Every five years

The Red Book - Deborah Copaken Kogan (Hyperion, 2012)

This is one of those books that I sort of can't get enough of (and clearly I'm not alone): a certain of friends who went to an elite college or university, and how their lives are turning out X years down the road. But I am probably close to burning out on them, so I picked up this book with some amount of skepticism.

And then it blew my expectations out of the water. (Yay!)

The Red Book is Harvard's version of the Class Books that come out every five years around reunion time. And if you've ever had to do one, you know how hard it is to sum up your life and present it in its best light when you know your page will be surrounded my those of your classmates who won Olympic medals and founded start-ups and joined Doctors Without Borders, etc. .... while at the same time maintaining a cool and self-effacing humility about the whole thing. The Class Book is just a bunch of #humblebrag on steroids.

And that's sort of what this novel is about, or at least the framing device. Addison, Mia, Clover, and Jane are in town for their 20th reunion. And we start with their red book pages and then learn the truth that hides behind those pages. And we see other alumni pages too, as their lives intersect with the four characters. Our omniscient narrator also gets into the minds of an ex-boyfriend, a couple teenage children, one character's husband (who I found almost absurdly likable), and possibly more. It also teases the future, and it is sometimes reassuring to have a narrator say that "years later" a character will look back on a moment, since the "now" of the book is 2009, and the book came out in 2012. Even right now, we're just heading into the characters' 25th reunion.

Maybe it's just that the novel was so readable. And while the characters weren't always likable, they were mostly sympathetic, and that felt real to me. And even the melodrama of the plot (and boy is there plenty of it) seemed reasonable in the context of the storytelling. So thank you, Deborah Copaken Kogan, for a very pleasant surprise.

Starting Over

The Season of Second Chances - Diane Meier (Henry Holt & Co., 2010)

(advance reader's edition)

Something I always seem to forget when I am sick or depressed is that I find narrative healing. So while I was spending a week fevered and coughing, I couldn't manage to read any of my New Yorkers. Why didn't I try a novel at the very start?

Finally I picked up Meier's, a reader's edition that I came into possession of somewhere along the line. It's about a middle-aged woman who leaves her teaching job in NYC when she is recruited for a new project at Amherst. She seems to have no spontaneity, no rich inner life, and yet there is already a promise of it, when she begins by buying this ramshackle Victorian house near campus. She gets drawn into a world of color and possibility, dragged slowly by her handyman - if such a term really gets at his talent for not only fixing a house, but unearthing its true potential - and her officemate. And a supporting cast of characters. Joy is, what? I think 48, when the novel opens, but she blossoms almost like a teenager, finding that there is strength in vulnerability, and freedom in tying yourself to a community.

Joy grows into herself in ways both expected and not, and loose ends maybe don't knot as nicely as one might like. But this book was a lovely break from my life, and even from the West Coast. And it made for a good reminder that life doesn't necessarily work on a schedule, and that maybe I don't need to worry so much about missing my chances or running out of time. We grow when we are ready to grow.

The freshman years of life

Commencement - J. Courtney Sullivan (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009)

I am a sucker for books about recent graduates of elite colleges and universities, and how they adjust - in their different ways - to life outside of that bubble. Often enough this means constructing different bubbles, but that is of plenty of interest to me as well.

In this version, four women become best friends at Smith College, Sullivan's alma mater. And the narrative is interspersed with recollections of their time as students. And then they go in separate directions, and their friendships are stretched and challenged. For better and for worse.

Early on, the novel won me over with one of my favorite ever descriptions of Irish dance: "which Celia now credited with her perfect posture and complete inability to dance like a normal person." Love it :)

There was also a lovely description of the ways in which powerful relationships develop in college: "Back then, they had expanses of time in which to memorize one another's routines and favorite songs and worst heartaches and greatest days. It felt something like being in love, but without the weight of having to choose just one heart to hold on to, and without the fear of ever losing it."

And maybe it's for that that I keep reading these novels...