The Copper Beech, by Maeve Binchy (1992)
This is my third time through this book and I pick up more of the story each time. The book is told from multiple points of view so you get more than one perspective on things that happen. I love knowing people's secrets and this book is full of them. One woman is trying to get a priest to run off with her; one boy has a pen-pal who thinks he (the boy) is a girl; one girl is covering up the murder she knows one of her parents committed; one woman has discovered some hidden jewels reported stolen for the insurance money; one man is having an affair with another man's wife; and on and on it goes. You might expect me to dislike this book since I've said on other occasions that I dislike small towns with impossibly high percentages of interesting people. I suppose if I were to be completely consistent, I would criticize a town that has so much going for it in the way of murder and romance and gypsies and so forth. Perhaps I'm only defending this particular book because I like it so much. Read it yourself and see. One of the most satisfying things about the book is that the author knows her reader wants to find out more, so she gives more: we get to go into the future and find out how everyone is doing once all the secrets are far in the past. I highly recommend any book by Maeve Binchy, but this is one of her best.
Geisha, by Liza Crihfield Dalby (1983)
If you read Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (see review), you'll know that Arthur Golden didn't go undercover as a geisha but someone else did. That someone was Liza Crihfield Dalby, an American anthropologist studying geisha. She used the more typical anthropological tools as well: surveys, interviews, government statistics---but her most interesting research was done while wearing white face paint and kimono.
The introduction to her book is worth reading; I appreciated her candor about her eventual abandonment of absolute objectivity: once she'd lived as a geisha, she could no longer be impersonal and distant about them. Her book is even more interesting because of this affinity, but if you didn't read the introduction you might occasionally be brought up short by a biased comment.
The text is terrific: a good combination of anecdotal and encyclopedic information. There are sections on topics such as geisha community hierarchy, geisha vs. prostitutes, government regulation of geisha, geisha training, geisha wardrobes, geisha vs. wives, and the different kinds of geisha in different cities. There are lots of pictures, something I always enjoy. The only thing I found confusing was time: the book was written in 1983, I'm reading it and reviewing it in 1999, and Liza Crihfield was in Japan in the 1960s? 1970s? Well, it's hard to say. When she writes that something was in style "10 years ago," I was never sure where we were counting back from. In most cases, the authors of non-fiction books would be clearer if they'd reference the time they mean: "in the mid 1970s" rather than "10 years ago."
The Fermata, by Nicholson Baker (1994)
If the narrator weren't so charmingly aware of his failings, it would be easy to toss this book aside as yet another 300-page male sex fantasy. Every time I was about to toss the book aside with an exasperated "Men!" sigh, the narrator changed course and mollified me. This is still not a book I'd want people to see me reading, though, just in case they'd read it and knew what it was like.
The plot is this: a man has the power to stop time while remaining conscious/mobile himself, so he uses this power to take women's clothes off. He also does things he considers loving acts, such as leaving sex toys and pornographic stories where these women will find them once he restarts time, then following the women home, stopping time while he sneaks into their bedrooms/bathrooms, starting time again and watching what happens. And more, but I'd rather not tell you about it. I had no idea there were so many slang words for body parts and sexual acts. I may not be what you'd call a street-wise woman of the world (one of my friends calls me "the rookie"), but I don't expect to have to think carefully about what someone might mean by one word or another.
I can't either recommend or not recommend this book to you. It's much too salacious for me to want you running around saying I recommended it to you, but on the other hand it's well-written in between the sections of actual pornography, and the narrator is a real person by the time you've finished reading his story, and the idea of "What would you do if you could stop time?" is a great one to mull over from time to time. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't use it to undress people, but then I happen to be a lady of fine virtue and delicate sensibilities.
Beaches, by Iris Rainer Dart (1985)
When I reviewed The Stork Club last month (see review), I didn't realize it was by the author of Beaches. Actually, I hadn't realized Beaches was anything but a Bette Midler movie. I never saw that movie, mostly because "Wind Beneath My Wings" is the worst song ever to happen to friendship. Ever since that song came out I've been avoiding friendships just in case someone might someday play that song in my presence and expect me to get teary. The day I tell anyone but a blood ancestor that "I would be nothing" without him or her is the day you can lock me up somewhere padded.
The song isn't in the book, so I went ahead and read it. If you were alive during the craze over the movie, you already know the plot: flamboyant potty-mouthed big star Cee Cee and rich quiet heiress WASP "Call Me Mrs. My Husband's Name" Bertie are best girlfriends from childhood through adulthood, and then Bertie dies. Beaches is similar to The Stork Club: the characters are two-dimensional, the plot melodramatic, the dialogue occasionally ridiculous---but, also like The Stork Club, I enjoyed reading it. I have the feeling that despite the book jacket photo in which she lounges uncomfortably in a forced pose and bad sundress on jagged rocks against a beach backdrop, Iris Rainer Dart is probably capable of better writing but has found a market for something more like this---and there's nothing wrong with that.
I'll Be There, by Iris Rainer Dart (1991)
This sequel to Beaches (see review, above) is a dippy continuation of what was a marginally dippy story to begin with. It's fun to find out what happens with Cee Cee and Nina and Michael and John after Bertie dies, but the realizations Cee Cee comes to about family and love and life and priorities are so unbearably sentimental and boring and stale that it was all I could do to keep from skipping to the end of the book to make sure nothing genuinely dramatic happens. The last fifty pages or so are nearly impossible to slog through. I also didn't think Cee Cee's parenting philosophy of Let The Teenager Say Hideously Disrespectful Things To You Just Because The Parenting Books Say It's Normal was working out too well for her, despite how great she thought she was being at keeping her mouth shut. I suppose I still think you ought to read this book if you enjoyed Beaches, if only to tie up the loose ends---but don't expect to sigh with satisfaction when you reach the last page.
Love Makes a Family, photographs by Gigi Kaeser, by Peggy Gillespie (1999)
Here's this year's coffee table book for all the families you might nervously refer to as "non-traditional." The parents in these families are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender men and women, all facing the challenges of being a non-traditional family on top of the normal challenges of rearing children. The book is beautifully done: warm, loving, snapshot-style family photos are followed by what each member of the family has to say about his or her family situation: how it came about, how it works, what they think of it, what sorts of attitudes they've had to deal with from other people. This is highly recommended reading for anyone who's curious about what such families are like. However, let's remember one thing: it's also okay to belong to a family in which no one is lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Occasionally in the zeal to defend the loving and kind nature of his or her own family, a family member speaks condescendingly or even disdainfully about "a traditional family with 2.5 kids and a puppy dog." If we're going to all learn to get along, we have to accept even those families.
Sleeping Through the Night...and Other Lies, by Sandi Kahn Shelton (1999)
One reviewer says that Sandi Kahn Shelton is "the true successor to Erma Bombeck," but I think she's better than that. Her greatest gift is making amusing lists such as "A Bunch of New Things to Worry About in the Middle of the Night" and "Why Babies Cry." This book is an amusing summary of what the first years with a new baby are like, and although it does slip into some of the incredibly old parenting jokes I never want to hear again (a la E.B.), most of it is funny and good. I laughed out loud many times, even when I was by myself. A few things are a little out of date: pablum, wind-up swings, that sort of little detail--but it's still a book you could give to a new mom.
The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
There's nothing quite like Africa to make you happy and guilty to live in the United States. This novel is similar to Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (by Allan Gurganus; see review) in that for the most part you swallow a lot of time/place history without realizing you're doing any studying.
The book takes place in the jungles of Africa, where a missionary has brought his wife and four daughters. The missionary is a little out of control to begin with (abuses his family, controls everything via direct orders from God, insists on doing this mission trip despite the church's disapproval, etc.), and he loses it more and more as time goes on and it becomes increasingly clear that he's wasting his time with the natives. Meanwhile, his family struggles with famine, diseases, parasites, poisonous snakes, floods, army ants, and drought.
I think The Poisonwood Bible could have ended about a hundred pages before it did; it was nice to find out what happened to the family, but that part could have been in a short epilogue. The last hundred pages or so were packed full of political fervor, most of it along the lines of blaming the United States for everything bad that's ever happened, from apartheid and The Holocaust all the way down to refined flour and the cancellation of"Maximum Bob" midway through its first season. If the author's purpose was to get that idea across, she did a much better job before she get het up about it: when I was reading the story I had many uncomfortable feelings along the lines of shame and gratitude and giving-all-I-have-to-the-poor---but once she started rubbing my face in it I had feelings more along the lines of "Oh yeah? Well, that's YOUR side of the story!" Furthermore, I found it hard to believe that one of the daughters (Rachel) would be exactly the same at 50 as she was at 16, and reading a 50-year-old talking like a 16-year-old is boring and annoying.
Still, it's a great book and would be terrific fodder for a book club. Not a book club I'd want to belong to, though: I can only listen to so much talk about how guilty people feel about owning things. I don't think feeling bad and condemning capitalism count as doing something about the problem.
This Year It Will Be Different, by Maeve Binchy (1996)
A collection of fifteen Christmas stories. Some are discouraging and depressing (e.g., "Things will never get better; life will go on this way year after year with no change"), others start out that way but have happy endings (e.g., "Things have been this way until now, but because of this Christmas things will be different and better from now on"). My favorites: "The First Step of Christmas," in which a woman learns to deal with the sullen teenaged step-daughter who will be her responsibility from now on; "The Ten Snaps of Christmas," in which a teenaged girl takes surreptitious photographs showing the side of Christmas not covered by her mother's carols and cheer; "Miss Martin's Wish," in which a left-at-the-alter schoolteacher and a man whose lover has died figure out a way to give two problems one happy solution; and "The Hard Core," in which a nursing home assistant and four of the most ornery residents save the home from bankruptcy. Actually, as I was trying to find my favorites I noticed that each story I looked at was a favorite, so I just stopped listing them after the first four stories.
The Lilac Bus, by Maeve Binchy (1991)
Another great Maeve Binchy book in true Maeve Binchy style: a series of chapters, each focusing on one of a group of related people. Each story presents an interesting problem and a satisfying (if not always happy) resolution. You should know that The Lilac Bus is only about half the book; the other half is a series of four short stories. This can be a little startling if you're settling down to read more about the first group of people and suddenly you're in with a new crowd.
Repent, Lanny Merkel, by Faith Sullivan (1981)
You should not read this book if you prefer to believe that we live in God's World where God's Law is Natural Law and therefore people who have affairs will ruin their lives and be miserable. Laura is in her early 40s, and the invitation she receives for her 25-year high school reunion brings up a lot of old memories. Most of those memories are about Lanny, her high school boyfriend with whom she has "unfinished business." She goes to the reunion without her husband and ties up a few loose ends. From this synopsis you might be getting the feeling that this is a serious and possibly even traumatic tale. In fact, its main flaw is that the author tries too hard to be snappy and funny. Or perhaps it's the narrator who's to blame. In any case, you'll be pausing every few seconds for a "bah-dum ching" and a laugh track. I laughed a few times but never once rollicked or howled. If you can skim over the nervous humor, it's a good story.
Watchdog, by Faith Sullivan (1982)
After reading this book, it seems to me my cat has a funny look in his eyes. Watchdog is about a dog named Fido who is on his way home with his new master when there is an accident and the master is killed. Fido moves in with the widow and is a loving companion and protector for her and her children. The widow, Louise, thinks the dog is unusually intelligent, and she attributes to him many human characteristics. When rather soon after the death of her husband Louise begins to date, the dog violently attacks the man several times. Fido also kills one of the man's pets, leaving it on the man's doorstep as a threat. Louise becomes increasingly afraid as it becomes apparent that Fido is able to get free of his chain and can also open doors. She makes more and more comparisons between the dog and her dead husband, remembering how her husband used to say that he would kill any man she got involved with. Soon you'll be wondering who's really nuts. Was it the husband? Do you want to believe that his spirit somehow possesses the dog, or would you rather believe Louise is cracking up? Or is the dog just a regular watch dog who knows Louise is in danger from her new boyfriend? Well, I'm sorry but you're just going to have to find out for yourself.
The Cape Ann, by Faith Sullivan (1988)
I don't like to read about families in which one member is out of control and ruining life for the other members. In this family, Lark is an early-gradeschool child living with her sensible, loving, fun mother and her gambling, drinking, beating, yelling father. The three of them live in the railroad depot where Lark's father works, and Lark's mother continually dreams of having a house. Every time enough money is saved for a down payment, Lark's father gambles it away. As this happens again and again, you can feel Lark's mother gearing up for an "enough is enough." In the meantime, Lark is working on being a child: going to school, making her first confession and first communion, playing with friends. There are many things she is told or overhears that she doesn't understand, so she keeps a notebook that she'll be able to look back on when she's older. Presumably you will be old enough to understand what Lark doesn't. The Cape Ann is a good book with distressing themes.