Her Fearful Symmetry

Just in case you've forgotten your Shakespeare or your O'Henry, along comes Audrey Niffenegger to remind you that messing with life and death, ghosts and resurrection always ends badly. Well, maybe not exactly badly for everyone, but certainly there are unintended consequences to actions even from beyond the grave.

Her Fearful Symmetry isn't as good as the excellent The Time Traveller's Wife, but that would be hard to follow up. True to form, though, Niffenegger's characters are fascinating. Notice I didn't say likeable. There are two creepy sets of twins, a handsome, crossword puzzle setter with severe OCD, an apparently perfect lover left bereft by his long-time girlfriend's death, some very serious-about-their-jobs cemetery tour guides/care takers, a kitten and--oh, a ghost or two.

Elspeth dies early on. In fact, the first chapter is called The End, so I'm not giving anything away. Still, as you might expect in a gothic-style novel, she does tricky things with her will and estate, sending for her estranged twin nieces to come live in her London flat after her death. The twins are down-right creepy in their twinness (images of those twins seen briefly in The Shining come to mind). First of all, they're mirror twins (same features, in revers including placement of the heart), their daughters of a twin, they dress exactly alike--even at the age of 21. They sleep together, the do everything together. It's weird. But they're at loose ends so they come willingly enough to occupy their unknown dead aunt's aparment. There they meet Robert (eventually), Elspeth's lover and arguably the best or nicest character in the book. They also become friends with Martin, their OCD neighbour who's pining for his wife, recently decamped to a place where she doesn't have to sidle just right through a doorway or watch her husband scrub floors for hours.

Valentina and Julia also meet the neighborhood which includes the lovely Highgate Cemetery. Niffenegger clearly spent time here and does a wonderful job of making it sound beautiful and appealing to both the living and the dead. When I finished the book, I was extremely tempted to send a contribution (as requested) to help maintain this lovely place (I was gently mocked for this by friend Alyssa).

So, yeah, the cemetery is important, but it turns out that's not the only place ghosts hang out. Yep, the dead aunt is still hanging about in the flat. Niffenegger has some interesting ideas about ghosts, though the why isn't ever made clear. Maybe we're supposed to assume that ghosts are everywhere in England, which would explain why apartments over there are so cold and draughty. Ghosts who haven't figured out how to get out the door are still hanging about their old homes, drifting through people in the hopes that someone will leave a book open or turn on the TV so they don't stay eternally bored.

But things aren't all fun and games for the ghosts or for the living. The creepy Valentina and Julia have some mysteries to solve and have to find a way to become their own person; Robert has to deal with his pining for Elspeth; Martin has to make it out his door...someday; and Elspeth also has a few things to settle. Never underestimate a ghost is all I can say.

This book is both wonderful and disturbing, dark and creepy, and sad and icky. Who doesn't desperately hope to become reconnected with the love of your life, or to have childhood mysteries solved from thin air? Niffenegger explored some of this in The Time Traveller's Wife, and she's very good at portraying eternal love that isn't bound by things like time and space or, say, death, but this is a different book from her first. It doesn't have the freshness of Time Traveller's Wife, but Niffenegger puts her stamp on the afterlife. She's not just connecting dots here and it shows. The characters and perhaps the mystery will draw a reader in, and the end is very satisying. I'm not saying it's a perfect ending, but each character's conclusion seems somehow just right.

Ex machina (Vol 1 and Vol 2)

I was so excited when the library finally got this series from Brian K. Vaughan because I'd really enjoyed Y:the last Man (see Blog 9/25/08). In Ex Machina (and the library only has two volumes so far though I know there are at least 7 out now with another one due in December), Vaughan gives us Mitch Hundred who is mayor of NYC by way of civic engineer turned failed superhero. Yep, he's a failure at that because even though he gets blasted by something weird under the Brooklyn Bridge (didn't you always suspect?), that allows him to "talk" to machines, he struggles to fulfill his perceived destiny to help humankind. Turns out New Yorkers find "The Great Machine" kind of a nuisance and want him arrested for zipping around in a goofy outfit, trying to help the police do their jobs. But then, Sept 11 happens and Mitch becomes mayor (conveniently an independent).

Volume 1 sets this story up but it moves back and forth in time (which I usually hate, but it works okay in graphic novel form--the titles help) and we never get the full story on any of the threads we're following. We know something happened under the bridge, we know that only one tower fell on September 11 and we get some background on Mitch's friends and associates. I loved Volume 1. Volume 2 starts to fill in some stuff, but it gets really gory and violent which I don't like at all. I just read those parts with slitted eyes and made the best of it. I don't care much for the artwork in this series--I miss Pia Guerra and Jose Marza' work in Y, though Volume 1 gives a nice overview of the models Tony Harris used for the characters in Ex Machina. I appreciate that there's a great story, but art is obviously really important in this format, and these pictures are just a little...off. I mean, the angles are fine, there's tension and all, but, well, for example, his "young people" look old and frankly, that's a problem. Also, Mitch is supposed to be so handsome, but yeah, it depends on the frame. Not consistent enough. I'm probably nit-picking, though, because it's not like it's painful to look at.

I love the vaguely parallel universe--it's recognizeable, but different. I'm completely hooked on how Hundred can talk to machines which turns out to be more convenient than you'd think. Would-be assassins have to use increasingly unsophisticated weapons, and political enemies can't even hope to listen in on conversations. All the wit from Y is still there and there are some nice "perfect world" issues, along with great mystery and misdirection. Still, I don't need so much eviscerated dog and people stabbing themselves with pens. I'm hoping Volume 3 moves away from that because I'm definitely hooked on the story.

The Madonnas of Leningrad

In the afterword of her novel about a woman with alzheimers recalling the siege of Leningrad during WWII, Debra Dean writes that she was "supremely unqualified" to write it. She claims she had only recently heard about the horrible, three year siege in which millions died of starvation, she spoke no Russian, and her knowledge about art history was only general. This is how I felt upon reading the novel. Not that the author was unqualified, but that I knew little or nothing about alzheimers, little or nothing about the siege, little or nothing about the artwork found in the Hermitage in St Petersburg (Leningrad, at the time), but that Debra Dean seemed like a pretty good guide.

We meet Marina just as her mind begins to close doors on the present and drift into the days when she was a guide at the grand museum in Leningrad. Dean describes alzheimers as the world made into book form. "When the page turns, whatever was on the previous page disappears from view." Intriguing, and not yet terribly depressing, because you can sense the book is still there. But then Dean pulls back and Marina's husband's reaction is revealed and you realize the stress of living with someone you love who is slowly abandoning you for the dark days of living in the basement of a war-destroyed city.

In 1941, Marina's job as guide at the Hermitage was to help pack and transport the museum's collection to safety during those first giddy weeks pre-invasion. The exhaustion, the dismay, and the fear are counter-balanced by the strange exhiliration of something big about to happen.
But as winter sets in and they watch helplessly as the entire food storage system of Leningrad is destroyed by German bombs, any hope for a short war disappears into hunger and something close to despair. Dean doesn't perhaps do justice to the despair, but I suppose it's because her main character stays strangely upbeat throughout. She gives hints that Marina has always lived a bit in her head which made me wonder if this is something that can be said about anyone with alzheimers. If Marina was always a bit dazed and dreamy and out-of-it, does that preface her alzheimers as an old woman? Or is that merely a novelist's attempt to be tidy?

There are some bits of humor in this novel, though not many, given the subject. Marina is at the wedding of her granddaughter and slips back into the past, remembering the "food" they ate, including "blockade jelly" which was melted-down joiner's paste. Her daughter-in-law can't quite get her head around her eating glue and thinks Marina's alzheimers is confusing her. "This was during the war?" she asks. "Yes, dear." Marina smiles. "We didn't eat it before. It wasn't THAT good."

Marina also describes living with her uncle in the basement of the Hermitage, along with many others, and having to endure his snoring. She was kept awake another several hours, her fatigued brain snared in the drama of his next breath...She can't help but think of it as an extension of his pedantic character, that even in his sleep he must be listened to. Marina doesn't have to listen for long to her uncle, though, as her family and friends begin to slip away one way or another.

The humor, like food during the siege, is what you make of it. To keep herself occupied during the first cold winter of starvation, the task which Marina gives herself is to recreate the Hermitage in her mind so that she can still give tours of its bare walls. This laborious memorization at a time of severe deprivation perhaps works a bit as the crosswords and sudoku are supposed to. These too are supposed to stave off our own alzheimers. Is all that effort what kept Marina alive during the war when so many others died? Is that what keeps her at home with her devoted husband so long after it becomes clear she cannot stay in the present? It's a lovely thought, to have art into which one can retreat in times of either mental or physical duress. Debra Dean may have felt unqualified, but she paints a tender and interesting picture of a survivor.

The Class/ Entre les murs

I love reading about imperfect teachers. It's somehow reassuring, though I suppose I should be alarmed from a parent's point of view. You mean, my kids' teachers might not be more than human? The class, by Francois Begaudeau is a semi-autobiographical look at a year in the life of a middle school teacher in a tough-ish Parisian neighborhood. It's been translated into English, but more interestingly, it's a pretty decent movie.

I can't judge if the book is well-written since I was just focused on reading the French text, but it's definitely very readeable, and was fascinating for the comparison it gave me between the middle schools I have known and taught in, here in the United States, and the attitudes and setting in at least one particular school in Paris. This one point is probably the most important: They serve champagne or wine at staff meetings. Ah, think of the possibilities at our own staff meetings if a sip of alcohol were encouraged. How much more relaxing to discuss difficult students--or, as they do in this book--how to remedy the balky coffee machine sittuation.

Okay, but on to the students. I've always been under the impression that in French schools, they certainly don't bend over backwards to encourage students who don't fit the norm. I suppose it "helps" that after middle school, the kids are sorted out into vocational or college tracks so it's easier to teach to your group. I'm still under that impression after reading this book and seeing the movie although it's interesting to note that the teacher in the movie comes off as much more sympathetic and dedicated than the one in the book. The guy in the book is always tired and a bit cranky. The movie's class is less disciplined (althought not, I should add, from an American perspective) than in the book. I can't believe they still stand when an adult enters the room (although in the movie, the principal has to remind them to do this and then gives a little speech about how that's not a sign of subjugation but of respect). The kids are mouthy and culture proud. They are mixed in their feelings of being or not being "true" French. They want the teacher to stop using the name Bill for all his sample sentences and replace it with Rachid or Aissata. Perhaps not coincidentally, Bill in French sounds very similar to the word for "crazy" so there's a great scene in which the teacher is not sure if the kids are calling him crazy or not.
And he does make some mistakes. He gets so fed up with the behaviour of two girls on student council (apperently, they get to sit in on grade discussions for the class) that he says they're acting like, um, whores, I guess. Imagine how well that goes over. The teacher in me cringes (and empathizes), but at the same time, HELLO. They're not your pals and they're crazy with hormones and have their dander up all the time at that age. Try having a little less champagne at the next staff meeting, maybe (or more).

I learned all sorts of things about the system of education in France, some of which I found intriguing and some of which horrified me. It was nice to get a modern glimpse at another school culture.

Bad Mother

Say you are lying in bed late-ish on a Sunday morning, reading Ayelet Waldman's book Bad Mother (A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace) and you decide to get up and make your kids waffles. No, not the frozen ones you had been contemplating, but the real ones, using whole wheat flour because, yeah, the book is making you feel a little guilty. So, does this make you a good mother? Well, what if as you're serving the waffles, you're yelling at everyone because it's all about the timing and NO ONE is helping! Okay, bad mother?

Actually, I'm cheating a little because I haven't finished reading this book and I might not even read all of it. It definitely seems like a pick-and-choose-your-chapters kind of book. I also don't recommend reading this as a nursing mother or as the member of a family whose laundry for the month isn't done (ever!), or if your even remotely grumpy about your husband's career or hobbies. Since I don't fit those categories for the time being, I read a couple of chapters and had a few amusing Aha moments.

In the chapter called Free to Be You and I (that should ring some bells for many from a 1970s childhood), Waldman talks about having been skewered for writing that she might love her husband more than she loves her kids. Actually, this chapter is about sex and housework. She's trying to explain how it seems men use sex to wind down after a stressful day whereas women, not so much. "What men who describe spending an afternoon with their children as 'babysitting' need to realize is that after an evening spent rushing from work to the grocery store, back home to cook dinner...then folding a load of laundry while supervising homework (and yes, thank you for doing the dishes, but it's not like you cured cancer; don't act like you deserve the Nobel Prize), before getting the kids to bed, packing their lunches for the next day, and then sitting down at the computer to answer twelve e-mails from the first-grade room parent...fill out and submit the nursery strategic plan survey, and create an Evite for the birthday party you've left yourself less than a week to plan, most women just aren't in the mood."

Having or not having sex with your husband is not, of course, an indicator of good mother or bad mother, but it does indicate if there is balance in your life. Even Waldman admits that her own wonderful marriage has gone through the ususal ups and downs. And I think we all know that you can love your husband or your kids more than life itself and still want to get away from them. This is not being a bad mother, but we sure do like to look askance at anyone who admits this need out loud.

In those early days--especially when nursing around the clock--my friends and I admitted we just needed 24 hours away from our families in order to be better mothers/wives/people. I don't think it ever happened for any of us but not because we were particularly "good" mothers. It was just too impractical, too much trouble, too much pumping ahead of time, never mind the discomfort that would follow. And we were tired.

My kids tell me on a daily basis whether I'm a good mother or a bad mother, entirely dependent on whether I've instantly fulfilled their wish of the moment (bought them a toy, made dutch baby for dinner, sewn up a little stuffed pig who's losing his beads) or asked them to do something that simply ruins their lives (clean up, wash their hands with soap, or--the worst--leave the house for some activity that only I can see will serve the greater good that is their future, like say, go to the library or go hiking). So, see, I don't really need anyone else in society passing judgement.

But this book isn't all about the way we judge ourselves or each other. It's just a provocative title and you should pay more attention to the subtitle. I loved the chapter on the torture of homework (Drawing the Line). I skimmed through one about dealing with daughters because I don't need to care. Ditto for the invective against dodge ball because it seemed too obvious (and my kids love dodge ball). So there's a little for everyone in here. I

love non-fiction that can be read in a non-linear way and can (mostly) make me feel better about my life. Next weekend, I'll try another real breakfast, but maybe without the yelling, and I already know I won't have to wash the floors then. Already done that today and with spousal help to boot. Peace and harmony reign in the household and it's all good.

Secret Son

There's a Guy de Maupassant short story about a couple of destitute families who are each approached by a wealthy couple eager to "purchase" a child. The thinking is, these families have too many children, the wealthy couple is childless, and who wouldn't want the best for their child? One family refuses out of love for their youngest. The other accepts and their boy is brought up happily and becomes healthy and wealthy. The other, well, he stays with his loving family and remains poor and uneducated. That's not the end for Maupassant, of course. In the very end, the boy whose family loved him too much to give him up, is bitterly angry at the opportunity for wealth and betterment that his family denied him by keeping him close. Maupassant never met a character he didn't want to twist.

This story came to mind as I read Laila Lalami's Secret Son. In the beginning, Youssef is living a life like many other young Moroccan men of little means. His mother loves him, has sacrificed all for him, he has friends in the slums where he lives, he has studied hard and is accepted to college so in many ways, he's better off than most. Except. Except. When he gets the opportunity to meet the father he never knew was alive, and he sees how the other half lives (because naturally, his father is one of the elite in Casablanca), he is forced to choose between two worlds.

Or at least we think he must choose. When his father convinces him that school is a waste, I hesitated to trust him. When his father keeps him secret from his current wife and balks at telling him much about his half-sister, you almost know things are bound to get ugly.

Still, what is there in the slums for Youssef? Surely, even his mother must see that? The somewhat shady group called The Party is moving in to his old neighborhood, bringing some good (health, free tea, some education) to the area, but with suspect motives and some preaching against lost morals. Even Youssef's mother doesn't trust them and she has never liked her son's friends. Youssef gets a good job through his father, abandons his mother to live the good life, and forgets his friends. Still, these friends are dead ends anyway so isn't that good?

Of course things go wrong. Youssef isn't particularly political but all politics are, of course, personal, and yes, he becomes wrapped up in things bigger than himself. When young Americans reach a dead end--no jobs, a lack of educational opportunity, no opportunities in general, they tend to turn to drugs or murder, I suppose. Apparently in Morocco, they turn to terrorism or political assassination. Youssef resents his mother for trying to keep him in the slums (and she is a bit sneaky about the whole thing), but he resents the world his father represents, once it is clear that his place is unattainable within that world.

I'm not saying Lalami is Maupassant, or that she twists her characters (or our loyalty to those characters) as much as that writer does, but there's a touch of despair and desperation in her characters that seem believable and remeniscent of the great writer. It's a bit hard for a westerner to understand all the nuances of class and the appeal of religious zealotry in the portrait she gives of modern Morocco, and I'm not sure Lalami draws a straight enough line for Youssef from beginning to end, but it is easy to understand his eventual desperation to find a way out of a dead-end, by any means necessary.

A great line as Youssef is watching his slummy neighborhood flood:...just a few feet away, knee-deep in water...a man and his two sons turned the corner toward him, carrying a chipped divan base, a torn mattress, and a table...They were moving to an uncle's house, the boy told him. It was the worst thing in the world, Youssef thought, to lose everything and, at the same time, to have everyone see that you did not own anything worth saving.

I also liked the proverb Youssef's friend quotes to him when he is trying to discourage Youssef from pursuing a rich co-ed. Everyone should know the size of his teapot. Proverbs always sound wise in translation, don't they?

Check out Laila Lalami's short story collection Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, as a great read and a little window into the Moroccan/French world. I've given it as a present to several people.

In The Heart of the Canyon

One by one, the guests staggered off the bus into the hot morning sun. Their clothes were clean, their hats straight, their skin pale and freshly shaved and smelling of sunscreen. Eager not only to be of use but also to make a good first impression on the guides... Let's just say that, obviously, nobody stays squeaky clean at the end of the raft trip down the Colorado in Elisabeth Hyde's great book. They don't all make a good first impression--or subsequent impressions--on the guides either. But, as is true of any basic fiction, everyone ends up somewhere different at the end.

I really enjoyed this book. A great, fast read (though thank goodness for the handy "cast of characters" page at the beginning because there are a lot of them). I loved the sense of dread throughout. You just know something's going to happen, but this is no River Wild or Deliverance (uh, good thing). Really, it's just about...a dog. No, not Cujo, not some evil being. Well, actually, that's a possibility. All I can say is, watch that dog!

JT is on his 125th run as white water guide and maybe he's had this kind of crazy group before and maybe he hasn't. He's got the old experienced couple. Oh except, one of them now suffers from Alzheimers; He's got the "expert" on everything; He's got the happy, happy Mormon family; the single 50 year old who doesn't do well in groups, the young frat boy who can't swim; and the 250 lbs teenage girl whose mother is trying desperately to bond with her on this twelve day journey. The dog, they pick up along the way.

I loved Amy, the fat girl (her own label) best. Hyde occasionally throws in excerpts from Amy's diary complete with overuse of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I loved it. So believable. Amy's really smart, too (perfect SAT scores), but she's got a few problems. Well, don't they all. Most of the characters are well drawn and you understand where they come from and where they end up. I guess on a trip like this, it'll either bring you together or tear you apart. Either one would make a good story, if done well. Hyde does a nice job of making the trip sound fun, all the while, making you dread the next page. It didn't exactly make me want to sign up--too much drowning potential, not enough showers, and I'm pretty sure I would have hated everyone in the group, but they do make an interesting set of characters without being too cliched. It's an exhausting ride down this river--forget the white water. The dog really doesn't help.