Reading Midnight's Children took me nine years after my son recommended it to me (finally got through it on the third try--but listening rather than reading). It has also taken me several days to sit down to write about it because I feel like I have little sensible to say. Even summarizing major plot points is difficult. But here's an attempt.
Midnight's Children covers 60 years in India's history, with independence--and the birth of the book's protagonist/narrator--as the fulcrum point. The 30 years prior to Saleem Sinai's birth just as the nation became independent are examined primarily from the perspective of his mother's family, a Muslim family with a share of dysfunctions equal to those of any modern American family. Eventually we reach the point at which 1001 babies are born in the first hour of India's independence; two--Saleem and a boy named Shiva--are exchanged by a nurse seeking approval from her revolutionary beloved (she believes that giving the poor Hindu child born to a street entertainer's wife the life of the wealthy Muslim boy will please him). After a misadventure at 9 years old that involves breathing the drawstring of a pair of pajama pants into his sinuses, Saleem believes that he can convene the surviving "Children of Midnight," who have a variety of supernatural powers, in his mind, which he does every night. While Saleem and Shiva quickly become rivals, Saleem believes these children will be the salvation of India. He is bereft when his parents trick him into having sinus surgery, which causes the loss of his ESP.
Saleem's family eventually emigrates to Pakistan, where his sister becomes a famous singer and he falls in love with her, assuming that, because they are not biologically related, she may agree to a relationship. Alas, he is wrong about this, and his life takes a turn for the worse. Not only is he pulled into every major event in Indo-Pakistani history, he concludes that the purpose of each event was to harm someone important to Saleem--his family is wiped out in the war of 1965, and the surviving Children of Midnight are sterilized and sperectomized (suffered the removal of hope) during the emergency declared by Indira Gandhi ("The Widow"). As he approaches his 31st birthday, Saleem is running a chutney factory started by the woman who exchanged him with Shiva as a baby. Although he plans to marry the woman, Padma, to whom he has been narrating the story of his life on his birthday, he also believes he will die that day (he sees his body cracking--though doctors deny this--and believes he will fall apart into dust).
Saleem is the ultimate unreliable narrator--he refers to himself in both the first and third persons and even admits that he is misremembering some events. He is so unreliable that I took the aspects of the book that many reviewers have described as magical realism or myth-making to be evidence that he is insane. His insanity was then, I thought, symbolic of the insanity of colonialism, post-colonial politics, and religious division on the Indian subcontinent. This is not the reading of scholars of either literature or Indian/Pakistani history, but it's what seemed to make sense to me.
Midnight's Children has won many prizes, including twice being named the best book in the history of the Booker prize (at the 25th and 40th anniversaries of that prize). It's certainly a book of great imagination and humor with a serious purpose. I feel a sense of achievement in having gotten through it--but I don't feel changed by the reading. Nor would it be likely to win the Singleton Prize if there were such a thing.
Favorite passages:
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems--but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible. . . Am I so far gone, in my desperate need for meaning, that I'm prepared to distort everything--to rewrite the whole history of my times purely in order to place myself in a central role? Today, in my confusion, I can't judge. I'll have to leave it to others. For me, there can be no going back; I must finish what I started, even if, inevitably, what I finish turns out not to be what I began . . .
The process of revision [Laurel's note: in making chutney--and in writing autobiography] should be constant and endless; don't think I'm satisfied with what I've done! Among my unhappinesses: an overly-harsh taste from those jars containing memories of my father; a certain ambiguity in the love-flavor of "Jamila Singer" (Special Formula No. 22), which might lead the unperceptive to conclude that I've invented the whole story of the baby-swap to justify an incestuous love . . . yes, I should revise and revise, improve and improve, but there is neither the time nor the energy. I am obliged to offer no more than this stubborn sentence: It happened that way because that's how it happened. . . .
One day, perhaps, the world may taste the pickles of history. They may be too strong for some palates, their smell may be overpowering, tears may rise to eyes; I hope nevertheless that it will be possible to say of them that they possess the authentic taste of truth . . that they are, despite everything, acts of love.
Friday, August 22, 2014
Monday, August 18, 2014
Men We Reaped, by Jesmyn Ward
Jesmyn Ward's memoir of growing up in an impoverished African American community in south Mississippi and watching five young men in her life--including her only brother--die over a four-year period is sad in so many ways that it's hard to write about (I can't even imagine how sad it was to live and to write). Ward's parents had four children and a troubled relationship, separating and reconciling numerous times before they finally divorced. Her father dreamed of having his own martial arts school, and her mother supported that dream, working as a housekeeper to keep the family financially afloat while he unsuccessfully tried to launch the school. Despite her mother's best efforts, her father's infidelity and inability to stay focused on his family (he had six other children by four different women) brought the marriage to an end.
As the oldest child, Jesmyn was often responsible for taking care of her siblings, just as her mother had cared for younger siblings while her mother worked. Jesmyn "looked at my father and mother and understood dimly that was harder to be a girl, that boys had it easier." And yet, boys and young men also had it hard: "Men's bodies litter my family history. The pain of the women they left behind pulls them from the beyond, makes them appear as ghosts."
Bullied by students in her public school, Jesmyn was offered the chance to attend a private school (her mother's employer volunteered to pay her expenses), where she was one of only a handful of black students and faced racism and the persistent experience of being "the other." Between her school life and her father's leaving the family, she felt herself to be worthless. And yet she worked hard at school, loved to read and write, and managed to leave Mississippi for an education at Stanford, work in New York, and a second advanced degree at Michigan.
The stories of the death of the five young men--one by a heart attack that may have been brought on by drug use, two in car accidents, one by suicide, and one the victim of an unsolved murder--are heartbreaking, particularly that of her beloved brother. After his death, Ward struggled mightily, considering suicide. The aspect of her story that I found most devastating was how Ward was constantly drawn back to her home town, where her depression and the community's culture led her to drink, get high, and hang out aimlessly, just as she might have had she not escaped to college. Of course, we know that she has become a very successful writer and professor, so she has indeed built a different life for herself, but she doesn't make clear how she managed to rise above the psychological damage that poverty, racism, lack of trust, and grief created.
Ward tells the story of her life chronologically, interspersed with chapters that briefly recount each young man's death, starting with the last death first. This structure is somewhat confusing but then suddenly seems to make sense when the two parts of the book converge at the time of her brother's death. I only wish we had the chapter of the book that takes place when she begins to heal.
Favorite passages:
What I did not understand then was that the same pressures were weighing on us all. My entire community suffered from a lack of trust: we didn't trust society to provide the basics of a good education, safety, access to good jobs, fairness in the justice system. And even as we distrusted the society around us, the culture that cornered us and told us we were perpetually less, we distrusted each other. We did not trust our fathers to raise us, to provide for us. Because we trusted nothing, we endeavored to protect ourselves, boys becoming misogynistic and violent, girls turning duplicitous, all of us hopeless.
How could I know then that this would be my life: yearning to leave the South and doing so again and again, but perpetually called back to home by a love so thick it choked me?
As the oldest child, Jesmyn was often responsible for taking care of her siblings, just as her mother had cared for younger siblings while her mother worked. Jesmyn "looked at my father and mother and understood dimly that was harder to be a girl, that boys had it easier." And yet, boys and young men also had it hard: "Men's bodies litter my family history. The pain of the women they left behind pulls them from the beyond, makes them appear as ghosts."
Bullied by students in her public school, Jesmyn was offered the chance to attend a private school (her mother's employer volunteered to pay her expenses), where she was one of only a handful of black students and faced racism and the persistent experience of being "the other." Between her school life and her father's leaving the family, she felt herself to be worthless. And yet she worked hard at school, loved to read and write, and managed to leave Mississippi for an education at Stanford, work in New York, and a second advanced degree at Michigan.
The stories of the death of the five young men--one by a heart attack that may have been brought on by drug use, two in car accidents, one by suicide, and one the victim of an unsolved murder--are heartbreaking, particularly that of her beloved brother. After his death, Ward struggled mightily, considering suicide. The aspect of her story that I found most devastating was how Ward was constantly drawn back to her home town, where her depression and the community's culture led her to drink, get high, and hang out aimlessly, just as she might have had she not escaped to college. Of course, we know that she has become a very successful writer and professor, so she has indeed built a different life for herself, but she doesn't make clear how she managed to rise above the psychological damage that poverty, racism, lack of trust, and grief created.
Ward tells the story of her life chronologically, interspersed with chapters that briefly recount each young man's death, starting with the last death first. This structure is somewhat confusing but then suddenly seems to make sense when the two parts of the book converge at the time of her brother's death. I only wish we had the chapter of the book that takes place when she begins to heal.
Favorite passages:
What I did not understand then was that the same pressures were weighing on us all. My entire community suffered from a lack of trust: we didn't trust society to provide the basics of a good education, safety, access to good jobs, fairness in the justice system. And even as we distrusted the society around us, the culture that cornered us and told us we were perpetually less, we distrusted each other. We did not trust our fathers to raise us, to provide for us. Because we trusted nothing, we endeavored to protect ourselves, boys becoming misogynistic and violent, girls turning duplicitous, all of us hopeless.
How could I know then that this would be my life: yearning to leave the South and doing so again and again, but perpetually called back to home by a love so thick it choked me?
Saturday, August 16, 2014
You Should Have Known, by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Grace Reinhart is a family therapist who is about to publish her first book, You Should Have Known, which provides advice to women on how to avoid marrying the wrong person; Grace truly believes that the wrong man always tells you that he is the wrong man, if only you will listen. Grace is married to a successful pediatric oncologist, sends her son Henry to the same private school she attended as a girl (and the parents at the school are portrayed just as those of us not living in New York would imagine them to be), and is happy nesting with her family in the same apartment she grew up in. While she, Henry, and husband Jonathan Sachs may not have many (or any) friends, they are a happy family.
But then things start to go wrong. She cannot reach her husband when he is supposed to be at a medical conference, and another mother at the Reardon School is the victim of a violent attack. When the police come to question her, Grace cannot imagine what she could possibly tell them that would be helpful. Soon, however, everyday brings revelations about her marriage that, perhaps, she "should have known." As her carefully constructed life collapses, Grace must figure out how to rebuild.
This book starts rather slowly--readers have to make it through a long interview Grace gives a reporter from Vogue about her book and accounts of two events at the school. While these sections establish Grace as the smug and judgmental, yet still somewhat insecure, person that she is and introduce us to her philosophy and the cultural milieu in which she lives, they could perhaps have been somewhat briefer. For me, one of the most interesting things about the book was trying to figure out why I stayed interested in an unsympathetic character like Grace--particularly when the reader spends the entire book inside Grace's head, subject to her self-delusions, judgments, panic, pain, recriminations, and on and on. I never really found an answer to that question, but I give Korelitz credit for making me care what happened to Grace despite not liking her (and, in fact, disliking her rather fiercely early on in the book).
I don't think this is a great book, but I did find it entertaining.
Favorite passage:
Someone has custom-written a horror story for my life, like those people who take your family members and turn them into a song for the golden anniversary celebration. But not like that at all.
But then things start to go wrong. She cannot reach her husband when he is supposed to be at a medical conference, and another mother at the Reardon School is the victim of a violent attack. When the police come to question her, Grace cannot imagine what she could possibly tell them that would be helpful. Soon, however, everyday brings revelations about her marriage that, perhaps, she "should have known." As her carefully constructed life collapses, Grace must figure out how to rebuild.
This book starts rather slowly--readers have to make it through a long interview Grace gives a reporter from Vogue about her book and accounts of two events at the school. While these sections establish Grace as the smug and judgmental, yet still somewhat insecure, person that she is and introduce us to her philosophy and the cultural milieu in which she lives, they could perhaps have been somewhat briefer. For me, one of the most interesting things about the book was trying to figure out why I stayed interested in an unsympathetic character like Grace--particularly when the reader spends the entire book inside Grace's head, subject to her self-delusions, judgments, panic, pain, recriminations, and on and on. I never really found an answer to that question, but I give Korelitz credit for making me care what happened to Grace despite not liking her (and, in fact, disliking her rather fiercely early on in the book).
I don't think this is a great book, but I did find it entertaining.
Favorite passage:
Someone has custom-written a horror story for my life, like those people who take your family members and turn them into a song for the golden anniversary celebration. But not like that at all.
Friday, August 8, 2014
Acts of God, by Ellen Gilchrist
Ellen Gilchrist is a much-lauded writer of short stories. Throughout Acts of God, her twelfth collection, people deal with a variety of crises and disasters--hurricanes, tornadoes, terrorist threats, serious illness, neighborhood disagreements (okay, that doesn't really qualify as a crisis)--and the ways in which people respond to them. Often, those responses are impressive: In "Miracle in Adkins, Arkansas," a teenage girl helps rescue a baby from the wreckage of a tornado and finds her perspective on life changed. A young single mother and college professor who serves in the National Guard is called to help in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina; her first rescue, of a young girl, has unexpected outcomes. Three men somewhat fool-heartedly refuse to evacuate during Katrina, but prove they made the right decision by volunteering at a stricken hospital.
My two favorite stories are darker. In the title story, when an elderly couple's caretaker doesn't show up for work, they decide to drive to the grocery store themselves. The outing ends tragically, when the husband drives into a pit on a construction site and both are killed. While many of their family members are furious with the caretaker, their eldest son describes their demise as "a sad but brilliant death"--and this seems right (and who wouldn't want a brilliant death?). Somewhat similarly, in "The Dissolution of the Myelin Sheath," Philipa has been diagnosed with MS. While her husband wants to take her to Mayo or another one of the "best" hospitals, Philipa has other plans. She carefully plots her suicide so her family members will be shielded from its reality--she jumps overboard near the motor of a cruise ship. Her note to her husband ends, "Nothing is of value except to have lived well and to die without pain."
Gilchrist's stories are not as opaque as many of the short stories that cause me to ask, when I get to the end, "What?" Her writing is straightforward and generally unornamented. Thus, I feel somewhat hypocritical, or at least recalcitrant, admitting that when I get to the end of Gilchrist's stories, I find myself asking, "So what?" There just doesn't seem to be a lot of heft there. Given Gilchrist's reputation, I'm willing to accept that the fault is with me and not the stories. While I wouldn't advise people to avoid Acts of God, I also wouldn't suggest rushing out to get it.
Favorite passage:
I'm not interesting. I'm a cliche inside a self-fulfilling prophecy inside a stereotype.
My two favorite stories are darker. In the title story, when an elderly couple's caretaker doesn't show up for work, they decide to drive to the grocery store themselves. The outing ends tragically, when the husband drives into a pit on a construction site and both are killed. While many of their family members are furious with the caretaker, their eldest son describes their demise as "a sad but brilliant death"--and this seems right (and who wouldn't want a brilliant death?). Somewhat similarly, in "The Dissolution of the Myelin Sheath," Philipa has been diagnosed with MS. While her husband wants to take her to Mayo or another one of the "best" hospitals, Philipa has other plans. She carefully plots her suicide so her family members will be shielded from its reality--she jumps overboard near the motor of a cruise ship. Her note to her husband ends, "Nothing is of value except to have lived well and to die without pain."
Gilchrist's stories are not as opaque as many of the short stories that cause me to ask, when I get to the end, "What?" Her writing is straightforward and generally unornamented. Thus, I feel somewhat hypocritical, or at least recalcitrant, admitting that when I get to the end of Gilchrist's stories, I find myself asking, "So what?" There just doesn't seem to be a lot of heft there. Given Gilchrist's reputation, I'm willing to accept that the fault is with me and not the stories. While I wouldn't advise people to avoid Acts of God, I also wouldn't suggest rushing out to get it.
Favorite passage:
I'm not interesting. I'm a cliche inside a self-fulfilling prophecy inside a stereotype.
The Perpetual Commotion of the Heart, by Norma Gay Prewett
Gay Prewett is a friend of mine from high school (we once performed "The Cruel War" at our school's talent show, feeling like ultracool folk singers; unfortunately, I couldn't actually play the guitar I was strumming, but that's another story). Several years ago, we reconnected on Facebook and I am happy to report that she has just published her first collection of poetry, The Perpetual Commotion of the Heart.
From the resonance of that title and the beautiful painting that adorns the cover, created by Gay herself, to the moving final poem "Perhaps a Flower: Doing the Dishes," the collection draws the reader into Gay's Arkansas-bred family, her beloved Wisconsin cabin on Mapledale Creek, and even her yoga practice. As I have stated several times before, I'm not really qualified to comment on poetry qua poetry. Still, I can recognize a deft author's hand that, through rhythm, image, and well-crafted phrase, captures beautifully the poignancy of motherhood, of growing up financially poor but rich in love and noise, of aging, of, essentially, life. Gay's poems are moving without being sentimental. One of her blurb-writers does a much better job describing Gay: "She is a pragmatist of earthly practicalities . . . and a fearless limit-tester in love" (Bob Wake).
Because no collection in my experience can move any particular reader with every poem, I admit the poems in the "Doing the Down Doggerel" section are not my favorites (though I love the section title). However, those in the book's other four sections provide more than adequate pleasure.
Favorite passages:
I taste history and future in this tangy sweet
Grandmother and great-great-grandchild together.
Nothing, not even jelly, will ever be as clear again.
From "Grape Jellying at the End of the Century"
I am tacking indirectly toward a home
I know is there, but may not recognize
From "Perhaps a Flower: Doing the Dishes"
From the resonance of that title and the beautiful painting that adorns the cover, created by Gay herself, to the moving final poem "Perhaps a Flower: Doing the Dishes," the collection draws the reader into Gay's Arkansas-bred family, her beloved Wisconsin cabin on Mapledale Creek, and even her yoga practice. As I have stated several times before, I'm not really qualified to comment on poetry qua poetry. Still, I can recognize a deft author's hand that, through rhythm, image, and well-crafted phrase, captures beautifully the poignancy of motherhood, of growing up financially poor but rich in love and noise, of aging, of, essentially, life. Gay's poems are moving without being sentimental. One of her blurb-writers does a much better job describing Gay: "She is a pragmatist of earthly practicalities . . . and a fearless limit-tester in love" (Bob Wake).
Because no collection in my experience can move any particular reader with every poem, I admit the poems in the "Doing the Down Doggerel" section are not my favorites (though I love the section title). However, those in the book's other four sections provide more than adequate pleasure.
Favorite passages:
I taste history and future in this tangy sweet
Grandmother and great-great-grandchild together.
Nothing, not even jelly, will ever be as clear again.
From "Grape Jellying at the End of the Century"
I am tacking indirectly toward a home
I know is there, but may not recognize
From "Perhaps a Flower: Doing the Dishes"
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Big Little Lies, by Liane Moriarty
At the beginning of Big Little Lies, we learn that all hell broke loose at a Pirriwee Primary School fund-raiser (Trivia Night, with attendees costumed as Elvis or Audrey Hepburn) and someone was killed--but we don't know who, how, or why. From that starting point, Moriarty goes back six months to tell how the school's helicopter parents got to the point of murder at a fundraiser. Most of the story is told from the perspective of three kindergarten moms who are friends--Madeline, the bitchy ring-leader of the trio who despises the "Blonde Bobs," the gifted-and-talented parents, and the power mothers, all of whom make her feel inadequate; Celeste, who is so beautiful and rich that everyone assumes she is completely happy; and Jane, the younger single mom whose son is immediately singled-out by one of the power mothers as a bully. Of course, each of the three has problems not immediately visible to their friends (as do the rival mothers); these problems range from abusive and unfaithful husbands to conflict with a teenage daughter and self-esteem so damaged as to be crippling.
Interspersed with the narrative from these three women's perspectives are snippets of quotes from police statements taken after the disastrous Trivia Night, along with comments from the officer in charge of the case. The "witnesses" provide such disparate stories of what happened not only that evening but in the preceding months that the thinly veiled frustration on the part of the officer is fully justifiable--but humorous as well.
Liane Moriarty is an excellent satirist, skewering modern parents in a way that is especially enjoyable for a mother from an early generation like myself. At the same time, she deals with the serious issues of bullying violence against women without being at all preachy and engages the reader in a "mystery" that is unlike more traditional who-dun-its. While I had guessed a couple of the "surprises" that came at the end of the book, other developments were unexpected, which made for a satisfying ending. Recommended.
Favorite passage:
It had never crossed her mind that sending your child to school would be like going back to school yourself.
Saturday, August 2, 2014
The Cuckoo's Calling, by Robert Galbraith
Cormoran Strike is a down-and-out private investigator in London. He lost part of a leg serving in Afghanistan, has broken up with his beautiful fiance and is living in his office, and owes money to his rock-star father, whom he has only met twice in his 35 years (his mother, long-dead of a drug overdose, was known as a super-groupie). To top it off, a new temporary secretary has shown up, despite his request to the agency not to send anyone (he cannot afford to pay her). His luck is about to change, however, because the new temp Robin is an excellent assistant and, more importantly, a lawyer hires him to investigate the death of his supermodel sister. Needless to say, Strike discovers what really happened to the beautiful young woman.
I probably wouldn't be writing about this book, since I have generally stopped writing about all but the best mysteries I read. The Cuckoo's Calling is entertaining--albeit longer (455 pp.) than it needs to be and using the rather tired convention of the private investigator meeting with the villain to explain in detail how he solved the case--but it's not a great mystery. However, it is notable because Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling, she of Harry Potter fame. In Cormoran Strike, she has created an endearing character, and I will definitely give the second title in the series a try.
Favorite passage:
This was the hour when he found London most lovable; the working day over, her pub windows were warm and jewel-like, her streets thrummed with life, and the indefatigable permanence of her aged buildings, softened by the street lights, became strangely reassuring. We have seen plenty like you, they seemed to murmur soothingly, as he limped along Oxford Street carrying a boxed-up camp bed. Seven and a half million hearts were beating in close proximity in this heaving old city, and many, after all, would be aching far worse than his.
I probably wouldn't be writing about this book, since I have generally stopped writing about all but the best mysteries I read. The Cuckoo's Calling is entertaining--albeit longer (455 pp.) than it needs to be and using the rather tired convention of the private investigator meeting with the villain to explain in detail how he solved the case--but it's not a great mystery. However, it is notable because Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling, she of Harry Potter fame. In Cormoran Strike, she has created an endearing character, and I will definitely give the second title in the series a try.
Favorite passage:
This was the hour when he found London most lovable; the working day over, her pub windows were warm and jewel-like, her streets thrummed with life, and the indefatigable permanence of her aged buildings, softened by the street lights, became strangely reassuring. We have seen plenty like you, they seemed to murmur soothingly, as he limped along Oxford Street carrying a boxed-up camp bed. Seven and a half million hearts were beating in close proximity in this heaving old city, and many, after all, would be aching far worse than his.
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