The Condition, by Jennifer Haigh

The title of this book and its structure--it starts with a "prologue" set in 1976 just before the McKotch family discovers that young Gwen has a genetic condition (Turner's syndrome) that will prevent her from physically maturing normally--suggest that Gwen's condition is the root of the family's many difficulties. But this is certainly not the case, as the members of the family all have "conditions" that keep them from happiness and fully functional lives.

The parents--who are long-divorced by the late 1990s, when the real action of the book begins--seem to have been badly matched to begin with. Father Frank, who came from a working class family in Pennsylvania, is a scientist obsessed with achieving success; at the same time, his libido sometimes obscures his judgement. These factors combine in bad ways to sabotage his chances for the recognition he longs for. Mother Paulette is a New England patrician, who believes beige should be every woman's favorite color and is embarrassed to discuss her daughter's medical issues. Older brother Billy is a successful cardiologist in New York City, but he has distanced himself from his family because he is hiding the fact that he is gay from them. Gwen is underemployed in a museum and has limited social contacts. Younger brother Scott, a pothead who teaches at a mediocre private school, is struggling to find something meaningful about his life. As he deals with his son's constant problems in school, he realizes that he is probably ADHD himself.

When Gwen goes on a dive trip, falls in love, and decides to quit her job and live in the Caribbean, Paulette freaks out and tries to get each of the men to take action. Billy and Frank, both embroiled in problems of their own, refuse, but Scott is delighted by the idea that his mother is trusting him to act for the family and heads south to "handle" the situation. By the end of the book, all three children emerge changed--although not necessarily in ways that seem realistic.

I didn't actively dislike The Condition (although I despised the gratuitous 9/11 reference at the end), but I think I would have liked it more had it been more focused on Gwen and her challenges, as I thought it would be. The other members of the McKotch family were less interesting and their issues more mundane and self-inflicted (in Billy's case, I'm referring not to his sexuality but his choice not to tell his family about it). Perhaps if they were a bit less stereotypical, they might have been more sympathetic. But Gwen is the star of the book--and could have had an even bigger part.

Favorite passage:

Like everything else, maturity had disappointed Paulette.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson

My son Kevin recently gave me a gift subscription to Audible, and I used my first credit to buy The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, which turned out to be a less-than-stellar choice. Why? First, it's too long for a novice novel listener. Second, there are too many characters with Swedish names (oh, what a surprise!) that sound alike, causing me considerable confusion. Third, the plot seems to involve various groups of police, journalists, lawyers, and bad people talking about their plans and investigations--which tends to lull one (especially one who spent four days sick last week) into a trance, if not to sleep. Consequently, I often found myself starting a section over because I had no idea what had happened.

I will give Audible another chance. Luckily, there are no more Lisbeth Salander/Mikael Blomkvist books left to read or listen to (I know, that's an extraordinarily mean thing to say since the poor author died). While the first two books in the series were incredibly violent, this one is just dull. Plus, Larsson once again gives us a climax followed by pages and pages and pages (or minutes and minutes and minutes) to resolve a few remaining plot points. Do I care who is managing the money Lisbeth stole, how her relationships with Miriam Wu or Mikael work out, or even what happens to her nefarious half-brother? I do not!

Underground Time, by Delphine de Vigan

Underground Time focuses on one day--May 20--in the lives of two Parisians. Mathilde is a single mother of three boys, who pulled herself out of the abyss following her husband's death by building a career as the deputy to the marketing director at an international consulting firm. Eight months ago, however, she dared to disagree with her boss, who has gradually isolated her, stripping her of responsibility and using his power to make her a "nonperson" in their department. Mathilde is breaking down under the pressure, but she clings to the irrational hope that something good will happen on May 20, as predicted by a psychic.

Thibault is a doctor who works for an emergency service. That morning, he has broken up with his lover, Lila, who "just isn't programmed to fall in love with him." As Thibault drives his car through the morass of traffic in Paris, tending to the sick and lonely, he, too feels his isolation as nearly unbearable.

As the two go through their days, feeling ever more alienation, the reader's sense of dread builds. You begin to wonder if their paths will cross and hope that they might somehow save each other.

Underground Time is a moving exploration of how a person's sense of self can be eroded. It is beautifully written; I often find translated works to have an emotional flatness, but that is certainly not the case with this fine book translated by George Miller.

Favorite passages:

She's often thought that shes' passed on to her children a kind of gaiety, a talent for joy. She's often thought that she has nothing more important to offer them than her laugh, beyond the infinite chaos of the world.

She strokes their sleep-crumpled faces and breathes in their smell. In the creases of their necks the arrangement of her own life seems simple to her.

His life is here. Even though none of it fools him. Not the music that comes through windows, nor the illuminated signs, nor the bursts of voices around television sets on evenings when there's football on. Even if he has known for a long time that the singular trumps the plural and how fragile conjunctions are.

What kind of adult do you become if you have discovered at such an early age that life can collapse? What kind of person? What does it equip you with? What are you missing?

The Sweet Life in Paris, by David Lebovitz

My quasi-daughter-in-law Leigh gave me this book for Christmas, in anticipation of a summer trip to Paris. Author David Lebovitz, dessert cookbook author and former chef at Chez Panisse, decided to move to Paris after his partner died, leaving him feeling unmoored in his life in San Francisco. The book is a light-hearted look at how Lebovitz learned to deal with various aspects of life in Paris--from dressing, to waiting in line, to shopping and dining. While the book is funny and the author clearly loves Paris, he paints a picture of an unwelcoming, if not somewhat frightening place.

Lebovitz describes walking the streets as "an annoying game of people-pinball" while avoiding copious amounts of dog poop, waiting in line as an opportunity to experience line-jumping and unwanted intimacy with the person standing behind you. Shopping is an experience constrained by numerous rules--you must say Bonjour to store personnel when you enter if you hope to receive any sort of service; on the other hand, you must not touch anything unless you are sure you want to buy it, as clerks will snatch up anything you touch and begin wrapping it for you. The chocolates, breads, and cheeses of Paris are divine--should personnel at the shops not take an unexplained dislike to you (Lebovitz greased many a wheel by taking brownies to people in the various businesses he patronizes). If you go into certain restaurants dressed like an American, you will be relegated to the back room and may be served bad fish. I am definitely going to have to read some more romanticized descriptions of Paris to get my courage back.

Lebovitz includes recipes at the end of each brief chapter of the book, many but by no means all desserts. He also lists sources in the U.S. for French foodstuffs and some of his favorite cafes, bakeries, cheese shops, and the like in Paris.

Favorite passage:

When they say, "The cheeses in France are the best in the world, they mean, "We are indeed a superior culture."

When they say, "We are tired of American culture," they mean, "Please don't show us Sharon Stone's vagina again."

My Korean Deli: Risking Everything for a Convenience Store, by Ben Ryder Howe

Ben Ryder Howe's family came to the "New World" on the Mayflower. He is an editor at the Paris Review, the literary magazine founded by George Plimpton. His wife Gab's Korean-American family came to the United States just a few decades ago. Gab is a corporate lawyer who has burned out and wants to help her parents by putting the money she and Ben have saved to buy an apartment of their own (they live in her parents' basement) into buying a convenience store. Does this seem like a good idea? Well....

Howe weaves together the story of their deli ownership--the search for a suitable store to buy, the process of learning how to run the store, the oddball customers and employees, the struggle between he and his mother-in-law Kay about what inventory to stock, the horrendous fines levied by New York City for infractions of various kinds--with the story of his work at the Review (Plimpton dies during the two years covered in the book) and reflections on marriage, family, and the immigrant experience.

The parts of the book on both aspects of Howe's work life are funny--in surprisingly similar ways. Although Howe portrays himself as something of a dufus, he endeared himself to me through the respect he developed for the work of convenience store owners and employees and his struggles to understand his wife's family. I did wish, however, that he had given Gab and Kay--both fascinating characters--a chance to tell us their stories themselves.

Favorite passages:

Forgetting what it's like to suffer can be a good thing, since suffering can make people too cut-throat for society's good. But suffering also breeds certain capacities that are easily lost, such as the ability to focus and a willingness to engage with conflict. These are things that I believe Kay thinks I'm incapable of.

My mother-in-law . . . [is] the archetype of a certain New Yorker who, whatever her actual story, is assumed to have sacrificed so much and worked so hard just to be here that it almost makes you defensive. Why are YOU here? What's YOUR story? It's not only people like Gab who struggle to live up to their parents' example, in other words; it's all of us. New York never let syou just sit there and relax. So many people are dying to get in, and willing to do almost anything to stay once they get here.

. . . self-reliance is a compulsion, not a skill you acquire because you or your parents thought it would be good for character development. You acquire it by becoming scarred, and becoming incurably suspicious that if you don't take care of a job yourself, no one will.

Blue Nights, by Joan Didion

So the real last book of 2011 is Joan Didion's Blue Nights, a slim melancholy volume that matches my mood of a New Year's Eve. ("What? The year is over and I didn't accomplish anything? Alus I'm getting so old.". . . You get the drift.) If you read Didion's Year of Magical Thinking, you know that in the year after her husband died suddenly, she was also dealing with her daughter Quintana's illness. Quintana died a year and a half after her father. This slim volume is a moving meditation on the loss of a child, parenting, and aging.

Didion describes memories of Quintana's life--both pleasant and troubling--and castigates herself for not understanding the emotional issues that her daughter struggled with. Quintana was adopted as an infant, and her parents followed the recommended method of telling their daughter that she was a chosen child, but this approach did little to assuage Quintana's fear of abandonment (she often asked her parents what would have happened if they hadn't been home to answer the phone when the doctor called to say a baby was available). Didion also wonders if she and husband John Gregory Dunne placed their daughter in adult situations too early

At the same time that Didion is dealing with her daughter's death and self-doubt about her parenting, she is facing nagging health problems of her own and sometimes-crippling fear that she will fall and be injured, that her legs simply will not hold her when she tries to stand. She has, in her words, lost her "sense of the possible." As she grapples with the problem of having no one to list as an emergency contact when she checks into the hospital, she realizes that her fear is really the fear of losing her memories of her daughter.

I find it difficult to describe how Didion has constructed the book--she dips back and forth in time, returning to certain scenes, stories, and especially quotes from Quintana as touchstones in her reflections. She occasionally addresses the reader directly, particularly as she worries about her ability to think and write as she once did ("Even the correct stance for telling you this, the ways to describe what is happening to me, the attitude, the tone, the very words, now elude my grasp.") The construction nonetheless conveys well the thoughts that torture Didion as she grieves her daughter, regrets he failures as a parent, and experiences the difficulties of aging.

Favorite passage:

In certain latitudes, there comes a span of time approaching and following the summer solstice, some weeks in all, when the twilights turn long and blue. . . . Blue nights are the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but they are also its warning.

[The sentences above are the first and last sentences of the book's first chapter, one long paragraph that explains the title and beautifully sets a tone for the book.]

. . . when we talk about our children what are we saying? Are we saying what it meant to us to have them? What it meant to us not to have them? What it meant to let them go? Are we talking about the enigma of pledging ourselves to protect the unprotectable? About the whole puzzle of being a parent? Time passes.

Addendum to Best of 2011

I love magazines, and every year read lots of good essays and articles in magazines that I don't make note of and (because I have the memory of a 61-year-old) cannot remember specifics about when I do my "Best of" post. This year, I want to recommend two recent David Brooks' columns from the NYT, in which he highlights some of the best magazine essays of the year. The two columns can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/opinion/brooks-the-sidney-awards-part-i.html and http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/opinion/brooks-the-sidney-awards-part-ii.html. I am working my way through the essays right now and, while I expect to disagree with Brooks on some of his selections (I certainly disagree with him on plenty of other things), I join him in celebrating long-form journalism. Let's not let great magazines die in 2012!