November Ever After, by Laura Torres

Posted on April 14, 2008 by Thistle

novemberSpoilers.

About a year ago, I stumbled across a description of this young adult fiction book while searching for another title, and it looked interesting. Amy is dealing with the recent loss of her mother, and throughout the book, discovers that her best friend, Sara, has kept secret from her the fact that she’s a lesbian. Amy is left trying to deal with the triple blow – death, secrets, and a change in the way she has to view the world and her friendships.

Now this sounded interesting to me. I decided to check it out last week, and read it today after finishing my last book. It didn’t take long, something like two hours. Unfortunately, while this is written about sixteen-year-olds, it seems to be written for eight-year-olds (but not like she meant it to be that way, just that it was badly written). A sort of odd way to juxtapose mature content with elementary style. I wasn’t real impressed. The characters didn’t seem real, their feelings felt fake, the plot was forced and most of it was shoved into the last twenty pages. A lot of it read like junior-high romance novels.

And beyond that, the ending left me a little upset. The book was published in 1999, and I know homosexuality was even more controversial of a subject then than now, but it felt like the author had a very specific opinion and purposely watered it down in order to make the book more acceptable. I’m not sure what her opinion was – it could have been that homosexuality is an acceptable part of life and we should be more open minded in our society, or it might have been that homosexuality is wrong and something that will hurt everyone – but either way, it was like those two opinions got mixed up at the end. Amy, at the end, is uncomfortable with Sara, tells her she thinks she’s doing something wrong and non-Christian, but also decides she’ll be her friend and tolerate her. At the same time, she personally acknowledges that she’s been a bad friend and that Sara is a good person who has never chided Amy for her religious beliefs (they have different ones), and thus may be the better person and friend here. It really felt like either the author wasn’t sure what her opinion was, or, like I said before (and I think this is more likely) she had an opinion and tried to water it down and neutralize it.

I was very disappointed. I felt like the story was interesting enough that it could have been well written, but wasn’t. Thankfully it only took up two hours of my time and now I can move on to something more interesting, like Nabokov!

Posted in 2008, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged | 1 Comment

Facing the Lion, by Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton

Posted on April 9, 2008 by Thistle

lionSubtitled: Growing Up Maasai on the African Savanna

I saw this book on the shelf at Barnes & Nobles a week or two ago when I took one of my sons to buy a reward book. It looked interesting, especially after reading about the Maasai people in Out of Africa earlier this year. I wrote down the name and author, then checked this out from the library last night. I knew it was a memoir, but didn’t realize it was a juvenile memoir sponsored by National Geographic. It certainly reads like a NG book – each chapter is like a five minute documentary (though I’m definitely not interested in seeing a mini-doc on tribal circumcision ceremonies…).

At first, I sort of struggled to get through the chapters. I’m used to books with a lot more detail, elaboration, and depth, and this was very surface level. It’s written for kids, not for adults. But as I pushed on, the boredom and exasperation passed, and by the end, I did find that I learned things. Not in the same way that Isak Dinesen taught me – rather than feeling like I’d experienced the African savanna, I felt as if someone who’d once lived there had told me stories about it. Storytelling has its merits, and is pleasurable. I’m not sure how much of this book I’ll remember a year from now, but it made a light, short, healthy break from my current Harry Potter streak, which is always useful. And the book does have a good, inspiring message, especially for kids who face monstrous obstacles in their lives.

Posted in 2008, Children's, Prose | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

Posted on March 21, 2008 by Thistle

grapesI really thought I wouldn’t like this book. I was very hesitant to begin it, thinking it would just bog me down like so many others I’ve read this year. As it turns out, this is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. I love the contrast Steinbeck makes between chapters: one chapter of plot, one chapter of very impressionist, camera-like motion. The characters were incredibly life-like, and it was more like a character study than a setting-based book (which is what most people have complained about to me, all the setting and description). Reading the characters was almost like reading an extreme form of family history. My great-grandma was from Oklahoma and lived through the great depression. She didn’t travel out to California, but stayed in OK. She was in a unique, if not particularly pleasant, position, as her mother was Cherokee and her father was Anglo. A lot of prejudice on both Anglo and Cherokee sides was put against her family. But getting back to the point, reading The Grapes of Wrath was like getting a little glimpse of the life my family comes from. The attitudes towards charity, the attitudes towards land, the attitudes about men and women and gender roles, the attitudes towards government, all that – I recognize the parts that have been passed down my family for years, becoming more diluted with each new generation. I recognize my grandpa in the descriptions of men, I recognize my grandma in the women, I recognize my mom’s views on charity and the role of government, etc. It’s really incredible.

Steinbeck isn’t pretending at all here – this is social commentary at its rawest. At the same time, he isn’t completely heavy-handed. His characters do have spots of good luck. In a situation that goes from bad to worse, continually, progressively, throughout the novel, it’s not so melancholy as to be unrealistic. Yes, terrible things happen, and the bad by far outweighs the good, but if the Joads just hit one misfortune after another with no break, the commentary would lose its value and meaning. Steinbeck puts in just the right amount of counterbalance so that the reader doesn’t get completely bogged down. You want the Joads to triumph even though you know they won’t. You get a third of the way into the book and already know each misfortune that’s going to happen and don’t want to read anymore but still have to go on. It’s masterfully done.

I think of immigrants today, the terrible things that they go through and the way we treat them in the US. They are poor. They have no choices in a lot of ways. We bring them here, pay them little, treat them like they’re stupid, dirty, uncivilized beasts, and send them back where they came from when we’ve used them well enough. What an awful thing! And I know that they aren’t US citizens, but if you look back then, states were much more segregated, and the Californians didn’t want the “okies” to invade any more than people don’t want the Mexicans to come in. We don’t want to give them a chance at citizenship. We build a wall to stop them. But if we can get them in enough to work for cheap, it’s okay. Just send them back afterwards. Sigh. Our society is doing just the same thing as then, and I think it would benefit people to go back and read this sort of work, to get some sense of our humanity back. One of the things Ma Joad says:

I’m learnin’ one thing good… If you’re in trouble or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

What a powerful statement. So many powerful messages in this book. A very worthwhile and fulfilling read, and I can’t wait to present it to my book club in April.

Posted in 2008, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

[refuge], by multiple authors

Posted on March 21, 2008 by Thistle

refugeIn February 2008, I went to Palestine to visit my sister and to be there for her wedding. I met her husband, Rami, who is a Palestinian refugee. Before I left, he gave me a copy of this book, which he and another student had worked to put together. It is a collection of stories, essays, memoirs, photos, poems, and more by the children of the Jenin refugee camp.

The stories are laid side by side in both Arabic and English. Rami and the other student did all the translations, and Rami himself contributed to the collection, having grown up in the refugee camp as well. The stories were so powerful, particularly in describing the violence that some of these children had seen and gone through. The photos really captured the essence of the camp as well.

This is a book that has never officially been published, and is not available to the mainstream. The only reason I have a copy at all is because the people who printed it accidentally got the order wrong, so some of the facing pages in Arabic and English are not the same story. Since I don’t read Arabic, this doesn’t matter to me.

Unfortunately, I don’t think anything ever came of the project. I know the plan was to try to publish and sell copies with the money to benefit the refugee camp, but I never heard anything else about it, and I know Rami moved away from the area not long after that. I’d guess that my copy is one of the few still in existence.

Posted in 2008, Adult, Poetry, Prose, Visual | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen

Posted on March 11, 2008 by Thistle

out of africaOut of Africa is Karen Blixen’s memoir (under a pseudonym) about her years in Africa. I’ve wanted to read this for a long time, and finally checked it out a month or so ago. In the last couple months, I’ve been very fascinated with non-western cultures. I know it’s not possible to fully experience any culture or country without actually being there, and even then, a visit is far less than a longterm stay for experience. Because I’m probably not going to Africa any time soon, I thought maybe I could see the world through Baroness Blixen’s eyes for a moment.

I didn’t expect it to take me several weeks to read. It’s a lot drier than many novels, which would normally turn me off right away (and nearly did with this one, but I persisted long enough to get caught up), but it really did pull me into the experiences she had. I began to see people, cultures, landscape, and wildlife through her eyes. The culture of the various tribes and religions she had contact with on her coffee farm began to make sense to me, so that halfway through, things that wouldn’t have phased me before suddenly became funny or sad or wistful.** I tried a couple times to describe moments to Jason that were hilarious to me, and he stared at me blankly when I did. They just aren’t funny outside the eyes of this world. I see animals differently now as well (never had any idea before how vicious zebras are). While nothing can substitute for actual experience, this book did a great job of taking me into the world it’s about. It was definitely worth the weeks of reading.

**Note: I didn’t mention this in my original review, but one of the things that struck me about the book was the bit about women and shaved heads. The culture she lived in thought it was vulgar for women to have hair, which is very different from what I’m used to. About halfway through the book, however, I had a weird experience where I read about a woman with long hair, and it automatically repulsed me for an instant. I was drawn so far into the culture of the book that for a moment, I viewed things differently, and that made the book extremely powerful.

Posted in 2008, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards

Posted on February 22, 2008 by Thistle

memorykeepI read very little current fiction, but I decided to pick something up I’d never heard of at the library this weekend. This seemed interesting, and it ended up being a captivating book. At the beginning of the book, Norah Henry has twins, delivered by her husband David during a blizzard. He’s a doctor, and recognizes right away that the second baby has Down’s Syndrome. The birth takes place in 1964, when there was a lot of negative stigma about people with Down’s, and the doctor worries about the girl’s heart. His own sister died of heart problems, and he remembers the grief the family went through. He makes a bad decision, and asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby to an institution. He tells his wife that the girl, named Phoebe, was stillborn (Norah was under gas when the baby was born). Caroline doesn’t leave Phoebe at the institution, however; she instead takes her as her own, leaves town, and raises her. The book follows the parallel lives of the Henrys and Caroline, and the way that this one lie, this one secret, touches everyone.

I liked this book. It wasn’t my favorite book ever, nor do I think it was particularly high literature, but it was fun, interesting, and at the end, ultimately hopeful. For a pretty depressing subject, Kim Edwards does a good job not making you feel absolutely miserable all throughout. This is her debut book, and it’s pretty good. My only real problem with it (besides some editor screw-ups like saying “David’s guitar instructor” instead of “Paul’s guitar instructor”) was her use of cliched metaphors and similes. I also, on my own, didn’t like the fact that I read it straight through for a day and a half, but that says more about my own self-control than about her writing. Obviously her writing was captivating enough and the story was engaging enough to keep me going on. I would recommend The Memory-Keeper’s Daughter for anyone who is looking for a fast, fun read without any deep thinking. Not something I would want to read on a permanent basis, but certainly nice for a light break in my serious reading, especially after Little Women and Madame Bovary.

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Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert

Posted on February 16, 2008 by Thistle

madamebovarySpoilers.

Well this was definitely my pointless read of the month. I read half of Madame Bovary in off moments in Palestine, times when Becky was stressed or out shopping alone because of her stress, hours spent in airports, etc. I had to force myself to begin it, because the book itself didn’t look too inviting – I have an old hardback copy with withered pages and completely faded gold lettering. I don’t mind old books usually, I actually like them, but this one looked particularly unappealing. I was determined not to let that affect me, and set out in a valiant effort.

Unfortunately, I had to read this one, in order to moderate my book club on it in March, otherwise I would have given it up long before my final reading in Palestine. Partly it was the extremely dry translation, partly it was just the 1800s writing style I’m not fond of, partly it was the story itself. It reminded me, more and more, of Anna Karenina, which is one of the worst books I ever forced myself through. I just had no patience for Anna in 2001, and the feeling stayed the same for Emma Bovary. A perpetual whiner, never satisfied, she wants to live in a fairy tale. She lives out of absurd notions of romance and emotion, and when they fail her, when passion can’t continue and becomes mundane – like things really are in life – she moans about and has “nervous fits.” I was so relieved when she finally killed herself! No sympathy whatsoever.

Now, Madame Bovary is considered one of the best books written of all time, a master specimen of realism, and the perfect example of the modern novel. That’s what people say about it. I suppose I’m not all up on what literature periods are, but if “realism” is anything like what the name implies, I don’t know why this qualifies in any way. There is nothing “real” about it except perhaps the statement of “people are perpetually unsatisfied.” All the rest of it is just fancy. Jason and I talked about the book a bit last night. He hasn’t read it, and I went on about how dull the prose and subject matter are, how Emma annoyed me, how the whole thing was just like Anna Karenina. Jason started doing some research on it, while I pecked away at the book, trying to get through it as fast as possible, and suddenly he started laughing. Apparently there’s some poll out there of the top 10 literary influences of modern writers, and Madame Bovary comes in second only to Anna Karenina. Beyond that, he read that Gustave Flaubert’s friends were trying to cure him of his romanticism, so they purposely chose the dullest, dreariest, most mundane subject possible, and challenged him to make a book about it. Yep. That’s Madame Bovary in a nutshell.

I wish I could have put this book down way before the end. I’m glad I finally pushed through to the end and can go onto something more interesting, more stimulating. Despite the book being on every top list that ever existed, I personally don’t recommend it. I hope the people in my book club like this book much more than I do!

Posted in 2008, Adult, Prose | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

Posted on February 15, 2008 by Thistle

littlewomen“the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese of literature”

Jason said to me, before I began reading Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, that the book was good – as long as I didn’t mind that the characters aren’t in the least bit believable as real human beings. Well, I’m not sure I fully agree with him that the book was all that good, but the latter half of the statement is certainly true. The characters are flat, like the author had created little personalities for dolls. She took what could have been real people and snipped out everything that made them round, so they look like little bundles of virtue, rather than like they actually lived. Paintings, with all the rosy glow around the edges so we see no imperfections. Life works out wonderfully neat.

Normally, a book this size takes me a week to read, and only that long because of all my writing, editing, mothering, etc. This one, I started a week or so before I left for Israel on the 31st. I expected to finish it before I left, so I packed some other books to take with me for reading in the airport, on the plane, and at Becky’s apartment, if there were lulls. I was about halfway through Little Women when I left, and I think my opinion about the book is obvious by the fact that I didn’t change out one of the packed books for this one. Not that I hated the book, I only found the characters unbelievable, the storyline pasted together, and the prose extremely tiresome. I learned some things reading it, and I enjoyed it to some degree. And, as usual, I kept going even when tired, because there are few books that I’ve simply given up on (only two that I can recall ever).

I spent the last couple days reading during naptimes, instead of writing, just to get it done with. In the end, I’m glad I read it, but I’ll stick with the movie after this. And because of Jason’s expressive description of the book, I’ll always associate it with boxed mac & cheese, something which is good as long as you don’t mind that it isn’t real macaroni and it isn’t real cheese.

Note: This was my first-ever book review, and incredibly snarky. I wrote it humorously, for a handful of friends who knew my voice. Looking back, it came out more rude than humorous…

Posted in 2008, Adult, Prose | Tagged | 1 Comment