that made them miss so much originally. Odysseus even manages to exorcise some demons there. Now he can die a happy man.

Zachary Mason has done what I bet a lot of people have imagined. Wouldn't it be great to take a classic and rewrite it so that it's fun? Or fill in the missing parts, reimagine the bits you didn't like originally. After all, The Odyssey has great bones. Think of the potential.

The Monster in the Box

As a reading teacher and the parent of a picky middle grade reader, I understand the comfort of series. You don't want to try too hard with a book; you want what's familiar, but with a little zest thrown in. Sometimes you just need that kind of book. Well, this explains why I picked up Ruth Rendell's latest Inspector Wexford mystery, The Monster in the Box. Rendell has won all sorts of awards and I will say some of her non-Wexford books are satisfyingly and disturbingly creepy. I have also found myself--in the past--mildly fascinated by the character of Inspector Wexford, mainly because I kept trying to figure out how a woman could write in the voice of such an old-fashioned, innocently sexist man. I'm going to assume that the fact that Rendell can do so is part of the reason she wins so many awards.

The last Wexford book that I read had a preposterous plot point. Something like a bunch of white British women believing they were pregnant--not in the usual way, mind you--and giving birth to black babies. It had something to do with modern day slavery. I don't know. It was silly and it made me throw my hands up in disgust. Fast-forward a year or so and that old comfort of a series with familiar characters pulled me in and I picked up The Monster in the Box. This didn't have too silly a plot, but it was...well...it was boring, frankly. Not what I'm looking for in a mystery. Wexford is getting old, though he's old in all the books. He spends this one reminiscing about his past loves (sort of) and, oh yes, that creepy guy he could never pin a murder on even though the guy looked at him funny when he was investigating his first case.
Surprise! Creepy guy shows up again. Surprise! It all ties in with someone else's non-case, and happy endings are had by all. Actually, no, things end fairly badly for all involved, but it sure takes a long time to get there.

I was talking the other day about the problem of crime series. How do you avoid repeating yourself? Do you age your character or not? And, really, how much crime can happen in a small town (Yes, I'm talking about you, Archer Mayor, in Brattleboro, Vermont)? Husband Ben says author Stephen Hunter seems to choose what kind of book he wants to write and then throws his character in somehow. Okay, that could work. Other authors end up with a character absurdly old because the series tries to be contemporary, but in the first book, the character was a veteran of the KOREAN war (or, frankly, the Vietnam war, which is also dated at this point).

Rendell doesn't seem to bring Wexford too far into the present day. He's "modern" but doesn't know how to use a computer. Times have changed in his town, but, on the other hand, there's a LOT of talk about use of a CD Walkman. I guess she gets some credit for keeping it all to the early 1990s, and the writing is okay, but this isn't the one to read if you're looking for an entry into a decent, quiet series. I'm not sure what to suggest because mysteries don't really differentiate themselves by title. Try something earlier, but don't get too hooked because then you'll find yourself taking The Monster in the Box off the shelf like you're visiting an old friend and next thing you know, you'll be snoring quietly by the fire.

Admissions

I picked up this book because of a misunderstanding my father-in-law had. First, I will say he never reads reviews/blurbs about books he hasn't read (for which I make gentle fun, of course), but he did read what I'd written about Jean Hanff Korelitz's book Admission under the impression that it was about this book, Admissions, by Nancy Lieberman of which he had heard. Personally, I wasn't going to touch this book at all because I certainly didn't need to read about over-priviliged NYC parents desperately trying to get their progeny into the best schools so they wouldn't have to risk rubbing shoulders with--shall we say-- people like my kids.

It turns out, though, that this is a fun, albeit over-long book. It was a strange follow up to my last read, Joseph O'Neill's Netherland, offering, as it does, a more conventional outsider's view of what it's like to live in NYC (at a certain income level, mind you). Like O'Neill (um, sort of), Lieberman uses "outsiders" to show us our way. Lieberman's outsiders are Helen who lives on the poorer end of high society among private school families, and her close friend Sara who works in kindergarten admissions at The School. Sara has a modest income and no kids, but she's in the thick of the madness. Helen and her husband are artistic (art critic and food channel producer) and they have one child who is graduating from The School and into a private high school, if only she can get in...somewhere. So, the stress on the two ends of the admission process is pretty much the plot, but throw in an increasingly bizarre head of school, a flirtation with the end of a marriage and a handsome widower, a few increasingly wacky parents and some appealing teen characters, and you've got a story.

The characters are generally interesting and well-differentiated, which is good because there are a lot to keep track of. I found the two Heads of School fairly hard to believe, although at least one of them was supposed to be drunk on power so her behavior had a source, I guess. Her affectation for sprinkling every pronouncement with French was amusing, as was her constantly passing off take-out food at school events as something she'd cooked herself. Lieberman does get carried away a bit, as when she has the denouement occur on a harbor cruise, a school even that had been christened "A Night To Remember." So, there's a major hint how that will go. Okay, yes, my prom had the same theme, but generally anyone who hears "A Night to Remember" in connection with a BOAT is thinking: Titanic. Kind of lame. Lieberman uses a lot of heavyhanded stunts like that, like naming the schools things like The Very Brainy Girls School, or The Bucolic School. Maybe that's some NYC humor, but it's a bit tedious after awhile.

Admissions was entertaining, a little silly, and a little over the top. Also, a little dull, really, but I found that I was sorry when I was done with the characters. I wanted to know the next chapter, how it would all shake out when they moved on to their new schools, new careers, new lives. I guess I should go ahead and thank my father-in-law for getting me to read Admissions. Now, I wonder if he'll read it...

Netherland

In her great book, The Family Tree, Carole Cadwalladr used cricket as a metaphor: Life as a game of cricket. That seems about right to me. Intense periods of boredom. Rules you don't quite understand. And a few, very few, moments of pure, unadulterated joy. Well, Joseph O'Neill's book Netherland also uses cricket as a metaphor, but his narrator is a bigger fan than Cadwalladr's is and his cricket is a way for the displaced to find their way in a post-9/11 NYC as foreigners.

No fear, though, you don't need to know a thing about cricket to enjoy this book. If nothing, the book gave me further insight into the bizarrest of games, my knowledge of which had been heretofore informed by school novels by PG Wodehouse and by watching games on the college lawns, as played by the Pakistani, Indian, and lone British student..

O'Neill's Hans van den Broek is already used to being out of place when we meet him. He is a Dutch finance wizard and has followed his British wife via London to NYC where they have a baby and then their world falls apart when the towers go down (mercifully, this happens off-page). His wife uses this disaster to decamp to her parents, young child in tow, so that she doesn't have to explain that their marriage had already become a sham of sorts.

Hans stays behind and wanders NYC, even more of an outsider now that he is unmoored from both his apartment and his family. He seeks solace in the Staten Island Cricket club and falls in with the taxi drivers, entrepreneurs, and financiers that make up the club. He sees the white uniforms gathered on a crumby, non-regulation pitch as a metaphor for these collected foreigners of different nations trying to make order of their lives in the new world. He himself has to learn "american cricket" (which apparently requires more aggressive pitching, for example). He spends his days making insane amounts of money at his job, his nights roaming the somewhat suspect areas of NYC, and his weekends playing cricket. It is through cricket that he meets the shady but captivating Chuck Ramkissoon, and it is through Chuck that Hans eventually finds a way out of his shell and into the world. He comes to care about what is happening around him and to, at last, engage in the world, even if he never quite fits into it.

We're supposed to see Hans as disengaged throughout the book, as exemplified by his outsider status as well as by his slowly receding marriage, but mainly I saw Hans as a thoughtful, open-minded character and I thought his wife was extremely annoying and unthoughtful. I thought O'Neill brought a very nice eye and ear to the "unknown" NYC and I enjoyed seeing the city through different characters than the usual.

This book first came to my attention when a friend of mine told me President Obama read it and said it gave him insight into the immigrant experience in this country. And sure enough, there's a quote from him on a sticker affixed to my paperback copy. I hope, if nothing else, the president took some notes on the frustrating and amusing trials of poor Hans trying to get his license at the DMV. We may not be able to welcome all to this country, but maybe we can get everyone driving, even if their names are spelled differently on their two pieces of identification.

I really liked Netherland and felt the whole time that I was meant to learn something about how we move in the world, both in our own spheres and how to shift into the sphere of 'the other'. O'Neill writes perceptively, and intelligently. This is not a quick read, but one to be savored and pondered.

Something Borrowed

So, I read a chick lit type book. It's vacation so I guess I can do what I want with my time. Emily Giffin's book did get me thinking about Jane Austen, actually. Not because there's much in common, mind you, but I was trying to figure out why I was so irritated by Giffin's main character, Rachel. Partly I had trouble with her name. Rachel. Don't get me wrong, I like the name Rachel. One of my cousins is named Rachel and it's perfectly lovely, but it just doesn't seem right for a fiance-stealing 30 year old, big firm lawyer. Anyway, her name is not what made me think of Jane Austen. I was irritated by Rachel because she is incredibly passive and I've decided this is a trait I can't stand in a character even if that character gets the opportunity to transform by novel's end, as all characters should.

What makes Jane Asuten's books still resonate today is that her characters are anything but passive. In fact, they generally seem anachronistically active in their own lives. There's a reason that Persuasion is arguably the least popular Austen novel. You just want to throttle Anne for sitting around and missing her opportunity at love and life. She's no Elizabeth Bennett or Emma. Yes, those are flawed characters, but for heaven's sake they have a personality.

Darcy has more of a personality (it's always easier to write the 'villain'), but she is generally unlikeable in Something Borrowed, so much so that I saw it as a further flaw in Rachel that they'd ever been friends to begin with. Certainly it was hard to believe their friendship had lasted into adulthood. There's something about old friends, but there's also such a thing as growing up and out of Indiana and into a life in NYC. I know it's been awhile since I was 30 (not THAT long, but still...), and I was certainly never single at that age, so what do I know? But these women didn't act their age. I mean, honestly, how much awkward kissing on a couch happens at that age?

Giffin seems to have written a whole series with embarrassing titles like Something Blue and Something New (or whatnot) and I had to hide the cover of this one under my other serious books at the library (yes, yes, I'm sad), but the titles are almost redeemed by the fact that the next book, Something Blue, seems to be narrated by Darcy herself. Apparently it's her chance to tell her side of the story after her supposed best friend steals her beloved fiance. I'm a sucker for multiple view points of the same story, (though I probably won't read the next installment) so this seems clever to me.

Darcy's definitely the more interesting character. Dex is your basic good guy and Rachel is utterly boring in many ways so I'm hopeful that Giffin lets the girl you love to hate really rant on in Something Blue. She's got a lot to say and may remind readers of Eleanor's younger sister in Sense and Sensibility or, more likely, Elizabeth Bennett's horror of a sister, Lydia. NOT that I'm really comparing Emily Giffin to Jane Austen, but, you know, you could...

**I just discovered that Something Borrowed, the movie, will begin filming this spring. Of course it will. It probably will make a very entertaining movie. They'll just have to cast a good personality for Rachel (and not overdo Darcy's worst qualities).**