The teenage years continue to haunt me literarily. Stuck as I was in a Milwaukee back brace for scoliosis, books were my means of escape. I read a ton of Paul Zindel books from age 13 to 17. Zindel, who died in 2003, was the literary voice of adolescent angst in the 1970s and 80s. The product of a broken marriage, he lived a somewhat rag-tag life with his mother and sister which fueled his plays and, later, his novels. (Zindel's 1964 play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds won the Pulitzer prize.)
Zindel's characters were usually fringe-type folk: nerds, dysfunctionals, obsessives, and though mostly young, sometimes ranged to the elderly--The Pigman and The Pigman's Legacy had older main characters. The teens consistently had quirky family lives (a hallmark of 1970s YA fiction, it seems) and looked to friends for normalcy and balance. Although I loved everything Zindel wrote through the 80s, the novel that continually pops into my mind now is Pardon Me, You're Stepping on my Eyeball. Just the title was enough for me to grab it from the shelf at my local Paperback Booksmith back in 1979. The plot centers on Edna Shinglebox, a plain quiet girl, whose perenially dateless life is a disappointment to her mother. Marsh Mallow is the school misfit who carries around a raccoon in his pocket. The unlikely two befriend each other and head on a crazy cross-country trip. What strikes me now, reading Zindel's prose, is the delightful hilarity infusing every artfully constructed sentence. There is humor here, and delicious irony, as he simultaneously pot-shoots and pardons the popular kids. The football captain may be a moron, but he's not evil, is he? And the pretty girl is actually really kind. Marsh Mallow is weird but smart, and, well, cute. Not everyone is a stereotype, Zindel suggests. Don't look for either black or white, this or that--most people you will meet in life are a subtle blending of both.
This lesson of living life in the gray in-between is one to relearn. People cannot be defined by political parties or religion, by family background or street addresses. Polite conversations in American living rooms are nearing extinction. Democrats, Republicans, whatever--we're all guilty of shoving an agenda down chit chat's throat. I can't tell you how many times a well-meaning discussion about the weather has turned into a political debate about global warming [or climate change :)] When did polite conversation become a battleground? I'm a mild mannered soul, and even I've found myself trapped in a dialogue quickly turning to lava. So, I've decided to return to one of the lessons I learned very young, the theme of Paul Zindel's and other 1970s children's authors' books: tolerance in your community. Pluralism in your own kitchen. And (sigh, because this will be difficult) minding the gray in-between with your very own children. Listen, nod, and smile: life is more colorful lived in the gray.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
What We Have by Amy Boesky
Happy holidays to everyone! I can't believe we're midway through December already. My reading has slowed to a crawl, mostly due to a book called The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. (Are the rumors about Stieg Larsson not actually writing this one true? I'd believe it.) But that's a story for another time.
I did want to take a second to blog about an excellent medical memoir called What We Have: A Family's Inspiring Story about Love, Loss, and Survival by Amy Boesky. Boesky, a literature professor at Boston College, tells the story of her family's battle with gene-linked ovarian and breast cancer. It sounds like a sad book, but it really isn't, mostly due to Boesky's self-deprecating narrative style. She's like a best friend, filling you in on her life, particularly the year 1993-1994 when amazing and significant events occurred. This reader admires her matter-of-fact analysis of her life as a single woman, her good-natured squabbles with her two sisters and mother. The year brings love, marriage, birth, and illness to everyone in her family. It's like life times ten for the Boesky clan. The author endures all, with humor tinged by anxiety (another battle). Time ticks along, and Boesky, retelling the story from a late 2000s vantage point, is able to nudge the reader to see what's important, to take note of what really matters: not illness or death, but the lessons learned from her mother and sisters in 1994. We all have years like these--mine, coincidentally, was 1994 also, the year my mother died. Our 1994s are to be endured and mined for nuggets when we feel strong again. It's good to remember that Boesky titled her book What We Have instead of what we haven't.
I did want to take a second to blog about an excellent medical memoir called What We Have: A Family's Inspiring Story about Love, Loss, and Survival by Amy Boesky. Boesky, a literature professor at Boston College, tells the story of her family's battle with gene-linked ovarian and breast cancer. It sounds like a sad book, but it really isn't, mostly due to Boesky's self-deprecating narrative style. She's like a best friend, filling you in on her life, particularly the year 1993-1994 when amazing and significant events occurred. This reader admires her matter-of-fact analysis of her life as a single woman, her good-natured squabbles with her two sisters and mother. The year brings love, marriage, birth, and illness to everyone in her family. It's like life times ten for the Boesky clan. The author endures all, with humor tinged by anxiety (another battle). Time ticks along, and Boesky, retelling the story from a late 2000s vantage point, is able to nudge the reader to see what's important, to take note of what really matters: not illness or death, but the lessons learned from her mother and sisters in 1994. We all have years like these--mine, coincidentally, was 1994 also, the year my mother died. Our 1994s are to be endured and mined for nuggets when we feel strong again. It's good to remember that Boesky titled her book What We Have instead of what we haven't.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Let's Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell
Man oh man, I've been busy lately. Family, work, and all the usual adjustments to such have eaten up a good chunk of my reading time. Have no fear, though, I haven't abandoned my mission to document the best books I've ever read. Though my posts may be few and far between, I'm still here, weighing what belongs and what doesn't.
One book that definitely belongs on this list is Gail Caldwell's memoir of friendship, Let's Take the Long Way Home. Literary critic Caldwell was a great friend of Caroline Knapp, best known for her own memoir, Drinking: A Love Story. The two don't quite hit it off at first, but are later drawn together by a mutual love of dogs and literature. Knapp and Caldwell also share hard-won victories over alcoholism. Both unmarried, independent career women, these two authors become each other's family, as good friends so often do. The stories of them sculling and dog walking together show how the friendship grows into a deep, lasting bond. But Knapp, a lifelong smoker, falls terminally ill with lung cancer, and Caldwell must weather this storm both with her, and, later, without her.
At its heart, this memoir is a love story, because a rich friendship like this one could not be anything but love. Where family fails us, friendship sails in and saves. A good friend brings us food when we're sick, reassures us we're okay, lets us cry on her shoulder. The best female friend is an amalgam of the most desirable traits of mother and father, brother and sister, and, yes, husband. Gail Caldwell pays homage to the wholeness a good friend brings to life.
However, Let's Take the Long Way Home is just as much about grief as friendship. I've never read a more concise, whip-sharp discussion of the grieving process. Caldwell is a good writer, and she brings the full force of her narrative power to analyze the mystery and misery of losing a loved one. I prefer her vignettes to those in Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. Awe permeates Caldwell's prose: praise for Knapp and the life she lived, stunned wonder at her quick death, and thanksgiving over and over again for what they had together. By the memoir's end, the reader gets the sense that Caldwell is moving closer to some sort of understanding of death, an inchoate one to be sure, but an understanding nevertheless.
One book that definitely belongs on this list is Gail Caldwell's memoir of friendship, Let's Take the Long Way Home. Literary critic Caldwell was a great friend of Caroline Knapp, best known for her own memoir, Drinking: A Love Story. The two don't quite hit it off at first, but are later drawn together by a mutual love of dogs and literature. Knapp and Caldwell also share hard-won victories over alcoholism. Both unmarried, independent career women, these two authors become each other's family, as good friends so often do. The stories of them sculling and dog walking together show how the friendship grows into a deep, lasting bond. But Knapp, a lifelong smoker, falls terminally ill with lung cancer, and Caldwell must weather this storm both with her, and, later, without her.
At its heart, this memoir is a love story, because a rich friendship like this one could not be anything but love. Where family fails us, friendship sails in and saves. A good friend brings us food when we're sick, reassures us we're okay, lets us cry on her shoulder. The best female friend is an amalgam of the most desirable traits of mother and father, brother and sister, and, yes, husband. Gail Caldwell pays homage to the wholeness a good friend brings to life.
However, Let's Take the Long Way Home is just as much about grief as friendship. I've never read a more concise, whip-sharp discussion of the grieving process. Caldwell is a good writer, and she brings the full force of her narrative power to analyze the mystery and misery of losing a loved one. I prefer her vignettes to those in Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. Awe permeates Caldwell's prose: praise for Knapp and the life she lived, stunned wonder at her quick death, and thanksgiving over and over again for what they had together. By the memoir's end, the reader gets the sense that Caldwell is moving closer to some sort of understanding of death, an inchoate one to be sure, but an understanding nevertheless.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
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 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.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
A Land Remembered by Patrick Smith
I'm making progress through that luscious pile of books! Some are throwaways (meaning returns), some are Godiva for the mind (Cakewalk by Kate Moses), and some are pure vitamin-- books that give you something you didn't even know you needed. For me this week, that book was A Land Remembered by Patrick Smith. Published in 1984, this novel has quickly become a Florida classic, reprinted many times (by regional publisher Pineapple Press). I'll be honest, I never ever wanted to read this book, purposely staying away from it. It was on the shelf at my grandmother's house, on the shelf at my parents' house, even on my own shelf at one point. (I don't know how that happened.) Anyway, I had my reasons for shunning it. I've never been a fan of historical fiction, especially that of my home state. It seems like that bubblegum-flavored antibiotic medicine that we give children, sweet trickery to make them swallow down what's good for them. I don't know about you, but when I read, I don't necessarily want what's good for me. Yuck. But A Land Remembered was my friend's selection for a book club, so I held my nose and opened my mouth, er, eyes. And, glory be, it was delicious!
Now, I must tell you, my brother and I spent our childhoods looking at land. Most weekends, when we weren't visiting our grandmother in Okeechobee, we were on family trips to Live Oak, St. Augustine, Palatka, every small Florida town within a day's drive. My mother had a sort of land lust--she was determined to purchase an oak hammock or pine plot, anything that wasn't a sinkhole. Over the course of these many trips, I fell in a pond, got stuck by bayonet plants, sweated inordinate amounts of RC Cola, and generally was very miserable. I wanted to be at home, riding my bike or playing with Barbies. The only thing that made these pilgrimages at all palatable was taking a book along, which helped block out the reality quite well, except when I had to get out of the car and walk the property. We all had to accompany the realtor on this land survey. I begged to stay in the car, but no, mom was afraid someone would get me. So, instead, I trudged along behind them, dragging my feet, and a tick got me but good. It burrowed undiscovered into my head for a week, until, scratching along one day, I found it nestled there. But that's a story for another time. With these childhood memories long established, mellowing nicely, I had no desire to revisit the Florida landscape, unless it involved the beaches, palm trees, shells, and maybe a condo with a pool or two. And then I read Smith's book.
A Land Remembered tells the story of the MacIvey family, from their arrival in Florida during the Civil War to the late 1960s. (Smith ends it there, before the advent of Disney World and the accompanying Orlando boom, a good place to stop.) The family struggles in the Florida scrub to build a home, find food, simply to survive. What they eat is a revelation--poke salad, swamp cabbage (a.k.a. hearts of palm), coon, bread made from cattail-flour. I've read country hardship stories before--Tobacco Road, The Grapes of Wrath, the Little House books, but never have I been so enthralled. This book brought back to life some of my earliest Florida memories--I could picture and taste that food so well. Hearts of palm, with its crunchy asparagus tang, the bitter taste of turnip greens.
And reading the description of the land literally was like someone shaking me for my own good. I recognized the itch that scrub leaves on your legs when you pass through, the brown murk of the creeks hiding the pebbled alligators, the slick flatness of the grass a snake leaves behind. (Thank goodness, they always left! Snakebite is far worse than tickbite!) And the stories of the cattle...let me tell you, I once knew far more than I ever wanted to about cows. The MacIvey family makes their first fortune (after losing everything several times) by herding wild cattle to Punta Rassa every year. The family meets and befriends Indians, fights cattle rustlers, yields to mosquito swarms, and slowly grows rich off these cattle drives. Meanwhile, the state is changing. Henry Flagler takes his railway all the way to Key West, Palm Beach becomes the Southern Mecca, with Miami birthing its own breed of glamour just a few years behind. Florida evolves, and so do the MacIveys, and therein lies Smith's chief point: remember the land because it is almost gone.
To be honest, many people would not like this book. The dialogue sounds artificial at times, hokey even. The characters tend toward stereotypes, the escaped ex-slave Skillet, for instance. The females Emma and Glenda don't ring true at all--too good, too pure, martyrs of a sort. But, really, the MacIveys aren't the main characters--the land is. The beautiful state of Florida, the pure Florida of the mind, with its wide swaths of prairie and sinkhole bowls, the rivers, and everglades, and God bless it, even the scrub which scratches and cuts the legs of little girls.
Now, I must tell you, my brother and I spent our childhoods looking at land. Most weekends, when we weren't visiting our grandmother in Okeechobee, we were on family trips to Live Oak, St. Augustine, Palatka, every small Florida town within a day's drive. My mother had a sort of land lust--she was determined to purchase an oak hammock or pine plot, anything that wasn't a sinkhole. Over the course of these many trips, I fell in a pond, got stuck by bayonet plants, sweated inordinate amounts of RC Cola, and generally was very miserable. I wanted to be at home, riding my bike or playing with Barbies. The only thing that made these pilgrimages at all palatable was taking a book along, which helped block out the reality quite well, except when I had to get out of the car and walk the property. We all had to accompany the realtor on this land survey. I begged to stay in the car, but no, mom was afraid someone would get me. So, instead, I trudged along behind them, dragging my feet, and a tick got me but good. It burrowed undiscovered into my head for a week, until, scratching along one day, I found it nestled there. But that's a story for another time. With these childhood memories long established, mellowing nicely, I had no desire to revisit the Florida landscape, unless it involved the beaches, palm trees, shells, and maybe a condo with a pool or two. And then I read Smith's book.
A Land Remembered tells the story of the MacIvey family, from their arrival in Florida during the Civil War to the late 1960s. (Smith ends it there, before the advent of Disney World and the accompanying Orlando boom, a good place to stop.) The family struggles in the Florida scrub to build a home, find food, simply to survive. What they eat is a revelation--poke salad, swamp cabbage (a.k.a. hearts of palm), coon, bread made from cattail-flour. I've read country hardship stories before--Tobacco Road, The Grapes of Wrath, the Little House books, but never have I been so enthralled. This book brought back to life some of my earliest Florida memories--I could picture and taste that food so well. Hearts of palm, with its crunchy asparagus tang, the bitter taste of turnip greens.
And reading the description of the land literally was like someone shaking me for my own good. I recognized the itch that scrub leaves on your legs when you pass through, the brown murk of the creeks hiding the pebbled alligators, the slick flatness of the grass a snake leaves behind. (Thank goodness, they always left! Snakebite is far worse than tickbite!) And the stories of the cattle...let me tell you, I once knew far more than I ever wanted to about cows. The MacIvey family makes their first fortune (after losing everything several times) by herding wild cattle to Punta Rassa every year. The family meets and befriends Indians, fights cattle rustlers, yields to mosquito swarms, and slowly grows rich off these cattle drives. Meanwhile, the state is changing. Henry Flagler takes his railway all the way to Key West, Palm Beach becomes the Southern Mecca, with Miami birthing its own breed of glamour just a few years behind. Florida evolves, and so do the MacIveys, and therein lies Smith's chief point: remember the land because it is almost gone.
To be honest, many people would not like this book. The dialogue sounds artificial at times, hokey even. The characters tend toward stereotypes, the escaped ex-slave Skillet, for instance. The females Emma and Glenda don't ring true at all--too good, too pure, martyrs of a sort. But, really, the MacIveys aren't the main characters--the land is. The beautiful state of Florida, the pure Florida of the mind, with its wide swaths of prairie and sinkhole bowls, the rivers, and everglades, and God bless it, even the scrub which scratches and cuts the legs of little girls.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Unread books
Hello to everyone in book world! I'm currently reading a selection from T.M. titled Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House by Meghan Daum. It's a memoir about Daum's house lust from childhood to middle age. So far, so good. I also have to read Patrick Smith's A Land Remembered for a book club. Smith's novel is a Florida classic (I hear, though I've never read it) about the state in its early natural glory. With the oil spill still spewing, who knows how this will change. I should read my son's summer reading books (one being Tangerine by Edward Bloor) so I can quiz him at the end of the summer (very surreptitiously, of course) to see if he really read it or just skimmed. Really, it's the old saw about the shoemaker's children--they have no shoes, and the librarian's son hates to read. Oh well. I won't give up on him. I've always felt that one of life's greatest joys is reading, and this child, springing from two families of avid readers, doesn't have a chance at being a-literate. Or at least I hope so.
Undone housework bothers me. Unwritten thank you notes, unpaid bills, unchecked email, you name it, all these things nibble on my psyche. Unread books? No way. A pile of unread books is pound cake and three days off plus a really killer manicure.
A stack of unread books is one of life's luxuries.
Undone housework bothers me. Unwritten thank you notes, unpaid bills, unchecked email, you name it, all these things nibble on my psyche. Unread books? No way. A pile of unread books is pound cake and three days off plus a really killer manicure.
A stack of unread books is one of life's luxuries.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Time out--Let's talk book recs
I've been reading a variety of things lately: Just Let Me Lie Down by Kristin Van Ogtrop, Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe, a Skinny Girl book by Bethenny Frankel, etc., etc. You can see that I'm all over the place with choices. These tomes came to rest in my ample lap through different means--a friend, a memory, a quick browse. Which brings me to today's topic--book recommendations.
I love Elle magazine's book review section! Is it my imagination, or did Elle get a lot better in the last decade, or did I just get a lot worse? Oh well, this monthly piece, along with the same in Vanity Fair and dailies picked up along the way like The New York Times, give me great reading selections. Also, I enjoy the email newsletter "Good Reads." But the best recommendations come from friends. T.M. has provided me with, I would say, at least 50% of the titles listed in this blog. She is indispensable in her role as personal librarian. Thank you, T.M.!
That being said, if you, dear blogreader, could tell me your favorite titles, I would be most appreciative and post them. I'm curious if anyone has read The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. I'll probably read this one anyway, but if anyone has a special shout-out for it, I would love to know. By the way, I love lemon cake and could really use some right about now. I'll have to settle for a granola bar.
I love Elle magazine's book review section! Is it my imagination, or did Elle get a lot better in the last decade, or did I just get a lot worse? Oh well, this monthly piece, along with the same in Vanity Fair and dailies picked up along the way like The New York Times, give me great reading selections. Also, I enjoy the email newsletter "Good Reads." But the best recommendations come from friends. T.M. has provided me with, I would say, at least 50% of the titles listed in this blog. She is indispensable in her role as personal librarian. Thank you, T.M.!
That being said, if you, dear blogreader, could tell me your favorite titles, I would be most appreciative and post them. I'm curious if anyone has read The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. I'll probably read this one anyway, but if anyone has a special shout-out for it, I would love to know. By the way, I love lemon cake and could really use some right about now. I'll have to settle for a granola bar.
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