Sue Miller

Several years ago Sue Miller was a guest at the Southwest Florida Reading Festival and, because I had made the contact with her, I got to share the stage and introduce her to the crowd. I was so excited - let's face it, most librarians are author stalkers to some degree, but once we meet them it's easy to become tongue tied. In this case though, she was the one who seemed reticent to strike up a conversation. I would almost describe my impression of her as melancholy. Interestingly, that's how her press photo appears as well, and readers familiar with her tremendous output will likely admit that there's nothing uplifting about it.

The Lake Shore Limited is no exception. I've read so many fabulous books, one right after the other lately, that I almost didn't stick with this novel because I'd been spoiled. It didn't grab me right out of the gate. The atmosphere of sadness is palpable yet it draws the reader in. One feels the need to pursue these characters as they try to navigate life as normal, functioning people even though one senses the turmoil roiling right beneath the surfaces.

Leslie and Pierce are in Boston for the opening of a new play written by their dear friend Billy, Wilhelmina, Gertz. The play, The Lake Shore Limited, is about a man who is in anguish over his plans to leave his wife until he hears that she may have been the victim of a terrorist bombing of a train in Chicago. The guilt that he feels about ending their relationship is mitigated by the dream of a future with his lover. Until, that is, she voices the relief that he fleetingly feels when he realizes that his wife Charlotte's death would release him from having to tell her he's leaving.

Once he hears the ugliness of his secret thoughts come from the mouth of his lover, he can no longer even look at her. Truth has broken the spell and he will now wait for word of his wife's life or death with the realization that he will always be with her. As the novel progresses we realize that Billy's play was written from the depth of her own conflicted feelings about the death of her lover, Gus, who was Leslie's baby brother and how Gus's death has created an uncomfortably unbreakable bond between Billy and Leslie.

If this sounds a tad complicated then you're right, it is. That's what gives this novel its supreme strength. People are complicated - relationships are complicated - and Miller is supremely gifted at exposing what goes on beneath our surfaces in a painfully honest way. Her description of the day when Billy realizes that Gus must have been on one of the planes that was flown into the World Trade Center is a masterful piece of work. The sense of dislocation, confusion, loss of time - the shock of understanding how little she actually knew this man/boy she was living with - is devastating.

I had planned to go into a rant about 9/11 - about how people can't let it rest, put it behind them, and how this latest controversy of the Islamic Cultural Center to be built nearby is merely an excuse for politicians to make points with their constituents and fall all over each other to see who can be uglier. Believe it or not, reading Miller's book this morning before work (rather than the newspaper) has actually calmed me down on that subject. Plus, I started reading David Remnick's book, The Bridge, about President Obama back when I still hoped he could be all things to all people.

I'm also rereading the fabulous Olive Kitteridge, taking notes for an upcoming book discussion, the first of our "season" here in Estero, Florida. My starred review of Philip Roth's latest novel, Nemesis, appeared in the August edition of Library Journal - check it out!

More Thoughts on Lionel Shriver

I'm beginning to really appreciate Ms. Shriver's ferociously dark sense of humor as I continue to listen to So Much for That. As my commute to work is short it may take some time for me to finish this book but I know that I will. There are times when I'm driving down the road and actually gasp out loud thinking, "she didn't say that!"

There are long philosophical discussions about quality versus length of life, including a rehash of the horrific Terri Schiavo case that put Florida on the map a few years ago and turned me off Jeb Bush forever. One of the most wise-cracking, poignant characters in this novel is Flicka, the extremely ill daughter of Jackson and Carole, who, at 16 years old, has had to grow up way too quickly. She's uber-bright and well aware that she doesn't have a long life expectancy.

 She feeds herself mush through a tube, is subject to debilitating seizures, yet because of the politics of public education in America, is mainstreamed in the school system. Her illness doesn't really allow her to develop friendships or to socialize in any normal way. She believes that people find her an object of pity and curiosity and voices the wish that her parents would let her just stay home and vegetate. But perhaps the lady doth protest too much?

Glynis, on the other hand, always such a cynic, has had surgery for mesothelioma and is currently suffering through a barrage of chemo treatments, hoping against hope to stay alive. Shep, now a full-time caretaker, sneaks guiltily into his office late at night to go online and just peek at the websites for the tiny island of Pemba where he had hoped they would retire to some day.

What, you might ask, to I do to pull myself out of the doldrums brought on by all this depressing reading? Certainly the newspapers don't help! Last night I went to the White House website and watched with pleasure as Elena Kagan accepted her appointment to the Supreme Court. All the good things that our government is doing - most of which never make the news - are there for anyone to see, if only they would.

Today I'll begin writing the review of my latest LJ offering, a wonderfully unusual and atmospheric novel by Susan Straight, a former National Book Award finalist. Take One Candle, Light a Room, will be out in October. Next up: Sue Miller's The Lakeshore Limited.

A Rose by Any Other Name.....

I'm trying to read all of the books on this year's discussion list well in advance and picked up one of Andrea's choices So Much for That by Lionel Shriver. I started listening to it in my car and I found it ferociously mean spirited. All I could think was "wow, this guy is so angry!" I kept listening, in thrall. It's kind of like when you drive by a car accident on the road and don't want to look but can't help yourself.

Imagine my embarrassment when I decided to look up this angry writer, Lionel Shriver, to see what his problem was and found that he is a she, and a prolific one at that! That will teach me to make judgments. Knowing that Ms. Shriver is an ex-pat living in London makes the novel and its point of view even more interesting to me. I didn't think I'd be able to spend any more time with these characters but now I know I'll hang in til the end.

Maybe what's bothering me about this book is how much it makes me think of myself and my friends, blithely planning for our futures, the trips we want to take, the "to do" lists for our retirement years. What's that old saying about "we plan, God laughs?" Shep and Glynis Knacker have spent every one of their vacations scouting for the perfect place to live when their time comes to relax and jump off the ends of the earth. They do everything right - work hard, invest wisely, live sensibly - and bang. Not just the Big C, but a highly untreatable form of cancer with a minimal chance of a good recovery. Suddenly all those pie in the sky plans fold up like a house of cards. It's terribly depressing.

Shriver's characters seem to just be mouthpieces for her politics. When Shep and Glynis get together with their best (and only) friends Carole and Jackson, who are raising a severely handicapped daughter, they rage against the American health care system, politicians, and the liberal elite, hysterically portrayed by Shep's wayward sister Beryl who spouts left wing rhetoric, eschews a career making money for one producing self-centered art films, and then begs for cash from her more responsible brother every time she needs a bailout. Ouch.

There are many online interviews with Ms. Shriver available but I'll just link to one. I find it interesting that she's gone on record as being dead set against President Obama's health care bill yet she despises our current situation in the United States, a belief that comes through loud and clear in this latest novel, but lives in England herself where she has free access to "socialized medicine." Hmmmmm http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/7482566/Lionel-Shriver-interview.html


I would love to be a fly on the wall during this book discussion. Just maybe I'll be able to sneak away from the reference desk for an hour. In the meantime I have a tantalizing new book from Library Journal to delve into. My favorite days are those when I come in to find an express envelope from New York sitting on my desk!
Today I have an odd day off mid-week and I can hear my neighbor out mowing his lawn so I'd better get on it as well before it gets too hot.

Relationships are no easy thing!

I have been crabbing quite vocally lately about the dearth of intelligent movies that come to southwest Florida. Getting the New York Times on the weekend is only serving to frustrate me as I am teased by the reviews of all these wonderfully bright, controversial films, starring brave award-winning actors that won't ever see their way clear to Regal Cinemas in Ft. Myers. Is it any wonder the Netflix and our own library system are putting these theatres out of business?

Finally, after showing around the country for six weeks now, we got The Kids are All Right - English majors - shouldn't it be "alright?" My friend Donna and I went to see it yesterday and kudos to the film as it was the catalyst for a 6 hour conversation on relationships, marriage (whether it be between a man and a woman, two men, two women) and the difficulty of sustaining long term coupledom in this day and age of longer and longer lives. Were we meant to be together for 30, 40 or 50 years?

It's difficult to believe in a "higher power" who had a grand plan in mind when you think that he/she didn't foresee our living to such ripe old ages. Just returning to biblical times one can figure that a couple married at the age of 12 or 13, stayed together to raise their children to a similar age and then died off. So what's the longest they were together? Fifteen years maybe?

Think about the person you were at 18, then 30, 45 - 50, and now. Is it an unrealistic expectation to think that two people can grow at the same speed, toward the same goal, keeping love and attraction and respect intact throughout the aging process? This question has been bandied about quite a bit lately in light of the shocking news of the Al Gores' divorce but I've been pondering it for years. I can honestly say that, off the top of my head, I can only think of two couples I know who have managed to go past the forty years together mark and still prefer to be with each other than with anyone else. Oh yes, Alan and Sharon, Cathy and Hank, I do envy you.

The movie did an outstanding job of showing a lesbian couple in a long term marriage, raising two teenagers who share the same male sperm from a donor bank in California, as they try to navigate all the relational pitfalls of any heterosexual couple; a flagging sex life, disputes over power, who handles the money, who does the cooking, who's too easy on the kids, etc. They have traditional roles, the incomparable Annette Bening is a physician and the main breadwinner, her partner Julianne Moore has been the stay at home earth mother type whose latest venture is as a landscape architect.

Their performances were brave and heartfelt to the point where I did not see them as two female actors playing lesbians but felt that they were, indeed, a couple. In one amazing scene at a dinner table there is an incredibly long closeup of Ms. Bening sans makeup as she undergoes a devastating realization. The emotion plays across her face, crow's feet at her eyes, character lines around the mouth, a neck that looks like it belongs to a real woman and not a doctored version of one. It made me so proud to be a "woman of a certain age."

And it brings me to a look at a book I'm just finishing, another one that I had the good fortune to pick up back at the Public Library Assoc. conference in Portland. The Red Thread by Ann Hood is, on the surface, a book about adoption, in particular, adoption of Chinese female babies by American families. It's all there and lovingly told, the anguish of the Chinese mothers forced by family or circumstance or the government to give up their "unimportant" girl children and how these babies find their way to the waiting arms of women here in the states who long for a baby of their own.

But more than this, Ms. Hood has written a terrifying novel about relationships; the reasons couples are brought together, the reasons they part, the tragic inability of men and women to communicate about their deepest hopes and desires; the little deceptions that drive a chink into the foundation of even the happiest couples and the way they often tend to be working against each other, sometimes deliberately but at other times completely unwittingly.

Ms. Hood has created a wonderful character in Maya Lange, the owner of The Red Thread Adoption Agency, and the person who heals the emptiness in her heart caused by the loss of her own baby daughter to a tragic accident, by filling the need for a baby in others' hearts. Maya is as masterful at dealing with the various personalities of the prospective parents, their fear, insecurity and troubles, as she is with subsuming her own.

Even though I'm devastated by the couples I'm meeting in this novel, I care about them and want to keep reading to see how they will work through their relationships, or not. The writing is beautiful, the pacing quick and if you had no distractions you could finish this in a day.  I gather from the author's note at the end of the book that she is writing from the heart and has been to the emotional places she describes. I've not read Ann Hood before. If you haven't either, you might want to give this one a try.

Two Titles, Two Opinions

Great day at work - out early and no afternoon thunderstorms meant that I could put on those rocker sneakers and take my late afternoon trek around the hood. The only trouble is that I'm listening to a book I had been SO looking forward to and it's been a big disappointment.

 I suspect that the publisher was hoping that Sarah Blake's The Postmistress would be the next Guernsey Literary.....but no such luck. Believe me, I would give it the benefit of the doubt since the WW II era is the time that I'm drawn to, much to Aunt Jackie's dismay. The music, style, history, etc. for some reason have me often feeling that I was born in the wrong time and place.

I'm halfway through and may give it up unless Susan tells me to stick with it (I saw her reading it at work). It's not that I don't like Frankie, the plucky young New Yorker who works for CBS in London, reporting for the radio audience back in the states. She's bright and inquisitive and is an activist for truth, pushed by her former roommate to probe into round ups of German Jews into ghettos. There's at least something to grab onto, but the rest of the story just leaves me flat.

Kudos though to Ms. Blake for a sensitively written sensual love scene - we know these aren't easy and are often ridiculed - in which the title character makes love for the first time. She captured beautifully the initial hesitance, the excitement, the determination and the desire to join with a man in equal communion rather than the old-fashioned "surrender" that's expected of a virgin of a certain age.

Front page of the local newspaper today happened to have an article about cyber-stalking, harrassment by text message. Who'd have thought we'd come to this? Which brings me to a novel that blew me out of the water and which I devoured in 3 days. Admittedly, I've loved Anna Quinden since way back when she used to write her poignant, funny column for the New York Times, when her family was young, and so was I. OK, I'm dating myself.

Then she began writing novels and book groups couldn't get enough of Black and Blue or the devastating  One True Thing which, though it came out ten years after my own mom's death from cancer, set me right back there in the hospital room. Rise and Shine felt too light for Quindlen but now she's back with a vengeance. Every Last One is an unforgettable book about the randomness of life, the time wasted worrying about the little things, the depth of grief and the long, slow process of recovery that cannot be rushed by well-meaning friends.

One wonders how a woman like Anna Quindlen, with the glorious life one surmises she lives, can delve down into the darkest depths of her imagination to write a book of such anguish and loss. This must be a testament to her talent. Ms. Quindlen describes a home which, on the surface, sounds like the one we'd all want to live in; two adults with not too many issues, Glen a doctor, she a landscape architect, and three lovely kids who prefer to bring their friends home than to hang out on the streets. Still, one doesn't have to read too far into the book to discover the cracks in this foundation.

Teenage daughter Ruby suffers from an eating disorder, Max has anti-social anxieties, while his brother Ben is almost too perfect, playing three-letter sports. Then there's Kiernan, Ruby's oldest friend, now lover, who cannot get enough of the Latham family.
Glen and Marybeth have a comfortable, long-term marriage with the requisite, subtle fissures that one assumes will be temporary and dissipate when the kids are grown and gone on their assuredly successful future paths. But for every scene of domestic tranquility that Quindlen dangles in front of her readers, she throws in just enough hints to keep us on edge, waiting for the other shoe to fall.

 And when it does it seems to come out of the blue. The stunning violence just doesn't mesh with this lovely family that seems to be doing every thing "right." This is a must read for anyone who revels in examining the extreme complexity of relationships, be they familial or sexual. For readers who have raised their families safely to adulthood and can now rest on your laurels, this novel may remind you of how very lucky you are.