Wednesday, December 29, 2021

The Crossroads

CrossroadsCrossroads by Jonathan Franzen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Crossroads is the beginning of a trilogy from Jonathan Franzen, a detailed exploration of the life of a Midwest pastor, his wife and their four kids. With the exception of the nine-year-old, each member is pretty screwed up and the author chapter by chapter describes their failings, history and sorry denouements. There was considerable religious commentary not unusual in a pastor's story, but which left me in the dark. The plot jostles along, but nothing about the writing made me sit up or read aloud to my reading companion. I noted "lambent" as a favorite adjective among others. There is one of the best descriptions of speed-induced mental derailment I've read. But though I read compulsively, surely someone will notice and help these characters, I did not love this novel as much as I did his first book, The Corrections.

But don't mind me. Here's one of my favorite reviewers, Ron Charles of the Washington Post, reviewing this book last October: "The result is a story of spiritual crises with a narrative range more expansive than Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead novels, which can sometimes feel liturgical in their arcane ruminations. Franzen is working closer to the practical theology and moral realism of John Updike’s “Rabbit, Run” and “In the Beauty of the Lilies.” Grasping at reeds of grace and selfishness, the Hildebrandts demonstrate in the most poignant way how mortals stumble through life freighted with ideals that simultaneously mock and inspire them."

My philosophy gaps are showing.

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Wednesday, December 15, 2021

I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins

I Love You But I've Chosen DarknessI Love You But I've Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In sometimes very funny and sharp prose, the author tells a story of a young woman fleeing her husband and baby daughter, probably with post-partum depression, to live in the Mojave Desert where she was raised, all true of the author. She starts the story with activities of her father, described on a Tecopa website, "Paul Watkins, the famous member of Charles Manson’s Family who testified against Manson, securing his conviction for the notorious Helter Skelter murders. Watkins founded the Death Valley Chamber of Commerce, and his daughter, writer Claire Vaye Watkins, grew up here, near the Old Spanish Trail." He died young and Claire Vaye Watkins focuses much of the later chapters on her erratic alcoholic mother and reliable sister and her many boyfriends. In many ways, this angry and intense tale smacks of memoir and reviewers label it as autofiction. Enchanted by the title, I moved quickly through the first half of this book but found it bogged down in the found letters from her mother as a teen. I skimmed until we were back in Tecopa and desert living as the author finds some peace in solitude: “Pull my hair. Be kind to all plants and animals and children. Leave me alone. That’s how I like it,” she demands in this look at the injustice of making mother and woman and artist and lover mutually exclusive.

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Wednesday, December 8, 2021

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz

The PlotThe Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Plot was an entertaining suspenseful view of novel writing with an absorbing story-within-a-story scheme which hiked up the suspense. I rarely care "who done it" in a mystery, but the twist was obvious as soon as her childhood was described exactly as a famous novel. Although I thought characterization was a bit weak, especially in the main characters, Anna and Jake, I still enjoyed the story, and the level of tension kept me turning pages. Also, as a native, it was fun to read about the Seattle settings.

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A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies

A Lie Someone Told You about YourselfA Lie Someone Told You about Yourself by Peter Ho Davies
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A well written and complicated auto-fiction (?) story of a couple choosing to abort their probably-damaged-fetus who do eventually have a healthy child. The guilt and politics which torment them as they cope with having a new baby and the writer's introduction to fatherhood make for absorbing reading. The narrator is a writing teacher at a local college which contributes to the humorous subplot in this moving family story.

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Beautiful World, Where Are You? by Sally Rooney

Beautiful World, Where Are YouBeautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was my first book from this popular author. I found it absorbing enough to finish, to find out what happened to the various relationships among the foursome, but I was not as affected by the prose as I had hoped I'd be. Competently written but not poetic. Interesting ideas crop up in the style alternating email with action such that a long philosophical chapter is relieved by a scene-filled action chapter. And her political ideas are solid (“My theory is that human beings lost the instinct for beauty in 1976, when plastics became the most widespread material in existence”).

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Exteriors by Annie Ernaux

ExteriorsExteriors by Annie Ernaux
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Trenchant observations of people and thoughts while on the subway, in the mall, at the grocery. Occasionally funny, always astute and empathetic.

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The Spare Room by Helen Garner

The Spare RoomThe Spare Room by Helen Garner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I started with Helen Garner Everywhere I Look and read Claire Fuller's review which is hard to top. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... I was also reminded of the plot of the Sigrid Nunez What Are You Going Through about friendships under strain. Engrossing story and a refreshing Australian setting.

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Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

HamnetHamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Everyone is right. Why did I postpone it for so long? Beautiful book, the writing, the tale, the imagination. Thanks to all who kept recommending it to me.
The author's exposition of grief is extraordinary bringing a tear to my hardened eye.
So many quotations to savor, i.e. this of his pregnant wife: "His mind is traversed for a moment, by an image of her body in its current astonishing shape, as he saw it last night; limbs, neat rib cage, the spine a long indent down the back, a cart-track through snow, and then this perfectly rounded phere at the front. Like a woman who had swallowed the moon."

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The Promise by Damon Galgut

The PromiseThe Promise by Damon Galgut
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Pleased that this family story of apartheid and beyond in South Africa won the Booker Prize this year. Absorbing tale with a surprising thread of humor running through it.

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My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

My Name Is Lucy BartonMy Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Enjoyable story of a mother-daughter and their often strained conversations, told in spare prose by the daughter who is a writer. I wanted more about Lucy at the end, but am pleased to see there's another volume Oh William!.

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The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen

The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; DependencyThe Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency by Tove Ditlevsen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I lollygagged through the initial book (Childhood), then gave up on this dense memoir. Recently, I tried again by going straight to Youth and goose-stepped to the end through the German occupation of Copenhagen, Tove Ditlevsen's four marriages, three kids, her intense devotion to writing numerous poems and novels, her appallingly realistic descriptions of addiction to Demerol, the cravings and trials of getting clean. Her craving never stops as she describes in Dependency, while she's at the mercy of her mentally ill medical researcher husband for her injections: "Hell on earth. I'm freezing, I'm shaking, I'm sweating, I'm crying and yelling his name into the empty room." I was continually aware of how much better the Danish medical system is than ours (doctors actually came to the house and answered calls at unlikely hours), she spent months in a rehab facility at state expense under a caring doctor). Her specificity is part of her writing skill. A very good book.

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