Mrs. Kimble, by Jennifer Haigh (2003)
This is the story of a man who marries three very different women. It is more about the women than about the man, which is good because the man is a real loser: his careful monitoring of his weight, his backaches that mean he needs to be waited on, his suggestions for ways women can improve their looks, his constant lying. It's hard to believe any of these women even considered him, let alone married him.
The first wife, Birdie, was hardest for me to read about: I hate reading alcoholic's-eye-view stuff, especially when little children are involved.
Three Junes, by Julia Glass (2002)
Each of the three sections of this book could be a stand-alone story, but they're even better together. Characters overlap unexpectedly, giving new dimensions to what you've already read. A very, very good book.
The Home Front, by Margaret Craven (1981)
This collection of old-fashioned stories published for the most part in the 1940s and 1950s is a little prissy, a little trite, a little moralistic, and yet still a pleasing read.
The most difficult hurdle for me were the stories of what a smart girl learns. A smart girl learns that she could work for her husband or with her husband, but never for herself--because that would be to work against him. A smart girl learns that a happy wife is one who unobtrusively clears the way for her husband's success, rather than looking for her own; and that a successful woman makes her household bitter and unhappy. A smart girl learns that her misogynistic, lying, cheating, abusive male co-worker was only that way because his wife was such a poor representative of womankind. A smart girl would find in time that the strict and critical boss had given her the immeasurable gift of shaping her useless feminine self into something useful.
The pleasing part is the gentle way the stories unfold. There's no need to worry: you will have your happy endings. The girl will fall for the injured nice young man, not for the showoffy handsome one. The boy will seek out a career of kindness and helping, rather than leaping for glory and money. Young love is quaint: there is no passion here; rather, two nice young people gradually come to realize, with no dating, that they will be married someday.
This is the sort of thing I assume people are talking about when they long for a "simpler time," a time when the girls wore pretty dresses and the boys were soldiers back from the wars, and only selfish cruel women were divorced or had careers. Reading the book is a nice little trip to the idealized past, even if you wouldn't want to have lived there.
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell (2005)
What we might call a "snap judgment," Malcolm Gladwell calls "thin-slicing": making a quick decision based not on piles of studies and weeks of thought, but on an almost instinctive understanding of the situation. When it works, this REALLY works: a curator may know in a flash that a work of art is a fake, without knowing how he knows. When it goes wrong, it REALLY goes wrong: a police officer may shoot a black man who wasn't doing anything except being black.
Full of interesting examples (the only one that bored me was the Red/Blue war games thing), this is a non-fiction book that's as fun to read as fiction.
The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls (2005)
This is a memoir of the "we were poorer than you can imagine, and yet I can talk about it in a perky tone of voice" variety. I'm sitting there reading about children shooting each other with guns, scrounging for maggoty food, blowing themselves up with kerosene trying to light a fire that'll keep them from freezing to death as their pets did--and it's all in this no-big-deal tone, as if sure it was bad, but hey, we had good times too, like when we had to leave town in the middle of the night to escape creditors and child protective services.
I felt particularly discouraged when reading about how brilliant we were supposed to consider the neglectful parents. Oh, sure, their dad stole all their money, drank, never wanted to have a job because it would keep him from working on any of his ridiculous schemes--but really he was a genius. Sure their mom thought her children should be "independent" to the point of setting themselves on fire and protecting themselves from molestors, and sure she swore up and down that she was pregnant for 12-14 months per child--but she read heaps of books from the library. Well, gosh, how impressive, perhaps they could join Mensa.
I'm glad that apparently only one of the four children inherited the parents' severe mental problems. I'm glad that the other three somehow managed to drag themselves out of an utter cesspit of a life. But I don't care if the dad is now dead and the mom is now a happy lil' homeless woman, I hate them both.
Naked, by David Sedaris (1997)
My previous two reviews of David Sedaris books are, essentially, me falling impotent to the floor in the face of his shining talent. This book is just as talented, but more upsetting: instead of feeling as if I would like to kneel at his feet, I felt as if perhaps he was a lost, drifting person, unable to get a toe-grip on the shifting surface of life. Some of the experiences he relates are truly dismal, but it sounds like he just went with the flow until he was accidentally caught on a branch and hauled out into the next experience. Sad and icky at times, but still excellent, excellent writing.
Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression, by Brooke Shields (2005)
It's nearly always for the common good when a celebrity writes a book about an illness or issue. The average person is not going to read a medical text on postpartum depression, but the average person might pick up a book with Brooke Shields's troubled face on the cover. As long as the celebrity is careful to present the issue responsibly, everybody wins: an illness/issue is brought to the public's attention, and members of the public are more likely to seek help for a problem themselves when they find out that rich and famous people struggle with it too.
Brooke Shields writes about her experience with postpartum depression, and it seems to me she presents it responsibly. She starts with her desire to get pregnant and ends with her daughter's first birthday. She vividly and revealingly documents the way she felt, and details the treatments that brought her relief. The reader is left with three impressions: one, that postpartum depression is a serious problem; two, that it can and should be treated; three, that eventually it will pass. Good stuff for the masses.
But be braced for some silliness. The c-section is described with intensely negative language: "...gutted like a fish...in the crucifix position." Other situations of the sort faced by many, many people (IVF, miscarriage, recovery from childbirth, learning to nurse a baby) are described as if they were incomprehensible nightmares faced by her alone; why oh why is she not allowed to have things the pretty way she'd always dreamed they'd be? And she says, "When I claimed I wanted to be someone's mother, I didn't factor in the devastating fatigue, the loss of personal freedom, and the overwhelming fear that are part of being a parent, not to mention the heartache." For heaven's sake, what DID she factor in? Well, it is a book by a celebrity, and we must take it as it comes. For what it is, it is very good. Those of us who would read the medical text need not read the celebrity account.
Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, by Ruth Reichl (2005)
This book has motivated me: the next time I go to the library, I'm wearing a wig and using a fake library card.
Ruth Reichl was the restaurant critic for The New York Times, and found that if she went to restaurants as herself, the service improved so much she couldn't judge it. So she began using disguises.
The book itself is entertaining, and I was surprised at how interesting her restaurant reviews were, considering I don't live in New York and wouldn't be eating at any of those places. The sheer and obvious enjoyment she gets from food comes shining through.
How to Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Life: Reluctant Confessions of a Big-Butted Star, by Kirstie Alley (2005)
You might expect this book to tell you how to lose your ass, but it does not. You might expect it to tell you how to regain your life, but it does not. You might expect the confessions to be reluctant, but they are not.
This is the sort of book that almost anyone could come up with if asked to recall a bunch of stuff that happened to them: high school relationships and humiliations; the time some guy turned out to have a girlfriend; the bad clothes provided by the parents; the death of a grandparent. The only thing that makes this book special at all is that it is written by a celebrity. Bonus points for generous use of photos.