Dead End Gene Pool by Wendy Burden

Summertime reading calls for books with sex or dirty secrets. Dead End Gene Pool by Wendy Burden has plenty of the latter, so delicious that you won't miss the former. A memoir of growing up in a rich offshoot of the Vanderbilt family, Burden's story spares no one in that branch of the tree. Most of her relatives born in the 20th century are pretty worthless in the achievement department: one uncle has OCD, another is mentally challenged and ignored by Burden's grandfather; her brothers have both struggled with severe addiction and careened from lifestyle to lifestyle; her father killed himself, and her mother was an emotionally stunted anorexic alcoholic.

Does not sound fun to read? Oh, but it is! It is book candy, and the reason is Burden's delightfully sardonic writing style. She weaves humor (though it is dark) through her tale, and opens wide the door on the super rich. Her grandmother, though clad in Chanel, continually passes gas (brfffft, a constant refrain in Burden's prose), her Uncle Ham-Ham's repetitive comments ring like a happy Greek chorus through gin-soaked gatherings featuring French cuisine and priceless works of art. Burden even can't resist poking fun at herself: for years she's fascinated by the Addams Family (author Charles Addams is a family friend); and she calls herself "about the ugliest thing anyone ever wrapped a diaper around." Self-deprecating to a fault, Wendy Burden and her wealthy, kooky world absolutely entertained me.

And as dark as her outlook can be, it is rarely mean-spirited. The reader gets the sense that Burden loved her grandparents; with her adult insight, she can now be grateful for the court-ordered visits to their 5th Avenue apartment, a ruling which provided the only stable residence of her childhood. Likewise, she doesn't disparage her privileged upbringing, even though there was plenty of bad stuff served with the good. Burden formed close attachments to servants, relished access to country homes, boats, and art, and traveled widely. These memories are gems for which she is grateful.

The only time Dead End Gene Pool nears nastiness is in Burden's description of her mother, Leslie Hamilton Burden Tobey. In the book, Leslie is the quintessential love with-holder. Absent from her children, she is a social x-ray, courting alcohol and men. (Amazingly, Leslie is also brilliant, graduating from Radcliffe and eventually earning a PhD from Oxford University--all the more amazing an achievement when she seems to exist on raw hamburger and Tab!) The Burden grandparents blame Leslie for their brilliant son's suicide and despise her. Indeed, the reader starts to side with the Burdens regarding this awful woman and her harpiness. Yet, Wendy Burden never lets the reader stray too far into mother hatred. She always tempers her stories with humor: her mother's obsession with tanning is hysterical--a photo in the book showing a dark faced woman with white moons for eyes proves the author's point. Though her mother is a nut, she is a nut with goals. (If perpetual sunburn counts as a goal.)

It is only at the very end of the memoir that Burden reveals a vital piece of information unearthed about her parents' marriage. This revelation softens her (and our) opinion of Leslie Hamilton Burden Tobey. A supreme loss in childbearing must have triggered some sort of sea change in her mother's personality which dominoed to her father's suicide. With this realization, Burden moves toward forgiveness of this strange, sarcastic person--her mother, who always called everyone "Toots."

Wendy Burden's late breaking life reinterpretation is an example of the prime reason I love memoir. The fact that adults can revisit childhood and see it with a mature eye, and maybe, just maybe, discover a new truth, strikes me as something like sorcery. How many of us, after having children, now see selfless acts in the everyday memories of our own mothers? Can't we all see a pattern and purpose in our early lives from our perch of time? Memoir is the adult mind making gold out of straw, finding logic in the chaos. First time out, Burden has proven herself masterful in this genre. Imho, her gene pool is definitely not dead-end.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

It's been a long time since I've felt this way about a book--over thirty years. Let me explain. As I child, I used to pull off a great disappearing act. I'd bury my nose in a book and cease to exist. I was elsewhere, skipping through gardens or prairies or castles. Nothing could find me, not my mother's voice, the phone call of a friend, nothing. I would eventually return home, dazed by the magic of Harriet the Spy or Strawberry Girl. I don't mourn much left behind in childhood, but I do miss what it feels like to visit those books for the first time.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton returned that feeling to me. My friend T.L. (like T.M., another reader extraordinaire) hand delivered the book, saying it reminded her of The Time Traveler's Wife. Morton's book is reminiscent of TTW in that it jumps here and there among time periods, points of view, and settings. It is a simpler book than Niffenegger's, however. The reader never gets confused because the fracturing of time and space is handled so deftly. We begin with the story of a little girl hiding on a berthed ship in 1913, minding the rules of the pretty lady who brought her there. Where did the lady go? Who is the child? Right from the start, these mysteries form the central cipher of the novel. Back and forth through decades, the story of Nell, a no-nonsense junk dealer in Australia, unfolds, along with that of her granddaughter Cassandra and a motley crew of others. When Nell dies, Cassandra begins to unravel the mystery of her past: a tiny white suitcase containing the yellowed pages of fairytales starts her off and eventually leads her to a hidden garden on an old estate in Cornwall. The reader learns why this garden, like Nell's birthright, has been obscured for decades.

Obviously, title and plot-wise, Morton's book is an homage to Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Secret Garden, another favorite book (and movie). Also, the very best elements of fairy tale and girl-sleuth are mixed into the story as well, and this melange of secret places and princesses and clues is what returned me to tweenhood. Although no one called us tweens in the late 70s. We were just girls, and if we found a good book, you could just watch us disappear.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

I'm glad my book club selected this book a few years back or I would never have read it. The subject matter--Afghanistan, war, rape--turned me way off. But the book is really more about childhood, friendship, American immigrants, and forgiveness than those other things. Honestly! In spite of the war-torn, brutal setting, the book glows with positivity and hope. Amir, a well-to-do child in Kabul, is best friends with the lower class Hassan. They both enjoy participating in kite races, an unfamiliar pastime to me, but apparently popular in that part of the world. The beauty and grace of kite flying strongly contrasts with the brutality and bullying going on all around the boys. Unfortunately, Hassan falls victim to a brutal attack, and Amir ends their friendship, a move that deeply haunts him into adulthood. Quite a bit of the novel discusses Amir's life in America--how his family adjusts, how he decides to become a writer. America is the country in which Amir matures and grows ready to face his past in Afghanistan. He does return to his homeland to face his demons, and he wins, in every way. The Kite Runner is a novel about triumphing over the evil that lives within and without.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I had to include this book, Harper Lee's one and only. Narrated by young Scout, a girl growing up in small-town Alabama in the 1930s, the story wends it way through a plot chock-full of childhood play, family, growing pains, and, most important, the troubles racial tension causes. I read To Kill a Mockingbird in 9th grade and liked it. I read it in my thirties and loved it. The definitive coming of age novel, the story shows Scout maturing from child to young adult during a period of three years: she learns that some people can be dangerous, and others (often the most unlikely ones) can literally save your life. Some time after rereading this book, I also read Charles Shields' Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, garnering a few literary tidbits. Lee, still alive and living in Alabama, has never published another novel; in fact, in the decade or so following Mockingbird, a major magazine rejected some essays she submitted, calling them subpar. Talk about humiliation! Also, I seem to remember that Shields supported the theory that Lee's good friend Truman Capote had helped her write Mockingbird, but don't quote me on this. In any case, none of this drama is important because the book remains one of the best in American literature; children and adults both find value in it. It's one of those that won't waste your time, so you can read it every decade.

So B. It by Sarah Weeks

It seems to me that many of the young adult novels written today are mediocre. I sometimes think it's because my adult mind has lost its ability to relate to anything youthful, but then I read a book like So B. It by Sarah Weeks, and I realize that maybe it's not me after all--it's them. (Sorry, Traveling Pants !) A coming of age story, So B. It concerns twelve year old Heidi's search for the truth about her mother, a loving mentally challenged woman, and her mysterious past. Her mother has no other discernable family, an unusual name (So B. It), and lives with Heidi and a kind agoraphobic neighbor, Bernadette, in adjoining apartments in Reno. Certain things intrigue Heidi, leading her to search for her mother's identity. Who are the people in the old pictures she's found? Who pays for the rent on their apartment? Weeks excels in plain, old-fashioned story telling: the characters seem real, not petty and paper-thin, and the places they travel are the well paved, mortar and bricks sort. The So B. It character fascinated me--her disability should limit her, but it really doesn't at all. She lives, and she's loved. Maybe the real message of this book is that family is important, and it comes in many kinds of weird configurations. Maturity is at the heart of So B. It--wisdom without preachiness. I wish there were more YA books like it.

Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt

Greetings from Florida! I'm an avid reader (with degrees in English and Library Science) and have created this blog to share my favorite books from childhood to the present. Speaking of which...my favorite book from childhood is Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt. It's a coming of age story that I try to reread every ten years or so. This author is more known for her book Across Five Aprils. More picks later...