The Master Bedroom

The eponymous room of Tessa Hadley's novel was hard for me to envision, but apparently was a monster that ran along an entire side of what seems to have been a big English manor. It's also where Kate and her mother - whom Kate has moved home to care for - were both born. And more, but that comes later.

It's always strange when you come across a New Yorker short story in a novel, but it particularly threw me in this case because the story pulled from a plotline that stretched across the whole novel, rather that grabbing a chapter in whole.

I liked this book, because I found it touching how tentatively the characters reached out to one another. And also because the characters were mysteries, to one another but more importantly to themselves. But that said, The Master Bedroom was also deeply flawed. The mystery that makes a character intriguing also means that you never get to know them quite well enough to understand their actions, or at least to understand why their actions are incomprehensible. The teenaged Jamie is particularly unknowable, even as he seems perhaps the most adult of the bunch, and that's in some ways especially infuriating.

In the end though, the novel was sweet. And quick to read. And poignant. Like wrapping oneself in a warm blanket. And sometimes that's enough.

(oh, and one last thing. I loved how Kate describes Jamie on first meeting him: "Kate wouldn't have minded him in one of her classes: a Tolstoy type, not a Dostoevsky type, who were two-a-penny.")

Feeling Liberal

Erin hearts Paul Krugman. (Not enough to have paid for TimesSelect during that little experiment, but nonetheless...) So when the Library's Aloud series brought him to town, I decided I had to be there.

And being there was fun. Krugman is a good speaker. And UC Irvine prof and Nation contributing editor Jon Wiener was a decent interviewer, particularly good at letting Krugman wander as he would, then bringing him back. So the conversation ranged over a variety of topics, beginning in the 1950s and the middle-class society that emerged out of the New Deal. The rise and fall of America as a middle-class society is - so I gather - a central narrative for Krugman, and he argues that "politics have a huge impact on income distribution." And they are able to do so even in a democracy b/c of smokescreen campaign issues (like "gay married terrorists"). He had some fascinating observations on the ways Republican politicians, without necessarily being racist, have exploited racism and a deep sense of being wronged in order to win elections.

Health care: PK is a fan of single-payer ("Civilized countries don't let people fail to get basic health care"), but believes that it is more feasible right now to support the consensus plan put forward by leading Democratic candidates.

The financial climate: "I don't know." He's nervous about the fallout from sub-prime and other loans, but not as nervous as some. So we'll see.

And of course, Bush: the 2000 campaign was a "radicalizing experience" for Krugman. And while he won't make any argument for whether Bush & co. should be criminally prosecuted once they are out, he does believe that we need to "open the books" on the Administration, and learn the truth about everything that's happened.

Reading so much Wonkette has made me feel like I ought to be more snarky. But really all I have to say is Krugman is crazy-smart and witty and yet calm and thoughtful, and it was a pleasure listening to him.

War and Peace and Sex

This week's LA Times Book Review brought a few happy discoveries:

New translations of War and Peace. Tolstoy's tome is in my all-time top three, so the idea of new, updated interpretations thrills me. Plus, one of them (by Andrew Bromfield) is of an early draft of the novel, a shorter one, and one in which my favorite character appears to meet with a less tragic ending.

The Abstinence Teacher, by Tom Perrotta. Reviewed by Carolyn Kellogg, formerly of LAist. She notes that this book is getting lots of review attention. And speaking of, I heard Perrotta on last week's New York Times Book Review podcast.

When someone else's life hits too close to home

Yesterday I had some free time between work and a meeting, so I happily sat down with my tea latte (and later a scone) and finished John Lanchester's Family Romance. Somehow I had it set in my mind that it was a novel, so I was surprised when I first opened it and discovered it was a memoir of the author's English & Irish expat parents. And their secrets.

Lanchester's mother is the more compelling parent, not only because she had an enormous secret and a fascinating pre-mom life. She was also a more dominant character in his life - and much of the book is about how Lanchester makes peace with her and all of who she was. His father is somehow blurrier, and I found him sorrowful, a man who never stood up and made his own destiny.

It's a fascinating book about relationships and families. The secrets we tell our loved ones, and the secrets we allow to be told. But the final 50 pages I read on Wednesday changed the whole book for me, and turned it into something far more personal. Suddenly I could identify intensely with Lanchester - as he begins to write about his struggles with anxiety, struggles that began while in grad school at Oxford. Now in addition to being an only child and having a mother with a past that she didn't share in full (although I made that connection late) we both knew what it was like to suffer through a panic attack, and to know that another one was right around the corner. To live with that strange and unreasonable dread. His descriptions of the physiological and the mental response were so real to me, I find myself floundering as I search for the right way to phrase the recognition and empathy I felt. But now it was no longer a book about him, it was also a book about me, and that altered my reaction to it in unexpected ways.

So, since I can't recapture what the book was to me before, I will share a few passages from the first half of the book that struck me:

about his father - "The experience of being loved by someone tells you a great deal about that person, almost as much as loving them does, but differently. Love has many textures. W.H. Auden said - it was one of his most beautiful ideas - that when you love people you are seeing them as they really are."

hmm, this one is also about his father - "You may think that most people live inside their own heads, but plenty of them don't. In fact, if you do think that, you're almost certainly one of the minority whose primary life is internal."

Strange how his mother was the more vibrant, real of the pair, and yet it was in writing about his father that Lanchester most touched me.

Me and everybody else

Happy Blog Action Day! Apparently I am one of thousands of bloggers worldwide who are joining together today to post about the environment.

Those of you who know me know that I'm a bit compulsive about recycling. I have a friend who swears up and down that recycling is actually uses more energy and creates more waste than it saves, but has yet to send me any back-up documentation. So I say hmph.

We do however both agree that not creating the waste in the first place is ideal. And while I have given up plastic water bottles in favor of my Klean Kanteen, my favorite waste-avoidance tool is the canvas bag. I have oodles, and they go with me to the grocery store and just about everywhere else. Over the past few years, I have found I get far fewer confused and dirty looks from baggers. It's finally gone mainstream (and a little too hip), but I was at the head of the pack, I swear. If you need bags, check Siel at greenLAgirl, who is constantly having giveaways.

And for more reading, Siel is also blogging for the LA Times at Emerald City.

So while I'm only really going eco on here for today, I try to be green all year long. And so should you.

Memories

In my last post, oh so long ago, I wrote about England - where I was making memories, to sound cheesy - and Peter Nadas - whose novel was about memories.

Returning to real life in Los Angeles meant that it was difficult to get through the last 200 pages, much harder than it was on an airplane. And because A Book of Memories is so disjointed, reading catch as catch can just made it even more confusing. But I finally succeeded. (The "I'm not going to sleep until it's finished" proclamation helped.)

What struck me about the three narrators is how well (and yet how poorly) they read other people. How everyday occurrences were charged with meaning. How openly they stated their flaws, and yet so often told something less than the truth. It's the kind of book that seems designed to come from a place like Communist Hungary, with a confused and complicated history, and where people were never quite in charge of their own destiny.

Some passages, beginning with a evocative depiction of falling in love:

We told each other stories, and even that would not be an accurate description of the feverish urging to relate and the eager curiosity to listen to each other's words with which we tried to complement the contact of our bodies, our constant physical presence in each other

and more:

Lovers walk around wearing each other's body, and they wear and radiate into the world their common physicality.