The Classics Project: Rebecca

I've been having trouble sleeping for the last week or so, and while that is not terribly beneficial to my physical or mental health, I have been reading. A lot.

Rebecca is a novel of romantic suspense by Daphne Du Maurier. I have a vague recollection of watching the Alfred Hitchcock movie a very long time ago, but I remembered little in the way of plot, only a vague sense of impending doom (which, to be fair, is present in all of Mr. Hitchcock's films). Interestingly, I did not realize how recent the book is. By recent I mean 1938 as opposed to sometime in the 1800s.

The start is slow. Really slow. Honestly, if this book had not been part of The Classics Project I would have given it up in favor of something more interesting. The writing often feels stilted and unnecessarily florid. As for the main character, well, let's just say I've held conversations with pillows that were more interesting than her.

The story starts off in the wealthy and transient town of Monte Carlo in the south of France. The narrator (and main character) is working as a companion to a rich, obnoxious American woman. She gets swept off her feet by the charming, intelligent, darkly moody, and recently widowed Maximillian de Winters. The very first part was interesting enough. It felt like your basic romance. There's no doubt about who the players are - the highly experienced but flawed man and the naive young girl. Yet even at the beginning a thread of suspense pervades the story that is less normal for your typical romance. This thread is strengthened and broadened as the narrator elopes with Mr. de Winters and returns to his home, Manderly.

From the beginning it is obvious that there is something very wrong with the circumstances of Mr. de Winter's late wife's death. We don't know what. We don't know why. All we know is who: Rebecca.

Rebecca is fascinating as a literary device. She's the title character. She's the catalyst for the book's conflict. And she is never once actually appears in the book. We see her only through what she left behind. Her room. Her clothes. Her monogrammed handkerchief with her elaborate capital "R." Through the memories of the Manderly staff and the local townspeople, we see her as a beautiful, vivacious woman who was good at everything (though, we learn, that is hardly the whole story). We also see her through the extended fantasies of the narrator.

The narrator constantly pits herself against this dead woman and constantly loses. She's incapable of making decisions, accepting the stern and hateful rule of the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, who worshiped Rebecca. She floats along in a cloud of doom and gloom that is positively exhausting. What sympathy can there be for a wet blanket of character who constantly bemoans her lack of interesting qualities? In that regard, I quite agree with her. Basically, the narrator has no agency for the first half of the book.

I was about ready to give up on the book entirely when my partner suddenly remembered having read it in high school English class. "Go on," they said. "It really picks up after the ball scene."

And it did. I hit the ball scene about five minutes after that conversation and the book finally got interesting. I won't go into details, but a secret was revealed that changed the whole scope of the novel. While the narrator is still ridiculously uninteresting, she at least begins to, you know, do things.

William Bernhardt, my writing teacher, once put it this way. Your character should struggle, not suffer. No one enjoys watching someone suffer passively chapter after chapter. Instead, we want to seem them try, attempt, rail against; we want to see them struggle. In a strange moment of self-cognizance, the book gave me this quote:

"I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth."

Which pretty much sums up what I didn't like about the book.

Honestly I think the book would have been ten times better if Mr. de Winters had been the main character. Yes, the secret twist would have been ruined, but we would have a character with action, with ability. A character that does more than bemoan her lank, overly-straight hair. Seriously.

I will say however, that the second half of the book wasn't bad. It was fast paced (especially in comparison to what had come before it). If you like a good romance and don't mind an empty narrator (a la Bella Swan), then this book might be just up your alley.

Honestly, I probably won't give Ms. du Maurier a second chance. Rebecca, her supposed opus, was mediocre at best. Ah, well. Better luck next time.

The Classics Project: My Antonia

It's been a while since I've reviewed a work of fiction. I've been so busy with school and other things, not to mention my recent nonfiction binge, but finally I've gotten around to it. And what a great book to jump back in with: Willa Cather's My Antonia.

My Antonia is the story of a boy growing up on the frontier of rural Nebraska, but more importantly, it's the story of a family of Bohemian immigrants and their daughter, Antonia (AN-toh-NEE-ah). Even though the story is told from the POV of the young man, Antonia is the sun his world revolves around. In a way, this is a small story. It's a coming of age story. It's a small town story. The scope is entirely limited to this one young man's life out in the prairies of Nebraska, to the people he knows, and the little pieces that make up their lives. Yet in another way, this story is as sprawling and magnificent as those fields of wheat, plowed into the land by sheer force of human will. As vast and grand as the blue sky that stretched over these pioneers bringing rain and wind and hope for a good crop.

Willa Cather skillfully paints the landscape as background and metaphor for the people who live there. Or perhaps, Antonia is the metaphor. She is strong, smart, kind. She works hard. She is never described as "pretty," instead we hear of her strong hands that can herd cattle. Her strong legs that can push a plow. Her burning, life-filled eyes that scorch themselves into the mind of one young man. She also never forgets the land that she left behind. In a way, this makes her the ultimate symbol for America. An immigrant, strong, hardworking - always pushing toward progress, but looking back to tradition, to where she came from. Idealistic, but flawed.

Because the reader experiences this story through the young man, we see his flaws arguably more than we see hers. He thinks he knows her. He thinks he's capable of understanding the world that created this young woman. He thinks it is the same world that created him. He judges her for passions, her lack of conventional propriety. He puts her up on a pedestal and pities her when she does not meet his narrow, privileged expectations. This is not to say he is an unlikable character. He's smart and has big dreams. He befriends her despite her immigrant status (or perhaps because of it). He loves the strength of her, the brightness that follows her. He chooses her over the doe-eyed Swede, Lena Lingard. But he is limited.

In a way, this book is entirely different from anything I've read before. The plot is gentle and real. There are no catastrophes, even the broken twists of life are written as normal and not melodramatically tragic. The story is as small as a single, not particularly spectacular, life, but as broad and far reaching as the prairie. Yet for me, there is something deeply familiar.

Like Antonia's family, my ancestors immigrated from Bohemia. They moved to the frontier of Nebraska, giving up their city trades, and choosing to work the land. They became part of that land. Their plows broke the soil, creating furrows of families that grew and expanded and survived. My connection to these mythical ancestors is tenuous at best. It is there in the poppyseed kolaches my mother makes. In the ridiculously vowel-barren family name on my grandmother's side (Hrdlicka; four consonants before they even get to a vowel!). It is there in the tiny, wood-bound bible I have in my china cabinet, the language foreign, but intrinsically fascinating. I don't have particulars. No detailed stories of pioneer women and their strength. It has all been blown away like sod in the prairie winds. In a way, I put these ancestors on a pedestal, just like that young man. They were idealized portraits of the attributes I find most compelling. But, like him, I will never truly understand their world.

My Antonia became something so much grander than a simple coming of age story. It filled the gaps in my roots with fertile soil, and whether the specifics are anything like the truth, it doesn't matter. Willa Cather reaches a broader truth. A resonating, simple, strong truth. She articulates that feeling of losing oneself in the vastness of the world around you, the magnificent grandeur of the past and the frontiers yet to come. In her words, "At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great."

On the Importance of Reading Modern Fiction

In my creative writing class, we've been workshopping everyone's final projects. One classmate's work in particular prompted me to write this post.

Pic by enchantedwhispersart.deviantart.com

He's a good poet. He's smart. He's my friend.

But his prose leaves much to be desired.

As a self-professed reader of only books from 100+ years ago, he writes in a stilted, overdone way. His sentences are long and cumbersome. He uses too many ... shall I say grandiose? ... words all together. It feels like he's trying so hard to sound like Dickens. Or Wilde. Or Proust. Or, god help us, Sir Walter Scott.

Basically, his writing is stunted.

As a writer, it's important to read everything. Classics. Contemporaries. Fiction. Nonfiction. You should read everything you can get your hands on. If you purposefully cut yourself off from a section of writings (especially one as large as the body of work produced in the last 100 years!) you are doing yourself a disservice. Your writing will suffer.

So I've decided to get him a few new(ish) books for his upcoming birthday. These are examples of fiction written within the last hundred years that I feel every writer (and reader) should experience.

1. Catch-22

"He was going to live forever or die in the attempt."

Catch-22, published in 1961, is a work of satirical genius by Joseph Heller. Taking place during WWII, Catch-22 captures the insanity, the desperation, the rage, the inevitability of war. Written in non-chronological 3rd person, it follows Air Force captain, Yossarian, who hates war. Yossarian's central conundrum is that if he is crazy, he'll be discharged. But he has to apply for said discharge and applying for said discharge demonstrates that he is not insane, thereby no longer qualifying for the discharge. For him, there is no way out of war. 

The narrative itself is circular and reflects the nature of the "Catch 22" conundrum. It's a great study in the devolution of a character into insanity. Heller's language is clear and powerful. His characters are unforgettable. It's hard to explain Catch-22 to someone who has not read it because it is so singular - so completely different from anything else that I've read.

2. Slaughterhouse-Five

"Nothing intelligent can be said about a massacre."

In keeping with my first suggestion, here is another experimental, WWII, and entirely singular book - Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, published 1969. I've reviewed this book before (you can read my review here). Like Catch-22, Slaugherhouse-Five is shockingly revolutionary and completely different from Heller's opus. Again, it's hard to explain Vonnegut's most famous work. Actually it's pretty hard to explain any of Vonnegut. He writes a little left of reality and Slaughterhouse-five is no different. Jumping between the fantastical and the devastating, Vonnegut captures the essence of surrealism without dissolving into the abstract or the detached. Billy Pilgrim is the quintessential unreliable narrator and the book forces the reader to question reality at every turn. What is real? What is delusion? Is there actually a difference? Vonnegut's writing is gorgeous - sometimes whimsical, sometimes bare and raw. Strange. Startling. Disturbing. This book is definitely worth the read. 

3. The Cider House Rules

"People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers."

John Irving is by far one of the most skilled writers working today. The Cider House Rules, published in 1985, is astounding. It follows Homer Wells, an orphan who never gets adopted. Instead he begins to learn the business of medicine as instructed by Dr. Wilbur Larch, head of the orphanage and the only doctor around who is willing to perform abortions. As my mother is fond of saying, all of Irving's books are about sex and perversion, and The Cider House Rules is no different. But instead of coming off as sensationalist or cheap, Irving writes about the difficulty of living. The difficulty of being human. It is the most honest look at one of the most controversial topics of our time. In the guise of empathetic characters and beautiful language, Irving forces you to examine your own beliefs - your own choices. An orphan or an abortion?

4. The Poisonwood Bible

"God doesn't need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves." 

The Poisonwood Bible is easily my favorite work of contemporary fiction (again, here's my full review). Published in 1998, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver is the story of five women and the missionary husband/father/abuser they follow. Travelling half a world away, from Georgia to the Belgian Congo in the 1960s, the Price family women each get their own POV. All five parts are written in first person and all five are incredibly distinctive. There's never any confusion over who's who and the shear technical ability Kingsolver displays here is worth the read. The fact that Kingsolver's technical talent is alloyed with a spectacularly compelling story makes this a rare find and a necessary addition to any personal library. The Poisonwood Bible is an astounding work woven of technical ability, social consciousness, and the intimacy of a family struggling to survive the ravages of the Congo and of their father.

5. 1Q84

"But pure, unadulterated feelings are dangerous in their own way. It is no easy feat for a flesh-and-blood human being to go on living with such feelings."

Published as three separate novels in Japan over 2009 and 2010, 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami is an excellent example of where modern fiction can go. In a way, it follows in the surrealist footsteps of Vonnegut and presents a world that is just slightly left of reality. The book uses the term "1Q84" to show the slight difference of this new world the characters stumbled into from the one they left, back in the normal 1984. Again, even that is a nod to previous work - this time George Orwell's infamous dystopia. In my previous review, I introduced the book by calling it an asymmetrical fairy tale. Murakami successfully captures the juxtaposition of a pre-mobile phone world and post-modern philospophy in his unique poetic style. While the book is definitely complex (and crammed together into a gigantic volume when it was translated to English), it's definitely worth the read.

It's very very difficult to pick only five books from the last 100 years and there are so many more that are worth your time. 

The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker. The Lord of the Rings (1937-1949) by J.R.R. Tolkien. To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee. The Handmaid's Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood. Ender's Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card. Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury. The Phantom Tollbooth (1961) by Norman Juster.

And on and on an on and on, ad infinitum. As a writer, it's so important to read everything. Just read. Read every moment you can. 

Perhaps Stephen King said it best. If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time nor tools to write.

Lost Girls: A Book Review

In the next iteration of my recent nonfiction reads, let me present Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker.

A tale of tragedy, vice, and murder, Lost Girls was both fascinating and frustrating. Even though the title directly tells you that the mystery is unsolved, there was a part of me that was confident that, given the evidence, I could figure out whodunit. But this is no clean Agatha Christie. It has no hero. No single villain. And no end.

Lost Girls is the story of the Long Island Serial Killer and five of his victims. Well, four depending on what you believe. Each of the girls is a sex worker who advertised through Craigslist, but while other authors might be tempted to emphasize the danger and seediness of these girl's worlds, Kolker does an excellent job of humanizing the girls. He starts out with a vision of their childhood and home life, the factors that lead to their career decisions. Their likes, their dislikes. Their dreams and ambitions and disappointments.

Kolker starts the book with an eerie prologue that sets the mood. A young woman, Shannan Gilbert, shows up at a gated community on Long Island. She runs from door to door, screaming that someone is trying to kill her. No one helps. The police take over forty-five minutes to show up. She disappears.

Alternating between factual evidence and anecdotal stories from family and friends, Kolker paints a broad picture. The tapestry is woven from the threads of these girls lives. From the reticence of the police and the community to care about "escorts." From the conflicting emotions of those left behind. This (sometimes) controlled chaos definitely makes for an interesting narrative.

Lost Girls does on occasion become confusing in its detail. With the vast cast of characters, the five main girls, and their alternative work names, keeping track of who's who can be a bit daunting. That's the difficulty of translating real life to a story. It's not always pretty.

Even with the inevitable disappoint, Lost Girls is a riveting story about the humanity behind the victims. It doesn't glorify the villain. It doesn't dismiss the victims. It strikes that precarious balance between voyeurism and information. Inextricably drawn into the mystery, the reader is forced to confront the fact that not all people are just good or just evil. That fate is never something one deserves. And most importantly, that not all stories have an ending.

Stolen Innocence: A Review

I've been on a bit of a nonfiction kick lately and it all started with one memoir. Stolen Innocence is the story of a young girl who grew up in the Fundamentalist Later Days Saints' community. Basically, when the mainstream Mormon church banned polygamy in an effort to get Utah accepted into the United States (you can read more about the history behind that here), there was a small group that broke off and continued the practice. Polygamy is one of those things that seems to go along with oppression of women and child abuse and I distinctly remember this particular group. The author is the main defendant in the 2007 case against the "prophet" Warren Jeffs. I was a senior in high school when this happened and I remember hearing about the case and, a year later, the police raid on an FLDS compound in Texas. That said, I really wasn't familiar with the details. I didn't know any names except Jeffs and I certainly had no concept about what the daily life of his followers was  like. 

The full title is Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs by Elissa Wall. That pretty much sums it up. The book starts out with the Wall's childhood - what it was like to grow up in the FLDS. I think the author does a great job of not vilifying the people who are caught up in this lifestyle. The majority of them were born into it and were never exposed to the outside world. Coming from a radically different background (on all levels), it was fascinating to me how "normal" aspects of daily life for them can be. They have hopes and games and family drama (though considerably more with multiple wives/mothers). Ultimately they are a family like any other. They want to raise their kids to live as good a life as they can imagine. They want a comfortable home and to feel secure with their place in the world. These memories of Wall's are painted with a warm glow and are pretty much presented the same way anyone's childhood memories would be. Even so, from the beginning there is an uneasy tension running through all the pleasant memories.

Wall's childhood, while idyllic at times, was also fraught with conflict. Conflict between the wives. Conflict between the children and the other mothers. Conflict between the sons and the father. Conflict between the family and the church. All of these stress pulled at Wall's family and eventually fractured it. When her father wasn't able to keep his children under control (several of the sons leaving the church permanently), her family was split up.

In the FLDS church, one of the core beliefs is that a man has to have three wives in order to reach the highest level of heaven. Wall's mother was the second wife and there was a lot of trouble between the two women. The first wife, having not been raised in the FLDS church, was not terribly comfortable with the arrangement and didn't know how to interact with a second wife, often choosing to be domineering and authoritarian (keep in mind this story is being told from the point of view of one of the second wife's children, so grain of salt...). After the head of the church - at the time it was Rulon Jeffs, heavily assisted by his son Warren - found out about the family's struggles, Wall's father was assigned a third wife. It was thought that the new addition may have a calming effect on the household, but no. The family's troubles continued. Eventually Wall's father had his second and third wife taken away from him. The trauma of having your family destroyed on the whim of some old man is devastating. Wall does a magnificent job of showing us the effect it had on her and her siblings. 

Matters only got worse with Rulon Jeffs' death. His son, Warren Jeffs, takes over and imposes new restrictions on the community. He marries many of his father's wives. He forces all the followers to take their children out of school. He shuts down community gatherings, even church. Basically the entire community gets more and more isolated, everyone terrified that they will be the next to be banished, the next to have their family taken away.

Warren Jeffs (at the back) with some of his wives.

Elissa Wall eventually became the lead defendant in the first case against Warren Jeffs. When she refused to conform to the expectations of the church, he forced her into an abusive marriage at the age of fourteen (obviously illegal). He was tried and found guilty in a civil suit, then with the raid of the Yearning for Zion ranch in Eldoardo, Texas, he was eventually found criminally guilty and sentenced to prison where he is still serving out his sentence.

 

I can't imagine the level of fear that these people lived with on a daily basis. I can't imagine the isolation and helplessness of those who were brave enough to leave, but who often had no where to go. No resources. No family. Often they didn't even have some sort of ID because their births were not officially recorded. This whole reality is so far removed from my realm of experience that it's difficult for me to remember that Stolen Innocence is nonfiction. But it is. As much as memories can be. 

There are flaws with the book. Wall is very obviously not a writer. She was assisted in writing this book by Lisa Pulitzer, but even so, the language is often awkward and inelegant. On that same note, the pacing is iffy in places, occasionally dragging the story down. But even with the book's technical flaws, it's an exhilarating read. I read this as research for one of my books, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone who's looking for an interesting (and terrifying) real life story. 

Mistborn: A Book Review

The Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson has been on my reading list for quite a while. I love epic fantasy, and I was first introduced to Sanderson by way of Robert Jordan's epic Wheel of Time series. When Robert Jordan died before finishing the 14 book series, Sanderson took over. Both Jordan and Jordan's wife thought Brandon Sanderson could handle the job. I was apprehensive at best, but he surprised me. His writing was stylistically different, but well done. He took the characters I had fallen in love with and continued their development organically. Actually, one of my favorite story arcs of all time is in the books Sanderson wrote. He did WoT right.

So naturally I had high expectations for his own original works.

The first one I read was Elantris which wasn't bad. It wasn't amazing (or even above average), but it featured an epidemic and I'm a sucker for diseases.

Even so, when a lot of my fellow fantasy readers recommended the Mistborn series, I thought I'd give him another chance. After all Elantris was his first widely released book, so maybe he's gotten better. He certainly was great with WoT. So I finally got around to reading the first in the series.

Here's the basic premise: In a world covered with ash and shrouded at night in mist, a young street-rat girl, Vin, discovers that she can use allomancy, a form of magic. She has to learn to control her powers, learn to trust other people, and overthrow the authoritarian god-king.

The plot itself isn't anything new. The execution is average and the writing is average. If I had read this in high school (when I was more indiscriminate) I probably would have enjoyed it. As is, I won't read it again. It's not bad, just not quite up to my standards.

I do want to say there are several things I thought were well done and would have elevated the book if the plot weren't so mediocre.

Firstly, he writes Vin, the protagonist, fairly well. He doesn't stick her in the middle of a love triangle (even though he totally could have). She is self-reliant and skilled. She's deeply flawed when it comes to interpersonal relationships, though to be honest I'm a little sick of the "broken girl learns to trust" gimmick. But he does a fairly good job at writing a female protagonist. Sadly, the vast majority of side characters are male (I only remember two female characters that Vin interacted, both of which were portrayed negatively).

Secondly, his magic system is unique and interesting. The basic idea is that Allomancers (magic users) get their powers from consuming and "burning" metals. Only certain pure metals and alloys are useful. Most can only use one metal, and thus only have one power. These are called Mistings. However there are a few select people who are capable of using all the metals. These are called Mistborn. The magic system is new and dynamic and Sanderson executes it well. It's unusual to find a system this unique that works, so that's a definite plus.

So if you're looking to read something easy and you like fantasy, than Mistborn isn't the worst choice. I might even end up reading the rest of the trilogy since the ebook I bought has all three. On the other hand, there are a lot of other books I would recommend before this one.

Flight Behavior: A Book Review

So I think I'm in love.

I wrote a review a while back about Barbara Kingsolver's spectacular novel, The Poisonwood Bible, of a family of star-crossed missionaries in Africa. It blew me away, and, honestly, I was a little hesitant to read another of her books. How could it possibly be as good? But I finally gave one a shot.

Flight Behavior follows Dellarobia Turnbow, a young woman desperate for a change in the hills of Southern Appalachia. One day, she climbs the mountain behind her house, determined to throw away the life she's been living - two children, a nice if uninteresting husband, a family she never really belonged to - but something stops her. In what verges on religious transcendence, she discovers a miracle. No, a phenomenon. No, a catastrophe. I don't want to give away anything, but what she discovers surpasses her understanding and the understanding of the scientific community.

In one breath, her life is overturned. Her church suddenly views her as blessed by God. Scientists venture into this small backwoods town to study the phenomenon. And well-meaning tourists disrupt the stagnant balance that had previously been Dellarobia's existence.

At first, I was a bit reluctant to relate to this character. Not because of how she was written but because of my own prejudices. Dellarobia is basically what I've always heard called "poor, white trash." She married before she graduated high school because she got pregnant. She stayed with her husband even though that meant a life of diapers, and cleaning, and putting up with the matriarch of this sheep-farmer family. She traded the young, brilliant, enthusiastic woman that she was in for a dollar-store, made-in-china, washed-out version of herself. As someone who grew up poor, it wasn't her poverty that turned me off. It was her absolute hopelessness. But that changes pretty quickly.

At first she sees the phenomenon that landed in her backyard as a sign from God. A sign of beauty and hope. She's not sure what to make of it, but she believes with a child-like certainty that it portends of good things to come. Then the scientists come.

The head scientist - a graceful, brilliant, foreign man - makes such an impression on this sheltered young mother that she falls almost instantly in love. Not exactly love for who he is, himself, but for what he stands for. Education. Knowledge. Opportunity. She quickly offers her land for his use and he sets up a portable trailer house and a makeshift laboratory. The more she learns, the clearer it becomes that this wonder in her backyard is a tragedy of catastrophic proportions.

Flight Behavior skillfully portrays the small dramas of this Appalachia town, complete with the exciting new opening of a thrift store the next town over. It shows the humanity of those who live paycheck to paycheck and the casual apathy that is almost required to survive in the cloistered, claustrophobic atmosphere of a dying small town. It presents, addresses, and demolishes prejudices and assumptions held on all sides. The intensely conservative distrust of science, outsiders, and anything new. The highly educated's arrogant assumptions regarding the inferiority, inability, and lack of self-determination with regards to the uneducated. It's strikes all the universal chords of family, ambition, privilege, respect, and that quintessentially human thirst for something .... more.

It made me question my own prejudices. It forced me to consider a new point of view. It compelled me to recognize the fact that I cannot know all of someone else's circumstances. That each person is valid and contributes to the humanity of us all. The main character grows immensely throughout the book and takes the reader along for the ride. It shows us that something can be both beautiful and heartbreaking. That a person can be both tragic and strong. Victim and oppressor. Ignorant and brilliant. That for what it's worth, each individual matters. And that in the face of overwhelming odds, it's worth fighting.

The writing itself is beautifully crafted, and I must admit, Barbara Kingsolver may give my all-time favorite author, Margaret Atwood, a run for her money when it comes to beauty and lyricism in writing. It looks like I've got a new favorite author, so now comes the hard part. Which of her other books should I read next?

Phenomenal Woman: A Remembrance of Dr. Maya Angelou

Dr. Maya Angelou touched many lives in many different ways. She was a brilliant writer, poet, dancer, and humanitarian. For me, she has always been a part of the fabric of my life.

I grew up in a household where her name was common. My mother loved her work and quoted her often. For me, her name was associated with lyrical fragments and reverence. I actually did not read a complete poem or any of her prose until I was much older. Instead she just existed as a part of my childhood background.

Like Maya Angelou, I grew up in rural Arkansas. Every time we drove through Stamps on our way to Texarkana and beyond, my mother would turn me.

"Grace, do you know who lived here? Have I told you?"

"Yes, Momma."

"Maya Angelou grew up here. She was the same age as you."

"I know, Momma."

I accepted her existence with the casual indifference of a child. She wasn't real to me. She was a name, a few pretty words, but she had my mother's admiration. I knew she had to be something wonderful.

Through high school and college, I read a few of her poems, but not in any concerted manner. One verse, one image, did stick to my mind. Maybe it spoke to my adolescent sense of sexuality. Maybe it was the celebration of a woman's body. Maybe it was just the rhythm of her words. But they stuck with me.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

It wasn't until a few months ago that I realized how much in common I had with her. I finally picked up a copy of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It blew me away. It was beautiful and tragic and harsh and uplifting. It was lyrical and gritty and intense. I was in love. 

Though I have thankfully not suffered the same tragedies as Ms. Angelou, I knew the town where she grew up. It was my town. Her neighbors were my neighbors. Her culture, my culture. It made me want to write about my childhood, about that isolated southern world were we both spent our formative years. 

Then on May 28th, 2014, Dr. Maya Angelou died. 

I've followed her on Facebook and that's where I heard the news. I was devastated. She had always existed for me. She was woven into the fabric of my understanding. She was gone and I would never get to meet her. I had to tell my mother.

That was a call I didn't want to make. I knew my love for Ms. Angelou paled in comparison to that of my mother's. I avoid the topic at first and then blurted it ungracefully. 

"Momma ... Maya Angelou died."

For the last week she's been on my mind. I see snippets of her poems and inspirational quotes everywhere. I've started my second novel that takes place in a small southern town and I see her in my words and characters. When I picked up I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I also bought a copy of her most recent autobiography about her relationship with her mother, Mom & Me & Mom. 

I skipped all the books in between because the central theme of the novel I'm writing focuses on the loving and destructive dynamic between a mother and daughter. I started and finished the book in a day.

It didn't have the same powerful impact as Caged Bird, but it was well written. It lacked some of the flowing lyricism, but I'm sure that's just an evolution of her writing style. She talked about her mother with the same awe and admiration I often feel for mine. Their relationship was tumultuous. Her mother left her at the age of three with her paternal grandmother. Betrayal, abandonment, and love wove a strong thread between these two strong women. It is definitely a book I would recommend, but only if you've read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. That book I recommend over all others.

And thought I'm sure many of you have read this in the days since her passing, I leave you with a video of the poet herself reciting her amazing work "Still I Rise."

The Classics Project: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is the debut novel of Carson McCullers. It centers around a deaf/mute man named Singer and the people that he attracts to him.

Before I get into my review too much, I do want to say I think this book is worth a read. It's very different from anything I've read before and I think it will take me a while to decided if I "liked" it. But it did make me think. There are also several spoilers, but I've tried to leave out the major turning points. So read ahead at your own discretion.

The main characters are Singer, his deaf/mute friend Antonapoulos, the tomboyish and musically inclined young girl Mick Kelly, the educated and idealistic black physician Dr. Copeland, the alcoholic would-be labor organizer Jake Blount, and the observant Biff Brannon who owns a local all-night diner.

McCullers weaves these characters around each other in a vast tapestry of a late 1930s Southern town. There's nothing particularly special about Singer (except for maybe his vast patience), but he pulls the lonely and downtrodden to him with a gravitational-like force. Each of the side characters are attracted to Singer because he is a deaf/mute who is willing to let them talk. They come to him individually and talk endlessly about themselves and their own lives, imagining that Singer is the one person who really understands them. Because of his silence, he becomes a reflection of them.

I almost pitied Singer his unfounded confidant status except that he does the exact same thing with his deaf/mute friend. Singer who uses sign language talks endlessly to Antonapoulos who doesn't. Singer is absolutely certain that his friend understands him without any evidence of it.

I thought the book would go on to some kind of commentary about how relationships that are based on false pretenses (seeing as how none of the characters actually understand each other) are ultimately unsatisfying, but no. Everyone seems completely happy as long as they have someone to talk at. When circumstances take that away they are exactly where they began or worse off. At one point, two of the secondary characters that have quite a lot in common actually get together and talk to each other. They end up not only not satisfied, but furious. Like they are just happier when the person they're talking to doesn't talk back.

The only character that seems to have any clue at all is the diner owner, Biff Brannon. He watches all of these people hover around Singer like moths around a nightlight. He knows that each of them are just projecting themselves onto Singer and he doesn't understand why they're all satisfied. In the end, nothing really changes even for him.

At times, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter seems so pointlessly nihilistic and at others it's like I'm the only one not getting it. I've read a lot of reviews of this book and, honestly, I feel like the readers are projecting themselves onto the book just like the characters and Singer. They make something larger out of what's there and everyone's satisfied. While I do think the book is worth a read, I don't think it's some amazing masterpiece. There are a lot of details that bothered me, but even the big picture seemed somehow less than what I'd expected.

Carson McCullers is a good technical writer and I would be interested in reading another of her books, but The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is by no means one of my favorite classics.

The Classic Project Extras: To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is arguably one of the great American novels. The reason this book wasn't on my Classic Project list from the beginning is that I've already read it. Like most people my age, I read it in school, but I picked it up again as inspiration for my new novel which will be part of the "Southern Literature" genre that Harper Lee's masterpiece exemplifies.

So here's a Classics Project Extra of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

When I read this in my early teens, I fell in love. Harper Lee has both a mastery of the language and the ability to tell moving stories. But in rereading this as an adult, there was a lot I missed in the first reading.

Even though Scout, the main character, is younger than I was when I read the book, as a reader I related more to her point of view and saw the world through her eyes. Given my age and the fact that it is written in first person, that's understandable. But now, as an adult, it's fascinating to see what I missed. I had little to no understanding of most of the adults' true motivations or the full depth of material. I missed most of the winks and nods that Harper Lee deftly wove in and that Scout, too, missed entirely.

One thing that struck me on this read-through (that the first time I accepted without question) was the casualness with which Scout views oppression. I grew up in a small Southern town that still had de facto segregation, so Scout's world wasn't too far off from my own. Now, with a decade of detachment from that small town, the institutionalized racism is shocking and intense. Before, much like Scout, I understood that that was just the way things were. Now it colored my reading with a darker hue.

Which brings me to perhaps the crux of the book.

Most people see To Kill a Mockingbird as Harper Lee's love letter to her father, and as a daughter of a terribly impressive and admirable man, I empathize with that facet of the novel, but for me there is a much more pressing issue presented.

SPOILERS AHEAD

In the book, Scout's father, Atticus Finch, is the defense attorney for a black man named Tom Robinson who is accused of raping a white woman. Her father defends his client despite the town's condemnation. He demonstrates the innocence - or at the very least the reasonable doubt of guilt - of his client, but the jury still finds the man guilty.

This is shown as a very small victory because the jury took so long to decide the defendant's fate. The book shows the hard struggle and sometimes inevitable defeat of the fight for equality, and I think that is all many readers take away from the trial.

Near the end of the book there is an incident where a recluse known as Boo Radley kills a man to protect Scout and her brother. Atticus and the Sheriff decide not to report the circumstances of the death because they don't want to force Boo Radley into the spotlight. Atticus tells Scout that forcing him into court would be the same as killing a mockingbird - destroying something precious that doesn't hurt anyone. So the death is reported as an accident and Boo Radley's name goes unmentioned.

Now I don't disagree with either of these lessons. 1) That even if you know you're going to lose, there are some fights worth fighting. 2) That the weak need to be protected for their own good but also for the good of the protectors.

What struck me was the intense juxtaposition between these two incidents. Tom Robinson, a black man, was forced to go to trial and sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. Boo Radley, a white man, actually killed a man, and - though it was obviously in the defense of children - the truth is again hidden but this time to his benefit.

I'm still struggling to process how very wrong this situation is. Part of me truly understands Atticus and the Sheriff not wanting to get Boo involved, but at the same time this compromise of truth is tainted by the white privilege that Boo enjoys. Would the sheriff have been so understanding if a black man had killed a white man in defense of black children? Would Atticus? I would very much like to think they would, but I can't help but feel they wouldn't.

I know this makes the characters flawed and real, but if feels like the book doesn't even see extreme wrongness of the situation. Scout certainly doesn't and I really can't tell if Harper Lee did. The disparity and the lack of awareness illustrates the problem with institutionalized racism. Even the "progressive" characters fall easily into the established system of privilege and oppression.

I will read this book again as a parent and I will enjoy it as I did this time and the time before. As a child, I thought Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird was complex and nuanced. As an adult, I find it even more so and I have solid faith that each time I read it, I will find new, fascinating, and sometimes disturbing facets. And that's pretty much the ultimate compliment for any book.

The Classics Project: The Hunt for Red October

Life has been kind of crazy lately. I'm getting ready to move into a new place and I've started a new job. I actually finished reading this book a while ago, but never got around to writing the review, so please forgive its lateness.

The Classics Project presents The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy.

I selected this book to read next because I was so affected by The Color Purple that I needed something completely different. In a way, I had quite high expectations for Mr. Clancy because all through my childhood, I can remember my dad in his recliner, a thick Tom Clancy book in his hands. And, still through childhood's lens, I expected that anything my father loved, I would love.

Needless to say, the reality was completely different.

It's not that I disliked The Hunt for Red October, the famously exciting Cold War submarine exploit, it's just that it came nowhere near my expectations.

First off, Clancy's obsession with military minutiae was at best uninteresting and often tedious. For people who have an especial fascination with all things military, this book would be rich and satisfying, but for me, it fell flat. I really don't feel the need to narratively trace every step involved in satellite communication or the exact measurements of each switch and dial in a submarine.

This compulsion of Clancy's was made doubly dull by the fact that all of the technology in his book that is presented as so high tech is nearly thirty years old. I have a thorough understanding of modern technology that surpasses anything presented in this book. I understand that the book is limited by its time. It was published in 1984, and at the time things like wireless communication were exciting and new. Sadly, that excitement doesn't hold up through the years.

Which brings me to another point. The anachronistic Cold War attitude of the book was jarring for someone who was born in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell. I did not grow up with the shadow of an imminent nuclear war or the fanatical patriotism that was so prevalent in the 1980s. Clancy takes every chance to declare how wonderful America and Freedom and "God and Country" are. He even takes especial pains to point out that Captain Ramius, the captain of the Soviet submarine, is not truly Russian because his mother was Lithuanian. You know ... so we can still cheer for him, because if he was Russian, how could any reader empathize? This narrow, black and white view of a very complex time comes off as pure propaganda and leaves a false, treacly impression in my mind.

From a purely analytical perspective, as a fellow author, I found Clancy's structure of the book weak. Jack Ryan is supposedly the protagonist of The Hunt for Red October, but I only know that because I've been told. I would've guessed that it was the more interesting character, Soviet captain Marko Ramius. The lack of depth in his protagonist is probably intrinsically connected to the book's format. Clancy jumps from viewpoint to viewpoint, giving the reader scenes from the POVs of all kinds of characters all over the Atlantic. While this does afford the reader a unique, big-picture view of the plot, it severely limits any character development.

Ultimately, there were several very thrilling scenes. Clancy can certainly amp up the excitement when he wants to, but thanks to the lack of interesting characters, the preponderance of military trivialities, and the anachronistic world view, I was left unsatisfied with The Hunt for Red October.

I think next time I'll just stick with the movie.

The Classics Project: The Color Purple

I know I wrote my review of Slaughterhouse Five just yesterday, but I literally read Alice Walker's The Color Purple in two evenings. I had actually been planning to read J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye next, but I was at the train station when I hit the abrupt ending of Slaughterhouse Five. My boyfriend and I had just been in an awesome little bookstore in downtown Denver called The Tattered Cover (check it out!) where I picked up a copy of Ms. Walker's classic for four dollars. So since Bob was still monopolizing my copy of Catcher, I started The Color Purple.

The Color Purple is the story of Celie, a young, bright, abused woman who gets married to spare her sister a life of drudgery and abuse. She and her sister become separated by men and time and continents. In many ways it's a story about a girl who finds what "God" means to her in a life of trials and hardships.

I can see why this book has so often been banned. On the very first page incestuous rape is mentioned casually as a fact of every day life. It goes on to question the idea of "God," the idea of marriage, of love. What does it mean to exist as a black woman in the pre-WWII South? Celie's experiences are heartbreaking, demeaning, intense, and, at times, beautiful. I cannot adequately describe how moving the story is. I can only say that there is a reason I finished it so quickly.

The book itself is an epistolary novel, meaning it is written as a series of letters. For the first half or more of the book, all of these letters are written by Celie and addressed "Dear God." As the story progresses we get to see some of Celie's sister, Nettie, and experience her life. Two very different lives - one in rural Georgia, one in the heart of the African Congo - are juxtaposed to show the growth of each sister. Both grow from young, victimized children to strong, compelling women.

One of the most spectacular elements, at least for me, is the language. Celie writes in a deep southern dialect and with little benefit of education. For most of the book I had to "hear" the words in my head to understand them, and at points, read them aloud. This may have slowed the speed of my reading a bit, but I got into the rhythm of Celie's speech surprisingly easily.

Having grown up in far South East Arkansas (where I was taught in social studies about the War of Northern Aggression), I was very familiar with this speech pattern. Many of the older people in the community spoke the same way as Celie so it was at once startling and comfortable for me. Much to my boyfriend's dismay, I fell back into those speech patterns myself. "What you doin'?" I asked at one point. He just stared up at me in horror.

Perhaps the most wonderful aspect - and one that shows Alice Walker's spectacular skill as a writer - is how organically poetry was woven into what some might think a backwoods, unrefined narrative. The story and the language itself become poetry.

He say, Celie, git the belt. The children be outside the room peeking through the cracks. It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood. I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That's how come I know trees fear man.

This awareness of the poetic is woven throughout what otherwise could become a depressing tale of oppression. But Alice Walker transcends individual sorrow, exposing the universal threads of womanhood, grief, and survival. This book is stunning. a beautiful and life changing read. I would read it again in a heartbeat.



And don't worry about me writing another Classics Project review tomorrow. I'm starting Anna Karenina and I dare say it'll take me longer than two evenings. Also, if you're interested, there is a wonderful documentary on Alice Walker by PBS's American Masters. You can watch it here.

The Classics Project: Slaughterhouse Five

Before I get into the heart of my review, let me say a quick apology. I'm sorry my first entry in the Classics Project didn't come until half way through February. I actually didn't even start reading one of the books on my list until a few days ago because I was still hung up on Robert Jordan's epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time (blog post to follow). But I finally got around to it and, so far, I am thoroughly enjoying myself.

The first book I decided to read was Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.

My mother has always loved Vonnegut because, as she often says, he writes just a little to the left of reality. This is one of those books that I am honestly surprised I haven't read already. How did I miss him when I was picking up my mother's love of Ray Bradbury and Heinlein? Now this book isn't general classified as "science fiction," but that's what the tone of wonder and awareness reminds me of. Also the aliens, but I'll get to them in a bit.

In many ways, I think Kurt Vonnegut's life must have felt a little to the left of reality. At the age of 23, he was captured by the Nazis and held as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. There, he witnessed the firebombing of Dresden, arguably one of the deadliest targeting of civilians in World War II. I think this must have given him a unique perspective both on death and on life.

Slaughterhouse Five starts out with a narrator (that is never directly identified as Vonnegut himself, only heavily implied) describing his journey and his decision to write a book about Dresden. While it appears that the narrator is the main character, in chapter two the book switches abruptly from first person POV to third. As it turns out, the narrator is only watching the story unfold. 

In truth, Slaughterhouse Five is the story of Billy Pilgrim, himself a prisoner of war and a witness to the fire-bombing of Dresden. But in a way, that is only window dressing. Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time. He flits between moments of his life at random, jumping from the war to his wedding to his senility as an old man, back and forth and all moments in-between. From what I've heard, this makes it difficult for some readers to follow, but I had no problems.

At its core, Slaughterhouse Five is an anti-war book. Not because the author condemns the soldiers or the generals or the civilians at home. In the very first chapter the book announces itself a failure because “nothing intelligent can be said about a massacre.” So it doesn’t even try. It skirts around the bombing in a surprisingly elegant, though at times sporadic, dance of moments and thoughts and strangeness.  

Perhaps the strangest aspect of this book is not its schizophrenic structure, but it's delving into the fantastical. At one point in his life, Billy believes he is abducted by aliens and taken to live in a zoo where he is given a missing adult film star as his mate. The planet's name is Tralfamadore. The reader experiences Billy's time on Tralfamadore as vividly as the bombed out wreckage of Dresden. There he learns that each moment exists forever. That when someone dies, they are only dead in that moment and there are plenty of moments before where they are not.

I think this is integral to the book. Aside from being arguably the entire point, I feel it justifies the structure. Slaughterhouse Five is not a long book, but I felt no urgency when reading it. It wasn’t an edge-of-your-seat kind of book. I had almost no interest in what happened next, but I loved reading it. I loved each individual moment in the book which to me felt whole and satisfying on its own. It made me take notice of each word in a way that I am not generally so aware. In many ways this creates an attitude of inevitability, that what is has been and will always be, because the moment exists forever. Children will always go to war and be killed. Humans will always look for answers and be disappointed.

One subtlety that appears near the end is the question of whether or not this is all real. This question is not asked directly, and Billy Pilgrim never once doubts his extraterrestrial experiences, but then we, the readers, see aspects of his visions pop up in the work of a second rate scifi author. Did Billy really get kidnapped by aliens? Did he really live in a zoo on Tralfamadore? Or is all of that just a delusion caused by the trauma of witnessing a massacre? Does that make his experiences any less real?

And then it was over. The ending as strange, as startling, as disturbing, as enjoyable as the rest of the book had been. So it goes. 

MaddAddam: A Book Review

MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood is the third installment of her apocalyptic series that started way back in 2003 with the phenomenal Oryx and Crake. The series explores a world of powerful corporations and biotech and the consequences that a single individual's actions can have on the world.

Let me start by saying that I loved the first two books. Oryx and Crake was exciting and fascinating and set the apocalyptic stage perfectly. The Year of the Flood, the second book, is my personal favorite. It follows an extreme sect of environmental/religious fundamentalists and two of the members' survival before and after a plague known as the waterless flood. Both of these books raised significant questions not only about their fictional world, but about our world and our belief systems. They made me question myself and the culture I live in. They gave me a new way to think about our world.

Then comes the much-anticipated end of the series: MaddAddam. I live in a small town with only one bookstore and I bought the only copy they had on release day. I went home, read it, and finished it within a couple of days. So why has it taken me nearly two weeks to write my review?

Throughout my reading of this final book, I had mixed feelings. I love Margaret Atwood's writing style. She is eloquent and thoughtful and her word use is superb. I love the world she created. I love the characters. Yet...I did not love this book.

It was okay. It wasn't bad. It was significantly better than a lot of other stuff that manages to get published. But it wasn't "Margaret Atwood" good. It wasn't what I had come to expect ever since I picked up The Handmaid's Tale when I was a sophomore in high school. I was disappointed.

It's hard to convey just what that disappointment meant to me. I even tried to convince myself that I wasn't disappointed. I was just having a couple of "off" days. Maybe something else was stressing me out so I couldn't enjoy the book properly. Then I finished it and realized that, no, it wasn't me. For the first time, I was disappointed with a Margaret Atwood book.

I think the main reason the book was lacking in comparison to its predecessors was that the first two books were full of powerful questions. MaddAddam was full of answers, and, honestly, they weren't as satisfying as the questions. It felt like the entire book was an attempt by Margaret Atwood to tie up the loose ends of the first two books. It lacked the inspiration, the spark that brought the others to life. It felt like literary checkbook balancing. I think I would have been just as satisfied if she'd never have written this book. In other words, it was very anticlimactic.

For an author that is known for writing powerful and relevant speculative fiction, MaddAddam falls far short of the bar she set for herself. The writing is technically good and the characters are the same ones that we fell in love with in the first place, but the book itself did not meet my expectations.

I haven't read any other reviews and, frankly, I'm not interested in them. I understand that many people will probably rave about the book and it is good. Just not in comparison to her other works. This experience has been much more to me than just a disappointing read. It was a fall from grace. Margaret Atwood has always been my inspiration. The paragon I aspired to be like.

And she still is.

But now I know even the best authors can write mediocre books.