We Need to Talk

We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver (Harper Perennial, 2003)

Do you believe me that I picked out this book to read next before Aurora happened? The idea of reading a novel about the aftermath (ish) of a mass shooting seemed a little much to handle, but I pushed on. And was in the thick of it when the Oak Creek shooting occurred. All of which could send me off on a diatribe about violence and weapons and cavalier disregard for the sanctity of human life and and and.

But no. This novel has too much to say on its own. The Post-Birthday World is one of my favorite novels - although no one I've foisted it on has enjoyed it as much as I did - but this one is the award-winner. And it was time to tackle something difficult.

It's November 2000, about 18 months after Eva's son changed their worlds forever by murdering a handful of classmates and two school staff members, about a week before Columbine. And Eva shares her story in epistolary fashion, in a series of letters to her estranged husband. The result is three narratives that unfold over about six months, with the final letter in April 2001. The first is world events; remember that election? and how it dominated everything? The second takes us back in time, as Eva details the couple's decision to have a baby, and the child's early years. The third is also current, about her ongoing relationship with Kevin, her visits to him in the juvenile prison upstate, as she strives to come to terms - to the extent such a phrase even makes sense - with his horrific acts, and her part in them.

Never has anything made me so scared about the prospect of having a child. From even before his birth, Eva was uneasy about Kevin. And Kevin made everyone uneasy except her husband, who desperation to adore his own son is so touchingly naive as seen through Eva's eyes. Whether or not Kevin was really a sociopath from Day One, how terrifying to consider not loving your own child.

And then some sort of trigger switched inside me. Eva does this complicated dance, of assuming all the responsibility for Kevin and his actions, and simultaneously abjuring it in favor of an argument that sort of runs, "I tried to warn you about him." It made me uncomfortable, which I can only assume was Shriver's intent. As are the growing signs that maybe Eva really is to blame, that maybe Kevin has always, desperately, sought his mother's love and affection. That maybe his malicious attacks on people's passions were both a way of destroying what he didn't have and couldn't abide in others. And even more so, a cry for his mom to notice and love him.

I feel terribly inarticulate trying to get at what I mean. Besides, did I really just place the responsibility for all these murders on this poor woman's shoulders? Plenty of people have awful parents who they fear don't really love them, and the vast majority of these people do not become killers at age 15. It's pretty much bullshit to absolve Kevin of any responsibility. And yet, I fear he just wanted to impress her. Although impress isn't quite the right word.

Before I fall too deeply down a rabbit hole, let me just say what I probably should have said in summary from the very start: this novel disquieted me in ways that few novels have. I will be thinking about Kevin for a long time to come.

How we learn to be ourselves

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - Ann Brashares (Delacorte Press, 2001)


The Second Summer of the Sisterhood - Ann Brashares (Delacorte Press, 2003)


Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood - Ann Brashares (Delacorte Press, 2005)


Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood - Ann Brashares (Delacorte Press, 2007)


Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares (Random House, 2011)


I've been moving! Which meant that I was very excited when a friend had a book swap and I was able to bring over all the books I had been saving up. It also meant that despite my best efforts, when I saw 3  of the Sisterhood novels, I picked them up. Years ago, a friend recommended them (or the movie?) and I had vaguely planned to read them. So in the midst of packing, I started reading the first one. Because really, what is better than YA as an escape from stress?

And then the second, and the third. And then I started looking online to see if there were more. All told, I think I read the five in about 4 weeks? Everyone already know the story, right? Four friends, and a pair of jeans that magically fits them all, and not just fits, but makes them look extra hot. The Pants become the way they "stay together" when summer takes them to different places. The Pants bear witness to their struggles to cope with change, and growing up, and love and loss. The first summer, the girls are a summer away from their 16th birthdays, by the third they are about to leave for college. The fourth finds them after their freshman years, and the last novel comes a decade later.

Reading them in the span of a month rather than over ten years, as they were written, it really jumps out at you how much the girls have to learn the same lessons over and over and over. How to be brave, how to be open to change and to forgive those who change around you, how to see past surfaces and accept the love that's offered, how to be vulnerable. And then to return to them, as young women about to turn 30, with years more of experience, the lessons are still there to be learned.

And that tore me up. It was an unexpected sucker punch. Maybe because it threw into such stark relief that fact that the lessons I have learned over the years need to be learned again and again and again. You don't just reach an epiphany and get to happily ever after. Or even to the next level, like some sort of video game. Or perhaps, to play with the video game analogy some more, you do, but you just repeat the same level again and again, in slightly different guise. You have to reach that epiphany, defeat the same boss, time and again. And that's a tough realization.

But no one reads the same book. We bring so much of ourselves - our past and especially our present - to what we read. I'm curious to know how others found Lena, Carmen, Tibby, and Bridget.

Falling in love under false pretenses, subcategory two

Beguiling the Beauty - Sherry Thomas (Berkley Sensation, 2012)


Second only to "pretending to be married" in my list of amusing romance scenarios that do. not. happen. is "pretending to be someone else." You could make an argument for those both falling under some broader category of "falling in love under false pretenses," but in one you're fooling outside observers and in the other, you're fooling the love interest.

And that's what happens here, when Venetia, 27 and twice widowed, finds herself hurt by public comments made by Lord Somethingorother and decides to make him fall in love with her, and then burst his bubble. (I'm not quite sure how this proves that she's not a Black Widow who uses her beauty to entrap men, but whatevs.) This plot, unbeknownst to her, has the added extra punch that he's been lusting after her from afar for years, since she was a young bride. Aww. So they seduce each other - did I mention she's wearing a veil, so he can't tell it's her? - and manage to fall in love.

Except they're both deceiving each other? How will it ever work out? :)

I'm snarking, which is unfair, because this was really rather charming. And humorous. They were likable characters, and up until the speedy denouement, I was totally down with them. I am pretty sure I made me "ZOMG SO CUTE" face after every chapter. Plus, it's always an added bonus when the heroine is into a "man's" subject like archeology. And Thomas cleverly laid the groundwork for the rest of the trilogy, which will settle the love lives of her younger (twins) sister & brother. In fact, she did such a thorough job that I really thought those were the B and C storylines and was confused that they were left unresolved. Which, of course, means I will have to read them...

Trying to mix great literature and sunshine

Swann's Way - Marcel Proust (trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff) (Dover Publications, 1913, 1922, 2002)


So, I finally started on In Search of Lost Time. Or, since it's the Moncrieff translation, maybe I should call it Remembrance of Things Past. This has been hovering around as a thing I should do for years now. But it was a slog. I started on or around Memorial Day, and finished sometime last week.

Why I had problems with the book: for starters, I kept getting sleepy. This was a fun vacation-y month, and the amount of mental power involved in parsing these long loooooooooong sentences was more than I could handle. (By the way, there should be a limit on the number of clauses allowed in a single sentence.) Also, I couldn't really get into the narrator. I kept pushing through, because eventually we were going to go back in time and find out about how Swann fell in love and ended up in this ill-advised (per the narrator's family) marriage. Except that wasn't really any better. Until it was. What does the reader find so reassuring about the idea that love was similar enough a century(ish) ago? Is it just that Proust does such a good job of showing how a lover can persist in reformulating a relationship in his head, again and again, to rationalize and justify staying in a position that grows ever more untenable? At any rate, it was sort of fascinating. And then we jump back to our narrator, as he falls for Swann's young daughter...

And it all made me think maybe I'd keep reading after all. Except I know that I'd just fall back into the part where I was grumping my way through the work. So what do I do? Stop after volume one?

On a quest

The Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan (Hyperion Books, 2005)


First of all, I'm moving! While this is fantastic news, I find moving totally stressful, and am getting mixed messages about whether I'm normal in how completely nutty I get around moving. Which means that I simultaneously have no time whatsoever to read and want nothing more than to just curl up and lose myself in a story.

And Percy Jackson provides just the right kind of story. I remember thinking when the series first came out that is sounded like a way of cashing in on the success of Harry Potter, and truth be told it's difficult to avoid that feeling. But kids who are "different" at some sort of boarding school is a children's literature trope that long predates JK Rowling.

I'm getting off topic. Percy is just finishing sixth grade at the start of the novel, and trouble always seems to find him. Which is why he gets sent from school to school. Turns out this is because he is the son of a human woman and an god from Olympus. Oops. And not just any god.... So while a huge part of the story is about Percy's attempts to fit in and find his place in the world - difficult even in a camp filled with half-bloods like him - what drives the plot is his efforts to, well, save the world by taking on an almost impossible mission. And in so doing, clear his name and gain his father's recognition. Plenty going on, and pretty much all the kind of themes that resonate with kids Percy's age.

But readers of all ages can find enjoyment in Percy's story. I struggled a bit with the 12 y.o. male narrator and a writing style that I found too much that of a 12 y.o. male. So my problem, not the book's. But once I accepted Percy's voice for what it was, I had a great time in his world. I'll be looking for the rest of the series. (And Riordan's series involving the Egyptian gods, I believe!)

Lad lit

Love & Other Recreational Sports - John Dearie (Plume, 2003)


Without bothering to do my background research, my understanding is that there's a lovely genre of British fiction that is the male equivalent to chick lit, and it's called lad lit. This includes stuff by writers like Nick Hornby.

I think that's what Dearie is doing here. Except I don't know that the genre really exists in America. It certainly doesn't look like that's how it was marketed.

Check out this cover. Does this look like it's being marketed toward men??? (Sorry for the mirror image problem.) Or are women the primary readers of lad lit?

These questions aside... well, actually I'm not sure I am able to place them aside, because they so strongly shaped my reading experience.

I'm battling through Proust (losing) and brought this along as lighter fare for a weekend out in the desert. So I sprawled in 100 degree shaded heat, and read about Jack and his adventures in (or avoiding) the Manhattan dating scene.

Let's compare Jack to a chick lit heroine. He is male, he is successful in the corporate world, he doesn't seem to get too excited about things. Hmm, not doing so well. And yet he has also been burned by a former lover, dresses well and enjoys the finer things, and gets his best advice from his friends and family. Wash.

And here is where I look at the back of the book and see that it was indeed marketed to women, claiming to provide insights into the mind of the dating male. Is this what Dearie had in mind when writing? I'm skeptical.

But I don't want it

This Beautiful Life - Helen Schulman (HarperCollins, 2011)


Meet the Bergamots. First Liz(zie), a trained art historian who became increasingly mom-first, and now, in NYC, mom-only. Then Richard, whose career in academia seems on an unstoppable upward trajectory. And Jake, the teen son. Finally Coco, the spirited kindergartener. They are transitioning, with varying degrees of success, from life in upstate Ithaca to Manhattan.

And then there's a night with two parties. Liz takes Coco to a sleepover at the Plaza, where she (and the other moms) get totally wasted. Yay. And Jake goes to a party with his friends, gets sad when he sees the object of his affection with her boyfriend, gets drunk, and draws the advances of the young hostess. He allows her attention, until he suddenly doesn't. And handles it like most boys would, which is to say like a jerk.

And there you have it. A Saturday morning with two hungover Bergamots. Except then Jake's make-out partner creates an awfully graphic web video to prove that she's old enough for him. And then all hell breaks loose.

Listening to Slate folks discuss it (here), I was intrigued by their final conversation, a debate over why and how the single click of the "forward" button untethered everything. It's hard to say for sure whether all the fissures of Liz's dissatisfaction and Richard's growing impatience would have been evident had the plot been presented in any other way. The first page (plus) is a description of the video, and it looms over everything that follows, leaving the reader waiting in some amount of anxiety. As a result, I saw how while nothing was broken, neither was it particularly strong. But that's just me.

I grew less enchanted with the book as it went on. The characters just kept so firmly to their established patterns, wearing out some weird groove that made me more and more frustrated. And then, suddenly, Schulman wraps up. She flashes forward several years, so we know what shakes down from the crisis. And ends with a coda chapter, the teen ingenue all grown up, or more grown up. But it's weird, because we've never really met her before. And now, we're not quite sure who she is, or what to think about what she unleashed when she hit record on her webcam.

Glittering Despair

Play It As It Lays - Joan Didion (Pocket Books, 1970, 1978)


Things I learned from this novel: the late 1960s and early 1970s kinda sucked. I mean, we glamorize them now, with all the free love and flowers and Woodstock and consciousness-altering drugs and activism and stuff. But there was also a lot of using drugs and sex to mask all sorts of pain, and hiding things away, and being corrupt in Hollywood.

I think I am too far outside the time to really understand this novel, because it seemed like Maria had a shitty childhood, made it to NYC where things were shady, fell for the director who cast her in a film where she was gangbanged, and then he made it big and she really didn't, mainly because her husband insisted on institutionalizing their daughter, and then there were affairs and affairs and affairs and eventually someone gets killed. Or dies of his own hand. Or something.

I can't say that Didion's prose isn't evocative, because it was bitterly painful to read, to go into Maria's desperation. So she accomplished what I believe was her vision. It's a successful book. But 40 years later... I find myself lost.

Dead Tired

Deadlocked - Charlaine Harris (Ace Books, 2012)


We know who Sookie will end up with, right? It's decided. So at this point the series is just taking us down the long winding road that leads us there. Preferably with a whole bunch of new supernatural creatures, all of whom seem to feel the need either to protect Sookie or to do her harm.

But that's fine. It was pleasant enough to rejoin Sookie's world for a few days, and celebrate her birthday with her. Life in Bon Temps is moving forward, and it seems like some loose ends are tying themselves up. Which makes me wonder if the next installment of Sookie will be the last.

Old New York, NOT Don Henley

The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton (Barnes & Noble Classics, 1920, 2004)


Despite not actually having the same name at all, I spent a lot of my time reading this book while humming along to the mental soundtrack of "The End of the Innocence." And any other Don Henley songs that came up in my head. Also, I saw the movie with Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer back when it came out. So I had a hard time displacing those characters from my head, even when they didn't feel quite right.

First off, the casting? I bought DDL as Newland Archer. Actually, that seems just about perfect. Pfeiffer I'm a little more meh about. And then there's Winona Ryder as May Archer (nee Welland). Wharton keeps stressing how Archer views her as being like the Goddess Diana. And I can't think of an actress who inspires that thought less in me. On the other hand, from what I remember, she nails the whole forced innocence thing.

But this isn't a movie review, and I really shouldn't be reviewing movies I saw almost twenty years ago, and when I was awfully young too. So, on to the book.

I'm not going to go into too much analysis, possibly because I'm lazy. Instead, going to be sorta solipsistic. First of all, there were ways in which this novel felt very Russian. Maybe just because most of the 19th-century novels I've read in the past several years (that were not Jane Austen) were Russian. (And yes, I know that this was actually written after WWI, so this may be a really weak point.) Or maybe it's that Mme Olenska reminded me of Anna Karenina. I'm not really sure. But more importantly, it was honestly such a pleasure to read this. I forgot how much I enjoyed the classics. I may be adding more of them to my list.

More from the Goon Squad

Returning to Egan.... I listened to Slate's discussion and had a couple takeaways.

First of all, I really need to join a book club. I wanted to be able to chime in on that discussion several times.

Second, I learned from them that the PP chapter got a lot of buzz (both good and bad) and I was gratified to hear that it worked for them as well. They also discussed the ways in which we see characters at various points in their lives (and filtered through different perspectives). Where I didn't talk about this before was with respect to the "flash forward." We don't just know what happens to characters by meeting or hearing about them again (or before), even within a story we are suddenly taken years into the future and told what becomes of a person. For example, we get Sasha's story when she's around 30 and again in college, but then we see her at 19 where we find out where she is in her 40s. (This is good, b/c it gives us a foundation to understand the next chapter, written in her daughter's voice.) But the flash forward doesn't always necessarily serve that kind of narrative purpose (the book club's example was finding out what happened to the grandson of an African tribal dancer, who appears as a very minor character much later, which I hadn't noticed) and I found it intensely comforting somehow. More so, I think, than they did.

And finally, not related to the podcast, I couldn't get over the fact that Alex and Sasha are both diminutives of the same Alexand(e)r(a), which made their date seem strangely awkward. (Probably just because I've used both as nicknames.)

Feeling Redundant

Armed Gunmen, True Facts, and Other Ridiculous Nonsense: A Compiled Compendium of Repetitive Redundancies - Richard Kallan (Pantheon Books, 2005)


I'm a huge snob about you're and your. And there are plenty of other written tics that make me crazy. But I think I'm pretty laissez faire about the things that bother the true purists. And so I'm not sure what to make of Kallan's book. Rather than any kind of diatribe about our propensity to include extraneous words, it's simply a list of some of the most frequent offenders. (For example: see title) They come with cute definitions - "Hidden Pitfall: A pitfall unannounced by bells and whistles" - and charming illustrations by 19th-century illustrator George Cruikshank. Also a plus: I learned that these are technically tautologies, which helped me understand that word a bit better. This is good, given that my previous definition was something like "it's like when you define the word illustration by saying something that is illustrated." So yay. On the other hand, I found some of it pretty judgmental. I'll grant you that saying "6 A.M. in the morning" is absurd, but "twelve noon" is not. Please trust me on this one, unless you too have been stuck in an Italian airport because your ride misunderstood and is coming twelve hours from now.

Story + story + story = novel?

A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010)


This book won a bunch of awards. (Or a least the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer.) And I had been sitting on a Slate Audio Book Club podcast since last August. And fiiiiinally I got around to getting a copy.

Here's where it turns out that I had already read a bunch of the book. Probably a third or so. Damn New Yorker. About three stories in, I found myself really frustrated. None of this was really new. Sigh, grr, etc. But then, this is where the structure of the book kicked in and argued its case. For it's not just a collection of short stories. It's a collection of stories that tie together and interconnect. A character in one story reappears in another. And while it seems like the threads that connect them are weak and few in number, they build upon one another, and you realize that you're getting the rich backstory to a throwaway line from 150 pages earlier.

We start in what is roughly the present, then dive back, then way back, then hang out somewhere between the 70s and now for awhile, and eventually finish in the future. Each story uses its own devices - third person, first person, at least one tale told in the second-person you. Another is an article (of the DFW persuasion) detailing a celebrity interview we already know (from however many stories previous) ends badly. But then there's chapter 12, "Great Rock and Roll Pauses," written by an adolescent daughter of characters we knew before. It's essentially a PowerPoint presentation, and it's tremendously effective for all that it's gimmicky. I waxed poetic about this to my boyfriend, venturing out into a reverie on why all the white space is so meaningful in a story about pauses and what is left unsaid. And so he's taken the fall for you, who only have to know that I had lots to say - of varying coherence - on the topic.

And I love the idea that in the not-so-distant future, this is how I children will tell stories. That in its own way, the PowerPoint can be a surprisingly eloquent medium. And then I lost it in the final story, which takes place roughly in that same period(ish). It's a mildly dystopic future NYC that looks quite a bit like Shteyngart's, in which handheld devices have kinda taken over (with a bit of Brooklyn hipster resistance thrown in too). For whatever reason, this felt overdone. Or at the very least out of place with the rest of the book. Ends get tied together, sure. But I didn't need this final story to feel the heft and power of the whole.

(next post coming after I actually listen to the audio book club podcast, scheduled for tonight's drive home...)

Beer and B&Bs: a recipe for romance

Love in a Nutshell - Janet Evanovich & Dorien Kelly (St. Martin's Press, 2011)


My very first Janet Evanovich. (Awwwww.) Such a cheerful read. Such a cheerful read. I feel a little weird about that, considering there is a very real "mystery" element to the plot, including several moments where poor Kate's life was in danger. And even when it wasn't, poor girl was dealing with the fact that she was definitely going to lose the family summer home, behind on payments and facing an ever-growing list of necessary repairs. And does it help or hurt that the man holding the mortgage happens to make her weak in the knees?

And yet, there is something so nice and comforting about reading this, and knowing that things will all sort themselves out. And I had a long reverie concerning the role of small exurban towns in these kinds of contemporary romances. Why are so many set in places where "everyone knows everyone else" and is going to be all up in their business? Is it a matter of plot convenience? Is it simple fantasy in the sense of trying to be as different as possible from the urban/suburban world of most readers? I feel like it has more to do with a nostalgic longing, although I'm not sure if it's more for a simpler time and more Etsy-ish pursuits or more about the close-knit communities and bonds that are so frayed in our world.

Have I digressed? The love story was sweet, the dogs were awesome, the setting pretty fun, and even the mystery worked. I wasn't particularly impressed with the climax (the villain's dialogue made me sad) but that was okay since the lead-up was so enjoyable. I suppose now I'll have to give Stephanie Plum a try.

It was the best of times...

Golden Days - Carolyn See (University of California Press, 1996, c1987)


The 80s were different. In a bunch of ways. Feminism and New Age mysticism and not-helicopter-parenting were all less under attack than they are now. On the other hand, the threat of nuclear annihilation was a real thing. And so, this twice-divorced mother seeking financial security - oh, and happiness! - recounts the days and years leading up to the other Big One that loomed over California during that wild and decadent decade.

The last pages, about what happens after the bomb falls.... they take up a lot of mental space, blocking my view back of the first 150 pages of this slim novel. And those pages are a wonder in themselves, of the remarkable and unremarkable, and of the meaning of women's friendships, and the omnipresence of men as a force to be defined in relation (often in opposition) to, and of moments that seemed so terribly dated ("That was what it was like back then?") and ones that seemed so current that I couldn't believe the book was 25 years old.

I don't know that I would recommend this book per se. I feel like it spoke to its time more effectively than it speaks to us. And I'm not sure of its potential audience today. But that doesn't mean it deserves anything less than my respect. And a significant measure of awe.