The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez

The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

 The story is set in Bogotá, Colombia and the reader learns that much of the city is recovering from severe PTSD. Citizens who lived through the Eighties in the time of Pablo Escobar have symptoms not unlike war veterans, having spent a decade living in fear, not going out to public places, restaurants, cafes, etc. and never knowing when a family member or friend would go missing. The narrator grew up in the era and suffers irrational fears and despair after he is wounded while walking with his friend Roberto who is shot and killed, leaving him obsessed with trying to understand the death from the man's surviving daughter. The book becomes a mystery tale and spurs the reader on to discover what happened. The writing is beautiful in translation. Kudos to Anne McLean - I want to read more of her translations and am looking at The Anatomy of a Moment: Thirty-Five Minutes in History and Imagination. One memorable setting of the ruined and abandoned animal park/zoo owned by the drug lord is so real you can hear the squeak of a broken sign hanging by one hinge in the oppressive ever-present heat. The pace is almost dreamy for the first section of the story but picks up rapidly moving forward to other events, further puzzles.
A favorite quotation from the book:
"There is just one direct route beween La Dorada and Bogotá...You turn south and take the straight road that runs by the river that takes you to Honda, the port where travelers used to arrive when no planes flew over the Andes. From London, from New York, from Havana, Colón or Barranquilla, they would arrive by sea at the mouth of the Magdalena and change ship there...long days of sailing upriver on tired steamships...From Honda, each traveler would get to Bogotá however he could, by mule or by train or in a private car...no one has able to explain convincingly, beyond banal historical causes, why a country should choose as its capital its most remote and hidden city. It's not our fault that we Bogotanos are stuffy and cold and distant, because that's what our city is like, and you can't blame us for greeting strangers warily, for we're not used to them."


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Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As powerful as its advance reviews, I revved through this book like a racing bike barely pausing to enjoy the fine writing, biting description, well-wrought main characters (three activists, three cops and a WTO delegate from Sri Lanka) caught up in downtown Seattle for the 1999 demonstrations. From time to time, I'd stop to take issue with some small geographic detail about my home town (a city by the Sound, not the sea as the author writes) but mostly I just barreled through the story, remembering the smell of tear gas as I drove back up to Capitol Hill that fateful day. I particularly enjoyed the passages with the delegate, concerned about his agenda and not grasping the enormity of the protest as he tries to make his way to the convention center. The police were harsh characters but their overreaction is well drawn in keeping with actuality. My sympathies were naturally with the protesters and how ill-prepared any were for the extent of violence encountered. The author's economic background slipped in nicely to explain issues without dampening a beautifully written story.

Feeling a tad guilty about taking so many writing classes at such expense and even toying with the idea of $1,000 for three days at Hedgebrook -what? So as I noodle about with my daily practice, I wanted to reiterate to myself what Heidi Julavits said about writing classes. She was talking about learning to water ski as an adult and how really hard that is. She tried repeatedly and couldn't get up. I identify completely. And all of the people in the boat kept yelling suggestions at her:  "bend your knees" or "let the boat pull you" or "try it with one ski first" but finally, out of the cacophony of orders, she heard "Lean Back!" She did and up she went skimming over the waves. So by taking these classes, I am waiting to hear my "lean back." Everyone has much to offer and lots of suggestions, but eventually someone will have the one that resonates with I will race atop the waves along with the boat.

A lot of what I have learned, I ignore or forget about. I am not sure how actually useful the Lexicon book is although it can't help but expand my vocabulary. I never use Christine Hemp's little cut out window. I haven't really tried Erik Larsen's cut and paste with chunks all over the floor although it might do wonders for the Nicaragua piece. If I wrote fiction, Elizabeth George's character studies sound invaluable and would spur a fiction piece forward in that you'd have fully developed characters before formulating a story. I do try to read out loud everything I write and find that helpful. I do circle all of the adjectives, adverbs and verbs and try to improve on them. Martha taught me that as well as to PAY ATTENTION TO TENSES with which I still struggle on every piece. I use the thesaurus a lot. Maggie Nelson's class was amazingly educational about gender studies and "writing about the body" but doubt that I'll do a trans-gendered character anytime soon. I can't even remember what I learned from Mona Simpson. Wendy's classes are good but it's been a long time and I've pretty much changed what I write about so completely, who knows how I can benefit from the class on senses. I always appreciated her in depth critiques. No one can hold a candle to Martha's critiques though for thoroughness. Nick's are oh-so-terse and journalistic. His classes teach me a bit but have greater value in the assignments and the outside lectures, last quarter from Gary Luke, publisher of Sasquatch and last week's talk by Brier Dudley, Seattle Times editor, who was encouraging and fun to talk with.

Page or Curtis or someone said recently that all of my classes are tax deductible. There's a good excuse, i.e. including the ten days in Nicaragua? Well, all right. I was thinking but I haven't published but that doesn't really matter for five years or so. You can just keep deducting without selling anything at least that long as I understand it.

So I'll keep taking the classes awaiting that lucid cry to "lean back," meanwhile enjoying each one immensely and continuing my daily scribbling, Or, as Michael would say, fuck the money,

Seattle Public Library, our Book Club and The Spinster

I will rant a bit on how ridiculous the "rebranding opportunity" for Seattle Public Library is to spend half a million dollars on changing its name by one letter in a venture that has nothing to do with books or programs to further reading and learning as stated in their new brand statement. Take the survey:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PBTWRN2
And who goes to the Libraries? I go to my branch of the Seattle Public Library but not to the Libraries. It sounds pretentious and inaccurate. If it is their desire to expand into plural libraries, why not pay to reciprocate fully with the King County Library System so we can place holds with them. And there's no getting around the sickening waste of money by an organization that is annually strapped for funds. Madness prevails, or marketing models. Next they'll call it Amazonlibrary or Googlibrary like the sports arenas. Don't even suggest it.

This year we have a good selection of book club titles, international and domestic, new and old, to make up our reading list for this year which are listed below. The voting session went smoothly and quickly and probably deciding on dates was the most challenging use of our time. Helen's heavenly sour cream lemon pie was the reward for our endeavors.

Lispector, Clarice. Near to the Wild Heart (Brazilian) - October
Maxwell, William. They Came Like Swallows (American) - November
Doyle, Brian. The Plover (American) - December
Daoud, Kamel. Meurault Investigation with Camus' The Stranger (Algerian)- Jan
Vasquez, Juan Gabriel. The Sound of Things Falling (Colombian) - February
Zink, Nell. The Wallcreeper (American but German setting) - March
Mitchell, Judith Claire. A Reunion of Ghosts (American) - April
Gadda, Carlo Emilio. That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana (Italian) - May
Ferrante, Elena. My Brilliant Friend (Italian) - June

Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick

Last night I read The Spinster by Kate Bolick which is particularly enjoyable in its memoir sections, alternates with biographical and academic info and includes a good bibliography (my weakness:  more books to read). The narrator explains her own decision to live alone in spite of a long-term relationship and her fascination with literary figures from her Northeastern MA background who demonstrate how the "demands of domesticity can limit women's literary production". She describes five women and their lives and references others to support her thesis: New Yorker essayist and short story author Maeve Brennan (Alice Munro called her 1972 story, "The Springs of Affection,""one of her favorite short stories of all time.") Vogue editor and novelist Neith Boyce, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edith Wharton and feminist writer ("The Yellow Wall-paper") Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I put the book aside for a moment and then when it became overdue, gobbled it up in an evening. That happens to me often with library due dates which my former profession instilled in me as "suggestions" rather than gospel, so I fund my Seattle Public Library rather than add to the bursting-at-the-seams volumes in my own.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Trust the hype, it's been a while since I read a 780-page book in 5 days and actually suffered pangs awakening and realizing it was over. I'd finished it after almost a week of constant company.  No more The Goldfinch to fall into and evade most other activities. And what will become of Theo? of Pippa?  They are still in their twenties when the book ends but the story of their meeting, their sublime disastrous connection precludes a future or does it? Theo's almost hopeful final thoughts close the story as he adds his "love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them."  Tartt has succeeded in keeping me enthralled from the events at the museum and their tragic aftermath and the glaring descriptions of Las Vegas living and youthful drug exploration on into serious addiction to the vagaries of curating and exploiting antique furniture.  A 14-year-old boy is possessed by a 17th C painting of a captive goldfinch, an actual work of art by Fabritius. "if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don't think 'oh, I love this picture because it's universal.' 'I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.' That's not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It's a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you...an individual heart-shock. Your dream...yours, yours. I was painted for you."  The book spoke to this reader.


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The Folded Clock: A Diary by Heidi Julavits
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Folded Clock by Heidi Julavits is self-absorbed and absorbing, reflective, boring to some but not to me, diary of a young woman's thoughts with each date starting "Today I..." and continuing with an anecdote or meditation about her life, i.e. I walked by here when I was on my way to have an affair with the man who became my second husband, or I swam for hours on the last day of our Maine vacation in t he little town where I have summered most of my life, or I went to see my therapist who did not answer the door or I fought with my husband when we were in Berlin. and she continues to muse on these beginnings for a few pages before we willy nilly move on to another date, not necessarily chronological. As a writer, and one not given to this kind of introspection, I found her entries fascinating. I listened to the book on CD and my husband did not share my enthusiasm even though she's funny at times and off the wall with her neuroses. It was a voyeurish excursion but the worries and obsessions about aging and death and friendship which concern her are shared by many women and I was sorry to have the book end. I'd buy another installment.


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The Green Road by Anne Enright

The Green Road by Anne Enright
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Green Road was sheer poetry, some of the best writing I've enjoyed in a long time. Anne Enright is the kind of writer who makes me want to toss my pen, she is so good and her work appears effortless:   "Rome was 1962, an audience with the Pope, a man on a little Vespa, so handsome he would cut you, with a fat brown baby on his knee. Oh and Roma, Roma! The unexpected piazzas, the sprays of orange blossom, an old codger on the tram who stank of garlic so badly -- Rosaleen should have realised that morning sickness was setting in. Dan was conceived in Rome. And Dan loved garlic! There was no end to the mysteries of Dan.". The story of a family told through the lives of each of the grown children and their mother in Ireland, it ends with a family Christmas which is a stunning chapter on the trauma and tragedy faced by many on the enforced holidays slated to be joyful, and the priceless litany of groceries brought in by the striving-to-please daughter Constance as she unloads almost 500 Euros of foodstuffs to please all, forgetting the coffee. Poignant, funny, and deeply affecting, the book is a top choice for me this year. Knausgaard is next or maybe Elena Ferrante.


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