Tag Archives: book

March 24, 2013

“Rock Me Mama Like a Wagon Wheel”

By Cassie

Rusted Gas Station

I’ve lived in North Carolina since I was five years old.  When we moved into our cookie-cutter neighborhood (where my parents still live today) there were cows grazing on a hill over the backroad of Strickland.  A rusted gas-station awning tipped on its axis and this is how I saw the world.  There were Texaco pumps still bleeding red and blue dumped in the weeds near the entrance.  Someone had cracked the door so the darkness lied.  My brother claims to have tried to explore it once, peeked in the windows on a late night scavenger hunt.  He told me condensed milk cans still sat on the shelf, their white wrap peeling.  Light still filtered in and saw dust covered the torn floor.  It would have been great for some photographer to come around and show the world Carolina in the rust.  Our house has always been two hours to the closest beach and two to the closest mountain.  You can cough and hear country music.  Boys look straight-faced at the girls in the seat next to them, smell the flowers on their neck, speed up for the thrill.  Girls scream, brush the wisps of their hair from their face, from sticking to their date-pink lip gloss.  Couples eat custard and spill barbecue.

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Ron Rash

One of my goals for this year was to read more Carolina literature.  Whether it be the Southern or Northern State, I wanted to read more about my hometown.  This month I read, Nothing Gold Can Stay by Ron Rash, and Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison.  Nothing Gold Can Stay is a short story collection about Appalachia and it switches between the past and the present.  I bought it because I listened to Ron Rash on Weekend Edition.  He made this amazing comment to the host about how he finds inspiration for his stories.

SIMON: How does a short story idea come into you?

RASH: Very often, they’re not ideas at all. I actually start sometimes with a voice, usually an image, an image that won’t leave me alone and I have to find out where that image will lead me.

SIMON: Can you give us a for instance?

RASH: Well, in “The Trustee,” the first story in the book, I had an image of a trustee, a prisoner, in the 19 – it was early 20th century, who was walking down the road with a bucket in his hand. I didn’t know where he was going or who he would meet but I knew I wanted to follow him.

The Trustee is a member of a chain gang who frees himself with a pail of water.  I loved the way that Rash played with the idea of trust. This man was trusted by the guards to walk miles to find a water spout on the neighboring farms, but too trusting when it comes to the outside world.  It’s this great balance between honesty and fear.  I think as human beings we’re constantly on this pendulum between the two things.  Earlier, I had a conversation with a good friend who said, “A guy will smile at a girl and think, she’s pretty, I should smile.  A girl will see a boy smile and plan their whole life together in a minute.”  This is so true and so true of the Southern girl mentality.  We live the fantasy.  How perfect would he look in a tie, will he carry our child on his shoulders, how great will his arm hair look in the sun with a tan.  It’s this disgusting little ritual we’ve concocted in our mind.  My good friend was in the process of composing a facebook message to her crush that was witty and adorable, but obsessive.  She’s living the balance of being honest and true to herself, but having to deal with the fear of the boy not loving that truth.  Oh, relationships, will we ever understand you?

@ Tumblr Image

Ron Rash plays a lot with this idea of honesty and fear.  Do we be golden, shine true, or do we give pieces of ourselves?  Obviously, the only person who is going to know the whole you is you.  No one is ever going to know you like you.  The characters in Rash’s stories really understand this and play with the idea of bringing their wholeness to the world.  What if instead of thinking of throwing a drink, I just threw one?  It’s fun to make your characters live out things that you were too scared to do in your own life.  My favorite story in this book was about a woman who found herself behind the safety glass of a radio booth.  Known as the Night Hawk she would play music for the sleepless, the all-nighters, the college students hunched over their chemistry textbooks, the drunks on late-night donut runs, the women unable to sleep over their pillow of worries, and those that just want to listen in the dark because they can’t listen in the day.  It’s one of the most beautiful and intricate stories out there.

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

In Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison just lets her characters go for it.  Ruth Anne, nicknamed Bone, lives on the edge of being another crazy Boatwright woman, and being herself.  It’s the same honesty and fear question.  Do I live with the strength of my mother and grandmother or do I falter into my own shyness?  Do I scream or not scream?  Do I give my heart to the dry hands of another or hoard it for myself?  It tells the story of a world that sometimes isn’t able to look at its own darkness.  I thought for sure by the end that Bone had experienced all the hurt she was going to experience by thirteen and in the last twenty pages, I got eaten alive.  It was painful and incredibly slow-moving.   It’s like watching something that you know is happening very quickly, a car crash maybe, and yet you watch the glass crack, split, fly.  Bone is every girl who’s ever been scraped clean by a man, and so are her aunts and her mother.  She bares the question, do we make the same mistakes that our mother’s made and our grandmother’s before our mothers?  Do we carry on the traditions that are beautiful and the traditions that burn?  I’m not sure at this point in my life, but I rely heavily on the strength that the women in my life carried throughout their trauma and tell myself that’s the legacy I’ll carry through.  My daughter won’t be called pretty, she’ll be called brave.

Quote @ Tumblr

Both of these books were slow, but slow in the Southern way.  If you’ve ever been to a grocery store in the South, you know we ponder, we make lists, we huddle, we stop and chat.  There ain’t no Southern lady on this planet who doesn’t spend an extra ten minutes in church just to hear the gossip.  Preacher’s outside shaking hands and women are leaning over pews, touching bonnets in conversation.  This is the South, this is my home.

It’s my Three Year Bloggiversary and in honor of that, I wanted to share some of my own writing about the South.  I hardly ever, if ever (this may be the first time) share my outside writing on my blog and so I thought it might be nice for just this once to share that little piece of myself.  Honest and fear, people, honesty and fear.  Before I do though, A Small Press Life is doing a bi-weekly blog called [R]evolving Incarnations: A Questionnaire for Passionate Readers and I am the reader this week, so go over and check that out here.  Her blog is wonderful and timeless.  Here goes nothing…

“He carried eggs in a basket to the house next door. Had polished them with a wet hankerchief before delivering them to the doorstep.  His mother put a stained wash cloth over the top to keep them warm after boil. They didn’t crack on the way. They huddled together like live chicks would in the cold. His scarf was caught in the wind and as he tightened it, it only flew more.  A runaway kite of neck scarf.  The eyes of the sky were out, it was early morning and the birds were slightly twinkling, cooing in the stiff air, watching frost crush green.

She was sitting like widows do with everything resting on their elbow. The glass was warming, her breath creating fog circles in the panels. He placed the basket on the top step, stared at the door and stuck his hands in his jean pockets.  She saw his hands, rosy with cold before he shoved them in, stepped back, and stared at the knocker, breathing smoke like almost-words.”

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February 17, 2013

Is Intensity the Same as Love?

By Cassie

I think it’s almost funny how unmoved I was by this book, like a stone woman.

Reading a book in one sitting is usually best for me.  I cried over Of Mice and Men after a strong afternoon of migrant workers and big-pawed Lennie.  I tend to spend tea time with Alice Monroe on my porch and drink up the sun, the words, the seep.  Then there is, of course, Hunger Games in a weekend where I ate only strawberries.  Gasped through New Moon at a disney resort where the poolside bartender gave us drinks without seeing our IDs, “all you need girls, is your room key.”  I usually have favorable outcomes with books that I spend a day with.  It’s almost like a day trip, we’ve driven this far, my feet are making toe prints on the windshield glass and the air in the pine trees make the words whisper.

The Book in Question

And then the New York Times reviewed the book.  Elissa Schappell wrote the review in the Times that makes me feel like I no can longer wear the stiff garter of the feminist.  She discusses the metaphor of “Soviet women as the human workhouses they were.”  I suppose I was wrong when I thought they lived in castles.  The things I know about Russia can be counted on two hands: ballet, ice skating, mail-order brides, no more American adoptions, Chernobyl, WWII, winter, Russian sables, and the ideal of blondeness.  Forgive me, any Russian readers, I desperately need an education.  It’s as if they leave the wholeness of the country out of our school books, as Americans.  At first, I thought this was the very reason that I didn’t really “get” the book.  I thought I was lost because my Russian history wasn’t fine-tuned.  I’ve never even traveled to Europe, never worn fur in the winters, I barely wear gloves.

The closest I came to Russia was when my high school best friend taught me to say I love you by squeezing my hand before we went to bed.  She would squeeze three times to say she loved me, and I would squeeze back four, tight compact squeezes where the lines in our palms pressed together and made our wrinkles into latitude and longitude.  She was taught to do this by a Russian girl that stayed with her family over the summer.  They would each have their eyelashes closed to their cheek, be secretly under the covers in matching pajamas and twin pillow cases and find each other’s hands.  I learned to say “I love you” silently from a little Russian girl.

“Father Frost and stepdaughter” by Ivan Bilibin

Schappell told me that Petrushevskaya’s American break out is a form of “scary fairy tales” and my only references to this are Grimm and Sexton.  Schappell mentions the Russian greats and compares Petrushevskaya to Chekov which I missed entirely in the reading of her book.   My favorite line from the Times Review though is, “For these women, telling their stories is as necessary as having someone to care for. They tell stories, while waiting in endless lines for bread and trains and promotions that will never come, to feel less lonely. As Joan Didion said, ‘We tell ourselves stories in order to live.’”

This is the exact reason why I didn’t adore this book.  I gave it 2 stars.  I couldn’t even write a review of the book on this blog until I spoke to the women I admire about what they thought on goodreads:

Alena gave it 2.5 stars, a sister to my 2 stars.  You can visit Alena’s fabulous book (and other interesting things) blog here.  I trust very few people to give me book recommendations and she is ALWAYS a go-to gal.

Alena's goodreads review.

Alena’s goodreads review.

And then Claire gave voice to the women smoking in the cafe telling these stories.  You can read Claire’s amazing blog here.  I highly recommend her book blog because she always says just the right thing to make you really analyze a book, or think about what you’ve just read in a new way.  I adore her blog and get the email updates every time she posts.  I will admit though, I am a poor commenter.

The discussion between Claire and I.

The discussion between Claire and I.

More discussing.

More discussing.

Claire's perfectly poignant comments.

Claire’s perfectly poignant comments.

Darkness & love

With all that said, do what you must with this book.  This is the wonderful thing about books, they cause you to explain yourself and they give different gifts to each reader.  I wonder sometimes if loving a book depends on the time you come to a book, or when the book finds you.  This book may have rooted if I was a different age, lived in a different time or place, found myself on a train in Japan half-reading and half watching the silent woman with untied boots three seats away.

Either way, somewhere in an off-write bedroom a women is in love with her sister’s husband and every time, every single time, of the twenty-seven times that they’ve encountered each other’s bodies, he silently removes his wedding ring while she adjusts her eyes to the dark.

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October 18, 2012

The Quick & Dirty: Reviews

By Cassie

I’ve been slackin’.  We can all see that.  I went from two-digits to single digits.

I’ve actually been researching the Holocaust because I’m going to start teaching Night in one week and I’m pumped up, like cheerleader pumped up, top of the pyramid cheerleader, BE AGGRESSIVE, B-E AGGRESSIVE cheerleader pumped up.

In order for me to catch up, it’s another round of the quick & dirty.

1. Tiger Lily – Jodi Lynn Anderson 

Tiger Lily – Jodi Lynn Anderson

Do you realize how many times I went into Barnes & Noble just to feel the green leather cover of the new Annotated Peter Pan?  If a cow was covered in peter pan memorabilia I would pet those Pan spots until the cow and I flew off to Neverland.  I have a deep love of Peter Pan, he’s like the classic version of Harry Potter.  I requested this book as an advanced reader from Harper Collins twice.  I literally had to e-mail beg the second time with a proud picture of my photobooth sad face.  (I know I have issues).  However, this was a dud.  I badly wanted Tiger Lily to not turn into the pouting girlfriend when Wendy came.  They made Peter Pan seem like some high school heart throb who made out with mermaids one minute and eskimo kissed Tiger Lily (how dare she ruin her morals like that) the next.  I did like that the mermaids were these half shark, half scaled, half Disney creatures though because it seems like the Blue Lagoon would breed some strange epiphany of an animal.  BUT, Tiger Lily is just another love sick “native” in another young adult book where the girl gets broken-hearted and sits alone to daydream about when the right man will come along.

TIGER LILY IS SUPPOSED TO BE A BEAST WHO DOESN’T GIVE PETER THE TIME OF DAY.

She uses him, okay. She uses him.

“Sometimes I think that maybe we are just stories. Like we may as well just be words on a page, because we’re only what we’ve done and what we are going to do.

Mister Pip – Lloyd Jones

2. Mister Pip – Lloyd Jones 

This book was another slight adventure into New Zealand literature.  I’m not sure anything could ever approach the greatness that is Bone People, but this was good.  However, if you’re going to write a book that twists off from the rock of a great classic piece of literature at least make the climax worth my time.  I was desperately involved with Mister Pip, the school teacher and his white suit, his love of Dickens.  I can imagine him wrapping his voice around the cocktail shrill of Miss Havisham, her wet broom hair, and dusty white lace.  I wanted to hear him cough like Magwitch, imagine the sounds of the sewer river near Pip’s home.  Magwitch threatened someone’s life, he must have a deep growl somewhere in the pit of his stomach.

It took this author two sentences to ruin the climax. Two full sentences and the entire book was a sham.

I wanted to hurl my body into a wall and leave a hole for the place where this story should have went.  Maybe it’ll grow like a wildflower from the blank space.

“I had found a new friend. The surprising thing is where I’d found him – not up a tree or sulking in the shade, or splashing around in one of the hill streams, but in a book. No one had told us kids to look there for a friend. Or that you could slip inside the skin of another. Or travel to another place with marshes, and where, to our ears, the bad people spoke like pirates. “ 

The Dove Keepers – Alice Hoffman

3. The Dove Keepers – Alice Hoffman 

If you want me to read a 500 and so page book, then you need to make it thrilling.

If you are writing about women made of magic and homemade ink and they aren’t fascinating gypsy spirits…

I can’t even review this.

Vaclav & Lena – Haley Tanner

4. Vaclav & Lena – Haley Tanner 

I enjoyed this book.  It has birds on the cover. It was a healthy dose of love story and corny plot line that I needed  during commercials of NFL football.  I hate when authors I love write blurbs on the back of books I don’t gush madly, deeply, truly (sorry Backstreet Boys  interrupted me there) about.  This book was okay.  It wasn’t a golden ringer and I was okay with that because I just borrowed it from the library.  I had to borrow it anonymously because I owe the librarian ten cents for a misunderstanding (Yea, sorry, I’m that person) but I gave it back in a quick turnaround.

The characters in this story are interesting.  It’s a bit too “written in the stars” for me.  I don’t like stories where the lovers are laid out in the beginning and the reader has to accept that whatever horrible things happen to them in the middle, they will come back together in the end, holding hands, or singing a lullaby, or just off somewhere looking at the sky, sitting close to one another.  (I take that back because I pretty much just described Twilight).

Vaclav is a magician and Lena is his lovely sidekick.  They are both Russian immigrants who YOU GUESSED IT lose each other on the cusp of adulthood and find each other again when they’re both much taller, lacking braces, and smell funny.

“. . . and Vaclav’s special new shoes with the lights on the heels and the Velcro everywhere, because in America no one, not even small children, has time to tie his own shoes, and everything must have flashing lights.” 

Black Boy – Richard Wright

5. Black Boy – Richard Wright 

I think this is one of the most brilliant memoirs to happen in the 20th century.  While everyone argues in their head for Year of Magical Thinking (which I thought was a bit of a bleh) please hear me out.

Richard Wright is so ahead of his time, it’s ridiculous.  Instead of being a writer who hits the Jackpot exactly at the right moment in time (50 Shades of Grey COUGH COUGH – came out just when everyone was trying to make women have these probing ultrasounds if they wanted to have an abortion and half of the population wanted to riot over the rights of women.  Everyone in porn is having a serious round of high-fives) (that was a long parenthesis), Richard Wright comes about when it’s the complete wrong part of time.  He grows up black when anything else is more acceptable.  He tells the true story of black boys, and to be honest, I read this book because I teach a lot of black boys and I wanted to understand them better.  What better way than by reading a book?  (Gateway drug).

I was awed by Richard Wright’s struggle, but not only that, the way he spoke about books made my chest open up and all the red flush drained out.  It’s like a black boy in “No Colored Allowed” South, knew me.  This is when books are meeting their true calling, when they find the pocket of opportunity to introduce a 24-year-old white girl to a sixteen-year-old black boy who is fighting every impossibility of life while she types a blog on her macbook.  This book found me in a place I didn’t yet know I had.  We read because we need to show the world color.

Thank you, Richard Wright, for just living and writing it down.

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all.” 

American Pastoral – Philip Roth

6. American Pastoral – Philip Roth 

I think this is a five.

Much like my favorite book ever, Lark & Termite, this is one of those books that you must finish and well-out before you are able to fully grasp the magnitude. (I mean sit in a well and ponder the possibilities of life).  I think I’m so in awe of this book because I could never, ever, ever write it.  The way Roth describes how you make a glove should be printed into short stories and given to amateur writers everywhere.  I’ve never been so interested in industrialization and the way a factory processes goods than I was in those gloved moments.  Philip Roth wrote down to every single stitch that a glove maker does by hand.  I learned parts of a glove that I never cared to learn.  It made me want to go out and dress like a lady.

I’m just not sure how to recommend this book.  I think if you can deeply feel a book for it’s style and content, then read this book.  If you get bored easily and can’t push yourself to finish books that dawdle, then don’t read this book.  Well….just….actually…please read this book.  I think it may be one of the greatest books in American literature.  And here I am, not even having gotten to the characters and how I felt about them, and I want to pull my pinky finger from the soft leather pinch with my teeth.

This book is just a marathon of awesome writing.  I hate using the word awesome in this blog because I think it’s an excuse of a word.  It’s like cussing, there’s no point when the English language – or any language for that matter – has so many great words for how you’re feeling when you cuss.  Awesome is the good word version of a cuss word in a paragraph.  It has a cool sound, but it isn’t actually a word.

A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer – Christine Schutt (Even the title is too long and pointless).

7. A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer – Christine Schutt 

I think she likes to hear the sound of her own voice.  I think I worked way too hard to read this book.  It was incredibly hard to be moved by these characters or to connect series of events.  If she wrote a novel, it would come out with a big “discard” stamp in the front flap. (That may be a little too harsh.  There were good word moments).

8. Elegance of the Hedgehog – Muriel Barbury 

I found this book pretentious.  I was expecting Matilda and I got philosopher concierge and pretentious little girl.  The best part of this book was the Japanese man who takes philosopher to dinner and discussions.  (I’m so sorry my dear Aussie friend.  I know you love it.  You can defend it to the death in a dual in the comments if you want).

Buddha in the Attic – Julie Otsuka

9. Buddha in the Attic – Julie Otsuka 

Don’t read this book.  It has a “we” as the narrator and it’s horrendous.  Who chose to write this as a chorus.  This is not a Greek tragedy.  We needed one character for the reader to connect to, to make this novel work.  Instead we get the gallows of women who  sound like a long train of dead voices.  If you can write a novel in the second person that’s beautiful, I will bow down, but the “we,” really?  Did WE really expect that one to work?

I’m a harsh critic tonight.

This must be why that book snob said that book bloggers are ruining the book culture. (Sorry, I’m not sorry).

“We lost weight and grew thin. We stopped bleeding. We stopped dreaming. We stopped wanting.” 

22 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in book reviews, books

July 10, 2012

Newsday Tuesday

By Cassie

Favorite Tweets:

Favorite Search Terms:

  • Cassie sparkles Michigan: I’m not sure if you’re trying to find your long lost love via google, or just letting me know that Michigan will crown me and let me wave from a pageant float covered in sparkles and frankincense.  Either way, I’m for this search – I back your stalker ways, and your fourth grade crush on Cassie Sparkle.  I can only imagine what her yearbook picture looks like
  • toddler lawn furniture: This gives me THE BEST mental image, but what am I…Target?
  • free southern belle coloring pages: Ya’ll, send those right over, please and thank you.  (This is me curtsying.  I also own a bonnet).
  • Grammar humor: what is my mind doing today.  All of a sudden two men with pocket watches in the slit of their vests, with spectacles resting at the hook of their nose are drinking tea and har-har-ing. (Har-har, dear, har-har: when used in a sentence).

Book News:

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in book reviews, books, poetry

June 5, 2012

Newsday Tuesday

By Cassie

Favorite Tweets:

Read bottom to top:

Read normally:

Favorite Search Terms:

  • bowel movements in history: if someone hasn’t written this book, they should.  I will review it with honor.
  • ihop receipt: I just thought that this was interesting.  I must know the story of this googling.  If you are out there anonymous googler, please email.  Yes, this has become a want-ad.
  • disney princess epiphanies: I have this all the time, then I sing, “Ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah” like golden rays are coming out of my hair and I’ve become little mermaid, minus the fin.
  • feminist background: Is anyone really born a feminist or do they become one after many years of silent rage?
  • a re-imagined Florida in which the citizens of the state are born with magic talents: Listen, I lived in Boca until I was five and the only magic talent Florida needs is better driving schools.  My faj flew over a grassy median once and said, “it’s okay, we’re in Florida, they all do that.”
  • spark notes Claire Keegan Foster: Shame on you.  I’m guffawing.

Book News:

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in book reviews, books, Photography, poetry, Young Adult

February 16, 2012

Interrupting the Flow | Beasts of No Nation

By Cassie

Beasts of No Nation

I’m not at all sure why I want to review this novel.  It’s both horrifying and fascinating as other readers have said, and yet it still feels really incomplete.  In fact, I think the ending was a complete cop-out of the ending that Iweala should have taken.  However, I am the “normal” state school college graduate and he is the Harvard alum who has spent lives in both Nigeria and America.  (He has also worked at refugee camps).  Does this mean though that his story should be told?

Let’s dive in.

Beasts of No Nation is the story of a child soldier named Agu who is at one point top of his class and living in his four-people family unit, then quickly thrust into the arms of a dictator Commandant who abuses him in all sorts of ways, some of them beyond even the Commandment’s control.  This is horrifying, yes?  A child is sexually abused by the head of an army, his only friend another child who doesn’t speak at all.  They are forced to carry a gun, march through broken bones and fed the trash of villages already thrashed through.  He experiences his first sexual awakening (although we have no age for Agu, we can assume that he is well before sexual enlightening years).  He experiences torn thoughts on killing others; on the one side believing he is still a good boy and on the other believing he is the devil.  I can’t disagree that the unfolding isn’t chilling.

Project for Peace

However, I don’t think Iweala captures it completely.  The only time I was completely disgusted was during a rape between Agu and his superior…as anyone would be disgusted just by the content.  He hasn’t sold me on the voice of Agu and his use of repetition, and no real grammar.  I think the child voice is spot on, but the accent needs work, and the author admits this in the gray pages of the end.  However, I’ve never heard West African English and so I can’t judge that this isn’t just my Southern, girl interpretation, or if it’s actually really a linguistic feature of the villages.

I think what disappointed me the most was my lack of feeling for Agu.  Here is this boy who has gone through nine lives of war in his one short boyhood and I am not connected with him every second.  I do not feel the need to comfort him.  I don’t immediately want to google child soldiers after I finish the book to learn more.  Honestly, I don’t think this book even brings child soldier’s justice, even though it is dedicated to those who have suffered.  The most fascinating part of the book was the bio of Uzodinma Iweala at the end, which I’m sure Harper Perennial insisted on.  The real reason this book is great is because of the message it tells people like me, who live everyday thinking a stop light is a disaster.

I feel like a horrible human being for not totally buying into this book.  I feel like this might be my inward struggle with the realness.  Maybe I’m not ready to face the fact that this happens to people.  Maybe I should remember that I’m a girl too afraid to watch Blood Diamond because of my future thoughts on engagement rings.

I think the two things that bother me most were my want and need that the main character of this book should be the child who did not speak: Strika.  How badly I want to know what that boy is thinking, how badly I want to know his own horrors to understand his silence.  While the dialogue for Agu always made sense, this was a book of his thoughts.  He is not silent, but what is better than having the thoughts of a silent victim on the page (Strika, Agu’s best friend).

My other problem with this book is that Agu leaves his fellow soldiers after the death of his friend, and walks off into the sunlight, (spoiler) only to be saved in the next chapter.  The very last chapter is a glimpse of the refugee camp with what seems to be a white counselor trying to talk Agu through his survival and his conscience.  I may be the only one who feels this way, but Agu should have died.  In order to understand the brutality of the situation, Agu should have died and been saved through his own death.  He should not live on because of the reader’s hopes of a happy ending, or the need for the author to make hope out of a war that isn’t over.  Agu has killed, and yes his psyche is all off, and his emotions and humanhood are all screwed-up, he is completely brain washed into these killings, but then I want his death to be his redemption.  The true end to this story was redemption through death and Iweala fails to find it.  This refugee camp is a cop out.  And now I’m all angry.

Falling Whistle

Really, you would think I’d be happy Agu was saved, but I’m not.  I’m that sort of person that an ending of a book is more important to me than the happiness of readers at the end.  We didn’t need this sewed up and tied with a bow.  We did not need the yams and the rice to fill his stomach after starvation.  We DEFINITELY didn’t need some white therapist stepping in to work through his child soldier memories.  That last part probably disturbs me the most because it ends on this note that white people are saving West Africa, or that white people are the saviors that everyone needs, or that the white mentality is stronger and better than the mentalities of other races.

What it basically says is that white (american) people understand, and will help.  (Let me speak for the group really quickly…I know this is not everyone’s feelings)…WHAT DO WE UNDERSTAND?  I don’t understand a damn thing about child trafficking, violence, or child soldiers in war.  Here in the US we let young men fight at the age of eighteen and when they die we tell ourselves that they lived a full life, filled with proms and football games.  We don’t understand the brutality of children fighting in war, children sewing together Nike’s in factories, the cost of one large diamond for our ring finger.  Oh, you mean people died from this?  I’m just a bit disgusted with the “white savior” at the end of this book.  Do we have to be constantly bombarded with this idea?

I’m not even sure I’ll post this blog at this point.  I feel like people are going to be offended.  (Side note: I asked my mother and three bloggers I really trust to look over this blog before posting it to make sure I didn’t hurt anyone.  It would pain me incredibly if anyone was offended by this blog and thus why I asked for others opinions).

I’ve learned throughout my life that you can’t say “I don’t see color,” because then you’re taking the uniqueness away from every person in a room.  You’re removing people’s history, people’s culture, people’s identities even.

So, while I recommend this book because some people need their eyes open to the cruelties of the world (me), I don’t think it’s the best book on the subject, and I think Iweala could have handled it better.   I actually do believe he will as he continues writing his heart.

In trying to help somehow with the cause of child soldiers, here are some links that I believe in.

Here are other reviews by bloggers:

10 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in book reviews, books

February 11, 2012

Backlogged | Lorrie Moore Obsession

By Cassie

Dude, where’s my life?

I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had anytime to review the wonderful books I’ve read throughout half of February.  I’m going to have to let a few slip by, but two of them I can’t really just let go of that easily.  One is an oldie but a goodie, and the other is brand spankin’ new.  So, today, oldie but goodie.  Next week, brand spankin’ new.

Lorrie Moore Creeper

First lesson in reading or writing literary fiction: if you haven’t read Lorrie Moore, put your pencil down, stop patting yourself on the back for that witty new character you’ve created and go to the literature, particularly the M’s for Moore.  As a side note, if you haven’t read Lorrie Moore, I can not be your friend until you do that.  I know, I have harsh standards for friendship, but that’s definitely one of my top five, after loyalty and before good note passing skills (in my later years we call those penpalships, or letters on stationary).

I’m not even sure I can dare speak about Lorrie Moore.  I’m not even sure, like Alice, I can reach the door knob of Lorrie Moore’s castle.  But, as always, I’m going to try.

Self-Help, at its heart is a collection of stories on how to be a helper of mankind.  I know that sounds really sentimental, but she does it in a way that you don’t even see coming.  One second you’re in this imagined lovers-turned-roommates relationship and the next second (boom) you’re in the clutches of your own life, unable to breathe and heaving for air.  To be honest, I’m pretty sure I’m the girl in both “How” and “How to Become a Writer.”  And this is definitely not a case of me reading too into things.  But that’s the glory of Lorrie Moore, you actually think you’re a character, even beyond that anonymous “you.”   You find yourself saying, “wait, I would totally meet a boyfriend at a ‘rummage sale’” or “‘escape into [a] book.  When he asks what you’re reading, hold it up without comment.’”  I’m really passive aggressive, a perfect girl to hold a book and continue in the silence.

Plus, I’m not going to lie, but every time I read this book (probably at eight times right about now, counting all the anthologized stories I read throughout undergrad ficiton writing classes) I still feel like one of these women.  I still feel caught up in my life, or like I could stab my (invisible) husband in a bakery if I caught him cheating.  This is probably saying more about me than it is about this book.

Drawing of Moore's story "To Fill" by artist Sam Jacoff

I don’t even know really how to describe Lorrie Moore’s writing because it’s just fascinating to look at.  She uses metaphors like everything can be related to everything.  It’s almost a six degree separation with her.  One of the quotes below has a man making love to a woman but using robotic movements like someone opening a cupboard.  Who would think that way?  It’s like her brain is a series of pockets that correlate with one another and of course sex-cupboard, why haven’t we made this connection before?  I wish it was that easy for all writers, but then we wouldn’t have like Lorrie Moore to both teach and humble us.

She’s also both witty and sentimental which is hard to do.  At times you think witty and cynical go together and other times you want to cry because she’s leaving you broken from all angles.  I think the star of this collection is the use of second person to make the reader be literally in the story.  A lot of people are turned off by the “you” but I think in every instance she uses it, although it’s a lot, it works.  (So, get turned on).  I’m not sure that if the writing was less impeccable and less finely detailed than Moore’s, that I would have accepted so many stories in second person.

Signature of Lorrie Morre on Self-Help

In the story, “Amahl and the Night Visitors” Moore chronicles a break-up from moment of initial demise all the way through packing bags (initial demise is of course a cat, aren’t they always)?  However in “How to Talk to Your Mother” she does almost the opposite by chronicling a girls life backwards by year.  From years without your mother, to the womb.  This is probably the moment where I learned ten pages make a life.  In fact, one page, one sentence, probably makes a life.  Thus, why we have six word memoirs.  In fact, I dare you all (readers and whoever else happens to stumble here by googling bad things) to write a chronicle of your life backyards using a person or a situation as the nail it all hangs on.  Moore uses the mother to define the daughter, now you use something in your own life to chronicle yourself backwards, and of course use the second person, “you.”  See where it gets you, email what you come up with.  This is a dare, a triple dog dare.  I’ll do it too, I need to write anyway.

The best gift, from the best writers, is the need to tell your own story; made-up or true. That’s what I believe.

I’ll end this by saying: Lorrie Morrie is all of the things that I want to be when I grow up.

Here are my favorite quotes:

  • “Beware of a man who says he loves you but who is incapable of a passionate confession, of melting into a sob.” (43, Moore, “What is Seized”). First of all how does she manipulate grammar that way.  Secondly, isn’t this a story of a whole generation of men and boys in just one sentence.
  • “When your parents divide, you, too bifurcate.  You cleave and bubble and break in two, live two lives, half of you crying every morning on the dock at sunrise, black hair fading to dusky gray, part of you traveling off to some other town where you teach school and tell jokes in an Italian accent in a bar and make people laugh.  And when your mother starts to lose her mind, so do you.  You begin to be afraid of people on the street.  You see shapes — old men and spiders — in the wallpaper again like when you were little and sick.  The moon’s reflection on the lake starts to look to you like a dead fish floating golden belly up.  Ask anyone.  Ask anyone whose mother is losing her mind.” (42, Moore, “What is Seized”) I think she wanted to use bifurcate in a sentence, and tell you what divorce is like.  I think she writes magic into places on peoples bodies where it has died, or has become lonely.  
  • “I think of my father, imagine him long ago at night casually parting my mother’s legs with the mechanical indifference of someone opening a cupboard.  And I say to myself: I will leave every cold man, every man for whom music is some private physics and love some unsteppable dance.  I will try to make them regret.  To make them sad.  I am driving toward my tiny kitchen table and I will write this: forgiveness lives alone and far off down the road, but bitterness and art are close, gossipy neighbors, sharing the same clothesline, hanging out their things, getting their laundry confused. (46, Moore, What is Seized). 

I have more favorite quotes that go beyond that one story, but I think those quotes kind of tell a story on their own.

Links:

  1. Here is a wonderful interview with Lorrie Moore from Paris Review.  I think her answers aren’t sprinted through, but well-thought out.
  2. Here is another one from The Believer where she answers different questions.
  3. The Short Review…review of Self-Help.
  4. The American Literary Review (blogspot). I’m kind of obsessed with the title of this blog.

19 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in book reviews, books

December 29, 2011

Questions of Book Lust

By Cassie

Sophie from Her library adventures adapted these for a recent blog post of hers- these questions are the original questions for a bookworm.  And then after, it was stolen by bookgrrl, and I borrowed it from her.  It’s traveled a long way, my friends, feel free to spread it over the book nation.  It’s bloggers uniting, just imagine that picture of all the stick people holding hands around the world and let your heart “jump, jump, jump around.” (Yes, old school rap, and MC Hammer pants definitely go with book blogging, just in case you were wondering.  Also, those glasses that look like window shutters that Kanye wears – book blogging essential).  Lastly, random note, I just tried to spell “shutters” like “udders.”

Marco Polo - Favorite Tea. I don't quite look as shadowy as her though when I drink it.

Imagine you sit in front of a fireplace. You read and beside you there is a cup with something hot in it. What would that be in your case: tea, coffee or hot chocolate?

Well given that I waitressed at a tea shop in Australia (with Alice in Wonderland high tea’s, big bonnet hats and old women with lots of enourmous jewels on their hands) I want to go with tea.  Specifically: Orange Spice Tea in America, or Marco Polo in Australia.  However, I’m thinking this is in the evening and I have boyfriend sweat pants on (meaning they’re 9 sizes too big and I can fit all the cheese I want in them) and fuzzy socks adore my feet, so tea would be better than keeping myself up all night with coffee.  Then again, if this is the morning, and I have just finished the newspaper that I don’t really read – just scan, and there are sunny-side-up eggs on the side with an everything bagel, lightly buttered (I’m such a princess), then I would choose coffee.  I also choose coffee at the RR, when I’m sitting in an over-large chair (preferably leather), while I’m driving (because the chance of spilling is 1 in 1) and when I go to IHOP.  I do not like to drink hot things when I’m eating hot food though, and I much prefer to eat honey nut cheerios while I read, out of habit and dedication to the honey bee.

If an author gave you the chance to rewrite or to change the fate of a book character, who would you chose?

SPOILER: EASY.  Emma in One Day by David Nicholls.  (Well…maybe not easy because Bovary needs a few tweaks in Madame Bovary).  But, seriously…you’re going to write a book where the main female character waits twenty years for the main male character to get his shit together (aka dump the frigid blonde, take care of his kid, quit his rock star ways and sweaty drinking) and then you kill her at the end.  What kind of anti-feminist lesson are you trying to pull here, David?  I LOATHE this book…I would make it eat worms if I could.   So frustrated.  I haven’t even seen the movie because I refuse to give any more money than my seven dollars (for the book) to David Nicholls or anyone on his team of readers and editors.

Did your parents read stories to you when you were little? if yes are there any special ones you remember the most?

Little Golden Book: Dumbo Edition

My mom always tells this story of me when I was still crawling.  It seems I had a book shelf and while my parents watched television on the couch I would crawl back and forth from bookshelf to parent feet and pile up my books.  When I was finally ready and the pile was about my height, I would climb up on the cushion, sit patiently and point at the books expecting either parent to read every single one.  Some of the favorites were: The Giving Tree, Goodnight Moon, Love you Forever, and the Little Golden Books (example to your left).

What do you like more the smell of old antiquarian books or the smell of new fresh ones you just bought?

Oh my, nom-nom-nom, old books.  I could literally smell page one, turn the page, smell page two, turn the page, smell the spinal crack, turn the page, smell the left corner, turn the page…all the way through an antiquarian book.  It’s the dust, or the molding of the old wooden shelves, or the finger smears of everyone before me that makes it worth it.  It’s the book flower, the anti-daisy smell.  It’s more nursing home, than fresh baby.  More grandpa’s elbow-patched jacket than a thirteen year old’s Victoria Secret perfume.  An antique book is its very own smell…like the back of a Victorian closet, or a crawl space below Hemingway’s house.  If it’s not browned at the edges, it ain’t for me.  I would literally, if I could, smell like an old librarian.  Speaking of, if anyone is selling old librarian cardigans – send them to this girl.

Holden, swoon.

You get the opportunity to chose between two secret talents: either to be able to make things come to life through reading them or the gift to read yourself into a book. Which one would you like to have?

….Are you joking.  I would be on my way to the catipillar, or the walrus, or the tea ceremony….I would educate myself on croquet if I could read myself into Alice.  I would wear petticoats ALL DAY LONG.  You have no idea how many goosebumps, and how cold my fingers got when I read this question.   I would also be dating, saving, fixing, Holden Caulfield because I like my men baggy, and used…clearly.

Do you have a favorite children’s book or a favorite fairy tale?

Children’s book(s) would be Sweet Valley High books (which Diablo Cody is writing into a movie – YES YES YES YES).  But, fairy tale, I’m not so sure.  I have an attachment to Blue Beard, Hansel and Gretel, and then Red Riding Hood (mostly because I want to own a pine-smelling red cloak.  But, I would want to be The Little Mermaid...because she’s a redhead and a breathes in the sea.  I would also like to be Jessica Rabbit, but she’s not really a fairy tale character.  Give me a Grimm, and I’m a happy girl.

Someone would talk to your friends and ask them to compare you to a book character. With whom do you think would they compare you?

Alice, times one million.  But if I can’t be Alice….(am I pushing my opinions too much here?)…I would have to be…wow, I have no idea. Friends, I need your help.  (Make her witty, or else).  Miss Havisham maybe, if she would have had oodles of cats and sat on her porch more.  I could see where my husband would die and I would wear the same dress caked with dirt for years and years.

Anne Sexton

Tell me the name of a writer whom you would like to have as a friend.

There’s way too many choices.  I think Edgar Allen Poe would drive me insane, and Dickens would be so damn depressing and Dr. Suess would always be rhyming, so really…a woman.  My head keeps flashing, “Anne Enright” because she’s Irish, and I’m in love with the majority of her books, but I feel like I’m missing someone.  Oh, duh, Anne Sexton.  Rather than Sylvia, I’d love to be the lady on the other line of her twisted, corking phone cord.  I’d like to talk in metaphors over dinner, and paint our nails dark colors on the floor of a tiled kitchen.

You can hide in a written down world for only one night into which world do you escape?

Man, oh man….Odysseus’ castle when he returns from his journey and finds all of the suitors and the ladies-in-waiting and kills each one except Penelope (his wife).  What a scene, it’s like Hamlet on steroids with less sex-gone-wrong.

Arthur Rackham Grimm's Illustration

Something terrible happens: you have to flee to an unknown place and all you can take with you are three books of all the ones you own. Which three ones do you put into your bag?

Hm.

1. Grimms’ Fairy Tales because I’m sure I could always discover something new, and when they got old I could tell myself my own tales, curling up into the sand and palm leaves in which I lay.

2. Norton Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction (same mindset as Grimm).  There are a lot to read and they can be read repeatedly with still fresh encounters.  I mean, just think about how many ways you can unwrap The Yellow Wallpaper.  Is she losing her damn mind?

3. Sylvia Plath’s Diaries.  I have been unable to complete them for some time now, although I’ve read most and she was a *ucking genius (pardon my french).  Plus, although I’m angry with Ted Hughes for publishing them without her knowledge especially due to the fact that they are deeply personal, I’m in total gratitude to him for letting us into a glimpse of her perfect diary.  I started to read this book and asked myself – why does anyone else write when this has already been brought into the world?  It’s like a creative writer’s bible.

In closing, I’d like to share this Conversation with B.H. Fairchild about poetry.

And also, the original writing and drawings of Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures Under Ground online.  Thanks to Beauty and Dreams I found this.

48 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in book reviews, books, Uncategorized

November 15, 2011

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” – JD

By Cassie

I don’t even know where to start.

My mother and I always had serious conversations in the car, usually conversations held during the whir of the car wash when it almost relaxed each of us that the hairs on twirling belts were massaging the windows.

Usually people have serious conversations in the car because it’s a place of transition.  It’s a place to mellow from the noise of the day.  After I get done reading a novel, or spending too much time on the internet alleyways, I always find the time in my car, mindlessly driving, a small chunk of aloneness (but not loneliness).

This weekend, I went on a road-trip with the boy I’m dating.

During the road-trip we had a discussion about the volcano at Yellowstone blowing.  He’s in a geology class and we were talking about how it was always California, and the West that we thought would go down in a heated fit of lava.  We were discussing how all of those cows, and dust motes, and rivers would be filled with ash and death.  However, his teacher and the majority of his classmates corrected him and told him it was the entire “Eastern Seaboard” that would be demolished if Yellow Stone “blew it’s top.”  Then, suddenly we’re transported to G.R.I.T.S, and trucks melting, flags burning, our own flesh, ash in a current.

Thinking about your own death changes things.

When the tar, smoke, ash, igneous rock and lava hits California, Washington, the biggest poetry bookstore in the United States in Seattle, coyotes in New Mexico it causes much less trauma than thinking about my father’s death in the house he’s lived in the longest out of the many others from his child hood as a moving-soldier, and then moving grocery-store manager.  It kills my mother with her red hair and sweet disposition.  My nephew is taken down off the wagon.  My brother won’t play anymore music, and it’s all devastating.

This is part of the way I felt reading Joan Didion’s, The Year of Magical Thinking.

A grave gift in the cemetery my grandmother is buried. (Gainsville, Florida) Taken by: Sarah Dion Photography

I could understand her coldness, the way the medical records soothed her because they were words she didn’t necessarily understand yet, or big words that meant nothing to her next to the magnitude of the word death.  The empty space in the d, e, and a and the gaps left over in the corners and swoops of t and h.  I understand why the little things, that were so redundant, and felt unnecessary were everything; the hotels they stayed in, the egg every morning for breakfast, the roads she took to Quintana in the hospital.  These are the mundane things that we must think about after death.

After my grandmother passed away in 2007, I kept thinking about her small pouch of extra stitching string and the one knitting needle that she left in the jewelry box passed down to me.  I tried desperately to remember the smell of her trailer with the birds and the chihauhau’s, but all I had was the noise of the bird

My graveyard look. First time I had been back.

and my palms against the inner-city folds of my ears.

Even now, just thinking about it, I’d rather look at the list of rocks that come up when I googled how to spell, “igneous.”  They are: andesite, rock, stone, aplite, groundmass, adesite, batholite, diorite, sodalite, periodotite.  All of these words that have nothing to do with my grandmother, her trailer, her jewelry box, her yankee-dixie relationship with my grandfather.  But at the same time, the list is soothing.  The same way a car ride is soothing, or memorizing the names of the streets you pass on the way to the hospital is soothing.  The biggest thing that soothes me when I think of visiting my grandmother’s grave in 2009 is the clotheslines of the lower income housing that can be seen from the graveyard.  There was a pink shirt, a wife-beater, a pair of brown slacks and some wind.  That’s it, that’s the only thing I think of, driving in the car with my best friend Sarah.  I don’t think about what I wrote during the time that I sat by her grave shushing ants with my giant fingers (to them), or the weeds I picked, or the amount of times I pulled up my pants.  Now, I do, now I can remember those little things, but then, I thought of clotheslines, and of my mother’s holey shoes.  There was no money.

So, I understand Didon’s book.  I understand the story of grief; the cold and hard facts.  The way some people say she’s “emotionally unresponsive.”

I think the biggest argument I’ve read against the book is her insertion of information where she assumes everyone is wealthy, everyone has a pool they fill with gardenias and candles before parties.  The amount of times they flew across the United States from New York to San Francisco and sometimes over oceans to Hawaii and Paris isn’t essential.  I, too, found this unsettling that she’d assume this added to her recollection of grief.  I don’t think it takes away from the book though.  I think she writes through the details, and hides her grief between the lines, and the facts, and the useless information that is only important to her and her grief process.  I like this information because as much as this book might help someone get through grief, or piss them off because she’s rich and they’re not, it just shows how grief isn’t the same for all of us.

I think what really angered me about this book is that Didion knew me before I even opened a page.  On page 198, with eighty percent of the book complete, Didion says this:

“I remember despising the book Dylan Thomas’s widow Caitlin wrote after her husband’s death, Leftover Life to Kill.  I remember being dismissive of, even censorious about, her “self-pity,” her “whining,” her “dwelling on it.”  Leftover Life to Kill was published in 1957.  I was twenty-two years old.  Time is the school in which we learn” (Didion, 198).

I think what frustrates me about this passage is it gives Didion the right to whine, to dwell, to show self-pity where the rest of grieving America is holed up in the houses, crying in the bathtub with their father’s, brother’s, boyfriend’s favorite book leaving wet marks on the pages.  She has put her grief out there, where it’s a new subject that isn’t self-help, but nonfiction.  Where are the other grieving widows left?  The best thing, I always say, about books is the chance to see yourself in them, or change yourself because of them.  While Didion gives widows, mourners and grievers the right to read, and feel like someone can connect, can understand, she still doesn’t give them the right to grieve, openly.

For a twenty-three year old, not completely fascinated and enlightened by Didion’s book, this passage bothers me.  Is it because I find myself close to Didion in her response to this woman’s book?  Do I find myself asking if maybe later Didion’s book will mean something to me after the death of my husband?  I can’t say that it will.  I can’t say we share the same grieving.  I will be wearing black.  At twenty-three I can already see my Miss Havisham tendencies where I will completely and inappropriately yell at children from my porch, or where I will cry in the middle of the grocery store squeezing plums, or break down seeing someone mow their lawn.  Didion refuses women, and men this right in her book.  She reminds everyone to “Keep Calm and Carry On.”  But why is that necessary?

I was upset in other ways as this book progressed.  The language isn’t beautiful the way you think someone will write after death; raw, human and wonderful.  The writing isn’t about John, or even really about Quintana (personally, I’d like to know how Quintana Roo’s new husband felt about the entire thing), it was more about Joan.  It was about Joan writing the path.  It wasn’t about Joan writing the feelings, it was about the path, the words, the amount of pages, the route to get to the end.

Joan Didion, like Dolly.

I’m disappointed after hearing so many triumphant reviews.  I’m disappointed with Didion because I think she’s selfish, but fragile and beautiful.  She looks entirely like my grandmother Dolly (Blondina Celestina Vanbritzen).  I want to know her, I really do.  Not because of this book but just because of my idea of her and my idea of John and to hear the life of a Hollywood woman.  I don’t know.

I’m feeling overwhelmed.

Reason why I read this book: I’m taking a nonfiction class in the fall and this is one of the premier books of nonfiction at the moment.  I’ve picked it up and handled it before but I needed a fresh call on it.  Also, Blue Nights is out about the death of Quintana, and so I needed to remember John before I remembered his daughter.

Here are links that I found interesting (most from 2004) about the subject, the woman, and the book:

I don’t know whether I can recommend, or not, this book of grief, of facts, of awards settling over coffins, but I think I’d like to hear what everyone else thought.  I’d like to just know what happens in other people’s brains.

7 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in book reviews, Uncategorized

August 2, 2011

Bee Season – Myla Goldberg (And Her Tights)

By Cassie

I think Myla Goldberg is one of the cutest authors I’ve ever set eyes on.  Her tights are right out of Sweeney Todd Halloween dress-up on the back cover of Bee Season, and so, when I saw it on the dollar shelf (how unfortunate) of Edward McKay’s I had to scoop it up.

Plus, the cover has that human skin feel to it, which I really think is sexy on a book (if you think I’m totally creepy please pick up this book and feel it in bookstores or pick up a copy of the Raleigh Review and give it a handle).

Another wonderful thing about Myla Goldberg is her name.  It rolls of the tongue with it’s ‘lalalalalala’ nature.  Last good thing (I’m sure there are more, but just the ones I want to share) is that she has a totally rad website which can be found here.  Okay last thing, I promise…she also did a Q&A with Powell books (which includes a question about a fictional character she’d most like to date) and that can be found here.  She’s hilarious, in probably a disturbing way because after reading Bee Season I couldn’t help but try and decipher who this woman was, who wrote this book.  I was fascinated by the kaleidoscopic of stolen property, and the wrecked-by-religion family.  Not to mention, a dad who is basically living inside of a study that should have been placed on another planet where everyone transcends their body and does yoga.  (I threw the yoga part in just for good mental images and for brain exercise/meditation).

After reading a few goodreads.com reviews that weren’t very flattering, I felt, as usual, that I need to throw my two cents in.  Now, I’m not the kind of reader that really likes best sellers.  I don’t pride myself on this, but usually if it makes the NY Times list, or if people around the world are raving about it, I can’t seem to get into it.  ESPECIALLY, if Oprah liked it.  (See:  The Help, Hector and the Search for Happiness, Harry Potter – post book four…hmmm all H titles).  So, I usually read strange books that everyone else has no interest in.  (See: How to Kill a Rockstar, Everything is Illuminated, Eating Animals, God-Shaped Hole).  Thus, Myla Goldberg is right up my alley.

I’d like to also take a moment to mention that she is a  Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers Award Winner, and I have never once gone wrong reading one of these hot off the shelf.  There was one that was a little so-so, but it was still a helluva read.  So, I definitely recommend seeking out your nearest B&N, getting a membership to save an extra ten percent and buying one of these books on a thirty percent price reduction.  They’re always good.  (See: The Adults – Alison Espach).

  Anyway, Bee Season is about a young girl,      Elly, who is average and not “academically    gifted” until she wins her school spelling bee,      and then continues to spell atrociously hard    words until she makes it to even higher  bee’s,  succeeding majority of the way.  I hope  that  wasn’t a spoiler…I tried to keep it light.  Anyway, her family is both very involved and  then dramatically uninvolved in her bee  winning.  Her mother is a total space cadet  because she is focusing on her life’s mission of  reaching what she calls “perfectimundo” and  her brother is dabbling in new religions that  may or may not turn into cult activity.  Her  father however, is obnoxious in his pursuit to  not only train Eliza (Elly) to win the National  Bee, but he is in hot pursuit of her reaching a  religious transcendence written about in ancient books (very focused on Kabbalah, ya know..that religion Madonna is really into, even though she isn’t Jewish).  While these characters sound blatantly ridiculous, and at points unbelievable, they also have stock character qualities.  The brother who never fits in, in any circle, even that of his own family.  A father who is living vicariously through his children.  And of course, the absent mother, who cleans well into the night because she is either nocturnal, or an insomniac.  I’d go with the latter if I were you.

A lot of people have reviewed this book saying it is utterly disturbing, and damaging.  However, I thought it was brilliant.  I read it in two days, got sucked into the religious aspect that somehow blends every family member together, and then sucked up into the voracious studying for the bee.  I’m not a stud of a speller, nor am I a great grammarian so it was definitely interesting.  Plus, I just recently watched the National Spelling Bee on ESPN (of all the channels they could put this on…really?) and that made me even more interested in this odd and forlorn family.

I don’t really even understand how people are so disturbed by this book.  We all have crazy family members (usually aunts or uncles that are wackadoodle) and we all have somehow dysfunctional families.  I know that no one out there has had a lifetime of just pure bliss.  Even though in one of my education classes a girl told me that the first time her mother ever raised her voice with her was her senior in high school, which sounds like an awfully boring house to me.  So, maybe there are some “good” families out there.  I think my family is dysfunctional, we have a lot of conversations about using the toilet (hence the blog title) but we are good to one another.  While this family isn’t a “Model American Family” straight out of a 1950′s Time Magazine, it was still really interesting to see a darkness that can envelope a semi-happy family.  It’s like watching Snapped on Investigation Discovery, or something.

I definitely plan on reading Myla Goldberg’s other ventures in writing and reviewing them as well.  I just wanted to let people know that they shouldn’t always look at how a book scored on goodreads.com or any other website, or under any other review before trying it out themselves.  Don’t judge a book by its dysfunctional family dynamics is all I’m sayin’.

Here are a few other reviews that you may find different &/or helpful to help make a decision if this book is worth your penny (plus shipping & handling) on Amazon.com:

Review #1

Review #2

Review #3

Review #4

Review # 5 (my personal favorite)

Also, there is a movie based on this book.  It stars Richard Gere. even though I felt the father was a much older man.  It didn’t get the best reviews, but if you’re not a reader, there are other options.

And just for the record:

Bee Season was a New York Times Notable Book for 2000, winner of the Borders New Voices Prize, and a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award, the NYPL Young Lions award, and the Barnes & Noble Discover award.

I guess sometimes I do like best-ish-sellers.   Or, then again, maybe it just won awards…

Also (again) I think the people who write reviews only of “happy books” do not realize that every book must have a dark side.  While every cloud has a silver lining, it also has a lining of ugly mold from all the perspiration and condensation it holds in its clouded armpits.  I remember back in ’09 when I was taking a fiction workshop with Jill McCorkle at NCSU, and a girl in my class got really upset when she couldn’t write something happy, where everyone in the story was enjoying their life.  McCorkle ended up giving a whole discussion on how even our favorite characters must have unlovable qualities and our least favorite characters must have loving qualities (even the rotten Disney villains).   Personally, happy stories bore me to death.  Bring on the “depressionland” as this reviewer said on goodreads.com.

Hope you like this book as much as I do, or you just trust me enough to try it out.

14 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in book reviews, books, Uncategorized

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