The Painted Veil, by William Somerset Maugham

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Thistle

97623-MI’m reviewing this book together with my good friend Karen of Books and Chocolate.

Amanda: Hi Karen! Thanks for buddy-reviewing with me!

I think I want to start out by talking about William Somerset Maugham. I first read one of his books in January 2001 – Mrs. Craddock – and fell in love with it. I’ve since read 12-15 of his books, several of them more than once. He’s one of my favorite classic authors. His books are easy to read and well thought out. The Painted Veil is one of my favorites of his. This is the third time I’ve read it, and I think I love it just a little bit more with each reread! So how did you discover Maugham?

Karen: I discovered Maugham back when I was a freshman in college. I had a huge crush on a boy in my dorm who had read Maugham the year before in a lit class. He insisted on lending me Of Human Bondage to read during the winter break. Of course, since I was crushing on him, I had to read it, and I loved it. It was one of the first classics I read for pleasure. I didn’t read any more Maugham until I met the man who is now my husband, also a Maugham fan — The Razor’s Edge is one of his favorite books. (Obviously, I’m attracted to men with great taste in literature!) So I read Razor’s Edge, and a couple others, but then I didn’t read hardly any more Maugham for quite awhile. Then, in 2008, our classics reading group chose the books for this year, but The Painted Veil wasn’t scheduled for almost a year! I couldn’t wait that long and read it right away. It’s just as good the second time around.

I agree, Maugham’s works are not difficult reads. I’ve been reading quite a few Victorian authors this year, so he’s really a refreshing change. I remember that I was pleasantly surprised at how easy Of Human Bondage was — it’s quite long, more than 600 pages (depending on the edition), yet it’s pretty fast for such a long book. The Painted Veil is much shorter, only about 250 pages, and I could probably read the whole thing in one day.

Amanda: One of the things I find most fascinating about Maugham was how little respected he was amongst his fellow authors. He was a pulp novelist. Often his writing tended more toward the cliche, and his prose was straightforward. With people like Hemingway, Faulkner, and Woolf as contemporaries, he was looked down on for not being experimental like them. He was old fashioned. But really, it was his straightforward, easy prose that hooked me on classics. Without him, I’m not sure what sort of reader I’d be today, or if I’d be a reader at all.

So. The Painted Veil. I loved it. All three times. One of my favorite things about it is the characterization. Each character is so round. None of them are all good or all evil. I personally find Kitty obnoxious, and really sympathize with her husband, but others might find Walter cruel and callous. Personally, I understood him and while I didn’t think he always made the best of judgments, I really admired his dedication to the people he was taking care of. What did you think of the characters?

Karen: There aren’t that many characters, but I agree, they’re well-rounded, especially Kitty. When I started the book, I really wanted to smack her, but I kept on reading — which just shows what a great writer Maugham was. These are seriously flawed people, yet the story is so fascinating that it holds the reader. Unlike other books with annoying heroines (like Cathy in Wuthering Heights, whom I wanted to kill personally. Seriously, if I’d have been able to jump into the book and kill her myself, I would have been very tempted. I apologize to all you Bronte fans.)

Anyway, I’ve really been thinking about some of these flawed characters lately, I’ll probably write a blog entry about it soon. I always think of them as Fascinating Train Wrecks. However, I’m not sure if I’d put Kitty in this category, because she actually makes changes to try and improve the situation. She’s proactive, and as annoying as she was, I actually ended up respecting her. Not that she’s perfect, she still makes mistakes, but you can see at the end that there’s hope for her.

So, Amanda, what did you think of Walter? Did he deserve Kitty?

Amanda: I think the real question is – did Kitty deserve Walter? Taking them back, prior to the affair and him taking her to the cholera epidemic. Walter is smart, hardworking, and sensitive. He has a very hard time relating to other people, and he has no patience for frivolity and social customs. Kitty, on the other hand, is empty-headed, self-centered, and a bit of a bimbo. Why he ever fell in love with her is beyond me – I suppose we can’t always explain why we fall in love with someone – but I think it’s interesting that he went into the whole marriage with his eyes open. He knew what she was. He knew she was like a doll – beautiful but empty. He was willing to put up with that in order to be near her, and he was always very kind. I don’t think Kitty ever realized – not even at the end – how badly she hurt him. She kept thinking it was pride, that her infidelity didn’t matter, shouldn’t matter, but to him, it killed his love.

I do think she became a better person, to a certain degree, but even at the end, she’s still selfish. I hope she’ll be better, and I do like that she plans to have daughters and raise them to be strong and smart, unlike her. That brings up another point, though – I thought this book said a lot of interesting things about the role of women at the time. It seems to take place in a very transitional time when women were gaining some independence but could not entirely be strong. Did you feel Maugham had a feminist slant in mind when he wrote it?

Karen: I think Kitty’s definitely less selfish at the end than at the beginning. Without spoilers, there are several instances when she tries deliberately not to hurt people. And she’s much better at reading people, and reacting to them.

The feminist angle didn’t strike me at all when I read it, but I can see it as a possibility. There are some strong female characters — even the Mother Superior, and Charlie’s wife Dorothy. They’re in traditional roles, nun and wife, but they’re a lot stronger than Charlie and maybe even Walter. I wish Maugham had developed Walter a little more. I think he was the least developed of the main characters. My favorite male character was definitely Waddington, but he was also tragic in his own way. Do you think in general the male characters were as well developed as the female?

Amanda: I actually thought Walter was very well developed, but that might be because of how much I could understand him. He wasn’t traditionally developed – it was just a brushstroke of information spattered here and there throughout the novel, leading to a whole picture. I think about things and feel things in very much the same way he does, so it was easy for me to relate to him and make a full picture of him in my mind, I suppose. I could see other people relating to him less, though, because he’s the sort of personality that many people have trouble relating to in real life. I think Maugham wrote the social awkwardness well.

I have read, though, that Maugham tended to understand women better than men in his own life, so it’s possible that’s why the women characters felt more developed. I loved the Mother Superior. I don’t normally like reading about Catholics, having grown up Catholic, but the Sisters in that convent were so different from traditional Catholics. Take, for example, one of my favorite quotes from the book:

Beauty is also a gift of God, one of the most rare and precious, and we should be thankful if we are happy enough to possess it and thankful, if we are not, that others possess it for our pleasure.

I love this. This goes against most traditional viewpoints of beauty. Most books treat beauty either as a precursor to emptyheadedness, or as a great evil. To hear someone speak this way – especially the head of a Catholic convent – is just amazing. I loved that the Sisters were so open, forgiving, and loving. They were the very picture of charity. Even though normally I don’t like to read much about religion in books, the passages with the Sisters just blew me away and I think they played an integral role in how much Kitty changed. What do you think?

Karen: I completely agree! They’re much more forgiving than Catholics are usually portrayed. It’s no wonder Kitty was really drawn to them. I wish I knew them! And I loved that quote also. I don’t normally make notes when I write, but I think I have to go back with sticky notes and tab all the passages I loved in this book.

One thing that did bother me about this book was the racist way in which the Chinese are portrayed, mostly the way they’re described — ugly, yellow, etc. That’s the one thing that really put me off in this book. But it’s possible that Maugham was merely reflecting the attitude of the British of that time, or Kitty’s attitude. What do you think?

Amanda: I do think that was reflective of Kitty’s attitude. It’s possible there was a certain amount of British superiority to it – I think that’s almost a given in that time period – but the main characters other than Kitty seemed to have compassion for the Chinese. The nuns, Waddington, Walter. They saw past the racial differences and did everything they could to help. The Chinese were just other people to them, not some strange foreign race that repulsed them. Even Kitty tried to get over her prejudice against them once she was surrounded by the children every day. I liked that. I thought it was a good message – that to overcome prejudice, one must spend time with those one is prejudiced against.

Without giving away spoilers, what did you think about the fate of Walter and Kitty’s relationship? Do you think, given the chance, they could have ever come to live together peacefully? Or were they, as Kitty says at one point, “Two little drops in the river that flowed silently towards the unknown; two little drops that to themselves had so much individuality and to the onlooker were but an indistinguishable part of the water?” (That’s my other favorite quote.)

Karen: That’s going to be tough without giving away the ending. I went back and forth as I read the book. Kitty seemed to really be growing and maturing as a person, so I began to feel hopeful, but then I didn’t know if Walter would ever forgive her. It sort of bothered me that Walter was so unforgiving, though he was surrounding by people dying horrible deaths. I would have thought it might have put her transgression in perspective somewhat — but that also relates to him deliberately bringing her into a situation where she might get infected and die, which is so bitter and vengeful. I saw Kitty changing as a person more than Walter, and I began to actually like her better than him.

This book has so many issues that are great for discussion, but it’s really hard without giving away major plot points — and I reaaaallly hate spoilers. I would highly recommend this book for a face-to-face discussion group — not too long, an easy read, a great plot and interesting characters. This was a great choice, and I am so looking forward to reading more by Maugham. There are three more on my to-read bookshelf right now, and I am so tempted to go back and reread Of Human Bondage.

So, I know you’ve read most of the Maugham oeuvre. How does this compare to the others? Is it one of your favorites? Definitely one of mine.

Amanda: Well, I haven’t read his entire works – he was an extremely prolific author. Wikipedia has 54 entries for him under the “Novels, Travel, Criticism, and Assorted Pamphlets” section, plus another 24 plays, 187 periodical contributions, and 123 short stories. I’ve only read a mere glancing of that. I haven’t read a single play or short story, though I hope to fix that next year. Of the novels I’ve read, though, I count The Painted Veil among my favorites, alongside Mrs. Craddock. Some other good ones are The Razor’s Edge, Of Human Bondage, and Theatre. In fact, there have only been two Maugham novels I disliked (The Magician, and The Moon and the Sixpence). I would definitely recommend his books as easy-to-read classics that are fun but also deep.

Thanks again for doing this review with me, Karen! I was having such a hard time figuring out how to review this book, since I love it so much.

Karen: Thank you, Amanda, for inviting me! It was really fun! We’ll have to do it again soon.

Posted in 2009, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery

Posted on December 16, 2009 by Thistle

elegance-of-the-hedgehog1Renee is a concierge in her mid-50s. She’s spent most of her life maintaining her invisibility, hiding her intelligence under a mask of stereotypical peasant ignorance. Paloma is a super-smart twelve year old girl who lives in the building where Renee is the concierge. She has decided that on the day she turns thirteen, she’s going to kill herself and set fire to her family’s flat. Her reasoning: life is meaningless, and she’s accepted it as such. Through a shared love of all things Japanese and a catalyst of a new wealthy Japanese resident in the building, both Renee and Paloma’s lives are changed.

I’ve been reading this book for months. I started it back in the early fall when random.org picked it off my shelves for the Random Reading Challenge. After about 40 pages, I put it aside for awhile. It was…too much for me at that moment. The prose is…not dense. Dense is the wrong word. It’s not wordy, either. But…it’s almost Nabokovian in the thickness of language. I found myself bombarded with a vocabulary I couldn’t keep up with. I have a decent vocabulary, but this book was a little beyond me at the beginning. I kept falling into a stupor while trying to read. I thought the idea behind the book was interesting, but I got a little tired of word play. And I like word play.

A few weeks ago, I picked it back up. I needed something quiet and thick, so I figured this would be a good one. While I read, I kept trying to figure out how I felt. Was all this word play merely pretentious drivel? Or was it just the innocuous voices of two intelligent narrators? I couldn’t tell if the author was being snarky towards the reader or not. I suspected not, most of the time, but I had my doubts. More than once, I almost gave up reading altogether, particularly in long chapters filled with philosophical notes. Sorry, but I’m not big into philosophy presented that way.

But after Mr. Ozu, the Japanese man, arrived, the book began to come together for me. I wonder, actually, if the narrative was framed in such a way to make a reader feel the same isolated unsurity that the characters had in the beginning, and then to allow them to make sense of things and come together in the second half. If so, it was subtly done. Brilliantly so. If not, then I guess I’m just making things up again. Reading too much into it.

I did like the second half of the book a lot. I loved the message: No matter how much we look, we never really see each other except in little moments. To free ourselves from the burdens that bind us, we need to be seen, really seen, just once. That’s what I took from the book, at least. I’m sure other readers would each have their own interpretation. I was really struck, though, with this concept of vision and blindness.

The ending made me cry. It came out of nowhere, but not jarringly so, and I didn’t expect to care as much as I did. But I got teary-eyed and decided, yes, it was worth slogging through the difficult chapters in order to get to this.

Here are some of my favorite passages. Three from Paloma:

Every time, it’s the same thing, I feel like crying, my throat goes all tight and I do the best I can to control myself but sometimes it gets close: I can hardly keep myself from sobbing. So when they sing a canon I look down at the ground because it’s just too much emotion at once: it’s too beautiful, and everyone singing together, this marvelous sharing. I’m no longer myself. I am just one part of a sublime whole, to which the others also belong, and I always wonder at such moments why this cannot be the rule of everyday life, instead of being an exceptional moment, during a choir.

*

Thinking back on it, this evening, with my heart and my stomach all like jelly, I have finally concluded, maybe that’s what life is about: there’s a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It’s as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within never.

*

So here is my profound thought for the day: this is the first time I have met someone who seeks out people and who sees beyond. That may seem trivial but I think it is profound all the same. We never look beyond our assumptions and, what’s worse, we have given up trying to meet others; we just meet ourselves.

And two from Renee:

Quite abruptly I realize I am sitting in my kitchen, in Paris, in this other world where I have made my invisible little niche, a world with which I have been careful never to mix, and I am weeping great warm tears while a little girl with an incredibly warm gaze is holding my hand, gently caressing my knuckles. And I also realize that I have said it all, told her everything: …I am weeping plump, hot, long, good tears, sobbing tears, and while I am troubled, I am also incomprehensibly happy to see the transfiguration of Paloma’s sad, severe gaze into a well of warmth where I can soften my sobs.

*

…I am struck with incredible force by this proof that sight is like a hand that tries to seize flowing water. Yes, our eyes may perceive, yet they do not observe; they may believe, yet they do not question; they may receive yet they do not search: they are emptied of desire, with neither hunger nor passion.

Posted in 2009, Adult, Prose | Tagged , | 1 Comment

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith

Posted on December 12, 2009 by Thistle

A_Tree_Grows_In_Brooklyn-cover_imageA Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a classic coming of age story set around the turn of the century in immigrant-heavy Brooklyn. It’s so much more than a coming of age story, though. This is the third time I’ve read this book, and like with most books I reread many times because I love them to pieces, I’m having a hard time figuring out how to review this book. So instead of writing a real review, I’m simply going to list out the things that I love so much about this book and encourage everyone to try it out!

1. Katie Rommely Nolan. Katie is the mother of the main character, Francie. She fell in love with a hopeless dreamer (Johnny Nolan) and spends most of her married life poor and working to keep her family alive. She scrubs flats in order to pay their rent. She knows how to stretch every cent and every bit of food they have. She keeps the children healthy and clean as best as she can. She loves her son, Neeley, more than Francie, but she tries very hard to be fair, though she’s not always successful.

I love Katie very much because she reminds me a lot of my own mother. Though my mom’s situation was very different from Katie’s, they have the same attitudes about a lot of things. My mom, like Katie, is tough, straightforward, blunt, and hardworking. There is no romance about her. Whatever romance she might have had when she was young wore off long before I was old enough to know about it. Reading about Katie is like getting to know my mother better, and it reminds me of my childhood (even though my childhood, again, was very different from Francie’s). Francie describes her as being made of “thin, invisible steel.” That’s such a perfect description.

2. Johnny Nolan. He should be easy to hate. Johnny’s a drunk, a drifter, an absolutely no-good provider for the family. But somehow, I can’t hate him. Before I read the book for the first time, Jason told me he liked the way Johnny was portrayed because normally alcoholics are painted completely black in books, and when children are involved there is always abuse and meanness. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is not like that, though. Johnny can’t provide for his family, but he’s never once mean to them. He never hits his wife or his children. He tries to love them the best he knows how. And despite his excessive drinking, he’s not a bad person.

Take, for example, a passage from when he’s out walking with Francie and they encounter a prostitute.

“Was that a bad lady, Papa?” [Francie] asked eagerly.
“No.”
“But she looked bad.”
“There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.”

To me, this showed Johnny’s fairness and understanding. Was he a good man? No, not really. But he wasn’t a bad man, either. He was just unfortunate, and a slave to his addictions and his dreams.

3. Currency. For much of the book, the Nolan family lives on a few dollars a week. Slowly, I got immersed in their world, learning the way money works the same way I would in another country with a foreign currency. I got used to Francie going to the butcher and the baker and paying with a penny or at most a nickel. When later there was mention of a $10/week salary, it felt enormous. When I heard of another character’s $10,000 yearly salary, it was like riches. Stepping back from the book, I think – wow, $10,000 is not that much. But in this book, it’s practically like being a millionaire, and Betty Smith did a great job wrapping me into this world so well that it felt rich before I stopped to think how little that is.

4. Brooklyn. I know Brooklyn’s not the same now, but I still wish I knew someone who knew Brooklyn well and could give me a tour when I’m next up in NYC.

5. The library scenes. There are scenes with the librarian both at the beginning and end of the book, and I loved the contrast. Actually, I’ll just include any scenes that are revisited near the end of the book, and how Francie deals with the people she interacted with as a child after she’s grown up.

6. She heard the word “oxygen.” I don’t want to spoil this scene for anyone who hasn’t read the book, but once you read it, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s such a good, triumphant scene!

7. Lessons on humanity and compassion. I couldn’t give examples for every single truth Betty Smith wrote into this book. Every few pages, she demonstrates how some people learn compassion from their suffering and others learn to taunt those beneath them. When the children are taking junk to the junk man, other children yell “Rag picker!” at them, even though they just dropped off their own junk. An intern doctor at a clinic talks about how filthy and disgusting the poor children are, and his nurse, once a poor immigrant child herself, agrees with him. Children at school taunt the kids for having lice and being sent home from school, even if they themselves had the same problem the week before. There’s one quote from all this that in particular stands out to me:

They learned no compassion from their own anguish. Thus their suffering was wasted.

8. The passage of time. When I read this with my book club two years ago, one of the main complaints people had was the uneven passage of time. The early part, when Francie is 11 years old, takes up a huge chunk of the book. As she grows older, time passes faster, and months go by without any details about them. Everything comes together so fast. Five years will pass in the book in the same space as a month or two earlier on. Personally, I like this. At one point, Francie herself starts to notice how holidays don’t seem too far away anymore. She sees beyond a week in front of her. Time starts to move fast and things are changing. When she asks Johnny what’s happening, he feels her forehead with the back of his hand and tells her she has a bad case of “growing up.”

I remember being about that age and when I started thinking time was moving faster each year. I remember when I really gained awareness of time in general. Things moved and changed so fast, I couldn’t keep up. I was forced into maturity before I was ready. This is the way it happens as a child turns to a young adult, and I think Betty Smith’s integration of that impression into the text was magnificent. I didn’t mind that it made things feel uneven. I felt closer to the book for that imbalance. It felt honest.

9. All the Christmas scenes. Each Christmas scene is special, from the tree-throwing man to the gilded pennies. For some reason, even though this book takes place over many years and isn’t necessarily about Christmas, it feels like a Christmas book for me. Maybe it’s because it’s so hopeful, or because Christmas is such an important thematic element, a touchstone for each year. I don’t know. But for some reason, when I think about holiday books, this one immediately comes to mind, which is why I just read the book for the third time.

It’s a good book. It’s not perfect, but I am able to look past the things that would irritate me in another book because I love the story so much.

Note: Review date is only an approximate of when this book was read/reviewed in 2009.

Note: Originally read in August 2007, and once again after that (probably December 2007).

Posted in 2009, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Asleep, by Banana Yoshimoto

Posted on December 9, 2009 by Thistle

tumblr_lc1arny2nu1qaouh8o1_400Included in Asleep are three longer short stories by Banana Yoshimoto, translated from the Japanese by Michael Emmerich. Each in some way deal with sleep (whether physical or metaphorical). This is my first read by Yoshimoto, and I’m delighted to be reviewing the book with Kelly of The Written World.

Amanda: Hi Kelly! Well I suppose I’ll just start this thing by asking what your overall thoughts are on the whole book before we split into talking about individual stories.

Kelly: Hi! I have to say that I wanted to love this book. There was just something about it that made me think I would, but then I finished it earlier today (Tuesday) and promptly the stories have left my head. I honestly will have to have the book close by to remember what happened, which is really bad! The third story probably stuck with me the best. There were aspects of the stories that I really enjoyed, but otherwise I probably will forget I have even read this book in the future. There was just nothing about it that was so amazing that it will stick with me forever. How about you?

Amanda: Well…let me just say, first, that I rescued this book from the throwaway pile at Half Price Books not long ago. I’d heard other people talking about Banana Yoshimoto in the past, but had never been interested in trying her books. I’ve not read a lot of Japanese literature. After reading The Housekeeper and the Professor, though, which I loved to pieces, I was really looking forward to trying more Japanese authors. This seemed short and quick, easy to read, and I’d heard it was simple and good. I wanted to like it. I expected to like it. But then I started reading, and was just bored. Sometimes almost offended by some of the things in the stories. By the end, I admit, I was skimming. I doubt I’ll remember anything from these stories. I don’t even remember anyone’s names at this point, and I just read them.

I suppose we ought to break into sections for the individual stories? Or would you like to add anything else about the book in general?

Kelly: I have to be honest and admit that I saw you were going to be reading this book soon, so I added it to my library pile because I am in the Japanese reading challenge and am having a hard time finding books to read for it!

The first story is called ‘Night and Night’s Travelers’. I found this story a bit random. I think she was trying for some suspense by not telling everything right away, but I was just uninterested by it all. What did you think about it?

Amanda: Okay. Night and Night’s Travelers. First let me say – since I’m not sure we have the same edition – that the back of my book was very misleading. What it said was that all three stories were about women who were bewitched into spiritual sleep. What it said about this story in particular was that a woman mourning for a lost lover starts sleepwalking. Maybe I just completely misunderstood the story, but I don’t remember any sleepwalking at all! I mean, the narrator’s cousin stays awake a lot at night, but she’s not sleepwalking!

Because that was the first story in the book, it was the one I paid the most attention to. At this point, I still was assuming it was automatic that I’d like the book. I’m not sure why I just assumed that, but I did. It was a quick read, but in the end, I didn’t feel like anything happened. The story didn’t go anywhere, and I had no emotional response to it at all. And again, there was no bewitching, no “spiritual sleep,” no “Kafkaesque surrealism” (which the back of the book also misleadingly said). I was disappointed. I wanted those things, especially the surrealism. I wonder if my disappointment was greater because of the misleading blurb? How about you? Did you have conflict with the back of your version?

Kelly: First I should say that I am weird and never read the back of the book. I was totally not sure what this book was about at all. I had heard of the author, so that was really all my criteria was for reading this book. I watched the first part of your response show up on my screen, though, so while you were typing I read my own back of the book. It says the exact same thing! So, yes, that is very misleading because if there was sleepwalking going on I entirely missed it. Unless it was a metaphor. Otherwise, that description makes no sense. So, I went into this book not really knowing what to expect and I was still disappointed.

Like you, since this was the first story in the book, I paid a lot of attention to what was going on. I knew we were going to be reviewing it, so I wanted it to be clear in my mind. Also, like you, I was less than enthused. I didn’t feel like there was really anything going on and I couldn’t sympathize with the characters at all. I just didn’t care… It was just there and I read it and that is really all there is for me to say about it. It isn’t even as if I can say I hated the story. I just didn’t care enough to like it or hate it.

Amanda: I know what you mean. I didn’t hate it either. I just didn’t care. Which is strange, because many of the characters in it ought to have been interesting. I skimmed back through for their names – I’m bad with Japanese names, plus the characters just didn’t stand out for me – and really, Mari, Yoshihiro, and Sarah were all interesting characters. Or they could have been. The problem, I think, was Shibami – the narrator. She was completely uninteresting, and since this was all told from her point of view, the other characters just kind of died out. For me, at least. I wonder if maybe this had been told from Mari or Sarah’s point of view, would it have been more interesting? Maybe. I don’t know. But as it was, it’s already fading from my mind.

However – if it’s okay to move on to the second story, “Love Songs,” – I didn’t find “Night and Night’s Travelers” offensive. It was just there. “Love Songs,” on the other hand, was plain awful to me. What did you think?

Kelly: I know what you mean about the narrator. Mari or Sarah might have made it more interesting, but otherwise it was nothing special.

Moving on to “Love Songs”. I am finding it hard to come up with what I want to say about this story. I don’t know what the author was even thinking with this one. It was just strange! I don’t know if I would call if awful because, like with the first story, I didn’t care enough to come up with a strong emotional response, but there was something wrong with this story. I consider myself pretty open-minded, but you have to be extremely easy-going to appreciate this story and I am not sure if I really am. I am having one of those moments where I know what I want to say, but don’t know how to say it. Maybe you should take over. You can probably say why you found it awful better than I am capable of at the moment.

Amanda: For me, it was really the lack of tact or any decent human being in the story that made it awful. The narrator is an atrocious drunk. Personally, I don’t like to read stories that are centered on the act of drinking. It’s just not my thing. I was terrified that any minute I would get to see some descriptive passages about her getting sick or something. Thankfully that didn’t happen (I’d have put the book down and said never mind if it had). But what comes of her drinking? She somehow decides that an ex-rival that she had some mild lesbian thoughts about – and only in hindsight – is haunting her, so she goes to a midget (blatantly calling him a midget over and over, which I found jarringly untactful), has a spiritual trance where the ex-rival basically tells her everything she wants to hear, and then it’s all happy again. WTF? Sorry, but I found everything about this story offensive, from the alcoholism to the untactful way of treating the midget character to the frivolous way that homosexuality was treated. I’m just glad that it was the shortest story by far in the book.

Did I touch on what you didn’t like at all? Or was there something more?

Kelly: No, you pretty much got everything. I didn’t think this story was handled well at all! I don’t think it had any redeeming features.

Shall we just move on to the third story, or is there something more you want to say about this one?

Amanda: Sounds good. I really don’t have anything more to say.

I have to make a confession about the third story (“Asleep”), though. After talking with you earlier on Twitter and seeing that you also found the whole book fairly forgettable, I mostly skimmed the last story. I started reading it, but after a few pages of that obnoxious-no-paragraph-flashback-thing, my mind completely settled into a fog. I read each page at a quick glance, stopped in a couple places that looked more interesting, but really didn’t retain anything at all about it. I caught that the girlfriend was sleeping a lot (according to the back of the book, that’s because her lover’s wife is in a coma), but that’s about all. Sorry! What did you think about it? You said above it was the most memorable story for you, right?

Kelly: I have to admit that I liked the ending of this story. It was nothing ground-breaking, but it was kind of a nice image. It is probably the only thing that will stick with me from the story. Not so much the exact scene, but the sense of the scene. It was something that I could relate to. We live in a crazy world and when things are going on you sort of feel like things are passing you by and you are standing still. For the couple at the end of the book, they really were letting the world pass them by and the narrator was at peace with it. I think in my own hectic world I sometimes don’t stop to enjoy the moments and tend to rush along with everyone else.

For the rest of the story, though, there was not a lot going on. The main character slept a lot and it was said to be the fault of the woman in the coma. She was sleeping through days and losing track of time. She had a few moments where she sporadically connected with friends and there was her boyfriend. Then, there was her connection with a dead friend and her reminiscences of what their friendship was like together. There was one spiritual moment that was rather strange, but all the stories were supposed to have a touch of the spiritual in them. Otherwise, there really isn’t anything to talk about.

I thought all three of the stories were strange, though. They are not what I normally read at all. I couldn’t relate with them or connect with them at all with the exception to the ending of the third story and that might have just been my mood at the time. Any final thoughts on them from you?

Amanda: Hmm. Maybe when I’m in a different mood I’ll go back and reread that one. I feel bad that I skimmed through it, but the second story upset me so much that I didn’t want to go through that sort of experience again. That, and it really just bugs me when back of the book blurbs are misleading, like I said above. Particularly when it compares one author to another, the way this was compared to Kafka. It wasn’t at all like Kafka! It’s like last year, when I read Oracle Night by Paul Auster, which was supposedly Nabokovian, and was offended on Nabokov’s behalf that the comparison was ever made!

Maybe I just went into this with too high of hopes. After The Housekeeper and the Professor, I expected something amazing, I guess. It’s sad that it didn’t work out. I guess that happens sometimes, though. Thanks for reviewing it with me anyway!

Kelly: I want to read The Housekeeper and the Professor, but my library doesn’t have it! I am glad we reviewed it together, though. I look forward to our next buddy review!

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A Step From Heaven, by An Na

Posted on December 6, 2009 by Thistle

A_Step_From_Heaven_(An_Na_novel)_cover_artI am in a reading slump. A terrible one. I keep picking up books and saying never mind. After doing this with about 4 in a row, I decided I needed to do the old book roulette from the Random Reading Challenge and just read whatever it came up with. I have about 100 books on my TBR shelves near my computer, so I let Random.org give me a number. It came up with A Step From Heaven by An Na, a thin book that I need to read for the Printz Project anyway. I figured it was short, so I could get through it.

A Step From Heaven is about a girl named Young Ju who immigrates with her parents to America from Korea. The narrative goes from the time she is 4 until she’s about to leave for college. She deals with a lot of things that new immigrants deal with – language barrier, culture shock, etc – but she also has to live with an abusive father and a very dysfunctional family.

At first, I had a hard time reading this. Not only was I in a slump, but there were no dialog tags, no quote marks. It was all very vague, and I was not familiar with Korean words such as Apa and Ummha (Father and Mother). Add to that the fact that the book starts very impressionist because the memories come from a four-year-old’s sketchy point of view, and I was confused a lot. Slowly, though, as Young Ju grows older and her memory firms up, I began to understand the book more. Words spoken in English were given quotation marks, while those spoken in Korean (though written in the text in English, of course) never had any quotation marks. I realized the quotes were being used to distinguish which language was spoken, and it made much more sense to me after that.

This was a very well-written book. The childhood memories felt just like they were from a child, without being condescending or false or too detailed. I keenly felt the struggles that Young Ju went through. More than that, I became very concerned about the story of a side character – Young Ju’s younger brother, Joon Ho. His role in the book isn’t huge, but the glimpses of him made me ache with sadness and anger. He’s treated like a king as a child because he’s the firstborn boy, so he grows up spoiled and wasted. Na only gives us glances at this – rotting front teeth in a photograph, a little boy peeing in the street, a young teenager skipping school over and over – but it’s enough to know that that little boy, because he was treated as if he could do no wrong as a kid, was growing into a hoodlum. That sort of thing always makes me sad and very, very angry at parents. I hate when parents do that to their children. It’s worse than almost anything.

Ultimately, the book was hopeful, though. About 3/4ths of the way in, I wasn’t sure, and I’m not in the mood for super-depressing books right now, but I was satisfied with the end. It was well constructed. I’ve actually never read anything about Korean culture or Korean-American culture, so it was an interesting experience for me.

A Step From Heaven won the Printz Award in 2002. It is well-deserved. I’m glad I stuck through those difficult opening chapters.

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Born on a Blue Day, by Daniel Tammet

Posted on December 4, 2009 by Thistle

Born-on-a-Blue-Day-webI was born on 31 January 1979 – a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday, because the date is blue in my mind and Wednesdays are always blue.

Daniel Tammet has savant syndrome. He can recite the numbers of Pi to over 22,500 decimal places. He can learn a new language in a week. He also has Asperger’s – a particularly high functioning form of Asperger’s which allows him to communicate and interact socially, though it is difficult for him to do so at times. Lastly, he has synesthesia, a condition of the nervous system that causes cross-sensory perception. In his case, he sees numbers in color, size, shape, motion, texture, and more. This book is his memoir and a record of how he came from being an awkward, lonely child to an independent functioning adult.

I heard about this book years ago because of Tammet’s synesthesia. I have synesthesia myself, though my kind is far more common than his. They say about 20-25% of the population has it. I have color-grapheme synesthesia, which means that I see numbers and letters in color. I also sometimes periodically see music and people in color as well. The color patterns on numbers and letters have been there ever since I learned my ABCs and 123s. They are unchanging and automatic. They aren’t associative (meaning I don’t picture a specific color because of a specific item – like some people will associate the color red for A because in grade school A always has a red apple next to it). Ask me any word, and I’ll tell you what color it is. It’s a completely automatic response. 🙂

I didn’t know I had synesthesia until a few years ago. I knew I saw things in color (as did my brother and one of my sisters) and that others didn’t, but I thought it was something I could teach them. I was never embarrassed by it as other people with synesthesia say they are. I talked about it with anyone who would listen. My sister and I used to lay in bed at night and argue over what colors each of the letters were. We had very different alphabets. A few years back, an ex-boyfriend and I met up via MySpace, and he told me he’d learned about synesthesia in school. He remembered me trying to teach him to see in color. I was so excited to learn about this neurological condition! I’ve been soaking up books and information ever since. I could go on for pages and pages about my synesthetic experiences and about synesthesia in general, so I’m going to try to reign myself in here and just say that it was my interest in the subject that first led me to Mr. Tammet.

This book was so wonderful to read. At first it was hard – in the very first paragraph, Tammet describes 9s as blue, which is SO WRONG in my head. He kept talking about the various colors he sees things in, and it was jarring because my colors are so different from his. I had a hard time imagining it – my own colors kept interfering. Fortunately, and in some ways unfortunately, he didn’t spend a lot of time on the color portions of his synesthesia. The book turned out to be much more about Asperger’s and savant syndrome, which isn’t what I expected, but I nevertheless enjoyed.

I don’t know why, but I felt an automatic kinship for Tammet. Maybe it’s because his birthday and mine are both made up of a bunch of primes: his is 1/31/1979 – mine is 3/1/1979. Maybe it’s because he was born exactly 29 days before me (also a prime, for those who would notice). Maybe it’s because I was also a very socially awkward child and used some of the same coping techniques that he did. Not that I have a brain anywhere near as impressive as his, nor do I have the same social issues to the same degree as him. I am a mere fraction both ways. But I could see. I could feel what he was saying, and he just had so many interesting things to teach me! And not just about the way the brain works, but about the ability of people to overcome obstacles. Despite his difficulty connecting to people on an emotional level, Tammet found love with his then-partner, Neil. He began a web business that helped him earn an independent living. He learned to travel all over the world despite his anxiety. He can look people in the eye when he talks to them. He has overcome.

Tammet has his own Wikipedia page, where I found out that he has two other books published. One concentrates on savant syndrome, the other on his conversion from atheism to Christianity.

I really enjoyed this book. If you do read it, make sure to keep in mind the way that Tammet thinks and connects to the world. It’s very logical and factual rather than emotional, and often goes off on mini-tangents. Because I’m sort of a split-personality on the way I connect with things – sometimes in logical, cold ways and sometimes intensely emotional, but never both at the same time – I was able to read this and relate to it, but some might have trouble with the way he writes. I think it’s worth the read, though.

Posted in 2009, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Amphigorey Too, by Edward Gorey

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Thistle

amphigorey tooAmphigorey Too is the second collection of Edward Gorey graphic novel shorts. It includes 20 stories. While I didn’t enjoy Amphigorey Too as much as Amphigorey (the first collection), it did have some memorable stories in it. I’m going to focus my review on those four that I liked best.

The Evil Garden

How elegant! how choice! how gay!
To think one doesn’t have to pay.

In The Evil Garden, a family visits a free garden where each of them slowly meet a horrific fate, be that getting sucked feet first into a man-eating plant or strangled by snakes. There is evidence all around that others have also met their doom in this garden, like a stockinged foot sticking out from behind a rock. The whole story is told in simple, upbeat rhymes like the ones above, giving it a slightly malicious air as it contrasts with the context and pictures. This is Gorey at his best.

The Chinese Obelisks

A was an Author who went for a walk.

This is an alphabet story similar to the Gashlycrumb Tinies, except that it concentrates on one specific character (the Author) as he goes out on his walk and, um, meets a very peculiar fate. What really fascinated me about this story was the fact that it was included twice in the collection. The first rendition was not at all in Gorey’s normal style, but more in hasty sketches. When I got the second rendition (which was in Gorey’s style), I realized that the sketching wasn’t a stylistic thing – these actually were his sketches! It was really interesting to see what changed between the original and final product.

Leaves from a Mislaid Album

I can’t give you a quote from this one, because this story exists entirely in pictures. They are gorgeous, Goreyesque drawings made to mimic old fashioned photographs, except with the author’s usual trademark gothness to them. I love them!

The Inanimate Tragedy

“Death and Destruction!” said the Pins and Needles. “Destruction and Debauchery!”

This is by far my favorite story in the collection. It just appealed to my sense of humor. It involves two buttons, marbles, a knotted string, a thumbtack, and a fountain pen tip. Between these characters, there is intrigue, secrets, fighting, destruction, murder (both purposely-done and accidental), mistaken identity, and suicide. Oh yes. And the Pins and Needles are there to cheer the fellows on. I laughed the whole time. Brilliant.

So there. It’s Gorey. If you like his weird sense of humor, you’ll probably like this book. If not…sad!! 😀 I’m just kidding. I do love Gorey, and am slowly working my way through all the Amphigorey books (there are four as far as I know, and I own all four of them).

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Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, by Vladimir Nabokov

Posted on November 29, 2009 by Thistle

adaI did it! I conquered my nemesis book: Ada! It only took me a decade to get through it, but in the end – Nabokov, I sunk your battleship!!!!!

Okay, so maybe that’s a bit too enthusiastic, especially for a book that in the end, I didn’t even like. In fact, the main thing I learned from this experience is that I don’t really like Nabokov’s later books. I love his earlier ones, but as his career advanced, he became very arrogant about his genius (and to be fair, the man was brilliant – he had a reason to be arrogant!), and started sacrificing story to form. The book published directly after Ada is called Transparent Things, and I hated that one. I only disliked Ada. But still, after a decade of trying, I’m so happy to finish. Until this past summer, I’d never gotten past page 2. This summer, I made it through 30 pages before giving up. But I was determined this time, and rammed through all 600 pages of it…and believe me, three weeks to read this book is definitely ramming speed!

So what’s Ada about, you ask? Well, in brief, it’s about the lifelong love affair between Ada and Van Veen, who are supposedly cousins but in actuality siblings. This love affair starts when they are 12 and 14 years old, respectively, and goes until their mutual death.

Awhile back, my brother and I were talking about this book. It’s one of his favorites of Nabokov’s. He hadn’t realized I hadn’t finished it when we were talking, and accidentally gave away the ending…except the ending that he gave me actually didn’t happen in the book. What he said to me was, “At first it just seems like a bunch of people all having sex with each other, until eventually you realize they’re all the same person.” (paraphrased) I was thinking this would be some surreal sort of exploration of existence or perhaps of mental illness, and that really intrigued me. Eventually I would discover that the whole incestuous family only existed in the mind of one character (probably Ada’s or Van’s)!

However, nothing like that happens. I kept waiting and waiting, looking for clues along the way that would point out the eventual ziplining into a single entity. I even read through the footnotes (written by Vladimir Nabokov’s anagrammatic alter-ego, Vivian Darkbloom) and the Wikipedia article looking for any hint of what William told me. Nothing. I thought I’d been spoiled…but apparently not. I’ve got an email out to my brother asking what the heck he was talking about!!

So yeah. I didn’t like the book all that much, especially when it didn’t even redeem itself with a surreal exploration of existence. It felt excessive, especially starting in Part 2 (of 5), and there were sections that were purposely almost unreadable with their difficulty. I’m sure 95% of the book went straight over my head, and I’m not an unintelligent girl. For example, Wikipedia explained to me that this all takes place in an alternate history where Russia was one of the main settlers of North America. I didn’t catch that at all. This is the sort of book that would have been best read over an entire semester with a professor who had studied it laboriously. Maybe I would have liked it then?

Observe, for instance, the following passage:

Van regretted that because Lettrocalamity (Vanvitelli’s old joke!) was banned all over the world, its very name having become a “dirty word” among upper-upper-class families (in the British and Brazilian sense) to which the Veens and Durmanovs happened to belong, and had been replaced by elaborate surrogates only in those very important “utilities”–telephones, motors–what else?–well a number of gadgets for which plain folks hanker with lolling tongues, breathing faster than gundogs (for it’s quite a long sentence), such trifles as tape recorders, the favorite toys of his and Ada’s grandsires (Prince Zemski had one for every bed of his harem of schoolgirls) were not manufactured any more, except in Tartary where they had evolved “minirechi” (“talking minarets”) of a secret make.

That, btw, is the first sentence of Chapter 24, Part 1. I chose the passage not for its particular difficulty – there are passages far more tedious than that – but by randomly opening the book to a page and choosing the first thing that came up. If you can believe it, that longwindedness (which in essence says “Van was sad things such as tape recorders were illegal and therefore no longer manufactured”) is one of the easier-to-understand passages of the book. The first 6 chapters are about 10 times that dense (hence why I’d never gotten too far in the book before).

Nabokov is, no doubt, a certified genius. He does amazing things with words, and in three languages, no less! Sadly, though, the story of this book was, as it seems to be in all the later works of his that I’ve read, pointless. Part of me is a bit irritated that I sat through the whole thing (especially as I kept searching for Ada and Van to become one person). I didn’t get anything out of it, beyond the satisfaction of having finished it. Of course, at the same time, I’m a bit at a loss now that it’s over. I’ve had a nemesis book so long, it feels weird to no longer have one. In the words of my dear Stiffs, Incorporated:

An end to enemy – I’ve no identity.

Without Ada, who am I now? How should I define myself? I need a new nemesis.

So…um, there’s not much else that I can say. I doubt anyone else is going to read this book, and I honestly wouldn’t recommend it. There are plenty of Nabokov books far greater than Ada. I’m just happy I conquered this book, even if I didn’t understand most of it.

Nabokov, though I sunk your battleship, I still admit defeat. I bow to your superiority.

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Wicked Lovely, by Melissa Marr

Posted on November 23, 2009 by Thistle

wicked-lovelyAislinn has always seen fairies, but she can’t let them know. These are not fairytale fairies, but scary, monstrous, mischievous creatures that Aislinn is terrified of. And then two begin to follow her…

Okay, so I have issues with fairies in books. They always end up being these absolutely perfect, beautiful creatures who no one can resist. Think Tithe or Wings. Absolutely ridiculous. I hate it. I complained about it in both of those reviews. So while I’ve been looking forward to Wicked Lovely for a very long time, I’ve also been worried. Worried that the fairies would be the same boring old perfect. Worried that the humans would either be completely negligible like in Wings or unadmirable like in Tithe. I ought not to have worried. This book was beautiful.

The fairies weren’t perfect. They weren’t even beautiful most of the time! Even the summer king, at full beauty brightness, needed manipulation to get people to love him! And then Aislinn still resists! Here is a strong, female protagonist who can resist, except when drugged (and that doesn’t count), the beautiful fairy! I love it!

I love just about everything about this book. I love Aislinn, who is strong and decisive and yet still scared and vulnerable at times. I love Seth, her good friend, who despite his scruffy-like appearance (long hair, tattoos, piercings all over the place) is a really good role model. He’s responsible and honest and kind. Totally stereotype-breaking, and a stereotype that I love to have broken! I loved that the situation between Aislinn and the summer king, Keenan, was completely unpreventable, and yet Aislinn still made the best of it. I’m really looking forward to the next two books now.

The only negative things I can think of were a few places where the dialog needed to be cleaned up. Some of it was awkward and twisted off in weird directions, not very naturally. Otherwise, I loved the execution, I loved the cat-and-mouse game, I loved the way I couldn’t figure out how everything was going to end the whole time. And best: I loved that all my expectations about this YA fairy story – flippant beautiful fairies, shallow pointless humans, etc – were proven wrong.

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Protected: Clubbing, by Andi Watson

Posted on November 20, 2009 by Thistle

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