Fave of the Month
I spend alot of time creeping round our local library, browsing the shelves and picking out books. Here are some books I've read and enjoyed recently.
The Rehearsal
Eleanor Catton
(Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2008)
You know I have to be honest and say that I don't often enjoy NZ books ... especially those that tout the author as 'an accomplished new voice' in NZ fiction. I get even more worried when I read that the author is yet another graduate from the MA programme at Victoria University in Wellington ...
However, I have to say that I am glad I picked up this book by newcomer Eleanor Catton. It received the Best First Book Award at the Montana awards in 2009 and Ms Catton (born in 1985) has won numerous awards since for this, her debut book.
I'd been hearing so much about her that I sought out the book at the library. I didn't take to it at first - found it a bit confusing at the start, the characters one-dimensional and some of the writing and words a little repetitive, stilted, 'could have done with a bit more work' type thing ... but I hung in there and am glad I did. I liked this book and recommend it - I woulnd't say it is one that I really enjoyed or would read again but for a first book it's pretty darn good and I would definitely read her second.
It's about a high school scandal, a male teacher and a young female student have an affair - and the repercussions affect the this girl's classmates in profound ways. Then the local drama school decide to make the scandalous situation the subject for their end-of-year production. It's pretty darn good.The blurb in the front says this book is '... an exhilirating and provocative novel about the unsimple mess of human desire. Startingly original, it is at once a tender evocation of its young protagonists and a shrewd expose if emotional compromise.' I actually think the blurb is spot on - maybe not quite to the degree of surety and exaltation but definitely close.
A Widow's Story
Joyce Carol Oates
(Fourth Estate, UK 2011)
I've been reading A Widow's Story by Joyce Carol Oates. When she lost her husband of 47 years Raymond Smith, she could not bear to talk about it - so she wrote about it.
This is an extraordinarily honest, raw and powerful book. It is about 400 pages long - and only the first 50 or so pages deals with the death of her husband - so you could be well within your rights to wonder what the heck is the rest of the book about.
Grief, loss, dealing with all of the 'how are you?' and then the reality of a life that goes on afterwards, brilliantly highlighted by the cat peeing on her husband's death certificate. All bases are covered: denial, the anguish of loss, tears, mourning, depression ... it is all here and when told by a writer of such prominence and excellence as Ms Oates, it's a significant work.
Intensely personal as she tries to make sense out of her loss - but also a "universal account of life and death, love and grief".
Every Last One
Anna Quindlen
(Random House, USA 2010)
I've read a few of Anna Quindlen's books and have enjoyed them all - A Short Guide to a Happy Life, Being Perfect, How Reading Changed My Life.
In this book, we meet Mary Beth Latham who seems to have a happy family life with her husband, three teenage children and her career as a successful landscape gardener. But we sense even from the first few sentences that all is not quite as good as it seems.
This is my life: The alarm goes off at five-thirty with the murmering of a public-radio announcer, telling me that there has been a coup in Chad, a tornado in Texas. ... My robe lies at the foot of the bed, printed cotton in teh summer, tufted chenille for the cold.... I hate the early mornings, the suspended animation of the world outside, the veil of black and then the opporessive gray of the horizon along the hills outside the French doors. But it is the only time I can rest without sleeping, think without deciding, speak and hear my own voice. It is the only time I can be alone. Slightly less than a hour each weekday when no one makes demands.
We start to get the picture! There are troubles within the family unit. When one her sons becomes depressed, the story takes us with Mary Beth through tragedy and facing up to fears along a road that none of us hope we ever have to travel.
Quindlen's writing is simple, direct and powerful as always. Recommended read!
My Life in France
Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme
(Alfred A. Knopf, USA, 2006)
I remember seeing Julia Child on TV in the US, cooking up deliciousness and of course thinking that no one could handle a chicken quite like her. Have to say I've never seen the like of Julia since, in spite of the profusion of food shows we have on TV nowadays.
I was browsing through the biography section at the library this week and came across this delightful book about Julia and her life in France, when she truly came into her own, fell in love with French food and found her 'true calling.'
Julia loved France and this farily leaps out from every page. Child also did a lot for France — and the American palate — by introducing French cuisine to American homes. But this book, written with her husband's great-nephew, Alex Prud'homme, before Child's death at 91 in August 2004, is really a love story: she loved Paul Child, 10 years her senior; she loved France; she loved French cooking; and she loved life. "The sweetness and generosity and politeness and gentleness and humanity of the French had shown me how lovely life can be if one takes time to be friendly."
The book is full of great photographs taken by husband Paul and bursting with anecdotes and of course descriptions of food and restaurants. Makes one want to take off for Paris this very minute.
She begins her book with these words: 'This is a book about some of the things I have loved most in my life: my husband, Paul Child; la belle France; and the many pleasures of cooking and eating.' And by golly, she does not disappoint. In addition to all the food and cooking, we meet the wonderful circle of friends they made, read of their joyous adventures together amidst the beautiful French countryside and we get to know their wee poussiequette, Minnette, who is quote the feline character.
Have a look - well worth it.
Room
Emma Donaghue
(Little, Brown, UK 2010)
Jack is five and he was born in Room.
Room is 11 feet by 11 feet, has a skylight, a makeshift kitchen, toilet, a bed, a table. Jack sleeps in the wardrobe and Ma sleeps in the bed.
Jack has never been Out. He was born in Room and there he has stayed. Ma is a young woman, and she does her best to educate Jack, using the television, what they can see through the skylight, her vivid imagination for games and activties, and a few books.
Old Nick visits most days, at night. He provides them with food. They leave him a note to request something once a week, for Sunday Treat.
This is one of the most compelling - and downright disturbing - books I've read in some time. Told from Jack's point of view, I usually read it during my lunch break, for maybe 30 minutes or so, and when I put the book down, I felt such a profound sense of dislocation, as if I had existed in another world entirely for those 30 minutes and had to shift back into the reality of my living room and washing the lunch dishes.
Such is the power of Room.
Based on true events, Emma Donaghue has crafted a most extraordinary book about a young woman, kidnapped as a girl, taken to a specially built, impregnable garden shed (Room) where she is imprisoned for years by her captor.She gives birth to Jack ... and he assists her in a daring escape from Room.
But I don't want to tell you too much. This book is good - it's a troubling read - but it's worth it.
Water for Elephants
Sara Gruen
(Allen and Unwin, Australia 2006)
"When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her." (Summary from Book Browse.com).
I am thoroughly enjoying this book - I haven't even finished it yet but feel compelled to let you know about it.
Author Sara Gruen writes beautifully in a simple but very engaging style that takes you right into the atmosphere and environment of protagonist Jacob Jankowski: the filthy animal straw, the pails of decomposing meat for the tigers, the smell of the popcorn on the Midway .... and involves you right from the start in a colourful troupe of vital and intriguing characters.
This New York Times best seller is a great book - and I note they've made a movie of it too - hardly surprising with its strong story line and colourful characters. Find it at your local library and enjoy a visit to the circus - and you will love Rosie the elephant. She's the star of the show.
Reading by Moonlight
Brenda Walker
(Penguin, Australia 2010)
I've been enjoying Reading by Moonlight by Brenda Walker.
Brenda is an Australian novelist and professor of literature and when she went into hospital for breast cancer surgery, she wondered which book to take with her. Books had always sustained and comforted her and choosing the right ones to accompany her on this journey was of great importance to her.
Not only do the pages reveal a jolly good reading list (from Dante to Nabakov and all things in between) but also show how Walker’s love of reading helped her through the trauma of diagnosis, treatment and recovery.
Brenda’s account of her experience is at times stark and frightening but then a good book distracts her, reassures her and gives her strength to carry on. She also has some wonderful things to say about the writing life – and life in general when faced with a serious illness. Well worth a look.
"This is the story of the right book, or books. We each have one life, one share of action and vision and money; a single life for all our speech and thought, our decent gestures and the decisions that might undo us, our welcome or unwanted love, our parties that may or may not come off. One life to satisfy our vast and human sense of voyaging. With the right books we find out what imaginary strangers have done with their share of this amazing thing, life." (Brenda Walker, pp 4).
The Help
Kathryn Stockett
(Fig Tree/Penguin, 2009)
It is the early 60's in a small Mississippi town. Miss Skeeter Phelan's family owns a cotton plantation and instead of upholding good southern young lady tradition by marrying, settling down, having children, Skeeter decides to write a book. She must write it secretly because it tells the stories of a number of black maids ('the help') and their experiences working for their white employers.
In the writing of their stories, Skeeter exposes the harsh and yet fully accepted realities of segregation in place at the time: the treatment these women receive, the hardships they have experienced in their lives and the role they play within the white familes employing them to raise the children and manage the household, all the while living within the suffocating contraints of racial prejudice.
This may sound like grim reading but The Help is a great book. The women Stockett writes about are vibrant, powerful, spirited characters with pitch perfect voices. The writing is evocative of 'the way it was' in 60's Mississippi, full of contrast and yet on the cusp of civil rights change - from the brutality and the accepted order to the wonderfully close relationships between the black maids and the white children they care for, all overlaid by the steamy southern summer and the cotton bolls in the fields.
The book is full of humour, poignancy and hope and is hard to put down. The story is based upon Stockett's own recollections of being raised by her family's maid, Demetrie. At the end of The Help, Stockett writes in 'Too Little, Too Late' about the writing of the book and she says:
"I was truly grateful to read Howell Raines's Pulitzer Prize-winning article, "Grady's Gift" : There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism. 'I read that and I thought, How did he find a way to put it into such concise words? Here was the same slippery issue I'd been struggling with and couldn't catch in my hands, like a wet fish. Mr. Raines managed to nail it down in a few sentences. I was glad to hear I was in the company of others in my struggle.'
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Diaz
(Riverhead Books, London, 2007)
I'd heard alot about this book so was quite keen to read it. However when I first picked it up I had a few doubts ... but then I kept reading and by golly, this is a very funny, refreshingly different and triumphant book.
Our hero, young Oscar, has had a hard time. He's a very sweet but 'disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd', lives in Paterson New Jersey with his ferocious beauty-queen mother Belicia and wild sister Lola and dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of getting laid. He loves to read and watch movies or TV shows with monsters and mutants or magic and villains (my kind of guy!) and writes stories populated by these types of characters.
But Oscar may never get what he wants, thanks to a curse - the Fuku - that has stalked his family for generations, 'dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love'.
'Author Junot Diaz immerses us within the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience'.
I really enjoyed this book. I liked the story, the depiction of this family cursed by the Fuku, poor Oscar and his troubles and laughed out loud at times. Really original and fun. Have a go - and hang in there with it - it's worth it.
Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady
Florence King
(Virago, UK, 2006)
Well now here's a great book for those of us who have some empathy with the Southern Belle! I really enjoyed this book because my Mom was raised in the South and some of the stories she tells about her life growing up in the magnolia-scented, warm velvet nights are very much like those Florence King tells in this very funny 'memoir'.
Florence King was born in Washington DC to a British father and an American mother, growing up under their influence and that of her maternal grandmother and her grandmother's maid, Jensy. 'Granny' insists that her family is descended from a fine southern heritage - colonial ancestors of Tidewater, Virginia - hence the firm southern roots that dictate Granny's obsession with the menopause and other Southern ladylike behaviours, a tradition she attempts to impose upon the young Florence with largely unsuccessful results.
Granny had tried to mould her own daughter, Florence's mother - a chain-smoking baseball-playing tomboy given to swearing - into a Southern lady without any luck. "Knowing that she could do nothing with Mama, Granny looked around the family for a malleable girl who would heed her advice, a surrogate daughter cast in the traditional mold, someone delicate and fragile in both body and spirit, a true exemplar of Southern womanhood. Someone, in other words, either sick or crazy." Before settling on Florence, Granny tries to sort out Evelyn, a nervous young woman who is somewhat "delicate down below," with disastrous results ...
So Florence was Granny's last hope and the story Florence tells of her somewhat dysfunctional childhood is very funny. The book (first published in 1985) is full of great one-liners and valuable advice for the Southern lady. "Silver is the Southern woman's proudest possession ... every decent woman goes to her husband with twelve 'covers' and if the knives have hollow handles he'll be running with other women before the year is out, you wait and see. No man respects a woman with hollow handles."
Great book, lots of fun - from a writer who went on to become a popular columnist and respected essayist.
Also wrote Southern Ladies and Gentlemen (1975). More info in Wikipedia.