The Girls, by Helen Yglesias (1999)
I was excited to read this book because it advertised itself as a book featuring elderly women in roles other than the stereotypical grandmother/witch sort--a book that addressed the issues of aging and dying via unique/real elderly characters. Instead I read page after page of repetitive, confused, pitiful, whining, half-cracked dialogue that left me feeling depressed and tired.
These four sisters, ages 80, 85, 90, and 95, complain endlessly about their relatives, fret endlessly about money, get exhausted by every little thing, accuse others unjustly of stealing/mooching/lying, repeat themselves over and over in a near mental-patient fashion, and in general bore and annoy everyone out of their wits with their delusions and ingratitude and confusion and hand-wringing. I read 113 pages and I'm not reading any more.
Irreconcilable Differences, by Lia Matera (1999)
I don't like "edited by" collections because it seems like the real authors don't get enough credit. I'll list them here: Edna Buchanan, Jan Burke, Amanda Cross, Jeffery Deaver, Eileen Dreyer, Pete Hautman, Jeremiah Healy, Joan Hess, Judith Kelman, Laurie R. King, Sarah Lovett, John Lutz, Margaret Maron, Lia Matera, Marcia Muller, Joyce Carol Oates, Bill Pronzini, Gillian Roberts, Sarah Shankman, and Julie Smith.
The authors were asked to write a short story on the theme "irreconcilable differences." In the boring and poorly organized introduction, the editor writes that she had expected to get more divorce stories than she did; the themes the authors chose instead include disputes between neighbors, strangers, friends, lovers, and even one or two that discuss irreconcilable differences within a single person.
This is a good collection of stories, but I'm not sure the cover is justified in calling them mystery stories. Some are mystery stories, some are suspense, some may tippy-toe over the line into horror. Very few are of the crime/clues/detective sort. Almost all are very good, though if I'd based my decision on the first story ("Tusk," by Joyce Carol Oates) I wouldn't have gone on: it's a depressing, upsetting, violent story about a teenager gone crazy. And the end of "Half of Something" was unclear, and "The Perfect Revenge" seemed anticlimactic. But for a collection of stories by different authors, usually a sure case of two or three good stories selling a whole lot of lousy ones, this book is particularly good.
Chang and Eng, by Darin Strauss (2000)
Told from the fictional point of view of Eng, one of a set of conjoined twins, this book gives a realistic look at what it might be like to be attached to someone your entire life, beginning with the difficulties of being born together and going all the way through life to the difficulties of dying together. And, the part everyone's been waiting for: the difficulties of being married together. (Chang and Eng married sisters and fathered twenty-one children.) One twin wants nothing more than to be separated from his brother, the other likes being conjoined; one belongs to a temperance union, the other drinks heavily; one hates being on display to gawking crowds, the other hams it up and enjoys the attention.
Adding further interest is a documentary I saw on conjoined twins, which said that it is believed now that Chang and Eng could in fact have been separated, that they were connected only by cartilage and not by any vital organs. At the time, though, it was believed that the twins would die if cut apart. Chang and Eng were not the first set of conjoined twins, but they were from Siam and the inspiration for the no longer correct but still commonly used term "Siamese twins." This is a novel and not a biography; the author says in an afterward that very little was known about Chang and Eng even when they were alive.
Emotionally Weird, by Kate Atkinson (2000)
This book is "witty," which is the nice way of saying it tries to be funny but fails in an embarrassing way. A sample paragraph has two women imagining what they'd like to have for breakfast, followed by this concluding sentence: "We remained hungry, however, for you cannot really eat your own words." Another sample paragraph discusses a dotty old professor and adds: "The university's strict laws of tenure dictated that he had to be dead at least three months before he could be removed from behind his desk."
The narrator is an English student and several times remarks critically that other students write about the minutia of everyday life--but then she goes on and on about what each person in her class is wearing, and copies verbatim every boring word her professor says. I slogged through 37 pages and couldn't stand to read any more. I threw it down when the narrator said she'd mistaken a kind of fish for a kind of hashish--and then says wittily, "...although many people, of course, consider [hashish] to be a kind of red herring." I was left with the impression that the author wanted me to pause after each bon mot and applaud her finely-honed wit.
No Good-byes, by Elaine Kagan (2000)
Will it sound condescending if I say this book is surprisingly good considering it was written by an actor? Yes, I suppose it does: I can just hear the pat on the head. Nevertheless, it was written by an actor, it was good, and I was surprised. Previous experience hasn't given me faith in crossover talent: actors always seem to be cutting albums, writing books, and inventing diet/exercise plans, and most of them demonstrate only that actors should stick to acting. Considering the quality of Elaine Kagan's book, I might suppose she's a lousy actress.
Not surprisingly, No Good-byes takes place in the world of acting. The leads are: Eleanor Costello, psychotherapist and recent widow; Chassi Jennings, movie star daughter who witnessed the death of her movie star mother; and Ionie St. John, coffee shop waitress and aspiring actress who decides on the classic method of getting to the top in Hollywood, if you follow me. When Chassi and Ionie are both cast in a remake of the movie Chassi's dead mother is famous for, Chassi starts having dizzy spells. She begins seeing Dr. Eleanor Costello, and slowly she works through the death of her mother. Through her sessions with Chassi, Dr. Costello begins to work through the recent death of her husband and the difficult relationship she has with her grown daughter. No Good-byes is about unexpected deaths, the relationships between parents and children, and the ins and outs of the actor's life.
Mr. Phillips, by John Lanchester (2000)
I didn't enjoy this book. There's nothing wrong with it if you don't mind reading page after page of a middle-aged man thinking about sex. Or if you don't mind "Finish the story yourself" endings, which drive me mad. The entire book takes place on one single day, the first work day after Mr. Phillips has been laid off from his job as an accountant. He doesn't have the nerve to tell his wife, so he just leaves for work as usual and spends the day wandering around the city. He goes to a museum, he sees a porn movie, he does long mathematical problems in his head, he contemplates his sexual fantasies past and present. And then as the work day ends, so does the book, leaving nothing certain except the mild-mannered ickiness of Mr. Phillips.
Mrs. Pollifax, Innocent Tourist, by Dorothy Gilman (1997)
Haven't you read a Mrs. Pollifax book yet? There are over a dozen of them now, all equally entertaining. Mrs. Pollifax is a nice little old lady who likes hats and gardening, and just for fun she signs up with the CIA. Each of her adventures starts out as some simple CIA errand, like just going to Iraq to pick up some paperwork, and quickly escalates into a multiple-plot international espionage crisis, usually with chases and disguises and double agents and exciting surprises and being tied up in a dark shed. Always a happy ending, of course, and Mrs. Pollifax goes back to her gardening until the next time she's needed. Exciting and not too scary, since you know Mrs. Pollifax will be just fine.
The Secret of Spring, by Piers Anthony and Jo Anne Taeusch (2000)
I'm not keen on science fiction, and one reason is that so much of it seems written for seventh grade boys: all space-guns and naked girls. Furthermore, I don't care how far in the future we get, certain truths are likely to remain constant and I think sci-fi authors need to remember that. One such truth is that a loving, intelligent father would not lock a secret in the subconscious of his daughter's mind and make her virginity the key. The idea that Doing It will reveal the secret to absolute power is less plot device than teenage fantasy. Yet that's what the father does in this novel, right before he dies and leaves his secret-storing daughter (yes, her name is Spring--*sigh*) to fend for herself against evil wizards and other dangerous creatures.
Another such truth: if a woman has only a towel between her and nakedness, a sudden surprise, such as a man coming into the room unexpectedly, will not make her drop the towel. Again with the teenage-boy fantasy problem.
Besides the problems with reality, The Secret of Spring has another typical science fiction problem: everything has to have a fancy name, usually a stupid one. Because much of the novel takes place on a planet of walking, talking plants, it's not a lightbulb, it's a flowerbulb; it's not a notepad, it's a lilypad; it's not a magazine, it's a magazinia; it's not a deadbeat, it's a deadbeet. Dumb, dumb, dumb--and not funny and not clever. The co-author Taeusch gives herself credit in the afterword for these "puns," but these lame plays on words do not qualify as puns.
The entire book is written in a similarly immature style (the romance, in particular, is nauseating), so that I kept checking to see if I'd inadvertently selected a book from the "Young Adult" section. Unfortunately, no. I don't recommend this book for anyone who successfully completed the seventh grade.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, by J. K. Rowling (1997)
There comes a point where the hype about a book or an author has reached such a peak that I have to see for myself what all the fuss is about. (This, incidentally, is what led to an unfortunate encounter with a Danielle Steel book.) With no expectations of greatness, I tried the first Harry Potter book. Though certainly written for children (elementary and middle school-aged), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone will be greatly enjoyed by the parents who read it aloud or have to listen to a million anecdotes told enthusiastically by starry-eyed children. I'll have to read the others in the series to be sure, but my preliminary evaluation is that the Harry Potter books are on par with the C. S. Lewis Narnia series. One major difference: the Narnia books are in some places religious parables, whereas the Harry Potter books don't seem to be; the Harry Potter books are pure fun and fantasy.
As the author of the Harry Potter books knows, the only real way for a child to begin an adventure is for his parents to die. Harry Potter's parents (a witch and a wizard) don't just die, they're killed by an evil wizard. Harry is only a baby, so from then on he lives with his hideous aunt and uncle who don't believe in all this witch/wizard nonsense and take it out on Harry, withholding the information from him that he has a magical background. He lives the typical storybook life of cheerfully-borne misery until he's 11 years old and gets a notice saying he should prepare himself for Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This is all a big pleasant surprise to Harry, as you can imagine. Soon he's been swept out of the house of his hateful relatives and is on his way to adventures and magic and wands and potions. The school includes the correct proportions of nice teachers, strict-but-nice teachers, and evil teachers who hate certain children for no reason; also in correct proportion are nice kids, tough-but-nice older kids, mischievous prankster kids, too-smart-for-their-own-good kids, wussy kids, and mean evil snotty tattletale kids. Children will get a big kick out of all the stuff these kids get to do, and they'll also love the way 11-year-old Harry Potter has to whip the sorry butt of the arch-evil wizard who killed his parents (naturally this happens after Harry is unable to convince the disbelieving adults that something bad is afoot).
High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby (1995)
If I hadn't seen the preview for the movie made from this book, I'm not sure I could have made it through all 323 pages of neurotic self-second-guessing. John Cusack, who plays the lead in the movie, is perhaps the only man who can get away with this kind of thing and still be charming and appealing. (Or perhaps even he fails; I haven't seen the movie.) The book, sans John Cusack, slips over into the Lame Ducks category: a man who doesn't know how good he's got it slumps and whines for hundreds of pages about whether he should stir up the energy to want more out of his life than a record shop, a girlfriend, and an enormous record collection. He alternates between ingratitude and feeling guilty for his ingratitude, a boring combination after awhile. The impulse to slap him silly kept rising within me. The tepid ending, a sort of "Well, I guess this must be as good as it gets for anyone, so I'll make do" resolution on his part, left me wondering if his girlfriend really wanted to accept this kind of proposal.
What We Keep, by Elizabeth Berg (1998)
What We Keep is written in the "flashback" style: almost the entire book takes place as a woman on a plane thinks back over what caused her to split with her mother. Periodically we check back with what's happening on the plane (breakfast is served, another passenger strikes up a conversation, etc.), but for the most part we stay in the woman's memories of her childhood, and of what happened when she was twelve years old and her sister was thirteen. At that time her mother does something the woman on the plane says qualifies as the worst of all mother horror stories. I'm pretty sure it doesn't (after that build-up I was prepared for torture and human sacrifices), but it's pretty awful for everyone in the family. Now, 35 years later, the woman on the plane is going to see her mother again. I was completely absorbed in the book and enjoyed all of it. The writing is so expertly done, you forget you're reading and just glide effortlessly through to the end. Furthermore, there's a happy ending in which women learn to understand each other, and what could be better than that?
Joy School, by Elizabeth Berg (1997)
I was continually reminded of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, to the point of checking the binding to make sure I hadn't accidentally gotten a book from the Young Adults section (it's happened more than once).
Joy School is for adults, but I think a teenaged girl would like it too. There's a heavy emphasis on topics such as french kissing, being new in school, friendships, mean teachers, and boys. A 12-year-old girl named Katie moves to a new place with her father after her mother dies, and there struggles with neighbor children who leave threatening notes in the shrubs; a friend who is fascinating and popular but also shoplifts; and, most of all, a 23-year-old married man she thinks she can steal from his wife.
Like Judy Blume's Margaret, Katie turns in an unconventional way to religion, talking regularly to a nice Catholic priest even though she has no intention of becoming Catholic. I didn't like Joy School as much as I liked What We Keep (see review, above), mostly because I'm not as interested in the day-to-day struggles of adolescent girls as I was when I last read Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret about a million years ago. Still, Elizabeth Berg is a great writer and probably any of her books are worth reading.
Circle of Three, by Patricia Gaffney (2000)
It's odd how the "story told from the points of view of three generations of women" (or three friends or three sisters, or sometimes the number is four) is so overdone, and yet it's one of my favorites. It's so easy for it to be badly done: the tendency is for the author to divide up the possible characteristics among the women, making each woman a stereotype or a caricature with no traits in common with the others: one is the tomboy, one is the rich beauty (but not tomboyish), one is the intellectual (but neither rich nor tomboyish), etc. When an author avoids this and does the "three women" thing right, the multiple points of view can be wonderful.
In Circle of Three, the three generations are 70-ish Dana, 40-ish Carrie, and 15-ish Ruth. Carrie's husband Stephen is killed in a car accident, and she and Ruth have to figure out how to live their lives without him. Ruth hates it when her mother Carrie hangs around month after month in a ratty old bathrobe, sleeping most of the time and unable to get on with her life, but she hates it even more when Carrie shows signs of recovery. (There were a few times that Carrie should have shaken off the moorings of her pointless guilt and given Ruth a good slap.) Although the story is mostly about Carrie and Ruth, Carrie's mother Dana comes in from time to time to explore how it feels to be an aging mother and to give us insight into the mother-daughter relationship that let to Carrie and Ruth's mother-daughter relationship. Although I thought the sentiment/introspection got a little deep, and although I'm not much interested in the inner thoughts of a 15-year-old, I still thought the book was pretty great.