Losing Charlotte

All the 80s teen movies took place in suburban areas with exotic sounding strip malls and stores I'd never heard of. Growing up in smallish town New Hampshire, I felt both totally uncool and totally aware that all the cool kids lived somewhere in the Midwest, probably near or in Chicago. Nothing ever happened in our town and there was never going to be anyone famous that I could say, Oh I knew him/her when...Although, there was apparently a kid from my class who went on to star in some ABC After School Specials (unconfirmed). Then I went to Middlebury College. Definitely a great school, loved it, but frankly no one was going to move and shake the world from there. Or if they had gone there, they'd already moved and shaken the world long before I got there (yeah, we've got some famous alums). We had decently well-known profs, too. I'm not denying it, but I still felt like it was all happening elsewhere.

So now I want to give a big shout-out to a Middlebury Alumna (who is younger than I, as all successful people seem to be these days). Heather Clay's first novel, Losing Charlotte, was a really nice read. No, it has nothing to do with Middlebury (or with New England. In fact, she only credits Columbia University---well, of course--for her writing career).In this book, Charlotte is the crazy sister, the interesting sister, the dramatic sister, the one who is going somewhere. Knox is the boring one who stays down on the family racehorse farm in Kentucky and pretends to be middle class and work with kids who have difficulty reading. She admires and resents all the room her big sister takes up, but is still willing to drop everything when Charlotte is set to deliver twins early. The family jets up to New York to be on hand, and then, yes, tragedy strikes. Suddenly, there's a vacuum to be filled and the parents are unable to step up. Knox begins to find a way to fill this space and to make peace with her lack of interest in children, her lack of commonality with her brother-in-law, and the absence of her sister.

I know it seems that it that the end will be predictable, but Clay does a great job of twisting our expectations. She doesn't answer everything, but satisfies everyone's story (or nearly does). She's done her research (and I hope it's not first-hand) so that the NICU scenes are painfully realistic. I've spent far too much time in neo-natal intensive care units myself and I did read these scenes with a lump in my throat. The fact that I could get through these is both a testament to time's healing and, I think, to Clay's matter-of-fact realism. So, yeah, there are some tough moments in this book, but it's a satisfying read and got me back on track after frittering around with mediocre books.


I'm too old to have crossed paths with Heather Clay and anyway, we probably would have traveled in different circles at school, but I'm glad to see Middlebury on the literary map with a new generation, even if it's thanks to Columbia's fine-tuning.

The Hundred Foot Journey

Any book with descriptions of food has a head start on being a good book. That's my general assumption anyway. Richard C. Morais' book, The Hundred Foot Journey takes place mostly in the kitchen, either a French restaurant kitchen or an Indian kitchen. A goat cheese and pistachio souffle gets its own couple of paragraphs with words like minced and crusty and whipped egg whites, purification, miraculously, elegantly, artistic swirl. All good cooking words, and, by the way, good writing words. Still, I didn't much like this book. It had all sorts of potential, but didn't quite show up. The fact that I read about it while waiting for the dentist probably should have warned me away.

The writing isn't the problem, the story of a young Indian who moves with his crazy, grief-stricken family from the chaos of Mumbai to the Alpine hills of France to start a restaurant isn't the problem either. The only problem is that I'm sick of emotionally detached protagonists. If they don't care, why should I? Early on, Hassan Haji explains that his (future) failures with women is due to the murder of his mother. Well, okay, but his mother wasn't a strong enough character for me to care about that either. Hassan is always getting picked up by older women and having a great time in his rise to a owning his own Parisian restaurant, but he never stays with them, they're never important enough. When an old lover shows up, he dispatches her without a second thought. And he makes me not care either.

Well, he's a busy man--first leaving his family after a terrible accident (which doesn't seem to affect him that much), moving in with the family's arch enemy to learn "proper French cooking", leaving her to pursue his restaurant dreams in Paris, and then of course, he's busy, busy, busy with restaurant life.

Morais has got some nice details about restaurant life, life moving on from tragedy, life around food, life in France (and even some good descriptions of life in Mumbai) so The Hundred Foot Journey is a decent read, especially if sense of place is appealing to you.Just don't expect to love or understand the main character.

The Singer's Gun

I heard Emily St John Mandel read about a month ago at our local bookstore and was intrigued by The Singer's Gun with its theme of escaping your identity. The book takes awhile to get where it's going but when it gets there, it gets there with a vengeance. Anton Waker and his cousin Aria make a decent living selling fake social security numbers and fake coveted American passports. Of course "decent" isn't quite the right word and eventually Anton wants out, especially after September 11 when it dawns on him that it isn't just sad immigrants yearning for a better life who might benefit from their products. His disillusionment begins to show when his cousin says, "We'll stop doing business in this country...when it's no longer legal to carry our product." She's being funny--not that she has a sense of humor--trying to point out that at least it's not drugs or guns, but Anton replies, "It's never legal to carry our product...And what other country would we do business in?"

And so Anton begins to extricate himself from the family-approved business. He obtains a Harvard degree--not in the usual way (but in a maneuver borrowed from an acquaintance of the author); he rises quickly in the business world of New York City, but not so quickly as to draw attention to himself; he falls in love and plans a wedding (three times, in a funny bit I heard read by the author), and then his carefully constructed world begins to implode. It turns out, Aria isn't ready to go solo.

We know bad things will happen eventually, but we don't know the what and the how. Can we ever really leave one life behind to start another? To a certain extent, we all try to escape our past, if only by growing up, but how drastic an escape do most of us have to make? The Singer's Gun is no classic gangster novel, though it has some of those elements. It's not even fully a "good guy does good" novel because Anton's not that good. Sure, he has standards, but most people do. You don't exactly root for him though there's nothing to dislike openly.The way the novel is constructed takes us back and forth in time and Emily St John Mandel does a nice job of setting us up with one expectation only to reveal later the true reason for a character's actions. That adds to the slower pace, but the pay off is interesting. Just don't expect to love anyone along the way.

What I read on my summer vacation

I spent a couple of weeks vaguely trying to use a French keyboard and mostly gave up. Sure, there are only a "few" differences, but they turn out to be fairly flummoxing. A comma in place of an M really does change the meaning of a word. I typed so many accidently Zs that I seriously wondered if that letter's prominent position is the root cause of the cartoon French accent.

I did read a lot of good books, though not as many as I thought I would. Yep, there was beach time to consider (and unlike the New England Atlantic, the Mediterranean is a swimable temperature) and lots of soccer to watch. Also, I have a terrible history of choosing really depressing books to read on vacation. I even managed to choose a plane crash book. Fortunately, I finished that one hours before the Air France ticket counter we were standing at was closed due to a "suspicious package." Once on the plane we were given aggressively detailed emergency instructions of dubious help. Did I mention that the plane in the book followed our same trajectory in reverse? Try going over Nova Scotia with all this in mind.

The plane crash book is Birds in Fall by Brad Kessler. It's the story of a plane crash (duh) and the family members who come to the island off Nova Scotia to grieve and to move on. When I began the book, I was afraid it read too much like a college writing exercise--multiple perspectives, lyrical writing, each character a short story that must somehow mesh in the end. I only perservered out of lack of any other book...and it paid off. Yes, the writing is lyrical, and yes, some of the mourning is hard to read, and yes, the ornithologist does make everyone feel better by teaching them about bird migration--there are some big hints to this, including several quotations and references to metamorphosis. But, all this aside, it's a good read and I came to care about several of the characters. Kessler begins, interestingly, with a chapter from the perspective of two of the passengers in the doomed plane, but it isn't scary or horrifying (um, mostly). I even learned some nice Greek mythology (most of which is not "nice"). I just recommend being earth bound when you read it.

I also read David Nicholls' One Day which I really loved, though also depressing for a vacation. I picked up John Scalzi's Your Hate Mail Will be Graded--a collection of his blog posts from Whatever. Excellent, entertaining, but perhaps better in small doses. Isn't that the point of a blog?

I read a terrible Ian Rankin--his first John Rebus book, Knots and Crosses. Truly bad, especially since I like his other, later ones. I left this one overseas, stuffed in among other abandoned books, not to be revisited on another trip.

I finished The Singer's Gun by Emily St John Mandel.

On the flight home, I began Michael Chabon's essays, Manhood is for Amateurs, which is good and thought-provoking.

I've got a huge list of things to finish and begin before the end of summer, though I'm hoping I pick up some light and fluffy stuff now that I'm all rested from vacation...

Book Hype

My father-in-law recently built and installed two floor-to-ceiling bookcases in our living room. Even when we sorted through and dispersed some of our collection, we found that we quickly filled these cases. When FinL visited again, he expressed some concern over the sagging in one of them, but pronounced them sound. Do you see where this is going? Today, one of the shelves collapsed.

This is not a reflection on my FinL's work, but it is an illustration of the fact that it is indeed possible to own too many books. I'm a happy supporter of my local independent bookstore, but I also love my library and after today's experience, I have to love my library more often than I visit my bookstore. The problem with loving the library is that I sometimes wait months to read the "hot" book. I have some weird panicky quirk that makes me loathe to get a book put on hold for me, so I'm really at the mercy of how quickly my very literate community gets through the book(s) of the season. Sometimes I've come by a book so late that the hype has freaked me out to the point that I don't like the book, don't get what all the fuss was about (The Lovely Bones). Other times I just enjoy reading something at my own pace. I recently finally got my hands on two uber-hyped books and had very different reactions.

I finally read Kathryn Stockett's The Help (about a year behind schedule) and I really liked it. I had given up on it when I saw that there were 36 holds on the first book returned (out of 10) at the library. Then I more or less forgot about it. A colleague handed it to me recently and so I read it. I didn't have that same shuddering realization that I'd had with Hillary Jordan's Mudbound, that shock at realizing how recently we still discriminated so openly against people of color, but The Help was a good read. I was a bit disappointed by the ending because it felt like the black maids were sending the poor little rich white girl out into the bigger world while they'd stay and take the heat. That was the first time that I felt I was reading a book about blacks that was written by a white person and I'd gone in skeptical. I'd listened to a panel of readers on the Diane Rehm show awhile back who had really enjoyed the book's story, but each had agreed that Stockett didn't get the speech patterns right. They said they forgave her quickly because the story was such a good one. So, yeah, I was nervous, but in the end The Help earned the hype.

Then, recently, I ran out of books to read. I was floundering, really. There was a ton I wanted to read, but not necessarily buy. I noticed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on our now-collapsed shelf and thought, why not? EVERYONE loves this book. I knew nothing about it, having purchased it for my husband based entirely on the hype at our local bookstore when it first came out. I'd even bought him the next two for Christmas and birthday, but I knew nothing. I wasn't enthusiastic, though, because I'd really disliked Smila's Sense of Snow. Husband Ben assured me it wasn't much like that, but I pictured cold and slow. I was further discouraged by having looked at it a year ago and discovered that the first 20 pages was about banking. Yep, 20 pages of Swedish banking (or something very much like banking). This time around, in desperation, I skipped all of that and plunged in.

Well, I didn't know about the torture and the rapes. How could I? I had female friends who raved about this. Everyone loved this book.

To me, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a fairly standard thriller/mystery, and I was very intrigued by the main plot--finding out what had happened to young Harriet Vanger so many years ago. I even liked the setting. In fact, I was ready to visit Northern Sweden, even in the cold of winter. It sounded lovely--never mind that every woman in the country is at risk for being locked up somewhere and tortured by the perverted, twisted men that apparently run all the big businesses and lawyer firms. So, since I had to find out about Harriet, I read on. The characters are decently interesting, though Blomkvist is a bit bland. The "girl" herself is okay, though husband Ben says she becomes too amazing by book 2. The setting is different, but you have to be ready for the gruesome details (which aren't actually too detailed). I won't be reading the next book, and I honestly don't get what all the fuss is about.
Now, I'm off on vacation, so inspite of my vow to quit buying books until the shelves are repaired, I've stuffed suitcases full of new books. Here's to happy beach reading, without all the hype.

Book signings

I went down to our local bookstore the other night to hear Dan Chaon read and I learned how to pronounce his name (It turns out it's shawn). That, of course, wasn't why I slammed down a burrito and ran out the door tossing out homework instructions and bathing advice to my children. I went because I couldn't get enough of Await Your Reply (which I've already raved about on this blog). My pilgrimmage was rewarded by hearing Chaon read a deleted scene that is included in the paperback edition of his novel. A deleted scene! I love it. And it added a tiny piece of the puzzle to a story that is nothing but puzzles. Plus there was another writer sharing the stage with Chaon, Emily St. Mandel, and she was charming, funny, relaxed, and I'll end up buying The Singer's Gun if not her first book, Last Night in Montreal.

But readings/signings are a bizarre little thing. It must be awkward for the writer. Writers tend to spend a lot of time by themselves, crafting sentences in the confines of their own minds and/or tiny rooms. Not always the best way to prep for public speaking. It can be weird for the host, too. What if no one shows up? A friend who worked as a liaison for writers at another small bookstore once spent a horrible few hours with a photographer who refused to talk to anyone who even looked as though they were coming near his signing table. He wouldn't even chitchat with her. He had a gorgeous book of photos of Paris but I guess the expression "it sells itself" doesn't always hold. If you really want to hear how hard it can be for even the most enthusiastic author, read David Sedaris on the subject of hawking a book at a Costco. It's probably better if the author has no ego.

And of course, it can be weird and fraught for the audience. I was at Dan Chaon with a friend who told me her embarrassing moment at a Steve Almond reading recently. She admits herself that she is just a bit overly obsessed with Steve Almond so you'd think she'd be pleased to be singled out by him at a reading. Uh, well, not if it's because she's stumbling in late (babysitter issues) to sit in the front row and not if it's because Almond (who is a very funny guy) decides to point this out in a helpful manner. Apparently he announced, "Well, if that isn't disruptive," as she slunk in across the creaky, old floor.

I once coughed my way through a reading by Susan Minot. And I don't mean a polite little cough into a delicate handkerchief. This was in college and I had developed one of those upper respiratory infections that someone with good insurance and maybe a mom's advice would have had looked at, but no, I felt I just had to go to this reading. Did I sit discreetly on the end of a row? Hell, no! I was a big fan! I sat in the very center of the crowd. I'm sure everyone, including Susan Minot hated me within five minutes, and probably still uses me as a negative example when they blog about author readings.

And of course it also turns out that there is such a thing as a stupid question and you'll hear a good many of them at readings. I heard someone ask why an author always used the same name for characters. Was this a special person in the author's life? Well, no, because it turned out the author had only used that name once and in only one book, so, um, wasn't really sure how to answer the self-proclaimed greatest fan's question. Sometimes you just get a lot of would-be writers in the audience who monopolize the author to glean tidbits of wisdom interesting only to their own narrow needs. And there are always people who ask for clarification of painfully obvious plot points. Still, it's worse if no one asks a question so at times, you just hope that some fan will come in clutching a well-worn book and announce that the work spoke directly to their soul. No, really, it did.

I don't get to as many readings as I would like. In fact, I'm missing Ann Beattie tonight and Beattie is a writer I greatly admired in college. She was the epitome of 80s short stories and who I wanted to be. I think it's even good to go to the no-namers, the locals. Yep, I saw Dan Brown before he was DAN BROWN because he's a local (or was, I should say). At the time, I mostly liked the cover of Angels and Demons and he worked right upstairs and we were kind of just filling the room. That night, I learned more than I'll ever need to know about the Masons, but I never did read his book(s).

I've seen authors who wouldn't shut up. I've seen authors who clearly need to update their jacket photos. Or maybe not. It's a bit like radio personalities. They have a voice and then there's their actual presence. It can be a bit jarring. Still, I wonder if they look out at us--dumb, adoring, bored, yearning--and think, My God, are these my readers?

Doors Open

You're just a regular guy--okay, not regular, regular because you've made a killing in the tech world--but you're youngish and you're a little bored and you have a couple of friends who have the same hobbies as you, mainly you all like fine art. Did I mention you're bored and you have a lot of money? What if one of your buddies comes up with a seemingly brilliant plan to "free" some fine art from the clutches (and locks and keys) of the local (Edinburgh) banks? Would you do it?

Husband Ben loves books about regular people who get involved in high crime. Things like Scott Smith's A Simple Plan (made into a decent movie) or Mark Bowen's real-life story of an accident involving a Brinks truck, Finders Keepers. I've passed Ian Rankin's Doors Open to Ben because I'm thinking it's right up his alley. Rankin is a good writer who happens to write thrillers--or rather, police procedurals. I've always enjoyed his Inspector Rebus books, but he retired his hard-drinking, insubordinate character in last year's Exit Music. Probably about time, too. So it was with great pleasure that I found myself deep into this one-off about Mike Mackenzie trying to pull off a bank heist (but only for art's sake, of course). How many people have been sitting around a pub (or the national equivalent) with a bunch of buddies and thought, "yeah, I could do that."? That's pretty much what Mike was doing, and what his friend Allan hoped they were doing, and then Professor Gissing pushed them to do more than speculate about it.

Turns out there's a lot to pulling off a big robbery. I will say that for all the things that go wrong (and, yeah, duh! They do go wrong-ish), Rankin makes it seem achievable. Or, I guess I should say, he makes the whole plan more or less believable. There were some scenes where my tv-inspired mind was screaming, "NO, obviously the cops will trace you when you do that!" but I was along for the ride (and wrong to worry, in a few cases). I also decided that much of police work depends on coincidence--you happen to know something about art, or you happen to have been tailing a criminal element and he runs into an art lover and then you put it all together when some art goes missing...Later, I thought this might not be true, but I bought it while I read it.
I'm glad Ian Rankin stayed in the game without having to resort to sticking his creaky old Inspector Rebus into new and increasingly unlikely scenarios.

I'm wondering if husband Ben (a software engineer himself) will recognize himself in this particular scene? One of the recessed lights in the kitchen needed replacing, too, but it was a halogen thing and fiddly to install. Mike would sometimes joke that when the last bulb fizzled out, he'd have to find somewhere else to live. This pretty much describes how Ben's office ran for years, getting dimmer and dimmer as the engineers opted to move existing lightbulbs to burnt-out areas, rather than, God forbid--purchase new ones and install them properly. For this moment alone, I bow to Rankin's knowledge of human nature among the software set.