Dry, by Augusten Burroughs (2003)
It is one of the great sorrows of my life that I will never be friends with Augusten Burroughs. I have to come to terms with it periodically, rehearsing the trueness of it in in my head along with other things that are equally true: I will never be an actress. I will never be a singer. I will never be friends with Augusten Burroughs.
Oh, sure, I might one day meet him, at a book-signing or something. But then I'd be all, "OHMIGOD! Augusten! Burroughs! I am SUCH a fan!," and he'd be all, whatever he says in these circumstances, probably something like, "Oh, great, great," or whatever. And then it would be the turn for the person behind me to say "OHMIGOD!..." as I went on ahead, trying to be content with this measure of Augusten Burroughs that was all that destiny would allow me: I may look upon him briefly, and then I must move along to the cash register. He will be friends not with me but with people like Haven Kimmel, other genius writers I want badly to be friends with.
This particular work of genius is about his struggle with alcoholism. But who cares what it's about, specifically? It is by Augusten Burroughs. OHMIGOD. Augusten. Burroughs. I am SUCH a fan.
Second Honeymoon, by Joanna Trollope (2006)
This is exactly the sort of novel I enjoy: good, realistic characters in a basic, family-issues plot, written in a way that makes normal life situations mesmerizing.
Edie and Russell Boyd have finally waved goodbye to the last of their three little nestlings. Russell is happy to get back to spending time with just Edie, but Edie can't tolerate the empty nest and the feeling that she is no longer needed. She starts romanticizing the years when her children were making constant demands on her; meanwhile, Russell is romanticizing the years before the children arrived.
Before long, Edie has managed to fill the house with more people than they originally had, and has remembered how it actually feels to have so many people needing her all the time. Each person moving in has had their own life-changing crisis or issue; as these situations are resolved, Russell and Edie get a second chance to enjoy the empty nest.
Rococo, by Adriana Trigiani (2005)
I partly liked this book and partly didn't. On one hand, I like Adriana Trigiani's writing, and I did read the book all the way to the end, and I enjoyed many parts of it. On the other hand, parts of it were very dull for those of us who aren't interested in interior decorating. A sample passage:
"I adjust the glass top to fit perfectly over the seams of the ottoman. I had a ball with this one, oval with simple wooden legs. I covered it with a deep blue satin brocade embroidered with a multicolored bird-of-paradise design. I used a six-inch silk fringe in pale blue from the base to the floor, then added a kicky ball fringe in gold around the top seam to give the piece movement. I covered forty-seven large buttons in cornflower-blue velvet and staggered them on the sides, giving texture to the satin."
This goes on for pages and pages, again and again throughout the book. I suppose it makes sense, since the main character is an interior decorator, but I'm not sure that kind of lengthy, detailed description makes for good fiction.
To nitpick--and what could be more interesting than that?--there's a chess metaphor that tells me the author doesn't play chess: the character talks about how the game is like salvation, in that you "do a little good, move forward; sin, go back; ignore the needs of others, stay in the same square." Perhaps the author is thinking of Candyland?
The novel wraps up in full trite mode: first some complete changes of lifelong behavior lead to abrupt reconciliations, and then there's a thoughtful overview of what's important about life. You can just hear it done for the movie in a warm, affectionate, philosophical voice-over: families have their troubles, but in the end? They're family, and that's important.
The Egg and I, by Betty MacDonald (1945)
This little time capsule tells of a woman's experience on a mountain farm, rearing chickens with her husband. Her husband sounds like kind of an asshole (he bosses her all day as she works beside him, then at night he smokes and rests while she does the dishes, then he checks the mattress springs to make sure they're dust-free), but she compares him to the other men who are beating their wives just for fun or letting their wives do all the farming and all the housework, and decides he's better than most. (I wonder how this year's model of husband will look to the women of 60 years from now.)
You might think that reading a book about hauling water, scraping manure, and wrestling with a difficult stove would be....well, we're among friends, right? We can say "dull"? But I found it interesting to read about, and I liked the author's voice. I wasn't on the edge of my seat, but I certainly wasn't bored. I should warn you that there is some language that we now consider racist (I say "now" because I don't know what it was considered back then), but there is not a lot of it.
Plum Wine, by Angela Davis-Gardner (2006)
About six weeks ago, I had such a score at the library, I didn't know what I was going to do. I found about two dozen books I was interested in reading, and I've renewed them two times now and they're due today for real. The last one in the pile, the one I was least interested in, was Plum Wine.
The first half of the book surprised me: it was so absorbing and interesting, and not at all what I'd expected. Then I got involved in another project, put the book aside for a few days, and was disinclined to go back to it. With the due date looming, I nearly just took it back to the library without finishing it. But I remembered how much I'd liked the first half, and went back to it.
I should have gone with my first impulse. For all the eerie "What's going on here?" build-up, the explanation is dull and left me with a "Is THAT all??" feeling. The falseness of the romance seemed well-crafted when there was the scary feeling that someone was tricking someone else, but seemed just plain false when the trickery was explained away.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson (1962)
This creepy story is about two sisters and their uncle living alone after the rest of the family dies from a suspicious poisoning. The story's plot does not surprise, but it unsettles nevertheless.
Hothouse Kids, by Alissa Quart (2006)
There is too much "according to Webster's" here. That kind of thing belongs in high school essays and never afterward.
This is a book about gifted children, and whether the methods we have of dealing with them are the "right" methods: the methods that take into account the well-being of the child, the fair development of his or her skills, the careful respect for his or her childhood, and the future use of those skills in adulthood.
The author wants to force a connection between the gifted child and the myth of Icarus flying too close to the sun, but it never gels. The author claims that the connection is "a failure to accept human limits," but that doesn't work: Icarus's downfall was a failure to listen to someone who knew better, and is a better tale for reminding children to obey their parents. I can see why she wanted to make the myth work: she likes the image of the gifted child "flying too high" and being damaged by its own abilities. Too bad that's not what happened in that myth.
The author's descriptions of the people she interviews are sometimes pleasingly revealing: "He tends to deliver sentences like ['I never really felt like a child'] with a certain romantic appreciation, seemingly aware that his narrative could seem as fabulous as it is sad, the story of a foiled wunderkind." And sometimes the descriptions are too peculiar: "Speech bursts from his mouth like air from a balloon." What does that mean? In a long squealing whine? In a near-silent whoosh? In a loud bang?
Many of her observations seem well-placed and intelligent (a favorite: "According to the blurry logic I described earlier, the total neglect of orphans is shown to be bad, and therefore superstimulation must be good"), but the book never hangs together. She asks many, many questions, but mostly as a device for keeping the text moving, not as a cue that she's about to provide answers. Some of the questions are silly, and out of the scope of this book: "Are these lucrative and powerful jobs, in fact, paving the way to long-term happiness?"
It seemed to me this book lacked focus. Were we talking about the kind of child who is exceptionally intelligent overall, or the kind of child who shows an unusual talent for just one thing but is otherwise normal, or the sort of child whose parent has forced him or her to take many, many "enrichment" activities? The author wants to talk about all of them, and so the book scatters in several directions. The way we discuss a child who is born significantly more intelligent than average is different than the way we discuss a child whose parent has forced a steady stream of ballet, gymnastics, violin, foreign languages, all in an attempt to MAKE the child gifted. In my opinion, the author was not able to talk about all the different kinds at once, and should either have chosen one and stuck to it, or else made more of an effort to separate the kinds. Also in my opinion, the author should not have gone for the tank-top-and-oiled-skin look for her author photograph.
The Girls, by Lori Lansens (2005)
I passed over this book several times at the library before reading a review of it in a magazine and realizing I actually hadn't read it before. I've read at least three books (not including this one) called The Girls (though I've only reviewed two) (I mean, until this one, which makes three), and it gets confusing. I don't think it would be a bad idea to have some sort of rule about titles and how many different authors may use the same one.
This The Girls is about conjoined twins Rose and Ruby, joined at the skull and not separable. When they are 29 years old, Rose begins to write their autobiography. Ruby, saying that Rose can't write an "autobiography" for their shared life, contributes chapters.
It's a really, really, really good book, and I'm glad I didn't miss it just because of the overused title.
Happiness Sold Separately, by Lolly Winston (2006)
I think it must be very, very difficult to write a love triangle book in which you feel sympathy and goodwill toward all three characters. This book pulls it off.
Ted and Elinor's five-year marriage has been almost completely overtaken by their attempt to have children. After the most recent failed attempt, Elinor disappears into the laundry room, and Ted disappears into the arms of Gina, his trainer at the gym. I was all set to hate Ted AND Gina, but that's not how the author writes it. By the end, I was hoping for happiness for all three people.
No Plot? No Problem!, by Chris Baty (2004)
If you hurry, there is still time to get your hands on a copy of this and read it before the November 1st start of NaNoWriMo. You ARE doing NaNoWriMo, right? Good. You had me worried there for a minute.
(Um, if for some reason you're NOT signed up for NaNoWriMo yet, go here to sign up now: http://www.nanowrimo.org. Hurry! Only a few days left, you slacker!)
I haven't read the entire book yet, of course, because the last four chapters are supposed to be read at the beginnings of each of the four weeks of NaNoWriMo. I am a rule-follower, and so I have not yet read them. I'll try to remember--with whatever is left of my wrung-out brain after November is over--to come back and complete the review.
You don't NEED this book to do NaNoWriMo. It's more like something to do for the last couple of days before NaNoWriMo begins, when you don't want to start a new and exciting book that you'll have to abandon. Here is what I found most valuable: the information that in the second week, many people find their enthusiasm fades, their plots plod, their characters sigh and give up---but if you persevere, things pick up in week three. Good to know.
Good luck, everybody doing NaNoWriMo with me. This might be my last review until December. Assuming I persevere through week 2, I'll be busy writing my own craptacular novel all of November.
Flash Fiction Forward: 80 Very Short Stories, by James Thomas and Robert Shapard (editors) (2006)
It turned out I had time for one more book before NaNoWriMo begins, and I'm so glad I did because this is the PERFECT book for you to have on hand while you are writing your crappy novel next month. There are going to be times when you want to do a little recreational reading, but you are not going to want to get involved in a long story, and this is just the thing: the length rule with these stories was that you shouldn't have to turn the page more than once.
The editors' note compares these ultra-short stories to poems, and indeed the similarities are many. Like poems, they can deliver a huge emotional slug to the gut, or they can be irritatingly obscure. And as with poems, if they were irritatingly obscure, there were times I blamed my own ability to understand, and there were times I blamed the tendency of some authors to mistake lofty nonsense for depth.
As with poems, the language is spare and has a greater impact than you'd expect. As with poems, some of them won't resonate with you, and some of them will resonate you so hard you'll be have to stop to take a breath. Some of them, I couldn't believe I'd been reading for such a short time, considering how involved I already felt, and how much I wanted to know more.
I started out intending to list my favorite stories. When the book was bristling with post-its, I thought maybe it would be quicker to list my least favorites--but there weren't enough of them for me to feel like making a fuss. With stories this short, if I didn't like it, I knew it would be over soon.
Overall, a very, very good collection; one of the best short story collections I've read in a long time.