2008: A Year of Reading

2008 hasn't been a spectacular year of reading like 2007 was, but it was full of a number of excellent books, a few really bad ones, and lots in the middle. Click the titles for my reviews.

The Top 10
Broken for You (Stephanie Kallos)
Cellist of Sarajevo, The (Steven Galloway)
Death in the Family, A (James Agee)
Half of a Yellow Sun (Adichie)
I Have Lived a Thousand Years (Livia Bitton-Jackson)
Sky Isn't Visible From Here, The (Felicia Sullivan)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
Unaccustomed Earth (Jhumpa Lahiri)
When the Emperor Was Divine (Julie Otsuka)
Year of Wonders (Geraldine Brooks)

To Kill a Mockingbird and A Death in the Family are definitely the top books for the year, but I like to pick contemporary books, too (plus, I'd read To Kill a Mockingbird many times already). I'd have to say that, after those two: Year of Wonders and Half of a Yellow Sun were the best. Some observations about the Top 10: we have lots of war and death going on this year with Sarajevo, Biafra, WW2 (Japanese internment camp and the Holocaust), and the plague. In fact, To Kill a Mockingbird is the only really uplifting novel on the list. I'm not sure what that says about me, but there it is!

The Next 10
Atonement (Ian McEwan)
A Town Like Alice (Neville Shute)
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon)
gods in Alabama (Joshilyn Jackson)
Horizontal World, The (Deb Marquart)
House at Riverton (Kate Morton)
Jayber Crow (Wendell Berry)
On Chesil Beach (Ian McEwan)
Peony in Love (Lisa See)
Winter Wheat (Mildred Walker)

Bottom of the Barrel
Appeal, The (John Grisham)
Blue Ridge (T.R. Pearson)
Five People You Meet in Heaven, The (Mitch Albom)
Secret Between Us, The (Barbara Delinsky)
Shattered Dreams (Irene Spencer)
Songs in Ordinary Time (Mary McGarry Morris)
Way the Crow Flies (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
World Before Her, The (Deborah Weisgall)


And The Whole List Itself (59 total fiction & nonfiction)

Fiction

• A Town Like Alice (Neville Shute)
• Amateur Marriage, The (Anne Tyler)
• Appeal, The (John Grisham)
• Astrid and Veronika (Linda Olsson)
• Atonement (Ian McEwan)
• Beneath the Pines (Janet Beard)
• Birth House, The (Ami McKay)
• Blue Ridge (T.R. Pearson)
• Briar Rose (Jane Yolen)
• Broken for You (Stephanie Kallos)
• Cellist of Sarajevo, The (Steven Galloway)
• Child of My Heart (Alice McDermott)
• Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon)
• Death in the Family, A (James Agee)
• Echo Maker, The (Richard Powers)
• Fiction Class (Susan Breen)
• Five People You Meet in Heaven, The (Mitch Albom)
• Flies on the Butter (Denise Hildreth)
• Girl in Hyacinth Blue (Susan Vreeland)
• gods in Alabama (Joshilyn Jackson)
• Half of a Yellow Sun (Adichie)
• House at Riverton (Kate Morton)
• Jayber Crow (Wendell Berry)
• Journal of Callie Wade (Dawn Miller)
• Knitting Circle (Ann Hood)
• Me and Emma (Elizabeth Flock)
• Miracle at Speedy Motors (A. McCall-Smith)
• More Than You Know (Beth Gutcheon)
• Namesake, The (Jhumpa Lahiri)
• On Chesil Beach
• Peony in Love (Lisa See)
• River King, The (Alice Hoffman)
• Run (Ann Patchett)
• Secret Between Us, The (Barbara Delinsky)
• Senator's Wife, The (Sue Miller)
• Songs in Ordinary Time (Mary McGarry Morris)
• Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
• Tallgrass (Sandra Dallas)
• To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
• Twilight (Stephanie Meyer)
• Unaccustomed Earth (Jhumpa Lahiri)
• Way the Crow Flies (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
• When the Emperor Was Divine (Julie Otsuka)
• Winter Wheat (Mildred Walker)
• Without a Trace (Colleen Coble)
• World Before Her, The (Deborah Weisgall)
• Year of Wonders (Geraldine Brooks)

Nonfiction

A Million Little Pieces (James Frey)
Beginning, a Muddle, and an End (Avi)
Five Love Language of Teenagers (Gary Chapman)
Horizontal World, The (Deb Marquart)
I Have Lived a Thousand Years (Livia Bitton-Jackson)
Liars' Club, The (Mary Karr)
Serpent Handlers, The (Brown and McDonald)
Shattered Dreams (Irene Spencer)
Sky Isn't Visible From Here, The (Felicia Sullivan)
Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank (Celia Rivenbark)
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (Philip Gourevitch)

And let's not forget…
Children's Book Reviews

• Autumn Books for Children
• Beginning, a Muddle and an End (by Avi)
• Boston Tea Party
• Favorite Christmas Books for Kids
• Great Gilly Hopkins (K. Paterson)
• Jimmy's Stars (Mary Ann Rodman)
• Murder for Her Majesty
• Poetry for Children
• Reading with Children, Part 1
• Reading with Children, Part 2
• Sign of the Beaver
• This Is the Feast (Diane Shore)
• Three by Barefoot Books
• Witch of Blackbird Pond

Book Review: The Amateur Marriage

I have always been a huge fan of Anne Tyler. I remember the moment when I first discovered her, way back in a college lit class. The professor offered a summer reading list, and Dinner at the Homesick Restuarant was one of the choices. I liked the sound of that and made a mental note to read it. A few weeks later I noticed a friend reading that The Accidental Tourist. She asked me, "How do you pronounce this name, Macon--is is 'Ma(k)on' or 'Ma(s)son'?" I almost didn't read the book because of the uncertainty of the name pronunciation. I am strangely affected by words I can't pronounce easily.

Fortunately for me, I read The Accidental Tourist and then proceeded to read all of Tyler's past books and every single one since (except for her newest one, Digging to America. But that's on my TBR list.) The Amateur Marriage was familiar, as all Anne Tyler novels are, because Tyler's novels depict ordinary people living ordinary lives. Tyler's forte is delving into families and the various relationships involved in maintaining and surviving in a family: as an individual, a couple, a parent, a child, etc.

The Amateur Marriage is the story of a doomed marriage. Michael and Pauline slide into marriage almost by mistake, and they never manage to quite get the rhythm of a good marriage. They never quite click, never quite fall madly in love, never give each other exactly what they need. Sounds ordinary enough, maybe even trite, but Tyler is anything but trite. Her language is precise and smooth; her dialog is always perfect. The characters are wonderfully developed because you know people exactly like this.

As I often feel with Tyler novels, I wished for more. While Michael and Pauline are certainly the central characters, I wanted to know more about their children and grandson. I'd love another book or two devoted to these more minor characters. But so far Tyler has resisted taking any of her amazing novels and turning them into a loose series, and, really, I'm glad. She is perfect as she is.

Book Review: When the Emperor Was Divine

This is a small, unassuming novel, just short of 150 pages, but it is absolutely exquisite. This is Julie Otsuka's first novel, and I hope there are many, many more to come. Everything about this books is—dare I say it?—perfect.

The story is of a family—a girl, a boy, and a mother—who, like thousands of other Japanese Americans in 1942, must pack up all their possessions and become enemy aliens in a desert internment camp. Their father, a dignified businessman, had already been sent to a different camp for "dangerous" enemies, where his letters are heavily censored.

I have read several novels about the Japanese-American experience during World War II, and this is, without a doubt, the most powerful. (My review of Sandra Dallas's Tallgrass lists several of these books.) Otsuka's prose is stunning. She has a gift of giving the reader an unusual intimacy with each character with the briefest of words. The mother, for example (and this is just one of many short passages that round out the mother):

"It was the fourth week of the fifth month of the war and the woman, who did not always follow the rules, followed the rules. She gave the cat to the Greers next door. She caught the chicken that had been running wild in the yard since the fall and snapped its neck beneath the handle of a broomstick. She plucked out the feathers and set the carcass into a pan of cold water in the sink."

Otsuka knows when to give details (the pan of cold water in the sink) and when to leave them out (she didn't give the orange-and-white striped cat named Tippy who was the girl's favorite to the nasty neighbors next door in the white house). As a voracious reader, I admire and appreciate her clean and compact writing style immensely. I don't want to read extra stuff, but I appreciate the art of poetic details that add depth and impact—and texture.

"Always, he would remember the dust. It was soft and white and chalky, like talcum powder. Only the alkaline made your skin burn. It made your nose bleed. It made your eyes sting. It took your voice away. The dust got into your shoes. Your hair. Your pants. Your mouth. Your bed. Your dreams. It seeped under the doors and around the edges of windows and through the cracks in the walls. And all day long, it seemed, his mother was always sweeping. Once in a while she would put down her broom and look at him. 'What I wouldn't give,' she'd say, 'for my Electrolux.'"

A brilliant pairing of their life back in California with their life in the desert. There is so much power in what seems to be a simple passage. This isn't a novel full of plot and action; it is a heartwrenching novel in its lyrical prose and surface-level simplicity. This is a not-so-distant part of America's past that is quietly swept away, with a line or two in history books. If you know nothing of this episode in American history, I strongly urge you to take some time reading this book and others (listed in my Tallgrass review). Also, this book is totally appropriate for high schoolers studying American History.


Other reviews of When the Emperor Was Divine:
Natasha at Maw Books here
Rebecca at Reading Rants and Raves here

(If you've reviewed this book, leave a comment and I'll link to your review!)

Book Review: Twilight

I'm in that "last person to read it" category here with Stephanie Meyer's Twilight. And now I've read it!

Um, it was a fun read? I can see why teenagers like it?

I guess I'll just have to say that I totally don't get the Twilight phenomenon. I kept thinking that something amazing would happen as I was reading it. Isn't it supposed to be breathtaking and addictive?

I keep thinking that maybe I just need to be 25 years younger to appreciate this story of vampires with ethics and sex appeal, but I have adult friends who also love it.

What am I missing?

Book Review: The Echo Maker

I was drawn to Richard Powers' The Echo Maker not because it was a National Book Award Winner or a Pulitzer Prize finalist but because it is about a man who sustains a traumatic brain injury (TBI). I didn't read the novel for its prose or plot but, truly, to read about fictional character with a TBI.

I found Mark Schluter, the injured man, familiar in many ways. Six years ago my oldest brother sustained a TBI as a result of a bicycle accident. The days that followed were touch-and-go, and then the long process of rehabilitation began. My brother has lived on his own for at least 4 years now and seems remarkably well. Like Mark in the novel, my brother was quirky before the TBI; the injury exaggerated some qualities that were already there.

Powers certainly did his research. Here is something that I wrote on my other blog a couple of years ago about my brother:

"It's hard to describe what James is like now. Someone who doesn't know him well might not notice anything terribly odd. He may just seem a bit clumsy or distracted. You could even get used to him the way he is now. But truthfully, there is a whole person who was lost in the three short seconds it took for him to lurch off his bike and hit his head on the pavement. There was this brilliant, arrogant, selfish, generous, irritating, gentle, sharp-witted man who was my oldest brother--and now there is this brother who is like a broken statue glued back together."

I was startled, and strangely comforted, to read this echoing paragraph in The Echo Maker:

"Mark still limped and contusions still lined his face, but otherwise he seemed almost healed. Two months after the accident, strangers who talked to him might have found him a little slow and inclined toward strange theories, but nothing outside the local norm. … His days were laced with flashes of paranoia, outbursts of pleasure and rage, and increasingly elaborate explanations."

And so I came to this novel with an agenda. I read with a thirst for shared experience and illumination, and for that, the novel was satisfying. A short glance at the amazon.com reviews tells me that this novel is about the search for self, the destruction of an ecosystem coupled with a broken mind, etc. I was, frankly, distracted by myriad subplots. Woven throughout the book is a fight between wildlife preservation and urban development, and also a doctor's midlife crisis and fleeting fame. Powers' writing is beautiful, his prose poetic. The whole story of Mark was interesting enough, I think even to a reader who has no vested interested in brain injuries; however, the subplots were overbearing and tedious. Still I'm glad I read it.

Book Review: The House at Riverton

This book (published April 2008) by Kate Morton consumed much of my November. Often when a book takes me so long to read, it's because the book drags on and on, yet I am determined to finish it. Not so with The House at Riverton. I loved Morton's debut novel. I thought about the characters often through the days (weeks) during which I read the well-sculpted and richly woven book. My problem was that I just couldn't stay awake for more than a few pages at a time, thus the 2-3 week reading period.

The novel begins with 98-year-old Grace, who had once been a servant for a prominent British family, the Ashburys. As a maid, Grace is able to observe the happenings in the home—especially among the three teenagers—without being noticed. She is privy to all sorts of information and secret goings-on. World War I tears the family apart, and Grace eventually becomes the lady's maid of the eldest daughter, Hannah. During these years, younger sister Emmeline grows wild and Hannah, who married for money and security, falls in love with a famous but intense poet.

The story is told in a series of flashbacks brought about by a modern-day filmmaker who seeks to make a documentary about Riverton. Grace is the only living remnant of the Riverton generation, and the filmmaker's inquiries open the floodgates to Grace's memories.

This novel has a similar feeling to Diana Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale. There is an old family, a history of secrets, and that lovely ghostly feel. I definitely recommend this one; I only wish I'd been able to read it in larger chunks for a more cohesive experience.

Other reviews of The House at Riverton:
Caribousmom here
The Literate Housewife here
One More Chapter here
The Sleepy Reader here

If you've reviewed the book, leave your link in the comments!

Book Review: Run

I've had "more by Ann Patchett" scribbled on my hard copy TBR list for close to two years, ever since I read and enjoyed her novel Bel Canto (my brief review here). I've seen Run listed on a few book reviews lately and finally got my hands on it. Patchett is, foremost, an excellent writer. It is a pleasure to read a well-crafted novel that holds no awkward dialog or seeks to manipulate the reader's emotions. Patchett is much like Ian McEwan in this respect.

The novel centers on Bernard Doyle and his motherless boys, Sullivan, Tip and Teddy. Tip and Teddy, biological black brothers, were adopted into this white Irish family as infants and adored by their adoptive mother, Bernadette Doyle. When she dies before they even enter elementary school, Bernard dedicates himself to raising the boys. The novel itself takes place in a 24-hour period when the boys are in their early 20s and Sullivan, the prodigal son, is in his early 30s.

Through an accident in a snowstorm, Doyle and his boys suddenly find that they must redefine their world to accomodate new information about a stranger who saves Tip's life and her little girl. Are their lives really what they think they are? Who are they, really, and what does it mean to be a family?

I liked this novel. I can't say I loved it because something was missing; there was some unfinished business. I am left dangling with few nagging questions about the characters, their decisions, and the statue of Mary that looked like Bernadette. I feel like this is a novel that should turn into a series about the Doyle family. The characters are compelling enough that I'd read more about each one, but somehow they weren't completed in Run.

But my criticism of the novel is weak, really, because I would recommend it. Patchett's writing is so fabulous and the characters are likeable, interesting, and compelling. Perhaps what I really needed to do was think a little more while I was reading instead of racing through to the end.

Also reviewed at:
The Bluestocking Society

If you've reviewed Run on your blog, please leave your link in the comments!

Book Review: Shattered Dreams

Irene Spencer's memoir, subtitled My Life as a Polygamist's Wife, was both fascinating and frustrating, and, when finally finished, I was glad it was over.

Irene's story is interesting for the most part. Raised in a fundamentalist polygamous Mormon community, Irene vacillated between her love for an outsider and her firm conviction that God commanded her to live in a plural marriage. Although her mother, who had left her plural marriage, tried to convince her otherwise, Irene ends up becoming the second wife of her brother-in-law, Verlan LeBaron. Life with Verlan and his wife (her half-sister) Charlotte is tough from the beginning.Verlan appears to be an egomaniacal jerk from a crazy family. In the first year of marriage, the threesome moves to Mexico to live in total poverty, and Irene's first baby dies. In the next 28 years, Verlan takes seven more wives and fathers a total of 56 children, 13 of whom belong to Irene.

Irene's life is one continuous battle. She continuously fought with all the other wives, competing for time with Verlan. She battled total poverty and constant danger for nearly three decades. She battled depression, poor health, low self-esteem, and sheer exhaustion from managing Verlan's obscenely large household. Strangely, one of Irene's primary concerns in this memoir seems to be her lack of a satisfying physical relationship with her husband. Verlan is obviously a selfish creep, and yet Irene laments having to share him in page after endless page.

The reader, obviously, wants Irene just to leave Verlan. She had a large non-polygamous support system and could have left at any time. Even when she does finally leave, when at least half of her children are already grown, she ends up going back to him. I understand that I can't understand her state of mind. I understand that she was completely indoctrinated from birth to believe that plural marriage was mandatory in the eyes of God. Still, you can't help but wish, by midway through the book, that she would stop whining and just leave him. Again, I know that I can't possibly relate to the psychological bondage under which Irene lived, but several other wives did leave Verlan. Irene seemed to feel a tremendous need to be, ultimately, Verlan's favorite wife.

I also wondered how, if indeed Verlan and his wives lived in such total poverty, how Verlan was always buying new houses, flying on airplanes, and even taking Irene to Europe. Some parts of the story didn't quite fit. And some stories seemed completely extraneous and repetitive in this narrative. I think Irene's memoir could have benefited from more careful editing.

That said, this really is a fascinating look at a practice that continues today among those who call themselves the fundamentalist Mormons. I'd recommend reading this in combination with Under the Banner of Heaven, John Krakauer's amazing look into this strange world of polygamy in America.

Other reviews of Shattered Dreams*
Natasha at Maw Books here
Hava at Nonfiction Lover here (Hava has also reviewed His Favorite Wife, by another of Verlan's wives)

* If you've reviewed Shattered Dreams, please leave a comment so I can add your review!

Book Review: Tallgrass

This isn't my first Sandra Dallas book. I liked Alice's Tulips, The Diary of Mattie Spencer, and New Mercies well enough; all three were light reads, somewhat formulaic but enjoyable as "in between" reads.

But I found Tallgrass to be a step above Dallas's usual writing. For one, I love the subject matter. Or maybe I don't love the subject matter, but I am always mystified as to why this subject is so little discussed in the history of the U.S. The Tallgrass of the novel is the fictional name (but based on a real Colorado camp) of a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II. I've always found this to be a fascinating part of our recent history, and yet I don't think I was really aware of it until graduate school, when I took a class in minority literature. Toshio Mori's Yokohama, California, a collection of short stories that portray a Japanese American community right before WWII, and Mine Okubo's Citizen 13360, a graphic novel depicting Okubo's life as a teenage college student in an internment camp, just blew me away. I had heard of the internment camps, and my father had a couple of Japanese-American colleagues who had lived in internment camps, but these things were only whispered about, said in a cautionary sort of way.

Tallgrass, unlike the abovementioned titles, is told from the perspective of a 13-year-old girl who, like everyone else in the world, watches her safe world change rapidly with World War II. The people of her tiny rural town are in further upheaval when an internment camp is built at the edge of town and thousands of Japanese Americans are brought to live there. Rennie Stroud's father welcomes the Japanese, much to the dismay of the townspeople, but Rennie isn't so sure she is comfortable with "the enemy" being housed at the edge of their farm. When a local girl is murdered, the town is convinced that one of the prisoners is responsible.

This book is part historical fiction and part coming-of-age. Rennie is a likeable character, and I love the relationship she has with her family. Dallas's characters are for the most part well-developed, although I didn't get quite enough of a feel for the internment camp itself. I'm not sure I could have visualized it very well had I not read other books on the subject. But besides that, I really loved this book.

I was amazed to get When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka in the mail last week, as well. I'd read Natasha's review of this at Maw Books and had forgotten that I'd ordered a copy from Paperback Swap. I'm looking forward to reading it next. Other books I've read years ago related to this topic: The Magic of Ordinary Days by Ann Creel, which I absolutely loved, and the more well-known Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson. Both of these were turned into movies in which I recall being quite disappointed.

If you don't know anything about this period in American history, these six books are a great place to start. You might even want to take this a step further and read a different perspective on American history than what you probably learned in school. Ronald Takaki's A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, traces the economic and political history of various racial and ethnic groups in America—Chinese, Indians, African Americans, Mexicans, Japanese, Irish, and Jewish people. I found this text to be enlightening and valuable in providing a more rounded view of American history.

Other Review of Tallgrass:
Lesa at Lesa's Book Critiques
Lynne's Little Corner of the World

(If you've reviewed this book, please leave a comment and I'll link to you!)

Book Review: Girl in Hyacinth Blue

This novel by Susan Vreeland begins with a painting that one instructor shares with another at a private academy in Pennsylvania and ends with the creation of the painting itself, hundreds of years earlier. Like the doll in Rachel Field's wonderful Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, the painting goes from home to home, from family to family, in a series of usually bittersweet scenarios. Among other stories, the painting is given as payment for the upkeep of motherless baby in Holland, purchased because a man is reminded of his first true love, and is traded as food for the artist himself.

The artist himself: Vermeer. I read Tracy Chavelier's Girl with the Pearl Earring about a year ago. If you haven't read either of these books yet, I'd strongly recommend reading Girl with the Pearl Earring first and then follow it with Girl in Hyacinth Blue. The two complement each other beautifully, and both make me want to study Vermeer much more. Vreeland does a wonderful job of expressing the pure joy that a perfect painting brings to people, the bonding that happens between art and artist and art and owner.

Booking Through Thursday: Best

Today's Booking Through Thursday asks:

What, in your opinion, is the best book that you haven’t liked? Mind you, I don’t mean your most-hated book–oh, no. I mean the most accomplished, skilled, well-written, impressive book that you just simply didn’t like.

The first book that came to mind--no, shouted "PICK ME! PICK ME!"— is Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth. I actually despised this book. We had to read it for an awesome class in graduate school called "The Mayflower at Ellis Island: The Immigrant Experience in the U.S." The professor chose Portnoy's Complaint to read an example of growing up Jewish in American in the 1940s and 50s. It's supposed to be outrageously funny, but I found it outrageously annoying. Even though I loved Roth's novella Goodbye, Columbus, which I read in college, I have never read another Philip Roth novel. That's how much I hated this "masterpiece."

Do you have a most-hated "masterpiece"? Check out other answers at Booking Through Thursday.

Book Review: Half of a Yellow Sun

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun led me first to Wikipedia to get a little background on Biafra:

The Republic of Biafra was a secessionist state in south-eastern Nigeria. Biafra was inhabited mostly by the Igbo people (or Ibo) and existed from 30 May 1967, to 15 January 1970. The secession was led by the Igbo due to economic, ethnic, cultural and religious tensions among the various peoples of Nigeria and the creation of the new country, named after the Bight of Biafra (the Atlantic bay to its south), was among the complex causes for the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Nigerian-Biafran War.

That's Wikipedia's introduction to its section on Biafra. Half of a Yellow Sun, goes far beyond the dry facts. Adichie tells the story of the Igbo people, who were determined to establish a nation independent from Nigeria. The book starts before the civil war, when optimism is high and excitement fuels the people, and ends with the devastating defeat of Biafra.

The novel contains two intertwining stories: that of upper-class Olanna and her revolutionary husband, Odenigbo, and their houseboy, Ugwu; and that of Olanna's wealthy twin sister, Kainene, and her white lover, Richard. From lavish meals to roasted rats, Adichie follows the two families from the height of success to the daily struggle to survive.

Adichie is a phenomenal writer. Her language is lyrical, her descriptions rich, her dialog true. Her power to portray the images of Africa is astounding: the sights and smells of a country and its people are nearly palpable. The lushness of the first section of the book contrasts sharply and effectively with the starkness of latter two-thirds. We go from black party dresses to ripped rags, from a baby dressed in clean white linen to a little girl playing with shrapnel:

"Baby joined the thin children who ran around with their naked bellies wreathed in brown. Many of the children collected pieces of shrapnel, played with them, traded them. When Baby came back with two bits of jagged metal, Olanna shouted at her and pulled her ear and took them away. She hated to think that Baby was playing with the cold leftovers of things that killed."

This is an amazing book, haunting and memorable; a book that one cannot read without being staggered by the strength and will of humans to survive.

Other reviews of this book:
Caribous Mom
Jill at The Magic Lasso
Gautami at the Reading Room

(If you have reviewed this book and would like me to link to your review, please leave a link in the comments.)

Book Review: The Cellist of Sarajevo

"It doesn't matter what the world thinks of his city. All that matters is what he thinks. In the Sarajevo of his memory, it was completely unacceptable to have a dead man lying in the street. In the Sarajevo of today it's normal. He has been living in neither, has tried to live in a city that no longer exists, refusing to participate in the one that does."

The Cellist of Sarajevo is a small book about 22 days in what became the longest siege in the history of modern warfare, a four-year sniper and shelling campaign against the citizens of Sarajevo by Serb forces. But this story begins on May 22, 1992, when 22 people in a bread line were killed in a mortar attack. The cellist—who on that day decided not to buy bread— then begins a 22-day memorial service, playing Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor each afternoon "into the mortar-packed, sniper-infested streets of Sarajevo."

The book alternates among the stories of four main characters trapped in their own city: the cellist himself; Arrow, a sniper of snipers; Kenan, a young husband and father who must cross the dangerous city twice each week to get water; and Dragan, a baker who just wants to cross a street in safety. They were once four ordinary citizens of an ordinary city. Now they are survivors in a war-ravaged city, struggling each day to navigate in a city in which people are gunned down as if they were game pieces, picked off one by one.

It is a small book, quick to read, about a very big subject: how the human spirit insists on surviving and creating some semblance of meaning when the world has spun out of control. Steven Galloway's writing is clean and spare. The effect is powerful. Galloway's images stick. His characters are in a constant state of trying to reconcile the past and the present: this was my life then, this is my life now:

"The absence of shelling is almost like music, and she imagines if she closed her eyes she could convince herself that she was walking through the streets of Sarajevo as it used to be. Almost. She knows that in the city of her memory she wasn't hungry, and she wasn't bruised, and her shoulder didn't bear the weight of a gun. In the city of her memory there were always people out at this time of morning, preparing for the day to come. They wouldn't be shut inside like invalids, exhausted from another night of wondering if a shell was about to land on their house."

This book is based on real events that happened just 16 years ago, when I was a young married woman, buying our first car and soon to be expecting our first baby. Sarajevo, Serb, Bosnia: words on the evening news. While I shopped for a new car, people exactly like me were dashing across intersections, fervently praying that they weren't a sniper's target practice that day, trying to figure out how this happened to their lives, and when it would all end.

"There is no way to tell which version of a lie is the truth. Is the real Sarajevo the one where people were happy, treated each other well, lived without conflict? Or is the real Sarajevo the one he sees today, where people are trying to kill each other, where bullets and bombs fly down from the hills and the buildings crumble to the ground?"

Read this book. It is devastating, but the glimmer of hope is powerful, and Galloway is a language craftsman and a beautiful storyteller.

Other reviews:
Natasha at Maw Books here
Wendy at Caribousmom here
Jill at The Magic Lasso here
(If you have a review, please post your link in the comments!)

Book Review: Songs in Ordinary Time

Can I just say that when this book by Mary McGarry Morris was finished, I was so happy?

I know. The burning question is: why did I continue reading this 740 page novel if I didn't really like it? Well, it's like this: During the first 150 pages, I wasn't truly committed to finishing the book. But I read just enough to be intrigued by the characters, and I read just enough that I had to know how everything turned out.

So what's wrong with the book?
* It was confusing. The chapters jump between the minds of about 16 different characters, and I'm not even sure that I'm exaggerating at all.
* It was depressing. Nothing good happens. Really, nothing.
* The characters were, for the most part, unlikeable. All of them, except perhaps the three kids. (But nothing good happens to the three kids; I'm telling you right now.)
* The title is misleading. This is no book of an "ordinary time," and no one is singing a song.

So why did I keep reading?
* Morris is a good writer in that her use of language is excellent. She is descriptive, creating wonderful scenes. Well, not wonderful as in "nice," but wonderful as in memorable. In fact, she's so good at making the story tangible that I felt grimy, sweaty, and desperate while reading the book.
* Although I didn't like any of the characters much, they were compelling enough to, like I said, make me want to find out what happened.
* Because I hate to give up on books. I probably need to see a therapist about that.

My advice: unless you want to be in reading agony or unless you enjoy being mired in depressing lives, skip it.

Book Review: gods in Alabama

This was exactly the book I needed this week. Don't you love when that happens? I've been stuck in heavy reading lately—some because the subject matter is intense (The Cellist of Sarajevo, A Million Little Pieces)—some because the storyline is cumbersome (Songs in Ordinary Times).

gods in Alabama is Joshilyn Jackson's debut novel, published in 2005. I read Jackson's 2006 Between, Georgia about this time last year and enjoyed it. (Reading my review from last year, I am amused to see that I was also reading that Jackson novel after a very intense read!) Jackson does a fantastic job of capturing the quirkiness of the south without falling into stereotypes. She has a great sense of humor. I think that if Celia Rivenbark (Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank and We're Just Like You, Only Prettier) were to write a novel, her voice would sound very much like Jackson's.

The story here is of Lena/Arlene Fleet, an Alabama girl who fled her tiny hometown for Chicago. For ten years she's avoided returning home to her quirky southern family and the tragedies of her youth, including a murder, but at last her Chicago boyfriend forces her to return home to introduce him to her family or risk losing him.

This is a fast-paced book that weaves between past and present perfectly. This was one of those books that I read through in just a few hours, including a very late night. I am a great fan of southern literature, and I really needed this book, this taste of southerness, high school gone awry, and laugh-outloud moments. I'll definitely keep my eyes out for Jackson's newest book, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming.

Book Review: A Million Little Pieces

As I've said a few times before, I love memoirs. But how should I feel about what is apparently an over-embellished memoir, with some episodes that just plain didn't happen?

Such was my state of mind when I began reading James Frey's controverisal 2003 A Million Little Pieces. I knew going into this that Frey went from Oprah's reading list (and thus, The New York Times Bestseller List) to The Smoking Gun's hit list in a matter of months. Apparently, a whole lot of James Frey's memoir didn't really happen the way he said it did.

But I liked it anyway. OK, this is not really a book you like. This is a hard book to read. Frey's mantra is: "I am an alcoholic, a drug addict, and a criminal." According to Frey, his drinking started at age 7, when he drank the dregs of wine glasses at his parents' parties, and escalated to pretty much constant alcohol and drug use by age 14. When the memoir begins he is 23 and about a day away from death, and on his way to an expensive rehab facility.

This is an ugly book because the subject matter is ugly. Even if Frey made up half the things in the book, he still lived a horrible existence. It is unfortunate that he felt the need to spice up his already hideous life by fabricating certain details; he really didn't have to do that. His writing is powerful, lyrical in its candid simplicity:

I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag filled with mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can.

I'm sorry that Frey didn't have the confidence and foresight to be totally honest in his writing. I hope he keeps writing, and I hope he has learned that he has enough talent himself without resorting to tale twisting.

I think I would recommend this book. It is not a pretty book in any form or fashion; in fact, the reader should be prepared for several graphic scenes and endless bad language. You certainly won't feel uplifted and happy after reading the book, but still: the raw emotions in Frey's writing maybe balance out the rest.

Book Review: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

I read it, finally.

I was under-whelmed.

I am not sure why this book by Mitch Albom was such a big deal. I liked his Tuesdays with Morrie; it was a beautiful and touching tribute. But this one? It was just okay.

In case you are one of the other twelve people in the world who haven't read the book or seen the made-for-TV movie, the story centers on Eddie: his death, his life, and his first "day" in Heaven. The premise of the story is intriguing: what lives are intertwined with yours in ways you could never imagine? I was ready to be "wowed" by this book, with all the talk about it a few years ago. I thought it was going to be more along the lines of "It's a Wonderful Life": happy and redeeming. But it really wasn't. Unlike Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, Eddie isn't particularly lovable. He isn't revealed as to have profoundly affected anyone's life for the good. He's just a guy who traverses through life.

I read this book between two intense memoirs: The Liar's Club and A Million Little Pieces. I thought it would be uplifting—an encouraging filler. I should have picked something else.

Book Review: The Liar's Club

I've written before about memoirs and how I love them. Since that post I've read two more memoirs: The Liars' Club by Mary Karr and A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, which I'll review in the next couple of days.

I didn't like The Liars' Club as much as I thought I would, and I think I know why: Karr is a harsh writer. Heck, she survived an unbelievably harsh childhood, so her prose makes sense. I've read reviews that call this a hilarious book, but I didn't find much to laugh at. I've read that her language is lyrical, but I found it brutal and aloof.

Brutal, dark and aloof make sense, though. The memoir tells of Karr's volatile childhood in a nasty East Texas town that was ranked one of the most vile places in America to live. Her father worked hard and drank hard; her mother was depressed and unstable. Karr and her sister were basically left to tend to themselves, although their mother appears to feel responsible for them and their father adores them.

The writing is sometimes choppy. The stories start and then go off on a tangent, with time and place sometimes hard to follow. I don't require a linear story, but too much jumping around without a pattern can be tedious. Basically, I didn't connect with the author. My favorite part--the part that really got to me--was at the end when she finds out the reason for her mother's depression.

But who am I to critique this much-praised book? It's not that I didn't like it at all; I'm glad I read it. But I just think there are much better memoirs out there that deal with similar issues (alcoholism, child neglect, incompetent parents). The Sky Isn't Visible From Here and The Glass Castle are two.

Book Review: A Death in the Family

I hear my father; I need never fear. I hear my mother; I shall never be lonely, or want for love. When I am hungry it is they who provide for me; when I am in dismay, it is they who fill me with comfort. When I am astonished or bewildered, it is they who make the weak ground firm beneath my soul; it is in them that I put my trust. … I hear my father and my mother and they are my giants, my king and my queen, beside whom there are no others so wise or worthy or honorable or brave or beautiful in this world. I need never fear: nor ever shall I lack for loving-kindness.

How is it possible, I mean, seriously, how is it possible that I have never read this classic novel by James Agee? That in 4 years of high school taking every possible English-type class, 4 years in college as an English major, and 2 or 3 years in graduate school as an English/creative writing major, no one ever put Agee on a reading list? I don't get it.

A Death in the Family is, truly, an American classic. In this beautifully lyrical, autobiographical novel, Agee presents the life of the boy Rufus. Rufus is a cherished son in a tiny family with a big extended family. Preceding the novel is the stunning narrative piece called "Knoxville: Summer, 1915." This piece is a slow, dreamy observation of a summer night in a neighborhood from a child's perspective. The novel then opens with the happy life of the Follet family. They are working class people, and Mary and Jay adore each other and their two young children. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles are also central to the family dynamic, and together they make up Rufus's world.

The book is sectioned between straight narrative and Rufus's stream-of-conscious observations. The thoughts of Rufus were heartbreakingly beautiful. I'm not sure I've ever read a more apt description of the happiness and security that comes with being in the midst of a loving, stable family. Agee's narrative writing is simple but powerful; his "Rufus sections" are pure poetry. The combination is staggering.

But Rufus's perfect world must inevitably end. One hot summer night, Jay Follet take a late-night drive to his dying father's bedside north of Knoxville, and on the way home he has a fatal car accident. The rest of the novel dances between Mary's coping, funeral preparations, and the viewpoint of Rufus and his baby sister Catherine. It's all devastating, and like Mary, the reader hopes there has been some mistake.

I have to wonder if I love this novel so much partly because it takes place in Knoxville. I love thinking of Agee's old city, and do certainly delight in watching a Shakespeare performance on the same Market Square that Agee details when Rufus buys his first cap or driving by James Agee St. up on the UT campus. But regardless of place, this is southern literature at its best.

Book Review: The Serpent Handlers

And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
~Mark 16:17-18

Earlier this summer, our local library advertised that authors Fred Brown and Jeanne McDonald would be speaking about their book, The Serpent Handlers. I wasn't able to go to the seminar, but I did find several copies of the book at the library the next week. I have a weird fascination with religious fringe groups, like the fundamentalist LDS movement as described in John Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven.

Brown and McDonald introduce three serpent-handling families: the Brown family very near us in Parrottsville, TN; the Coots family of Kentucky; and the Elkins family of West Virginia. All three families have long histories of being involved in "taking up serpents"; all three have suffered several deaths in their families and congregations from snake bites.

The authors handle the lives of the snake-handlers gracefully and graciously. While it would be easy to mock the handlers for making Mark 16 a literal and vital part of their faith, Brown and McDonald recount their beliefs without bias and then allow the individuals themselves to tell their own stories. It's up to the reader to come to his or her own conclusions about this faith tradition.

Living in East Tennessee, I've long been aware of that snake-handling is not a thing of the past, but I didn't know much about it. (I've been told that there is at least one church just 10 minutes away, but the churches don't exactly advertise widely.) It's easy to smirk at what seems like such bunk, but after reading the testimonies of the handlers in this book, I do have a much greater understanding of these believers also known as Signs Followers. (Other signs are followed are handling fire, healing, drinking strychnine and other poisions, and casting out demons. Not all members follow all the signs.) I think what was made especially clear is that the signs are not the primary focus of the church members, but rather an element of worship. Also emphasized is that snake-handling and other signs-followings are not attempts to prove faith but are done to confirm the Word of God.

But honestly, while I do have more of an understanding, I still find it all bizarre and, frankly, taken out of context.

Interestingly, two articles in our local newspaper in the past few months reference snake-handling. This one most recently reports that Gregory Coots, one of the handlers featured in this book, was arrested by wildlife officers in a crackdown of the venomous snake trade. And this article details how the curator of the herpetology department at the Knoxville Zoo went out in the fields to collect snakes with a local snake-handling preacher.

If you're curious about life in Appalachia or in religious traditions, I'd highly recommend this book. The writing is excellent and purely unbiased and the personal narratives are fascinating.