{Review}: Lust and Wonder

Augusten Burroughs has an enviable knack for introspection and self-awareness. He has also has a writing voice that made me wonder at first if I were reading fiction or a memoir--at some points, I actually was not 100% confident Lust & Wonder was a memoir! Burroughs manages to make himself a sympathetic character, though I have a feeling that if I knew him in real life, I probably would not stand him. And he knows it. A funny, self-deprecating story that had me rooting for a marginally unlikeable person, I was genuinely disappointed when I reached the end and there was nothing more to read. 

Lust & Wonder is out from St. Martin's Press on March 29th but can be pre-ordered on Amazon. 

{I received a copy of this book for review purposes from NetGalley. There are affiliate links in this post.}

{Review}: The Best Place on Earth

Have you ever been to Israel? I went when I was 15, and even in my self-absorbed, navel-gazing teenage state, I knew that Israel was the most beautiful place I'd ever seen. It was the first foreign country I'd ever travelled to (Canada notwithstanding) and I've been to many others since then. Still the most beautiful place I've seen.

Reading Ayelet Tsabari's collection of short stories, The Best Place on Earth, I pulled heavily from my mental image bank to transport myself to the setting of her stories. While the stories were an enjoyable read, I found them to be somewhat shallow in imagery and flat in character development. There's a layer of gloss over the text that makes it feel like a rom-com or chick flick. In fact, I think I would very much enjoy a screen version of these stories.

Though the stories lack the grittiness needed for more compelling storytelling, the 11 stories are connected by the common thread of main characters that represent groups that have been traditionally marginalized--women, immigrants, non-Israelis, and the poor. Unlike a rom-com, there are no neat endings in this collection. The reader is left to create an epilogue for the characters.  But that's par for the course with marginalized people-- they lose control over their stories, and their voices are co-opted by people (readers, in this case) who are not them.  Empowered characters get to tell readers how it ends, but in this book, the characters become muted.

I came to that conclusion after I finished reading the book, but during,  I was fully engrossed in the collection and finished the book in two days, so it's worth a read, if only for the opportunity to consider what responsibility an author has to her disenfranchised characters.

{I received a copy of this book for review purposes from NetGalley. This post contains affiliate links.}

{Review}: Miller's Valley by Anna Quindlen

This is my first experience with an Anna Quindlen novel. She's an author that is on my radar but somehow, none of her books made it to my TBR list. When this book came up on NetGalley, I admit that I judged this book by it's beautiful cover, so I leapt at the chance to read my first Anna Quindlen novel. I only wish now that I had a paper copy of this book. (The book is available for pre-order and will be released on April 5th of this year.)

Mimi Miller, of Miller's Valley, comes from a respected but not wealthy family in a town that is being eyed by the government for a dam project. As the threat of both natural and intentional flooding looms, the people of Miller's Valley carry on, living out their lives and waiting for the inevitable, doing nothing to speed it up or slow it down. This is not a novel full of dramatic twists and turns, though there are moments where the reader does feel that it might go that way. This confirms my belief that, despite what reality shows and the evening news would have you think, most people live perfectly ordinary lives, full of triumphs, joys and tragedies. This is a novel about one human experience, that while we may not be able to relate to setting or time or plot, we can certainly relate to on a higher level-- reaching crossroads in our lives that force us to choose a direction, to shun or embrace opportunity.

With it's rich imagery, expertly drawn characters and Mimi's storytelling voice, I found myself immersed in her world, not willing to leave until I knew the outcome. I will say that I found much of the ending to be superfluous and long-winded, but that does nothing to damper my enjoyment of this novel.

I received a e-galley of this book for review purposes from NetGalley.  

{Review}: Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie

I have so many thoughts about this book, it's hard to know where to begin.

First, I have to confess that though I knew of Salman Rushdie, thanks to his notoriety, this is the first book of his I've actually read. And now, I'm wondering what I've been missing all this years. I was only a few pages into this stunning novel before I knew I'd be adding his other titles to my TBR list.

Let me also say this: the older I get, the more pleasure I get out of reading. Being able to bring my 36 years of experience with the world makes reading a much richer experience as I'm able to pick up on cultural allusions and subtexts that would go over the heads of younger, less experience readers.

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is what I would call magical realism, is an allegory for our times. Rushdie rips off the veil of complacency, so that we can not ignore, or unsee, the terrible things that the human race has wrought upon itself. We cannot absolve ourselves of our responsibility  and cannot use ignorance as an excuse. Here are our choices: we change, we fight to change or we accept the terrible state of the world and let it lie. We can leave the mess for someone else, in some other time, if we want to. The consequences for all those choices are dire. It's a case of damned if we do, damned if we don't.

In this book, the worst thing that happens is truth-telling. It's the thing that knocks down the house of cards, and does everyone in. The truth-teller takes an unexpected, but not surprising, form.
A few weeks ago, right when I was getting into the thick of this book, I was driving my usual route home that takes me down a winding, sylvan road lined with modest and not-so-modest homes. And I struck by a terrible thought:

Behind closed doors in every town in America, horrible, unspeakable things are happening everyday and we just don't know until we know. Then, we take a collective gasp and ask, "how could this happen right in front of us?" 

Indeed. How could it? And what is our responsbility?

Besides the allegorical message, readers will be taken in by the powerful imagery, the explicit character development, the stream-of-consciousness pace of the storytelling. I have the ebook but will be getting a paper copy for my shelf, to be re-read in a few years. It feels prophetic, this book.

{I received a  complimentary copy of this book from Netgalley for review purposes.  This post contains affiliate links.}

Little Failure

I admit, I've had Gary Shteyngart's novels on my To Read list for a long time, and I did start Super Sad True Love Story but I never managed to finish it. I couldn't get into it, though the writing was excellent and funny. Little Failure, his memoir, was the opposite experience-- I couldn't get enough of the book. It was the first book in a long time that I finished in less than week. Reading while nursing, reading before bed, reading when I woke up, reading while waiting for Stella to get out of school. All the time, reading until I got down to the last word.
I am not an immigrant. My father is not an immigrant. Even my grandfather was not an immigrant--his siblings were born in Ukraine but he was first generation, 5 months old at the time his family was first counted in the census. But we are Asheknazi Jews, and that comes with a particular brand of humor that can be hard to understand if you don't grow up surrounded by it. Jews often temper tragedy and sadness with brevity, with self-deprecating humor, sentimentalism and wit. It's a form of emotional and spiritual survival that evolves out of being persecuted by someone, somewhere in every millenia since the beginning of time. Though nothing about Shtyengart's life is intimitely familiar to me, I immediately understood the humor imbued in this book. There is comedy in everything. The comedy is in the telling, the voice, the tone, the ability to poke fun at onesself, and to temper pride with self-loathing. The constant comparisons to Woody Allen are no accident.
But more than just a memoir of an immigrant child, the book is also the story of Shteyngart's discovery that he is a writer, and a good one at that.  For Shteyngart, writing is a natural consquence of being an only child who spends a lot of time in his own head. The stories have to come out eventually and when he realizes that his storytelling, inspired by his father's own creative tales, is the ticket to acceptance from his American peers, there is motivation to keep the stories coming, a sensation not much different from the abused who supplicates his abuser to keep himself alive. As long as Shteyngart can tell his funny, fantastic stories, his status remains elevated enough to keep the bullies at bay for a short while.
Little Failure is, at base, a poignant, funny, bittersweet tale of one boy's search for love and redemption from those most hard-pressed to give it to him.

{I recieved an egalley from NetGalley for review purposes. I have not been compensated for this review and all opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links.}

2012 Read Shelf

I stopped using Goodreads for quite awhile then started up again over the summer, so I'm doing my best to remember all the books I read this year! Joining the From Left to Write book club and signing up for Netgalley,  filled up my Read shelf quite a bit, but my goal had been to read 24 books this year. I fell a little short but I did read some really good books, along with some duds. Here are the books, in no particular order.

1. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho: Here's a little disclaimer...I'm not entirely sure that I read this in 2012 but I think I did! This was my first experience with Paulo Coelho and I want to read more of his books in 2013. I loved the mystical and spiritual aspects of this story, as a person who grapples quite a bit with being comfortable with religious belief. 
2.  I Am Forbidden by Anouk Markouvits: This was a From Left to Write book club selection but I was not yet part of the club when I read it. It is a gripping, compelling story that spans generations and time periods as the characters struggle with what it means to be a religious Jew. 
3. The Midwife of Venice by Roberta Rich: I love period fiction, and I loved this story of a daring Jewish midwife in segregated 17th century Venice who risks her life to save a non-Jewish noblewoman and her baby. 
4. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach: There was a lot of hype about this book, and I never thought I'd like a book about baseball but as with all things, it wasn't about baseball. It is about relationships, the ways we depend on each other for validation and struggle with our own shortcomings. There are some excellent lines in this book, and overall, is well written though it does drag on in some parts. It's not a short, quick read. 
5. The Baker's Daughter by Sarah McCoy: This was a From Left to Write book club selection, and another period novel. The book switches from Germany during WW II to El Paso, Texas in the present day and follows a reporter as she tries to uncover a story about a bakery owner from Germany. I enjoyed the book and read it straight through one night in bed. I wrote about it here. 
6. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline: Though I am a child of the '90s, and not the '80s, I appreciated all the '80s references in this book, especially since we had a Commodore 64 growing up and plenty of video games to go around. Reviews have been mixed on this book but I thought it was fascinating, though the ending was rushed. 
7. The Bloodletter's Daughter by Linda Lafferty. Another From Left to Write book club selection, and set in Old Bohemia during the 17th century, I took a special interest in this book because I lived in Prague for four months, on study abroad Junior year of college. At it's heart, this is a book about the struggle between mystical belief, faith and science. Again, lots to think about in terms of my own relationship to these things. I wrote about it here. 
8. The Rabbi in the Attic and Other Stories by Eileen Pollack. This was a selection I chose from Netgalley, a collection of short stories, some of which have a slight Jewish-y tone to it, and others that were straight up Jewish. Most of the stories are set in the Catskills, where I spend a decent part of my childhood summers visiting my grandparents, so I enjoyed recognizing the names of small towns mentioned in the stories. I no longer have a copy of the book, since the egalley expired off my Kindle, which is a shame because I would to re-read some of the stories. Overall, enjoyable. 
9. Behind the Woodpile by Emily Rosenbaum. This is a book written by a member of From Left to Write, self-published on Kindle. It is a harrowing tale of child abuse and neglect. I was a little skeptical at some points that some events actually happened but I was sucked in. 
10. A Thousand Pardons by Jonathan Dee. Another book from Netgalley, it reminded me of Revolutionary Road. I enjoyed it but didn't find it to be exceptional.  I wrote about it here.
11. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. I don't remember how I came across this title but I discovered a new favorite author! Again, I'm a sucker for period novels and this one was set in the time of the Plague in England. I loved the main character and how she evolves into a strong woman. 
12. The Headmaster's Wager by Vincent Lam. This was a From Left to Write book club selection that I read before the holiday hiatus. I went through a period in high school where I read a lot of fiction and memoirs about China during the 5 Year Campaign, so I really enjoyed reading this book about a Chinese expat in Viet Nam. I wrote about here. 
13. The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown. I pretty much chose this book because of it's cover and because it was about sisters. I really did not appreciate that the narrator seemed to be some unknown 4th sister, and the Shakespeare references were overwrought. It would probably make a better movie than book. 
14. The Expats by Chris Pavone. This is the most recent From Left to Write book club selection, and I haven't written a post about it yet. It starts slowly but picks up speed about halfway through, to the point where I had to sit on the couch for a couple of hours, ignoring the kids so that I could get to the end. 
15. The Black Count by Tom Reiss. I found the historical aspects of this biography about the real Count of Monte Cristo fascinating but the book was more than twice as long as it needed to be. I didn't finish it; I tried to rally but ultimately, it was just taking up too much of my time. 
16. Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks. After Year of Wonders, I was eager to read another book by Geraldine Brooks. This one was set in The New World, during the 1600s. Again, I loved the strong central female character. 

Feel free to leave a link to your own year-end reading round-up in the comments!
{All links to titles are IndieBound affiliate links. By buying books using my links, you support independent bookstores, and you support me, as well!}

A Thousand Themes, Maybe

It's funny... the title of Jonathan Dee's book, A Thousand Pardons, did not register with me at all. I did not look at the synopsis of the book before I started reading. It was only until after that I realized that the theme of the book was supposed to forgiveness. In my day (that would be the '90s, ahem), reader response was the prevailing method for teaching literature. Accordingly, reader response is my default, especially when the setting and plot details hit home.

So I read A Thousand Pardons as a reader from Upstate New York, who lived in New York City. I read A Thousand Pardons as a woman with complicated, unseen layers in her marriage. I read A Thousand Pardons as a housewife that has been out of the workforce for as long as she's had children.

The writing is breezy, the characters are well-developed and the plot is the stuff of Hollywood. There is nothing too deep going on here, but a reader is drawn into the story, and finds herself cheering the characters on. Even the pitifully at fault Ben is a sympathetic character. His fall from grace makes a reader cringe in the way that a horror movie heroine makes you shake your head and yell at the screen, "No! Don't open that door!" The reader sees disaster coming before he does, and wishes Ben had the benefit of hindsight. 

Helen, on the other hand, rises from the ashes of her marriage with commendable fortitude. The reader knows that Helen has a small flame burning inside of her, that is at danger of being suffocated by her powerlessness over the unravelling of her marriage. The separation from her husband breathes new life into the fire and fuels her transformation into a woman with control over men. 

Does any of this resemble my own marriage? Not in the least but the discontent of a housewife, hidden or looming large, is a well-known and familiar feeling to women, whether through experience or exposure. For that reason, I blew through this book, murmuring in sympathy with Helen and telling her, "I know what you mean, girl."

I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley, for review purposes. Links to the title are affiliate links which means, if you buy the book using my link, I get a cut from IndieBound. 

Married.

My husband tonight said that our marriage is like an arranged marriage, in a lot of ways. I was so relieved to hear him say that because I've always felt the same way but thought he would be hurt by it. My husband, he's kind of a sensitive guy!
But his admission is just one more reminder of how quickly we fell in together.

In Barbara Slate's graphic novel, Jo marries the first guy her mother approves of, under pressure from her mother to get hitched before she becomes an old maid. Poor Jo. Too bad she didn't have parents like mine, who urged me to wait before getting married. My father advised that I wait until I was at least 30. I came pretty close. I met Henry when I was 26 and we married when I was 28. We had a whirlwind courtship, a one year engagement and a small, intimate wedding.

Like an arranged marriage, Henry and I didn't know each very well when we got married, and the early years of our marriage have been devoted to figuring each other out. It's a really good thing that we like each other so much because I don't think we could've made it this far without that. We were in love from the beginning but that's different from really loving someone. I think you have to really know someone well in order to love them (or hate them, for that matter!).  So, when Henry says he feels like we have an arranged marriage, that's what he means. We're getting to know each other still, really and our love has grown not just deeper but wider. I think of it as a tiny ball of light that expands over time, exerting its pressure. It grew little by little during the first 9 months of our marriage, then grew exponentially after Alice was born, despite my being a hormonal mess for the first six months of her life. It grew steadily bigger over the next 13 months, then there was another big growth spurt after Stella was born.

We've worked through a lot of angst and communication mishaps in the 4 years we've been married and as we approach our fifth anniversary, I finally feel like I really know my husband in the little ways and in the big ways, too.  I admit, there were times when I wondered if I'd made a mistake. Not so much in marrying Henry but in marrying him so soon after we met but I'm a believer in fate. If we're meant to be together, we might as well be married and figure out the rest as we go.

This post is inspired by Getting Married and Other Mistakes by Barbara Slate. This graphic novel offers a raw, yet humorous look at what happens to Jo after a surprise divorce. Join From Left to Write on Thursday, June 28 as we discuss Getting Married and Other Mistakes by Barbara Slate. I received a review copy of the e-book and all opinions are my own. All links are IndieBound affiliate links. This means if you purchase the book using my link, I get a percentage!