Oh, Alice Hoffman, Why so Dark?

I know it, I know it, you're not supposed to make assumptions about writers based on their subject matter though we do it all the time, especially in book group discussions. In my continuing quest to catch up on all of the Alice Hoffman novels I've missed, I listened to The Story Sisters over the past couple of weeks and, oy vay, this is her darkest one yet. I, at least, can't help but wonder what was going on in her head or heart when she wrote this tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. It's so relentlessly depressing.

All the elements are there for the asking; the parents' divorce with the dad getting so caught up in his new life that he forgets his three daughters, the mother, Annie, so centered on her own pain that she totally fails to see her daughters' strange behavior, the girls, Elv, Meg and Claire, living in a fantasy world where no one can hurt them, speaking their own invented language, burying themselves in their loss.

And then the catalyst for Elv's unraveling, which we learn about in doled out little bits of information throughout the novel, not really quite understanding the evil that's been done. Elv, kidnapped, molested, sacrifices herself to save her younger sister Claire, who can never bring herself to talk about that fateful day. When Elv returns home she is astounded that her mother can't intuit what has happened. When Annie seems oblivious, Elv begins the long years of acting out that will all but destroy the fragile Story family.

Cutting herself, by the very nature of the act, a cri de coeur for attention, goes unnoticed. Sneaking out at night, promiscuity, drugs, anti-social behavior, all result in Elv's being sent away to an institution for incorrigible teens, and adds up to a tale of hopelessness that any good reviewer simply can't recommend. Why would you want to spend time with these people? Perhaps it all goes back to my earlier question - why do we read? Perhaps, in this case, it's to say, "there but for the grace of god, go I."

Though some remnant of salvation evolves in the end, I just don't know that it's worth the wait. Ms. Hoffman's writing is, as always, that beautifully overused word, "luminous." That will never change. Next up, The Paris Wife. Too bad, we all already know how THAT worked out!

Sandra Brown, Yes, Sandra Brown

A typical Monday at my library means that friends and co-workers are like ships passing in the night. Scores of book carts are waiting to be shelved. Meetings and programs are lined up from dawn til dusk. You better hope nothing goes wrong with the lights, the AC, bugs of any kind, plumbing, you get the picture. So, it was delightful that my pal Andrea and I passed each other in the circulation office; she coming off the desk, me going on. She had a Jude Devereaux paperback in hand and asked me on the QT if she should think any less of her doctor for reading Devereaux.
Cracked me up. My immediate, snobby reaction was, hell yeah. Then I rethought the fact that I was planning to blog about Sandra Brown tonight and squashed that snobby voice in my head. No, Andrea, your poor doctor is probably stressed to the max and needs escapism in the evening. She agreed and we both felt good that we had addressed our elitist attitude toward literature. With whom will I play these little pas de deux when she is gone?

I wrote the other day about why we read but one of the motivations I forgot to mention was peer pressure. There's nothing like having someone whose opinion you respect ask you if you're familiar with such and such a book and having to hang your head in shame. Of course, librarians have the perfect excuse. We DON'T HAVE TIME! But when two members of our book discussion group both said that they wanted to talk about Sandra Brown's novel Rainwater, I'll admit I looked at them with crooked eyebrows.

Still, I remembered when Ms. Brown and her husband attended our reading festival several years ago and I had the honor of introducing her to the crowd. We were surprised and disappointed at the attendance, maybe 200 people in a room that holds 500. She was undaunted and unfazed. She gave a beautiful, heartfelt presentation talking more about the joy of writing than about any one particular book. Check your local catalog if you doubt her prolific output. She had a fan in me forever.

Rainwater is not her usual genre. As a matter of fact, Booklist calls it a huge leap from Ms. Brown's romantic suspense. One might even call it a parable since it has elements of a biblical tale of good vs. evil, a David vs. Goliath if you will. In a small Texas town, Gilead, during the depression years, a young Ella Barron, abandoned by her husband, perhaps over the birth of their son with a rare form of autism once called "idiot savant," (think Dustin Hoffman in Rainman), struggles to make ends meet as  the owner of a rooming house.

The local doctor asks Ella if she'd be willing to take in an old friend of his who's looking for a peaceful place to rest while he's being treated for a terminal disease. David Rainwater is like no other man Ella has ever met. As you read you must keep reminding yourself that we're back in the early 1930's, that morees are different from today's and that Ella's reputation depends upon her circumspection in her interactions with any of her boarders. She fights hard, stubbornly against her attraction to Mr. Rainwater.

Mr. Rainwater, ever the gentleman, isn't having it. He takes an interst in Ella's son, an instance that starts the ball rolling for Ella to see him as more than just a withdrawn little boy who throws tantrums. Researching his disease, she finds that Solly may have more going on in his head than anyone would have believed and begins to hope that he will one day be able to learn, to be on his own, maybe even to thrive.

Beyond the personal story of Ella and David is the backdrop of troubling times where once comfortable farmers are losing their lands to foreclosure, their crops to the dustbowl, and their animals to a government program that pays the farmers to destroy their cattle even though people are starving in the shanties on the edge of town. Racism is in full bloom and the good old boys who make up the police department are threatened when a new charismatic black minster comes to town with an uncanny ability to instill pride and hope into those who have had little of either.

David Rainwater is a man with, it would seem, little to lose. He invests himself in the townspeople's struggles, he organizes what might now be called neighborhood watches, he stands against the cruelty of the government men and the local bullies who would keep food from the mouths of the starving children.
Yet all while it's happening the reader has a constant feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. Hoping against hope we understand that it will take a tragedy of epic proportions to set the town of Gilead right. I won't peek at the ending, though I want to very badly. Kudos to Sandra Brown for a thoughtful novel with enough twists to keep this fussy reader on edge.

Why We Read

An interaction with a customer at the reference desk yesterday started me thinking about reading tastes, how they change (or do they?) over the years, why we began reading, why we read now, and how and what we'll read in our futures. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that if you're presently following this book blog that you're already a book junkie with an insatiable desire to read books and to read about books - even if you never choose to open any that I might recommend.

So this woman came up with a copy of a Wilbur Smith novel and wanted to know if I'd ever read him. Of course, I did my famous bait and switch dance and admitted that no, I hadn't read Wilbur, but that I've heard wonderful things about him. She didn't really care if I'd read him anyway, she only wanted to know what the next title was in that particular series, which was easier to discover than it's ever been since Jessica showed us what great info Wikipedia has on reading in a series. Sorry reference librarians but it's true! Google it! Ha.

Anyway, I was thinking "what if she'd asked me what I was reading now?" She'd have probably looked at me like I had three heads. The answer is Jane Gardam. The title, Old Filth. Fess up, how many of you have read her? Heard of her? Well, you know. I hadn't either. But, as I follow about 30 other book blogs written by some pretty amazing amateurs, and then read how many review magazines and websites, certain names come up again and again and one's curiosity gets the best of them.

Gardam is in that cadre of marvelously dry, witty, British women that my sister, my mother and I would read. I'm thinking Anita Brookner, Margaret Drabble. She's been shortlisted for or has won all the prestigious British awards, the Whitbread, the Man Booker, the Orange Prize, but still it seems that these types of authors get no respect in this country. Of course, she's also published by Europa editions with whom you know I'm having a cover love affair.

                  Old Filth is an insider nickname for a very sad old man by the name of Edward Feathers. I say sad in that his successful life as a barrister has left him wealthily retired, widowed, and alone, back in England after years in Hong Kong. He and his wife Betty were childless and one gathers that there's an interesting back story to that situation which will eventually come clear. Though married for over fifty years they seem to know nothing about each other. At least he knows nothing about her. A follow up book, The Man in the Wooden Hat, is written from Betty's perspective and I can't wait to get into that!

The irony is that Eddie's life was, in fact, amazingly full, but his attempts at connection were thwarted by bad timing and worse luck. Born in Malaysia where his parents were stationed at the height of The Raj, think of the wonderful Raj Quartet, Eddie was motherless within a few hours of his birth. His father, a shell shocked WW I veteran who was barely holding it together before the death of his wife, refuses to acknowledge his son, so Eddie is happily left to be loved by the wet nurse and her family.

As he approaches school age though, father decides that Eddie should be sent back to England to be educated and the scenes of his removal from the indigenous family that he's attached himself to are heartrending. Ms. Gardam has a gorgeous way with words but, even more, a razor sharp insight into the effects of British imperialism on those who had to live through it on both sides of "the pond." 

Her novel throws a clear-eyed light on the British private school system as Eddie thrives in his studies and makes fast friends, until World War II intervenes.

So why does this book appeal to me? Why am I also currently listening to - don't faint now - a Sandra Brown novel? Why am I putting off the only book on my kitchen counter that everyone is talking about - The Paris Wife? And we're back to the first question, why do we read? Sometimes it has to be to learn how a great writer puts words together on the page and comes up with critical acclaim. Other times it's just to travel to a new place in a different time. Often it's just to relax after a particularly painful reading experience. Perhaps the more astute question is "how can we not read?"

Fun Cleaning Nabokov's House

Run, don't walk to your nearest library or bookstore and grab a copy of this laugh out loud entertaining debut novel by Leslie Daniels. I read it in a weekend and have been talking it up to all of my friends who have trouble sleeping at night. I simply marvel at authors who can come up with a subject that hasn't been done again and again and again.Or, I should say, a new twist on a subject that has been done again and again.

Barb Barrett is a woman you just can't help but root for. She's smart and snarky and sensitive and poignant, a perfect blend of most of us. When her husband says something that gets on her last frayed nerve, she doesn't think twice about grabbing her two kids and walking out the door. That's the problem, not thinking twice, not planning, not understanding that she's the city girl, the outsider in a small upstate New York town where the soon to be ex knows everyone and knows how to manipulate the system to his advantage.

By the time he takes her to the cleaners and the kids with him, Barb is in a funk so deep that you think she'll never be able to drag herself out of bed. But you'd be wrong. One day, living out of her car, she parks outside the kids' school yard to watch her little darlings at play and sees a perfect little yellow house with a for sale sign on it. Motivated out of her torpor, she makes a move to settle down and build a home for her children that will knock the socks off the snippy little social worker who is now sleeping with her ex-husband.

And then she finds the index cards. Hidden away in a drawer, an almost completed novel in the handwriting of one of the previous owners of the house, Vladimir Nabokov! The discovery boosts Barb's morale and sets in motion a series of hilarious events on her quest to earn enough money to go to court and win back custody of her kids.

Even though the plot is out of this world unbelievable, Daniels writes with such authenticity about small town life. Each character jumps off the page with recognition, from the concerned mail carrier whose wife just happens to be a publicist, to the washed up, middle aged sports icon who now runs the sharpest rowing crew at the local college. This book is filled with so much humanity, so much truth about the foibles, the best and worst in all of us.

 I simply sighed with satisfaction throughout as Daniels hit me with one perfect metaphor after another. I'm envious and half in love with an author who can do this. Vladimir Nabokov isn't the only one who can pen a perfect novel! Learn more about Ms. Daniels: http://www.lesliedaniels.com/blog/

Oh Africa! When will they stop Pillaging You?

If you thought that the BP blowout in the gulf of Mexico was damaging to our country, to tourism, to the economy, you have no idea how really horrific things could be. At least here in the United States we still have the wherewithal to rant and rave and pass laws that may put a damper on these global corporations that thrive on short cuts and irresponsibility.

But what happens if you don't have a voice? Many of you may have been introduced to big oil's influence in Africa, Nigeria in particular, when you read Little Bee. In that novel readers learned what happens to villagers who refuse to leave so that the oil companies can move in. Children are not exempt from the cruelty.

In a new novel by Nigerian author Helon Habila, called Oil on Water, this subject matter is ratcheted up by several degrees but with more nuance than Chris Cleave's book. Each character in this deceptively simple, highly accessible story has a kind of humanity to him that forces the reader to dig a little deeper in an attempt to understand how it is that African countries seem so ripe for exploitation.

Rufus is our narrator, a delightfully unassuming young man, recently graduated from journalism school and assigned to work with Zaq, a hardened, experienced but jaded reporter who was once Rufus's idol. In the Niger delta where Rufus and Zaq work and grew up, BP has gotten a strong toehold.

Empty promises are made by BP's London staffers, the villagers will all get rich, sharing in the fruits of their land. If the tribal chiefs refuse to work with the oil companies they simply disappear. Villagers are exiled to islands where they will starve before they can rebuild their lives, similar to what we did to our Native American tribes, except that this is happening today, right under our noses.
When the wife of the BP rep. in Port Harcourt is kidnapped, Rufus gets the assignment by default, two other reporters dealing with kidnappers were executed a few days before. It's the chance of a lifetime but he has to weigh the danger to himself since he is the sole support of his sister Boma, whose face was disfigured in a fire from an exploding oil rig.

As Rufus and Zaq try to infiltrate the various villages and remote islands where Isabel and her driver might be held, readers once again get a history lesson through fiction. From Rufus's journalist's eye we get an unflinching look at the militants', the villagers', and even the oil company's points of view. Reviewers say the Mr. Habila may have a screenplay in the works and I believe that this would work well in a Blood Diamonds kind of way. It's not an easy subject but we need to know what's going on outside of our comfy little corner of the world.