SmallWorld Reads

Friday, June 28, 2013

Book Review: Breakfast at Tiffany's and Other Voices, Other Rooms

I have had these two novellas on my TBR list forever—at least for 20 years. It was about 20 years ago that Nanci Griffith came out with the album "Other Voices, Other Rooms." On the cover photo, she is holding that book by Truman Capote, so I've always known I need to read it.

So when we were in Paris, we went to the famous Shakespeare and Company, and we each wanted to buy a special book there. I saw a beautiful hardback copy of these two Truman Capote novellas together, and I snatched it up. And I'm glad I did, although I can't say I love either one, as much as I wanted to.

Breakfast at Tiffany's: When I was a little girl, I played "Moon River"—from the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's— on the piano, and I've always meant to see the movie. I still haven't (I know, I know, and it's even on Netflix) but I will soon. The book was not was I expected. To be clear, Capote is a beautiful writer. There is no doubt about that. He is lyrical and lovely. But the novel itself... Somehow I just always see Audrey Hepburn and hear "Moon River," so I wasn't prepared for this very sad and disturbing story of Holly Golightly, a 19-year-old orphan-turned-society-girl who will do just about anything to climb higher up the social ladder. She wraps everyone around her little finger, completely disregarding their feelings, and then discards them when they are no longer useful. She's so often called "endearing" by critics for her eccentricity and flightiness, but I just found her to be selfish.

Other Voices, Other Rooms: One word—creepy. Joel is a 13-year-old boy who hasn't seen his father since he was an infant but must go live with him when his mother dies. Joel, a city boy, must adjust to a bizarre household in a rotting plantation manor that includes his stepmother, creepy cousin Randolph, and two servants, all wrapped up in secrets. This is southern Gothic for sure, and I never knew what weirdness was lurking around the corner. There was quite a bit of a freak show feel to the novel, with those kind of wonderful southern characters that are one step away from an asylum.

I'm glad I read these two short novels finally. I loved In Cold Blood, even though I know it's not "typical" of Capote's writings. I've also read several of his short stories and especially loved the collection The Grass Harp. Tiffany's and Other Voices are not among my favorites of Capote, but I'm still glad I read them.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

The Sunday Salon: Mid-Year Review

My book blogging has reached a new low in these past six months, but I'm trying to catch up with regular reviews! I am slowly, slowly catching up, but some of these links will go to amazon.com rather than my own review.

Books Read January 1–June 1

Best Books So Far

Unbroken: an absolutely stunning novel about survival and resilience during WWII (nonfiction)
The Story of Beautiful Girl: Absolutely mesmerizing story of Lynnie, a beautiful inmate at the School for the Incurable and Feebleminded; Homan, a deaf man who is also locked away there; and Martha, a widow in her 70s who becomes tangled in their lives.
Expecting Adam: Martha and John, young Harvard graduate students, find out the life-changing news: their unborn baby, a boy, has Down Syndrome. They are shocked beyond words. This is Harvard, the land of geniuses and IQs off the charts. There is no room in Harvard for anything "less" than "perfect." Terminate now, they are told over and over again. This is their family's beautiful story. (memoir)
And, well, of course I have to add To Kill a Mockingbird, which I read again while teaching American Lit. It just never loses it's magic for me.

Biggest Surprises
The good: What Alice Forgot. I almost put this one back on the shelf because the jacket description sounded silly, but I absolutely loved this story of what we'd like to keep forgotten.

The bad: Other Voices, Other Rooms. I've been wanting to read this Truman Capote novel for decades—since singer/songwriter Nanci Griffith came out with her album by the same name. She's holding a copy of the novel on the album cover. (Yes, I know there aren't "albums" anymore, but you know what I mean.) I was pretty disappointed in this short novel, which I actually bought with delight at Shakespeare and Co. Bookseller while we were in Paris.

Books Read in Book Club

Interred with Their Bones. Mixed reviews in book club, but the general consensus was similar to my review.
Moonflower Vine. Well-received. Those who read it loved it!
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Unfortunately that was a book club in which only a few members could come, so we didn't have much discussion. But this is one of my favorites! I did a paper on it in graduate school.

I must admit that I did not read the other two books for Book Club. Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods was one. I detest this book. OK, I actually only read a few chapters of it a few years ago, but I threw it across the room. I just couldn't bear to hear about a guy who can go buy anything he wants to randomly hike the A.T. because he thinks it would be a great story. My husband has a lifelong dream of hiking the A.T., so I have personal issues, I know. The other book was The Paris Wife, the story of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley. I'd still like to read this one, but I thought I was going to be absent from book club that month. And while I didn't read The Paris Wife, we did pay homage to Hemingway's digs and neighborhood while we were in Paris.

Where Hemingway and Hadley lived in Paris

Movies/Plays from Books
• With my American Lit class, I watched The Crucible and Ethan Frome. I loved both of them, although I've seen them both before. We're going to be getting together this summer to watch To Kill a Mockingbird and a few other classic movies based on American literature.
• We also went to see the play A Raisin in the Sun at the Clarence Brown Theatre at the campus of U. Tenn. The kids seemed to like the play pretty well. I love hearing them discuss how this actor wasn't what he expected, or how a particular scene was done differently that she imagined from reading the play.
• I watched Sarah's Key finally. I liked it well enough, but it's been years since I read the book. I've heard others say they didn't like the movie at all because it deviated so much from the book; fortunately, I have a short memory for such things.
• I'm really looking forward to seeing The Great Gatsby. I re-read the novel (my old college copy) on the train from Paris to Normandy and loved it almost as much as I did way back when. I think I loved it most in college, but I remember some great discussions from my high school English class as well. We got to France right before the movie was released, and the metro was plastered with movie posters. They're excited in France, too!

Added to My TBR List

The Keeper of Secrets by Julie Thomas.
The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton Disclafani.
A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams
The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls
41 False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers by Janet Malcolm
Ghost Moth by Michele Forbes
Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford
And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
Riding the Bus with My Sister by Rachel Simon
The Baker's Daughter by Sarah McCoy
Clair de Lune by Jetta Carleton
In My Father's Country by Saima Wahab
Autobiography of Us by Aria Beth Sloss
Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
Losing Julia by Jonathan Hull
Astray by Emma Donoghue
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Mataxas

And last, but not least, a few more bookish photos from our trip to France!

Jesse at Baudelaire's grave

Samuel Beckett, no longer waiting for Godot

Victor Hugo's tomb marker in the crypt beneath the Pantheon

And a bit about Les Mis while in the Paris sewers. Yes, really.

My oldest, an English major, loved the booksellers along the Seine

Breathing in the history, walking in the footsteps of great writers!

We all had to buy a book or two.

Beneath the Pantheon.

And that is my mid-year update! Now, to get back to regular book reviews!

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Book Review: Unbroken

Since starting a year-long World War II study with my 12-year-old, I've been told many times that I must read Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. I am so glad I finally did.

This is the true story of Louis Zamperini, a punk kid turned Olympic athlete turned bombardier—and then POW. Zamperini's story is an incredible story of strength, faith, and determination on so many levels. After his plane crashes into the sea while searching for another plane, Zamperini and two other men survive and drift in a tiny raft for 47 days, drinking only rainwater, eating birds and an occasional fish, and fighting off sharks. One man dies, and eventually Zamperini and Phil wash up on land, only to find themselves at the mercy of the Japanese.

For the next two and a half years, Zamperini endures unbelievable atrocities at the hands of his Japanese captors. Although nearly all the guards are brutal, Louis becomes the particular favorite of Mutsuhiro "The Bird" Watanabe, a psychotic sadist who finds particular pleasure in torturing Louis. Starved and diseased in general, Louis endures daily beatings that leave him unconscious and psychological battering that leave him terrified but determined to survive.

When the camp was liberated in 1945, the 700 men were skeletons, battered almost beyond recognition. Louis had been pronounced dead years before, but his family refused to believe it. The world was shocked and skeptical to hear that this beloved Olympic athlete was still alive. But Louis has years of torture still to come, as his life after the war was haunted by The Bird.

To say this was an incredible story is an understatement. I don't often weep while reading, but I wept during many parts of this book. What these men endured is just mind-boggling—and how their captors could be so cruel is equally mind-boggling. It is uplifting to see how the human spirit can be so resilient, yet terrifying to imagine the flip side of that: that humans can be so vicious and inhumane.

Don't miss this book. It is an incredible story, and in spite of the subject matter, an incredibly uplifting one.

More World War II books reviewed here.

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Book Review: The Dovekeepers

I didn't know what I was getting into with Alice Hoffman's The Dovekeepers, but I had been told by a friend that this was her book club's favorite. And wow! She was right—this was an absolutely stunning novel.

First of all, I didn't realize when I began the novel that all roads were leading to the real story of Masada, a mountain fortress where 900 Jewish rebels held out against the Roman army until it was no longer feasible. I probably skimmed the book flaps, so I was through at least a quarter of the book before it clicked. I had to read up on Masada a bit to get some context, and that helped tremendously.

The Dovekeepers tells the stories of four extraordinary women who end up at Masada: Yael, a young woman whose father despises her because her mother died in childbirth; Revka, the Baker's Wife, who watched her daughter brutally murdered; Azizah, who is more comfortable as a warrior than as a woman; and Shirah, known as "the witch of Moab." The stories are told separately but are interconnected, all touching each other and building to an incredible ending. All but two women and five children killed themselves at Masada. As the reader figures out, two of these four women will survive. But who?

I loved Francine Rivers' Mark of the Lion series, which chronicles a similar time period. I've been immersed in Old Testament stories my entire life, but I love having the culture—the religious and social customs—fleshed out and vividly portrayed. Hoffman is simply masterful at creating this world with all its violence, passion, religious fervor, sorrow, and utter despair.

The book takes work for the reader. You have to really concentrate on the characters and carry them through from section to section, remembering who is who. This is a novel to concentrate on, not to read in snippets here and there. But it is so worth it. Highly recommended, both on a historical level and as a novel of the endurance of the human spirit.

Linked up with Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Book Review: What Alice Forgot

I almost put this book by Liane Moriarty back on the shelf. After reading the inside flap, I thought it sounded silly and wondered why I had it on my TBR list. Plus, I didn't like the cover. But because I am determined to make a dent in my TBR list this year, I checked it out. And I'm so glad I did!

The book's description makes it sound silly and flippant, but this book is anything but silly. Alice has a terrible fall, bangs her head, and wakes up in the hospital—and she's lost 10 terrible years of her life. Alice has no memory of having become a cold, brittle, callous woman who wears expensive clothes, has a personal trainer, does her kids' science projects so they'll win everything, and has filed for divorce. She remembers only that she is expecting her first child and is blissfully married to the love of her life.

It isn't one of those terrible amnesia stories but an incredibly thought-provoking tale of: how did I become this person? How did I stray so far from who I really am—and who am I, really? I found myself rooting for the old Alice, cheering for her as she ditches her rich and snotty friends. At the same time I felt incredibly sad, knowing that her lifestyle before her head injury is so common and so damaging to kids and marriages.

In the end, it's a book largely of do-overs. What if you had the gift of being able to forget all the horrible mistakes you made in a decade—but had to forget the births of your children and all those precious memories, too?

Highly recommended.

Linked up with the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Book Review: City of Thieves

Lots and lots of people have told me that I need to read David Benioff's City of Thieves, and they were right. The novel is based on the author's grandfather's stories of surviving WWII in Russia. It's a stark, frightening picture of survival, but there was something terribly heartwarming about the novel.

It's during the Seige in Leningrad. People are starving, doing anything to survive. Seventeen-year-old Lev Beniov is caught trying to steal from a German paratrooper's dead body. Rather than being executed, he and another young prisoner are charged with what seems to be an impossible task: they must find a dozen eggs for the colonel's daughter's wedding cake. Lev is a shy, articulate son of a famous Russian poet; his unlikely partner is the boisterous, reckless Kolya, an army deserter.

The two take off across the city and through the countryside in search of eggs. People are starving everywhere. Lev and Kolya take incredible risks, but both are so certain that they are going to die, it doesn't seem to matter. The are completely mismatched. Where Lev lacks confidence, Kolya is bold. Where Kolya is rash, Lev is cautious and thoughtful. I liked both of them tremendously.

The story is incredibly heartbreaking but still uplifting. It's a coming of age story for Lev, a war story, and a romance all tied into one tight, beautifully written novel. Highly recommended.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Book Review: Expecting Adam—A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic

"Now I think that the vast majority of us 'normal' people spend our lives trashing our treasures and treasuring our trash. We bustle around trying to create the impression that we are hip, imperturbable, omniscient, in perfect control, when in fact we are awkward and scared and bewildered. … Living with Adam, loving Adam, has taught me a lot about the truth. He has taught me to look at things in themselves, not at the value a brutal and often senseless world assigns to them."

In the memoir Expecting Adam, Martha Beck and her husband John are a young couple caught up in the crazy haze of graduate school at Harvard and new parenthood. Harvard looms like an overbearing, impossible-to-please parent in every corner of their world; the pressure to succeed at Harvard eclipses everything else in their lives. Their world consists of tag-team parenting, little sleep, constant rushing, and determination to stay on top.

And then Martha discovers that she is pregnant again, just as they were starting to figure out how to balance Katie, their toddler, with Harvard and John's new consulting job in Singapore. Martha writes that "motherhood had made me the odd person out among my classmates; they were polite and kind to me but understandably less than fascinated by the details of my life as a nursing mother. I would show up at class after a night in the emergency room, where Katie had been put through a battery of hideously painful tests to determine the cause of some raging illness, and pretend that I really cared abut the contrast between Karl Marx's view of historical necessity and Max Weber's."

Martha is violently ill during pregnancy, barely able to function. A couple of women she barely knew show up at her door, bearing food and emotional support, and she makes actual true friends for the first time in her adult life. Every day is a struggle for Martha and for John during the weeks that he is at Harvard, but they manage—barely.

Martha was violently ill during her first pregnancy, too, but this one is different. She has all kinds of dreams and intuits that something is not right with this pregnancy, and yet rather than panicking, she feels oddly comforted. She finds out much, much later, even years later, that John had similar experiences.

And then they find out the life-changing news: the unborn baby, a boy, has Down Syndrome. They are shocked beyond words. This is Harvard, the land of geniuses and IQs off the charts. There is no room in Harvard for anything "less" than "perfect." Terminate now, they are told over and over again. John's Harvard mentor, some kind of demi-god, tells John that his career is over if they have this baby.

John and Martha, though both raised in Mormon homes, aren't religious. Both are staunchly pro-choice. But the idea of aborting their baby is abhorrent to Martha and ultimately to John. They have no idea what they will do with a baby with Down Syndrome, but Martha's skills as a researcher kick in, and she finds out everything she can (which, at the time, wasn't much).

From the moment they find out they are expecting Adam, everything changes for Martha and John and Katie. They go from living a life of outrageously high expectations to a life of quiet expectation and joy.

"I really thought there would be a miracle," said John softly… "I really thought God would fix him."
I considered that for a minute. "Maybe he didn't need fixing," I said. "Maybe he's the only one of us who was never broken."
John looked at me. "Are you broken, sweetheart?"
"I was," I said. "Not anymore."
"Same here," said John. He paused, then gave me a smile—not his manic Harvard grin but a real smile, one that contained all the sorrow of the past months, along with the joy. "So," he said, "there's your miracle."

By the time Adam is born, John and Martha are changed people. They are ready to escape the Harvard life and embrace a calmer life focused on nurturing relationships. As Martha says, "I have had to unlearn virtually everything Harvard taught me about what is precious and what is garbage. I have discovered that many of the things I thought were priceless are as cheap as costume jewelry, and much of what I labeled worthless was, all the time, filled with the kidn of beauty that directly nourishes my soul."

Highly recommended. Martha's writing is fantastic and the story is one you can hardly put down.

Linked up with Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books