Constance Harding is a clueless 53-year-old English housewife who has started a blog at her children's suggestion--they are hoping the blog will relieve the pressure on them to listen to her prattling on about bell-ringing, flower arranging, and the flaws of her Lithuanian housekeeper Natalia. The novel presents a year's worth of blog entries, in which she learns that her son, for whom she has been relentlessly attempting to match-make, is gay; her daughter has a variety of misadventures including running off with her father's obnoxious Russian friend; and she learns her husband Jeffrey has had an affair with the aforementioned Natalia. But some time on her own in Argentina leads to personal transformation and a happy ending.
A Surrey State of Affairs is a satire on upper middle class British women of a certain age, exposing their prejudices, vapidity, and essential silliness, but the satire would be more effective if Constance weren't such a total idiot. Furthermore, while the author is attempting a "trendy" form, the blog is in fact no different from a diary, as there is no interactivity. In fact, until the end of the book, we have no idea whether anyone at all is reading Constance's blog.
Suitable for beach or ski lodge reading.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
The Age of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker
The Age of Miracles is a coming of age story that takes place in a dystopic future. Earth has suddenly started rotating more slowly, causing days to be longer. At first the day is only an hour or so longer, but the slowing continues until long periods of sunlight are followed by long periods of darkness. The effects on the environment and on people's psyches are severe.
The story is told in retrospect by Julia, who is a middle-schooler at the time of the initial "slowing" (and 23 at the time she is telling the story). Julia is an only child and something of a misfit when the story opens, but she has one good friend, Hanna, and therefore feels at least somewhat secure in the social hell that is middle school (ironically, "The Age of Miracles" of the title refers to the middle school years, when young people go through incredible physical changes). Then, when the slowing begins, Hanna's Mormon family heads to Utah; when they return, Hanna no longer wants to be friends with Julia. Julia's life is not fun--she has no friends, her mother--always a worrywart--is suffering from a new illness caused by the rotational slowing, and her father is having an affair with Sylvia, the piano teacher who lives across the street. Sylvia is a real-timer, rebelling against the government's demand that people's activities continue on "clock time," even if that means sleeping in broad daylight and going to school in total darkness. Real-timers are ostracized; many move to remote colonies in the desert or mountains.
Things get marginally better for Julia when Seth Moreno, a classmate she has had a crush on for some time, befriends her. The two spend many hours together talking about such uplifting topics as whether they would rather die from disease or in an explosion. They risk radiation poisoning (and devastating sunburn) by sneaking out during daylight hours, which have become very dangerous, to spy on Sylvia.
The book fizzles somewhat at the end--characters disappear, others live on. No one knows what caused the slowing or how long human life can endure on the changed planet. Yet Julia has decided to try to become a doctor--a note of hope, perhaps. The Age of Miracles isn't a great book, but it's a quick read with an interesting premise. I think Novel Conversations will find plenty to discuss!
Favorite passages:
I had grown into a worrier, a girl on constant guard for catastrophes large and small, but the disappointments I now sensed were hidden all around us right in plain sight.
Sometimes the saddest stories take the fewest words.
Friday, February 8, 2013
The McSweeney's Book of Politics and Musicals, edited by Christopher Monks
Politics and musicals may not seem like a natural pairing, but in this collection, they are. Among the more than 100 pieces in the collection are "fragments" from such musicals as "Weiner! The Musical" (as disgusting as you night expect), "Palin! The Musical," "Hot Planet! The Musical"(in which Al Gore rues the day that, as a teenager, he wished the ocean were warmer so he could follow a girl in a low-cut bathing suit into the water). These fragments include such lyrical gems as "And also I will go fight Newt/He's always up for a dispute/At any time, in any forum/And so am I. I'm Rick Santorum."
The non-musical pieces are varied, including many written written from the perspective of historical figures. Among these was my favorite, "Starting Over with Pat Nixon," in which Pat describes writing to Ann Landers for marital advice, wonders when the romance went out of her marriage, and imagines spilling the beans about her imaginary son (and other oddities) to David Frost, Dick Cavett, or Barbara Walters.
The book also features numerous lists--Republican S&M safe words and subject lines from Obama campaign emails to name but two. My favorite among these was "Crate and Barrel Tableware Style + American President = Fictional Delta Blues Singer." Examples: Faded Rose Jefferson and Chowder Bowl Pierce.
With a collection of satirical writings by more than 70 different authors, there are bound to be pieces that a single reader will not find funny--perhaps especially if that reader is over the age of 50. In fact, by the time I got to the last 50 pages, the humor was wearing thin. But I did get a few guffaws and a number of grins from this collection of political humor.
Favorite passages:
. . . the only reason we have an enemies list is because we tried to make a list of friends and found we had none. (Obviously from the aforementioned Pat Nixon piece by Tom Gliatto)
For all the unhappiness about the country's direction, most citizens would still rather be in prison here than anywhere else. Whether the prison is a literal one, like the famed Sing Sing in upstate New York, or more figurative, like junior high, compulsive behavior , a bad marriage, or a dead-end job as a poll analyst, America is still the gold standard in incarceration and hopelessness by a whopping four-to-one-margin. (From "How You Voted" by Jonathan Stern)
The non-musical pieces are varied, including many written written from the perspective of historical figures. Among these was my favorite, "Starting Over with Pat Nixon," in which Pat describes writing to Ann Landers for marital advice, wonders when the romance went out of her marriage, and imagines spilling the beans about her imaginary son (and other oddities) to David Frost, Dick Cavett, or Barbara Walters.
The book also features numerous lists--Republican S&M safe words and subject lines from Obama campaign emails to name but two. My favorite among these was "Crate and Barrel Tableware Style + American President = Fictional Delta Blues Singer." Examples: Faded Rose Jefferson and Chowder Bowl Pierce.
With a collection of satirical writings by more than 70 different authors, there are bound to be pieces that a single reader will not find funny--perhaps especially if that reader is over the age of 50. In fact, by the time I got to the last 50 pages, the humor was wearing thin. But I did get a few guffaws and a number of grins from this collection of political humor.
Favorite passages:
. . . the only reason we have an enemies list is because we tried to make a list of friends and found we had none. (Obviously from the aforementioned Pat Nixon piece by Tom Gliatto)
For all the unhappiness about the country's direction, most citizens would still rather be in prison here than anywhere else. Whether the prison is a literal one, like the famed Sing Sing in upstate New York, or more figurative, like junior high, compulsive behavior , a bad marriage, or a dead-end job as a poll analyst, America is still the gold standard in incarceration and hopelessness by a whopping four-to-one-margin. (From "How You Voted" by Jonathan Stern)
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Signs and Wonders, by Alix Ohlin
Signs and Wonders is the third collection of short stories I've read recently, and it is by far my favorite of the batch. Ohlin does not rely on plot twists to make these stories work (although she does throw in an occasional twist); her tools are graceful writing, strong character development, and the ability to capture a situation succinctly. Her subject matter is the development of identity, as an individual, a friend, a lover/spouse, and a parent.
The people who populate Ohlin's stories face difficulties, both self-inflicted and the result of circumstances beyond their control. Some of the difficulties and the ways people decide to navigate the troubles produce disturbing results (e.g., the music teacher whose husband cannot make her pregnant and therefore chooses to sleep with one of her orchestra students, the family that blames the new stepmother when a child disappears on vacation)--but those disturbing stories do stick with me!
Of the 16 stories in the collection, one of my favorites was "Bruno," in which a French teenager comes to visit his father in New York. The child was conceived on a vacation fling and has been raised by his French mother, with summer visits from his American father Art. But Art has missed several summers while undergoing treatment for testicular cancer. While Art thinks Bruno is coming for a visit, in fact Bruno and his mother have hatched a plot for him to stay in New York. As Art transitions from "vacation Dad" to parent, both child and adult change, inevitably and not necessarily for the better.
Another story I liked a great deal was "The Only Child." After her first year in college, Sophie's parents inform her that she is not an only child: they had a child before they were married. The child--a boy--had been placed for adoption but had recently reached out to his biological parents. As Sophie gets to know Phillip and his fiance Fiona, she reexamines what it means to be part of a family.
While not all the stories drew me in, I still think the collection is worth reading.
Favorite passages:
He'd worked at ICS for five years, and the line between it being a day job and a regular job had blurred to invisibility.
That's what marriage is, Tori's mother explained to her, a blame game. . . . This is why she doesn't usually confide in her mother because she makes these depressing pronouncements about life that all too often turn out to be true.
How long can always be to an 18-year old? Since you were 14? 16? since last week? . . . She seemed so happy, as if she'd proved something to herself, passed the test that only she knew the contents of, that she was grown up, he guessed. That she was allowed to make mistakes.
The people who populate Ohlin's stories face difficulties, both self-inflicted and the result of circumstances beyond their control. Some of the difficulties and the ways people decide to navigate the troubles produce disturbing results (e.g., the music teacher whose husband cannot make her pregnant and therefore chooses to sleep with one of her orchestra students, the family that blames the new stepmother when a child disappears on vacation)--but those disturbing stories do stick with me!
Of the 16 stories in the collection, one of my favorites was "Bruno," in which a French teenager comes to visit his father in New York. The child was conceived on a vacation fling and has been raised by his French mother, with summer visits from his American father Art. But Art has missed several summers while undergoing treatment for testicular cancer. While Art thinks Bruno is coming for a visit, in fact Bruno and his mother have hatched a plot for him to stay in New York. As Art transitions from "vacation Dad" to parent, both child and adult change, inevitably and not necessarily for the better.
Another story I liked a great deal was "The Only Child." After her first year in college, Sophie's parents inform her that she is not an only child: they had a child before they were married. The child--a boy--had been placed for adoption but had recently reached out to his biological parents. As Sophie gets to know Phillip and his fiance Fiona, she reexamines what it means to be part of a family.
While not all the stories drew me in, I still think the collection is worth reading.
Favorite passages:
He'd worked at ICS for five years, and the line between it being a day job and a regular job had blurred to invisibility.
That's what marriage is, Tori's mother explained to her, a blame game. . . . This is why she doesn't usually confide in her mother because she makes these depressing pronouncements about life that all too often turn out to be true.
How long can always be to an 18-year old? Since you were 14? 16? since last week? . . . She seemed so happy, as if she'd proved something to herself, passed the test that only she knew the contents of, that she was grown up, he guessed. That she was allowed to make mistakes.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Open Heart, by Elie Wiesel
My last post began with a comment that also applies to Open Heart, although it is probably politically incorrect to say so about something written by a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize: "If this author weren't so successful [perhaps eminent would be a better adjective here], this book would never have been published." Open Heart is a series of brief reflections (the entire book is only 79 pages and took about an hour to read) prompted by Wiesel's open heart surgery in summer 2011. He writes about his love for his wife and son, his guilt about not being with his parents and sister when they were murdered in the concentration camps, his writing, his faith, whether he has done enough in his life, whether he is ready to die.
Perhaps I am just too cynical to appreciate this kind of book. I did admire the way that Weisel depicted how his mind wandered from thought to thought under stress and anesthesia, but I did not find the book inspiring; nor did I feel I gained the "timeless lessons about life" mentioned in President Obama's jacket blurb.
Favorite passage:
. . . in my combat against hatred, which I wished to be unrelenting, did I in fact invest enough time, enough energy, in denouncing fanaticism in its various guises? Evidently not, since all of us who have fought the battle must now admit defeat.
Perhaps I am just too cynical to appreciate this kind of book. I did admire the way that Weisel depicted how his mind wandered from thought to thought under stress and anesthesia, but I did not find the book inspiring; nor did I feel I gained the "timeless lessons about life" mentioned in President Obama's jacket blurb.
Favorite passage:
. . . in my combat against hatred, which I wished to be unrelenting, did I in fact invest enough time, enough energy, in denouncing fanaticism in its various guises? Evidently not, since all of us who have fought the battle must now admit defeat.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Kinsey and Me, by Sue Grafton
From time to time, I come across a book that makes me think, "If this author weren't so successful, this book would never have been published." Kinsey and Me: Stories is one of those books, and I can't quite figure out why Sue Grafton would even want to publish it. One of the book's peculiarities is that it's two main sections--"Kinsey" and "Me"--have nothing to do with each other.
The Kinsey section features previously published short stories involving Grafton's signature character, Kinsey Millhone. Mystery short stories are essentially an exercise in the clever plot twist and, even though I read a lot of mysteries, mystery short stories get old quickly. I generally can tolerate a collection of them only when multiple authors have been asked to respond to a theme; seeing the range of responses can be amusing. However, just reading a series of short stories featuring Kinsey was not all that entertaining.
However, it is the Me section of the book that really raised questions. Why did Grafton choose to publish the stories in this section, which feature a character called Kit Blue, who is Sue Grafton's alter ego? Grafton wrote these "stories"--they are really more like ruminations on how having an alcoholic mother affects a daughter--in the ten years following her mother's death. The writing is inelegant, and the stories bounce from third to first to second person, with occasional use of such devices as addressing the reader directly and including a letter to give Kit's father a voice. Yet the stories have some emotional power; indeed, the pain and confusion are so palpable that reading the pieces is uncomfortable. If Grafton wanted to convey to others the multiple ways in which having an alcoholic mother scars someone, I can't help wondering why she didn't take these rough pieces as inspiration to write a more polished set of stories or even a novel. In the decades that have passed since the stories were written, Grafton has published 22 Millhone novels, so surely her writing style has advanced since she struggled with finding the voice in which to write about her own experience.
Not recommended.
The Kinsey section features previously published short stories involving Grafton's signature character, Kinsey Millhone. Mystery short stories are essentially an exercise in the clever plot twist and, even though I read a lot of mysteries, mystery short stories get old quickly. I generally can tolerate a collection of them only when multiple authors have been asked to respond to a theme; seeing the range of responses can be amusing. However, just reading a series of short stories featuring Kinsey was not all that entertaining.
However, it is the Me section of the book that really raised questions. Why did Grafton choose to publish the stories in this section, which feature a character called Kit Blue, who is Sue Grafton's alter ego? Grafton wrote these "stories"--they are really more like ruminations on how having an alcoholic mother affects a daughter--in the ten years following her mother's death. The writing is inelegant, and the stories bounce from third to first to second person, with occasional use of such devices as addressing the reader directly and including a letter to give Kit's father a voice. Yet the stories have some emotional power; indeed, the pain and confusion are so palpable that reading the pieces is uncomfortable. If Grafton wanted to convey to others the multiple ways in which having an alcoholic mother scars someone, I can't help wondering why she didn't take these rough pieces as inspiration to write a more polished set of stories or even a novel. In the decades that have passed since the stories were written, Grafton has published 22 Millhone novels, so surely her writing style has advanced since she struggled with finding the voice in which to write about her own experience.
Not recommended.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Black Dahlia and White Rose: Stories, by Joyce Carol Oates
Alan Cheuse, NPR book reviewer (and author and professor), has dubbed Joyce Carol Oates's style as "every day gothic." This description is apt, especially for the self-consciously noir portion of Oates's large body of work. Black Dahlia and White Rose definitely falls into that category, as it is a collection of dark tales of people whose lives hold little that is hopeful or positive.
The book is organized into four sections. The first contains only the title story, in which Oates makes Marilyn Monroe the roommate of Elizabeth Short, the young woman dubbed the Black Dahlia after her sensational murder. The story takes the reader inside the two women's minds, as well as those of a sleazy photographer and a voyeuristic doctor.
All but one of the stories in the second section deal with parent-child relationships. I found these to be the most effective stories in the book--but effective in a way that makes them painful to read. In "I.D.," for example, a middle school girl who is having a variety of problems is pulled out of class and asked to identify a body as her mother.
What the stories in the third section have in common seems to be that the narrators become obsessed with observing someone or something else--the people in an apartment across a courtyard from a Rome hotel in one story, animals in the other. I found the two stories about animals (a sparrow and spotted hyenas) so bizarre as to be meaningless. The story about a married couple visiting "Roma" seems a more straightforward exploration of lost connections in a marriage of longstanding (which also is a theme in the hyena story).
The final section includes two stories about classes offered in prison settings. One features a man who repeatedly takes Introduction to Biology to understand "how is a person die." The second is told from the perspective of an older academic, who is teaching essay-writing with a younger colleague; while I have no idea if Oates has ever taught in prison, I found the character quite similar to the way in which Oates depicted herself in the memoir A Widow's Story, a similarity that quite honestly felt uncomfortable.
Although a couple of stories were engaging, I generally did not enjoy this collection. Furthermore, Oates's writing did not display the grace I've come to expect from her. In fact, I cannot stop myself from reproducing this truly horrid sentence: "She'd begun to perspire inside her clothes." Really? Where else would one perspire?
The book is organized into four sections. The first contains only the title story, in which Oates makes Marilyn Monroe the roommate of Elizabeth Short, the young woman dubbed the Black Dahlia after her sensational murder. The story takes the reader inside the two women's minds, as well as those of a sleazy photographer and a voyeuristic doctor.
All but one of the stories in the second section deal with parent-child relationships. I found these to be the most effective stories in the book--but effective in a way that makes them painful to read. In "I.D.," for example, a middle school girl who is having a variety of problems is pulled out of class and asked to identify a body as her mother.
What the stories in the third section have in common seems to be that the narrators become obsessed with observing someone or something else--the people in an apartment across a courtyard from a Rome hotel in one story, animals in the other. I found the two stories about animals (a sparrow and spotted hyenas) so bizarre as to be meaningless. The story about a married couple visiting "Roma" seems a more straightforward exploration of lost connections in a marriage of longstanding (which also is a theme in the hyena story).
The final section includes two stories about classes offered in prison settings. One features a man who repeatedly takes Introduction to Biology to understand "how is a person die." The second is told from the perspective of an older academic, who is teaching essay-writing with a younger colleague; while I have no idea if Oates has ever taught in prison, I found the character quite similar to the way in which Oates depicted herself in the memoir A Widow's Story, a similarity that quite honestly felt uncomfortable.
Although a couple of stories were engaging, I generally did not enjoy this collection. Furthermore, Oates's writing did not display the grace I've come to expect from her. In fact, I cannot stop myself from reproducing this truly horrid sentence: "She'd begun to perspire inside her clothes." Really? Where else would one perspire?
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