Packing for a Reading Retreat: Volume VII

It's time for a new edition of "Packing for a Reading Retreat," where I imagine which books I would take with me if I were heading to a reading retreat, where there would be no distractions and I would be free to do nothing but read for a week.  I might imagine packing two kinds of books: those that are "New to Me" (books I've never read before) and "Old Favorites" (past reads I'd like to revisit).

New to Me

Lord Byron's Novel, The Evening Land, John Crowley
I picked up Lord Byron's Novel at a used book sale in the fall, and until I saw it there, both this book and John Crowley himself were completely off my radar. Crowley's novel supposes that Byron finished a novel that was then lost and presents that novel within two frame stories: one of Byron's daughter Ada finding the manuscript and one of the manuscript later being rediscovered. I am intrigued, and it sounds like (from the poking around on the interwebs I've done) that maybe Crowley is someone I ought to know about.

Longbourn, Jo Baker
Longbourn takes as its setting the household of the Bennets from Pride and Prejudice and tells the story of the servants there. To which I say, "Oh, neat!" I love a retelling, and the story of characters who are almost completely invisible (but undeniably there) from P&P is irresistible. While I don't expect Baker to portray the Bennets as nicer towards their servants then they were historically likely to be, I do hope there's no Bennet-bashing, that the book doesn't take as one of its goals to show us that realistically we wouldn't have liked the Bennets so very much.  

The Life of Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell
Somehow I managed to go through eleven years of formal study of English literature without knowing much about Elizabeth Gaskell. I'm a bit better acquainted with her now and am very excited to read her biography of Charlotte Bronte, surely a fascinating subject. The idea of a biography written by the subject's friend and contemporary also intrigues me.

Walking Home: A Poet's Journey, Simon Armitage
Poet Simon Armitage walked the Pennine Way, a trail through the Pennine Hills running from the Yorkshire Dales to just over the Scottish Border. Armitage did poetry readings along the way in exchange for room and board, and Walking Home is an account of his journey. I don't see how this could possibly be less than wonderful.

Twenty-One Books that Shaped Me

I've been ridiculously remiss in these last few months of the year about migrating reviews over here from LibraryThing and even missed out an edition of Packing for a Reading Retreat. I'm working on a Reading Retreat post for tomorrow, but in the meantime, I give you the twenty-one books that have most shaped my life. This post is based on a meme that floated around Facebook and LibraryThing a few weeks back, and is divided into two halves: the eleven books that have most stayed with me (ten positive influences and one negative one) and the ten books with which I did not connect. For each book, I give a brief explanation of why I included it in the list.

Eleven Books that Have Been Important to Me

1.) The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
My dad read LotR (and The Hobbit) to me when I was very small (five or six). It's probably the first mythology of any kind that ever meant anything to me and was certainly my first introduction to "grown-up" fiction in any sense. I have many memories of being read to at a young age (and of having my own books), but the nightly LotR reading probably instilled in me the idea that curling up with a good book is one of the Best Things.

2.) The Little House on the Prairie books, Laura Ingalls Wilder
These were read to me (Mom, this time) so many times and I read them myself so many times that the events within them became a permanent part of my mental furniture.

4.) Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
Probably the first book that I felt proprietary toward. I loved it, I read it over and over, I carried it around in my pocket, I had parts memorized. When I discovered that a nice hardcover edition on my grandfather's shelves was abridged OMG, I started (but did not complete) a comparative study between the abridged version and the complete text, making notes about how the abridgement altered the meaning of the book. I was about eleven. What a snot I must have been.

5.) Where the Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls
This was required reading at some point in middle school (sixth grade? seventh grade?), and I hated it. I could tell it was going somewhere awful, I couldn't escape being taken there with it, it traumatized me, and it made me feel trapped, scared, and depressed. That was the first time a book had ever made me feel that way (and it was one of the few times school ever made me feel that way, too). It may be the only book I have ever truly resented being made to read, and just the thought of the stupid thing still makes me feel a little sick to this day.

6.) Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Aside from just loving the story (which I did), this one is important because it was probably the first "classic" I read entirely of my own choosing and with no prompting from anyone else. I didn't struggle to read it, but it did require more "work" to get through than most things I read on my own at that age (about fifteen). For a kid who'd been reading way above her grade level for always, discovering that leisure reading could still be fun if it was also challenging was probably really important.

7.) Various Robert Heinlein books, including Time Enough for Love and I Will Fear No Evil
Heinlein gets a lot of flak for the way he wrote women (I don't disagree now that his female characters are problematic), but in my late teens his female characters who were smart and beautiful and unabashedly sexual (not sexy but sexual) were like a revelation to me.

8.) The Art of Fiction, John Gardner
A required text for a creative writing class in undergrad. Forever shaped the way I think about writing, reading, life, and what they're all for.

9.) Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Romances can have substance! They can be worth reading after you already know who gets together with whom! I have much more complicated feelings (still positive) about P&P now, but that was the revelation then, some time in college.

10.) The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling
In the summer between the two years of my masters program, I devoured HP 1-5 (all there was at the time). And rediscovered that reading can be pure, unadulterated fun. Thank heavens.

11.) A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
I would sooner give up any other ritual at Christmas (or any other time of year) than I would my annual reading of this brilliant little piece. Puts me in the perfect mood for Christmas, always, and straightens me out with the world and with myself (if necessary). An annual spiritual balm for me since high school.

Ten Books with which I Didn't Connect

1.) The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
I wanted to maneuver Holden Caulfield off a bridge even when I was his age.

2.) The Scarlett Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Could never work up any sympathy for (or interest in) any of the unlikeable characters mooning around in SL.

3.) Ulysses, James Joyce
What a brilliant writer Joyce was (The Dead, be still my heart). And what an amazing feat Ulysses is. But I could never warm to it. What a wretched reading experience it was (twice).

4.) Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
I always (I've read it at least three times) feel mired down in an impenetrable jungle of unintelligible murky images when I read Heart of Darkness.

5.) The Russians
I have not yet given up! I am determined to read at least one mammoth Russian novel before I die. I've tried Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina, and Doctor Zhivago. I just can't get into them. I have read some shorter works (The Death of Ivan Ilyich--three times! like Heart of Darkness, it was perpetually assigned to me throughout high school, undergrad, and grad school--Fathers and Sons, The Overcoat, some Chekov).

6.) The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens
Die faster, Little Nell. Lord.

7.) The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Like The Scarlett Letter, my chief problem with GoW was that I couldn't muster up any sympathy for the characters. That's a lot of ridin' around in the back of an old truck with the fambly if you don't care a lick for anyone.  And don't even get me started on the everlovin' turtle.

8.) The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
The allegory drives me nuts, and I just never warmed to the world. I wonder if there's a division between Tolkien and Lewis fans--like if you love Tolkien you're less likely to love Lewis.

9.) Animal Farm, George Orwell
I have heard some people describe this as the only book they had to read for school that they loved. Not me, boy. I found it both disturbing and tedious, which might be the worst combo ever.

10.) Slaughter House Five, Kurt Vonnegut
It's supposed to be funny, right? I don't get it. 

Book Review: Cocaine Blues, Kerry Greenwood

This first in the Phryne Fisher mystery series takes a little while to get going but had me pretty well hooked by about a third of the way in. Phryne grows tired of life in 1920s London, and, when an acquaintance asks if she wouldn't mind checking up on his daughter in Australia (who he thinks is being poisoned), Phryne sets sail for the other side of the world without much notion of coming back. And then she rather lands in the thick of things.

Phryne is capable and no-nonsense but also great fun. (And sexy, which is an element often somewhat missing in other mysteries of this type, I find. The attitude toward sex reminded me a bit of Mark Gatiss's The Vesuvius Club, actually, though the comparison pretty much stops there.) The mystery was a bit transparent (I had it sorted very quickly and I don't usually figure mysteries out before the end), but that didn't really lessen my enjoyment of the story. The style could maybe be tweaked a bit (it's Wodehousesian, but sometimes with a clang) but any slight missteps there never rose to the level of irritation. I'm looking forward to reading the next one.


This review originally appeared on my LibraryThing account.

Book Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor

Teen paranormal romance with a dash of urban fantasy, this.  Generally not really my thing, though I do understand the appeal.  Taylor creates a really fascinating paranormal world, an interesting main character, and a decent romance.  While I never cared really deeply for the characters, I was completely invested in finding out what was going to happen. 

My biggest problem with the story puts me solidly into cranky old lady territory.   I am so tired of paranormal romance heroes who are beautiful beyond all imagination and of "destined" romances.  Daughter is much, much better about making the relationship complex and real than some other paranormal teen fare (Twilight, I am looking at you).  But there's still this tendency to over-romanticize, to make the relationship the only important thing.  I know, I know. It's a story, it's a fantasy.  And nothing annoys me more than the suggestion that a teenager's (or anyone's) entertainment diet ought consist of nothing but spinachy substantive tales bound to the workings of the real world and better preparing one to face it.  Sometimes you just need a custard-filled doughnut-story swathed in chocolate icing with sprinkles on top.  But even so, there's something off-putting about this wrapping up of impossible ideals in a supernatural package:  Okay, we know there's no such thing as perfect beauty, but, see, the character is an angel, so it's okay.  See, we know that a girl shouldn't let her relationship become the only thing that has any meaning for her, but their love is destined, so it's okay.  We know that love is more interesting and lasting if it's a choice rather than fate, but their destined romance will bring peace to the world, so it's okay.  We know that we can live without the ones we love dearly, but they actually can't  because of Supernatural Stuff, so it's okay. 

This kind of use of the supernatural as excuse to keep telling all the old "romantic" untruths appears to be a new trope, and I think that's too bad.  I don't read enough of this genre to know whether there are books out there that get inside this trope and turn it on its ear.  (I hope so.  Maybe Taylor's going to do that as she continues on with this series--the characters are flawed enough, the heroine smart enough, the set-up complex enough that I think she certainly could.)  There could still be a happy ending.  There could still be overwhelming joyful squishy ecstatic love.  They could still bring peace to the world.  But how much more interesting it would be if, instead of just being irresistibly drawn to one another, they really loved each other, saw each other for what they are, shit and all, and still chose to be together.  How much more compelling if they were complete alone and a truly kickass team together.  What if the supernatural elements, instead of making it "okay" to slot back into the old stereotypes, opened up whole new worlds and ways of understanding love?



This review originally appeared on my LibraryThing account.

Packing for a Reading Retreat: Volume VI

It's time for a new edition of "Packing for a Reading Retreat," where I imagine which books I would take with me if I were heading to a reading retreat, where there would be no distractions and I would be free to do nothing but read for a week.  I might imagine packing two kinds of books: those that are "New to Me" (books I've never read before) and "Old Favorites" (past reads I'd like to revisit).

New to Me

Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter
Another one of those books that has snared me with its cover--all that sparkling blue water and those brightly-colored buildings clinging to the rocks as if held there by magic.  The back cover promises 1960s Italy, the set of Cleopatra, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  I'm particularly interested to see how Walter handles the last as I've been in Edinburgh during the Fringe and it is quite unlike anything else I've ever experienced.   

In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, Margaret Atwood
A collection of Atwood's writing on science fiction and speculative fiction.  I've never warmed to Atwood, but I am thoroughly convinced that I should not give up on her either.  Someday something will click--I'll read just the right book at just the right moment.  In any case, I'm intrigued to read what she has to say about SF, partly because I'd like to hear what Atwood has to say about SF and partly because I always want to hear what anyone has to say about SF.

Blackout, Connie Willis
Fifty years in our future, historians are time-travelers.  When a group of historians travels to World War II, strange things ensue and it appears that they may be altering history.  It's like Willis wrote a book just for me.  Love it when that happens. 

Cocaine Blues, Kerry Greenwood
The first in the Phryne Fisher mystery series.  It's the 1920s and Phryne Fisher is tired of London--so it's off to Melbourne, Australia, where she quickly meets with mysterious goings on.  I'm always looking for a good mystery series, and I've heard good things from trusted sources on this one.  And, again, the cover!  I would almost buy these just for the cover art alone.

Book Review: American Wife

American Wife fictionalizes Laura Bush's life, from childhood through the lame-duck years of her husband's presidency.  Laura and George Bush are called Alice and Charlie Blackwell here, though they are quite recognizably the former president and first lady, both through mannerisms and circumstance, especially so in the last quarter of the book, which deals with Alice's experiences as First Lady. 

The novel is by far best in the first half, as we follow Alice through a mid-west upbringing and adolescence in the fifties and sixties; her years as a single, independent young woman with a job she enjoys; and her initial romance with Charlie.  Alice is extremely compelling in this half of the book--she's intelligent and confident, but with a tendency to keep herself to herself, a fear of exposing herself, of being wholly who she is in front of others.  There's nothing doormattish about her, and she doesn't let these insecurities get in her way, but, still, there's that reining in, that holding back.  I imagine a lot of smart, capable women who would rather sit at home and read than go to a party would see a lot of themselves in Alice, and Sittenfeld portrays these seemingly contradictory aspects of Alice's personality with a deft and subtle touch.

But then Alice marries boisterous, wealthy, laddish, ambitious-but-aimless Charlie and the life just drops out of the book.  Alice becomes a house-wife, though an upper-class one who will never fade away under the drudgery of housework.  She still seems pretty content, it's clear that she loves her husband, and she becomes a good mother it their only child--but gone is the strong sense of her as an intellectual, gone is the job she enjoys.  We see some marital problems involving Charlie and drink, and Alice has enough backbone to quietly force Charlie to choose between his substance abuse and his family, but even then Alice seems curiously passive, curiously toothless.  Charlie gets religion, the aimlessness falls away, and, in a somewhat odd jump forward in the narrative of some twenty years, he becomes president.

The "First Lady Years" section of the book is the least compelling--and the least well-written.  Alice tells us much about the difficulties of being in the public eye, of how strange it is to be part of the public face of an administration with which she rarely agrees, of how exasperating it is to hear over and over of the puzzlement of those who don't understand how smart, bookish, liberal Alice Blackwell could possibly love conservative, war-mongering, rights-trampling President Charlie Blackwell.  This section ought to be the  thematic center of the novel--this ought to be the part where the book becomes whole, where the reason for writing a novel about a still-living real person becomes clear.  By the end, we ought to understand more fully Laura Bush or the office of the first lady or even just wifehood (the book's title, lacking an article as it does, seems to be reaching for some claim to a universal statement about American wives). 

And the thing is, we don't.  Alice stands up for herself again in the end, separating herself briefly from her husband and from her role as First Lady to be just Alice Blackwell, but the moment is just as passive and toothless as her stand against Charlie's drinking is earlier on.  Alice--smart, capable, happy Alice--is still subsumed under boisterous, laddish, ambitious Charlie.  What have we learned?  That people love who they love, and that intellectual or political compatibility doesn't necessarily come into it?  No kidding.  That smart, independent women often lose part of themselves through their genuine love of louder, more ambitious men?  You don't say.  Illustrating these facts beautifully and startlingly or giving Alice a convincing, true moment of reclamation of some of her younger independence of self--either of these would have made American Wife into something really satisfying.  But instead the novel just wilts when Alice marries Charlie and becomes more and more lifeless and rambling as it goes on.     

This review origianlly appeared on my LibraryThing account.

Packing for a Reading Retreat: Volume IV

It's time for a new edition of "Packing for a Reading Retreat," where I imagine which books I would take with me if I were heading to a reading retreat, where there would be no distractions and I would be free to do nothing but read for a week.  My imagined packing can fall into one of three categories: "New to Me," for books I've never read before; "Old Favorites," for past reads I'd like to revisit; and "Just in Case," for one book that can always be counted on to save me if one of the other selections turns out to be a dud.  As the volumes of "Packing" pile up, I may share more "New to Me" choices and allow "Old Favorites" and "Just in Case" to appear only when a book which fits either category leaps out at me and demands to be recognized. 

New to Me

tiny beautiful things: Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar, Cheryl Strayed
If you don't know about Dear Sugar and The Rumpus, you ought.  The Rumpus is an online magazine with reviews, essays, interviews and so on--often about and by people you want to hear from and likely won't anywhere else.  And Dear Sugar is their advice column.  And tiny beautiful things is a collection of those columns.  This ain't Dear Abby I'm talking about with one or two paragraphs of advice anyone with a brain and more than a decade or two of living behind them could give you (not that Dear Abby isn't usually right on the money); Sugar's responses are full-blown personal essays in response to her reader's questions, which themselves are often longer than an entire typical newspaper advice column and and are frequently heartrending.  Dear Sugar is less advice about what to do about something and more an invitation to contemplate what it means to be human and to discover how to be better at it.  This one is at the very top of my "to-read" pile.

Seraphina, Rachel Hartman
Dragons!  Seraphina is a young adult novel about human/dragon conflict wherein the dragons are sentient and eminently rational.  Hartman cited Vulcans and a desire really to explore what a society based on individual rationality above all else would look like as part of her inspiration.  She also reportedly listened to Italian polyphony and Breton bagpipe rock while she was writing. If she can put together a sentence, this basically cannot fail to be awesome, right?

Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
Doorstop-reads don't scare me off, exactly, but I'm often not in the mood to read them--usually because I have so many things I want to read now, now, now that I have a hard time committing so much reading time to one thing.  But lately I find myself aspiring to a lot of chunkster reads all at once.  Anna Karenina, The Forsyte Saga, War and Peace.  And Les Mis calls to me more than any other.  I'm not sure why (this notion predates the release of the recent movie, which I haven't seen.  Actually, I've never seen any interpretation of the book.).  Epic storytelling, tragic heroes, historical bits--all up my street.  Or maybe it's just winter.   

On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks, Simon Garfield
Oh, how I do love maps! World maps, fantasy maps, topography maps, ancient maps.  I can just stare at a good one for yonks.  So here's a book for me.  On the Map talks history of maps and map-making, how maps shape our understanding of the world, maps in popular culture.  I suspect this will be a book anyone with a map in her hall of the surrounding country "with all her favourite walks marked on it in red ink" will find fascinating.



Previous Editions of Packing for a Reading Retreat:

Volume III
Volume II
Volume I

Book Review: Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

A fascinating novel, mostly made so by its intriguing structure and deft handling of many writing styles. Cloud Atlas consists of six different narratives, each taking place at a different time in history (and some in the future), dealing with different characters, and employing different styles and methods of narration. The novel begins with the narrative furthest back in time (call it Narrative A), continues with the next narrative in chronological succession (Narrative B), and keeps going through its several narratives until it arrives at Narrative F, then works back in time through each narrative once again. So the structure looks something like this: ABCDEFEDCBA. Eventually it becomes apparent that there are connections among these seemingly separate narratives, and Mitchell's skill in handling this structure becomes increasingly clear as he works his way back down his narrative ladder (on the EDCBA side, if you will). Working the hints of connections into the first half of the novel strikes me as something not overly difficult; backing out through the second half of the narrative and picking up all those disparate threads to make the whole create sense and answer questions seems like it must have been mind-bogglingly difficult. For manipulation of this structure, for making it work, I give Mitchell all the credit in the world. His skill at working so well within so many different styles is also remarkable. He succeeds, as well, in making the reader care about each of his narratives, about all of his characters, despite wrenching her away from each narrative just as it is getting really good and asking her to invest in yet another scenario.

I came away from Cloud Atlas impressed by Mitchell's writing and his ability to reel one into a story and wowed by his handle on structure. But in the end I was never sure what all of that structural whizzbang was for (beyond being an incredible feat in and of itself). I'm not entirely sure what the novel means to say about the interconnectedness of people and events or about our ability (or inability?) to recognize those connections. Without that understanding I was left a bit befuddled. Which is not to say that I think this isn't a book worth reading. I think it is. There's enough here that is satisfying to outweigh that discontent in the end. And the novel avoids feeling like an experiment which succeeds technically but fails to tap into the emotional life of the reader. The novel is an amazing achievement, if not a wholly satisfying one. But absolutely worth the read, even if only to marvel at how Mitchell works that ABCDEFEDCBA structure. Seriously.


This review originally appeared on my LibraryThing account.

Tales from the Library Book Sale

The library I frequented the last time we lived in Roanoke is closed now.  The building still stands there, across from the post office, looking sad and empty and alone.  I will miss it--its fiction aisles were just the right width apart for proper browsing and none of the books were beyond my (admittedly short) reach.  The fiction collection was large enough for one to be assured of finding something good to read but not so big as to be overwhelming.  But!  There is a new (I think new) library not more than a few extra minutes' drive from our apartment (we are living now in effectively the same place we did before), and it is big without being impersonal and there's wood and lots of seating and many of the librarians from the old closed branch work there now.  I was happy to see those same faces again, though I will miss, too, seeing them go about their business in that old branch, which was small enough that it felt (pleasantly) as if the building really were their domain.  This new building sort of hovers over everyone; I think the librarians belong to it now, rather than the other way round.

I got a new library card in short order (much easier than getting a new driver's license, as it should be), picked up a volunteer form, and asked for the quick standing tour.  New books and DVDs behind you, Children's thataway.  Fiction, nonfiction, and quiet study upstairs.  Oh, and we're having the last day of our fall book sale down that hallway in the meeting room to your left.  

I had seen some notice of that book sale on the website, but thought I had missed it, thought it had ended at the weekend.  How serendipitous to have idled out to the library on just this day, on this day when I had planned to do nothing more than laundry (which, incidentally, languishes still).  I made my way to the sale, giving myself a stern talking-to as I went.  "You will be restrained," I insisted.  "Money is a little tight, and, anyway, you couldn't fit more than two or three more books into the apartment, and then only if you get the cats to teach you that thing they do with parallel dimensions."  As luck would have it, the sale was "fill a box for $3" on this last day, so the money problem was well in hand, and the books were so well-picked-over after five days of sales that taking home a box-full of books I actually had any interest in would have been a challenge.  But I did manage an impressive and exciting haul of five books, all in excellent shape.

The first treasure I found was a near-pristine paperback copy of Island of the Blue Dolphins from the seventies.  Not worth anything, I'm sure, but I almost invariably like better the covers of children's and young adult books from around the time I would have been the right age to read them than the covers they put on those same books today.  And somehow I've never managed to read Island of the Blue Dolphins, so I considered my book-sale foray a success within minutes of browsing its long tables of collapsing rows of still unwanted tomes.  Next I found The Red Tent, which I have almost taken home at full price from book shops several times and of which I am somewhat wary.  But people whose opinions I trust have recommended it to me, so I tucked it under my arm along with Island and carried on, figuring if there ever was going to be a time, at $3 a box, now was probably it.

Somewhere about a third of the way through the fiction, a nice-looking elderly gentleman browsing on the other side of the table from me tapped his fore-finger on the spine of a hard cover standing on its edge in the middle of the table.  "If you're looking for a good one, that one," he said.

I smiled.  It was a Jean M. Auel novel, a Clan of the Cave Bear installment from somewhere in the middle of the series.  I have Clan of the Cave Bear, and I've been told that it's best to stop with that one.

"It's a whole series," my new friend said, pulling the book up and handing it to me.  "Prehistoric stuff."    

"Oh?  How interesting," I said, or something similar, as I took the book and pretended to look through its opening pages.  I was caught off-guard by the recommendation and couldn't summon the words to express my lack of interest without coming off rude.

He turned away, but just as I was about to return the book to its row, he turned back.  I ruffled a few pages, trying to look intrigued.  "It's speculative, too.  Of course it would have to be, because no one knows what happened in prehistoric times." 

Was this a joke?  Some kind of religious remark?  Or just a statement of fact?  I smiled again, and gave a little laugh.  "Thanks," I said, probably at the wrong point in the exchange all together.  He smiled and nodded, and, this time, really did move on.  I scurried away to the nonfiction tables, leaving Clan of the Cave Bear IV behind.

I found there something called The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination, which seems like it can't fail to be right up my street, and a Bill Bryson we somehow managed not to have yet, I'm a Stranger Here Myself.  I've peeked into this one already, shortly after I got home, and nearly choked on my afternoon snack laughing at a chapter called "Rules for Living."  ("11.  Any electronic clock or other timing device on which the time is set by holding down a  button and scrolling laboriously through the minutes and hours is illegal. . . . 19. In office buildings and retail premises in which entry is through double doors and one of those doors is locked for no reason, the door must bear a large sign saying: 'This door is locked for no reason.'")  And finally, just as I was about to pay for my finds and make tracks (upstairs to see the fiction and nonfiction stacks, where I found, my to my puzzlement, a copy of Dante's The Divine Comedy on the nonfiction shelves), I saw, in a sorry little heap of bedraggled, forlorn-looking nonfic with titles like "The Do-It Yourself Guide to Plumbing" and "Understanding Baby's Diseases Made Easy," a book called The Pencil, written by Henry Petroski, whose The Book on the Bookshelf I read with great delight a year or so back.  That someone could be so fascinated by this ingenious little writing utensil to write a whole book about it, and that some other someone could be so impressed by the first someone's enthusiasm to agree to publish the thing, makes me uncommonly happy.  And that it sat there, waiting, patiently, amongst such dismal fare, is one of the best arguments for a library book sale I can think of.  It is certainly my favorite find of the afternoon.

And so, only five books, and only three dollars spent!  Restraint, achieved, I say.  But now, where to put them?  So far I've had no luck at all convincing the cats to give up the secret to that thing they do with parallel dimensions. 

Book Review: Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder

 Little House in the Big Woods

I recently read a review of the whole series of Little House books on the occasion of their being released in a two-volume set by the Library of America. These books were great favorites of mine as a child, but unlike many other childhood favorites, they have remained hidden away in the attic, unrevisited in my adult years. Reviewer Katherine A. Powers's discussion of the books' descriptions of frontier life and of the darkness inherent in it made me long to read these old favorites again. So I trotted off and snagged a few of them in paperback, my attic dwarf being unwilling to stand on her head and paw through boxes to find my childhood copies (which I once mutilated somewhat cruelly (by folding and crinkling the pages) in an effort to make the books look "old"; attic dwarf, in a slightly different role, was none too pleased with my efforts).

I remember that Little House in the Big Woods was not my favorite of the books (I think that was On the Banks of Plum Creek, but I won't be fully sure until I get to it), but gosh do I remember it well. I anticipated every incident, every illustration, even some turns of phrase. I started leafing ahead to see "How far til the stump that looked like a bear?" or "When do we get to the naughty boy and the bees?" Again, unlike other childhood favorites I have read again when grown up, I have little or no recollection of reading these, which makes me think I read them (or they were read to me) when I was so young that they just sort of became part of my own personal idiomythology (that's not a word, surely; surely it should be?). In any case, they were a delight to read now, and not just for the nostalgia. The prose is very simple, but there's often something poetic about it, and despite the episodic nature of the story (there's no plot beyond detailing how people stayed alive and happy in the big woods of Wisconsin in the 1870s), the book was practically a page-turner for me. Incidents that were mostly just adventures for me when I was a child now are tinged with a darkness that did not occur to me then. When Pa is away and Ma and Laura find a hungry bear inside the barn fence, what if the bear had killed Ma? What happens to a seven-year-old, a five-year-old, and a two-year old in the woods, alone, in winter with no way of contacting anyone? The reality of the thing is more real to me now, I suppose is a good way of putting it, and it engenders a respect for the courage of the people who lived these sorts of lives that just knowing that such a life was hard never could. This was fascinating reading, and I'm already well into the next one--or, the third one, really (I'm skipping Farmer Boy for now)--where I expect I may run headlong into some attitudes about native peoples which is going to challenge my fuzzy delight in rediscovering these books, but we shall see.


Little House on the Prairie

I didn't remember this one nearly as well as Little House in the Big Woods, but many of the incidents (and many of the illustrations) were familiar and welcome. I was struck in Big Woods by the ingenuity and courage of the settlers living on the frontiers in the 1870s; in Prairie I am no less impressed by those qualities, but the circumstances of the Ingalls family in this installment gives me the willies in a way that the realities of living in the Big Woods did not. Surely it is because I have always lived nestled among hills and under trees that the descriptions (and illustrations--maybe even especially the illustrations) of the wide open prairie and the notion of a house just plopped in the middle of all that space quite literally gives me the shivers. Do you know a person who must sit with his back to the wall in a restaurant because that open space behind him is discomfiting? That's how I feel about houses. They ought be backed up against the foot of a mountain or at the least tucked in a clearing with tall trees all around. I'm glad, I guess, that there are people who like that kind of open environment (both Pa and Laura in this book seem to take to the flat openness of the prairie particularly well) as not all of us can live at the foot of mountains--there just aren't enough of them. But I leave them to it.

The constant fear regarding encounters with restive Indians lent a sense of suspense to Prairie which was completely lacking in Big Woods. The fears I had about attitudes toward native peoples in this book were perhaps somewhat overblown. There is certainly othering going on here, and a fair amount of prejudice, but Laura (mostly) seems innocently fascinated by the Indians and Pa (though he definitely carries a nice load of white-settler-entitlement around with him) adopts a live-and-let-live attitude, talking his neighbors down from their fears on more than one occasion. Some passages made me squirm a bit, but keeping in mind the context in which the book was written and the time it recalls, and considering the perhaps more-enlightened-than-typical attitude of Pa, those passages weren't enough to ruin a series of childhood favorites. I would be fascinated, however, to read some articles delving into the portrayal of the native peoples in this book and providing some discussion of the political and historical situation. I'd particularly like to read some opinions on the scene where Laura becomes enchanted by an Indian baby with "hair . . . as black as a crow and its eyes . . . black as a night when no stars shine" and demands that Pa "get (her) that little Indian baby!" as well as on the fact that Pa's sense of morality when it comes to usurping the Indian land seems to stem directly from what the government says is okay. If Washington says the Indian Territory is open to the settlers then he's going to have his land and the Indians can go lump it. If they say not, then he'll move on. That the Indians are obviously living on the land and that they were clearly there first seems not to enter into it for him.

Pa, in fact (and to a somewhat lesser extent, Ma), has become one of the most interesting aspects of these books for me on these rereads. How does he know how to make a life on the prairie anyway? That he should be a competent frontiersman generally can be taken as a given since when we first meet him in Big Woods he's already been making a successful go at that kind of life for several years (at least). But how does he know what the specific dangers of the prairie are? And how to deal with them? As a child, I accepted Pa as the all-knowing performer of crafty miracles and protector of home and family (I knew men like that myself, after all), but as an adult I begin to want to see him as a real person and to question him and to suspect that sometimes his pioneer spirit endangers his family (a number of minor catastrophes in Prairie, which are presented as things from which Pa saves the day, are actually his fault). The question of what children know and what adults know and keep from the children, I think, is a central theme in this book, and one which probably sails right over the head of children readers (except for the few times when it is made explicit as part of the action). I count six instances in Prairie when the whole family is a hair's breadth away from a horrible death, and much of what is interesting to me here (beyond the details of the day-to-day business of staying alive, which is always fascinating) is how these two adults try to--and mostly succeed at--giving their children a happy life which is free from fear and dread.


These reviews originally appeared on my LibraryThing account here and here.

Packing for a Reading Retreat: Volume III

It's time for a new edition of "Packing for a Reading Retreat" (though I am a touch late), where I imagine which books I would take with me if I were heading to a reading retreat, where there would be no distractions and I would be free to do nothing but read for a week.  I imagine my packing in three categories: "New to Me," for books I've never read before; "Old Favorites," for past reads I'd like to revisit; and "Just in Case," for one book that can always be counted on to save me if one of the other selections turns out to be a dud.
  
New to Me 

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
I've had this one on hand for awhile now, but haven't cracked it open yet (though I have read Mitchell's Black Swan Green, which I gather is a very different sort of book, but which I enjoyed immensely).  I saw a preview for the movie version of Cloud Atlas and I quite literally wrinkled up my nose and said, "Cloud Atlas Cloud Atlas?  Like, David Mitchell?  Is that what that book is about?"  It was all science fiction-y-ish with the same actors playing different characters in different time periods.  I sort of knew that there was an element of souls appearing in different eras or reincarnation or something in Cloud Atlas, but the feel of the movie preview sort of shocked me in being not what I expected from that book.  But it looked like a movie I would like to see and it seems like a book I would definitely want to have read before seeing the movie, so it's been bumped up my mental list of books to read soon. 

Canada, Richard Ford
I recently saw a tiny snippet of an interview with Richard Ford which made me think I really ought to read something by him.  Canada is his latest, and I can't say that I picked it out of all his works for much more reason than because it is the most recent (and maybe because the story--a teenaged boy has to learn to fend for himself and avoid Child Services after his parents rob a bank--appealed to me).

The Time in Between, María Dueñas, trsl. Daniel Hahn
I have to confess that the cover and the first sentence ("A typewriter shattered my destiny.") are what drew me to this book and remain the chief reasons I want to read it.  Though the setting (WWII, Europe), as always, appeals.  I mean, who could resist that first line?

Old Favorites

 The Little House on the Prairie books, Laura Ingalls Wilder
This is the tiniest bit of a cheat, as I've already dipped in to these, but I am still very eager to carry on with them, so I call it fair.  A recent review of the Little House books highlighted the darkness and danger of living on the frontiers, and that prompted me to want to reread these childhood favorites.


Just in Case 

 Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
A beloved childhood read about a young man who sets out to seek his fortune and runs afoul of a dastardly uncle, is kidnapped, and then must make his way home through the Scottish Highlands during the turmoil in the years after the '45.  A pretty solid adventure story with a fascinating setting and wonderful attention to historical and political detail.


Previous Editions of Packing for a Reading Retreat:

Volume II
Volume I

Book Review: Salem Falls, Jodi Picoult

I've never read Picoult before because I am always wary of novels which seem to be About a Topic (capitals intentional there).  As in, this novel is About Autism.  This novel is About School Shootings.  This novel is About Child Abduction.  This wariness is a clear result of my thoughts on artful fiction, what it should do, and how it works.  I think fiction should arise from discovery and exploration, and little red flags go up for me when I see that a novel is about something specific that we could just as easily be reading in a news magazine.  A novel About Adultery seems to me like a very different thing than a novel with betrayal as a theme.  I suspect the first of being forcibly made into a story about one particular thing because it is topical; I believe the second has a better chance of arising through writerly discovery.  Either book could be terrible.  And either book might be very good, I suppose, which is why I decided to give Picoult a try.

I chose carefully, picking a novel I had heard nothing about and whose topic sounded interesting to me.  And I tried to read with an open mind.  What I found in Salem Falls was better than I expected it to be, but still left me pretty cold.

The novel is the story of Jack St. Bride, who spent eight months in jail as part of plea bargain when an infatuated sixteen-year-old girl on the soccer team he coached claimed they were having a sexual affair.  Jack is innocent, and we are never led to suspect otherwise.  When he arrives in Salem Falls just after being released from jail, he finds a job at a diner and tentatively begins a relationship with the diner's owner.  That Jack is a sexual offender makes its way around town, and a group of fathers in town make it their business to make it clear to Jack (through vandalism and personal violence) that Jack is not welcome.  Eventually Jack is accused of rape by one of the town's teenage girls, a girl who readers already know is mad at Jack (for failing to show a sexual interest in her), craves attention, and was almost certainly high at the time of the alleged rape.  The book then becomes a courtroom drama, with a lot of focus on gathering evidence and the presentation of the case in court.

Picoult writes pretty well.  Sentences are clear and coherent, the story pulls one along, there are few of the kinds of tics that suggest a writer is not taking care with the craft, and the aspects of the story which probably required research ring true enough.  But there is a tendency to overwrite and to over-sentimentalize.  Honest, every action doesn't require a simile describing it, especially not if those similes try to give the actions meaning they don't deserve.  And scars don't form in the shape of hearts on girls whose hearts have been trampled.  Come on.

There were a lot of moments like those, those moments where I thought, "This is manipulation.  I'm being told to feel something here, not being allowed to discover a truth along with the writer."  I have little patience for that sort of thing, but other problems I had with the novel were probably even more important.  These characters were cardboard; there was no complexity to them at all.  Not one of them did a single thing that furthered the reader's understanding of the character or of the situation they found themselves in.  Everyone behaved as expected; nothing ever asked the reader to stretch for meaning or growth.  And that is almost disturbing in a novel whose main focus is a man being destroyed by people who can't seem to conceive of things being not the way they appear. 

At about the two-thirds mark, I started asking myself what the the point of this book might be.  I'll admit to being fairly well engaged--I wanted to know what would happen, I wanted to see if the story would come out the way it should or if injustice would prevail.  And if making me want to turn the pages to find out What next? is all the novel was trying to do, well, then, I'd say it succeeds.  But the flap of Salem Falls claims that Picoult's novels demonstrate "'a firm grasp of the delicacy and complexity of human relationships.'"  That being the case, I would expect to discover something by reading the book.  The novel tells me (and even, maybe, in some instances, shows me) that teenage girls sometimes become infatuated with older men; that such infatuation can lead to trouble, not least because teenage girls often don't have the maturity to deal with their infatuation or understand the full ramifications of acting on them; that good people tend to believe the worst about people who have been labeled as "bad"; that fathers protect their daughters, sometimes to the point of blindness toward their daughters themselves.  Okay.  Agreed.  But I'd have agreed before I read word one of the novel; the story doesn't help me see anything new about any of this, doesn't help me understand any of it better or more fully.  And without an arrival at some better or fuller understanding, I sort of feel like Salem Falls is just rolling around in Statutory Rape and False Accusations and Witch Hunts in order to pick up the emotions already associated with those topics and pass them on without adding anything worthwhile to the mix.     


This review originally appeared on my LibraryThing account.

Packing for a Reading Retreat: Volume II

It's time for a new edition of "Packing for a Reading Retreat," where I imagine which books I would take with me if I were heading to a reading retreat, where there would be no distractions and I would be free to do nothing but read for a week.  I imagine my packing in three categories: "New to Me," for books I've never read before; "Old Favorites," for past reads I'd like to revisit; and "Just in Case," for one book that can always be counted on to save me if one of the other selections turns out to be a dud.

New to Me

The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
A retelling of The Iliad, as told by Patroclus.  Readers of the last installment of "Packing for a Reading Retreat" already know that I am a sucker for retellings.  The Ancient World and all the myths, legends, and epics that go with it have always been on the periphery of my imagination.  I know they are out there, and I know bits of the stories, but, despite being fairly intrigued by them, I've never really dived in.  Perhaps this retelling will inspire me to go to The Iliad itself.  Song has gotten a lot of good reviews (I started hearing good things on LibraryThing almost immediately after it was published), so I'm excited to read this one.

The Cove, Ron Rash
Set during WWI in the Appalachians of North Carolina, The Cove is both a stranger-comes-to-town story and a love story.  I've been meaning to read Ron Rash for a while, and I find myself drawn to stories set in or about the Appalachians since living in Tennessee and Virginia (though I have always lived in or near the Appalachian mountains).

Widdershins, Charles de Lint
I read a novel by de Lint a few years back, and, though I was ultimately somewhat disappointed with it, I was fascinated by de Lint's style, his used of both urban and fantastical settings, and his use of Hispanic mythology and mysticism.  I've been saying I would try another by him since, and the cover of this one drew me in.  De Lint is meant to be one of the masters of urban fantasy (and one of its pioneers), and I think he probably deserves a second go.


Old Favorites

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
I read and enjoyed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in my early teens, but I've never reread it.  It was a bit of struggle for me at the time, and I know much of it went over my head then.  The setting of early 20th-century New York appeals to me, and I'd love to read this one again with adult eyes.

The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
I have a hardback, beautifully illustrated edition of The Secret Garden that was given to me when I was six or seven as a Christmas present by a great-aunt who had a reputation for giving perfect presents.  I know I read the story at least once, but my strongest memory of this book is just sitting and looking at the pictures, of reveling in the book as a beautiful object.  I haven't looked at the book beyond a quick glance since middle school, and I plan to sit down with it some day soon and turn every page with relish.

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
I love Jane Eyre for the way she stands up for herself and doesn't let fear stop her from doing things.  My recent reading of The Flight of Gemma Hardy has rekindled a desire to read Jane Eyre again.  It's been too long anyway.


Just In Case

The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
The retelling of Arthurian legend from the point of view of the women in the story utterly engrossed me at sixteen.  It's still the best contemporary telling of the Arthur stories and would be the perfect book to have along in case of running out of other things to read.



Past Editions of "Packing for a Reading Retreat"

Volume I

Not Until They're Twenty-Five

I'm engaging in a reread of the Harry Potter series this summer, something I enjoy doing every few years.  I read Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets in quick succession, and was struck, as I always am on these rereads, by how really brilliant HP1 is and how exciting it would be to read these books for the first time as a child.  I never had that experience--I was sixteen when the first Harry was published, seventeen before it was published in the US.  And I didn't read any of them until I was nearly twenty and didn't quite realize the appeal until twenty-three.  I suppose there might be an argument to be made that I came to Harry Potter at exactly the right time for me--during a summer in grad school when it was a thrill to rediscover how purely enjoyable reading can be.  But I still return to that feeling that reading them at the age they were intended for would have been such a treat.  Which inevitably leads me to a question: how might one share the Harry Potter books with children today?

One of the things I love about the Harry books is that they allow the children within them to grow and that the books themselves progressively "grow up" in vocabulary, style, and incident as Harry and co. get older themselves.  This was almost certainly a great thrill for those children lucky enough to be the right age to start Harry when he first came out and interested and/or readerly enough to stick with him through book seven.  An eight-year-old who started with Sorcerer in 1998 would have been just the same age as Harry himself when she read Deathly Hallows in 2007.  How cool is that?

But this very "growing up" of the series is what I fear would make giving Harry to children today problematic.  Suppose there is an eight-year-old of your acquaintance whom you think would enjoy these books.  If she is a strong reader, she should be able to read HP1 on her own; if not, she should be able to enjoy it thoroughly if read aloud to her.  Unless quite easily frightened, our eight-year-old (let's call her Rose) should be able to enjoy the small nastinesses, the sort-of scary monsters, and the kind-of creepy villain of Sorcerer's Stone without being upset by the book.  The same is probably true of Chamber of Secrets and maybe even Prisoner of Azkaban. 

But how many installments until you're afraid that the books are too old for Rose?  It won't take her ten years to get to Deathly Hallows without J.K. Rowling's writing pace to slow her down, especially if she is really caught up in the story.  How would you feel about little nine-year-old Rose reading about ethnic cleansing, children wiping their parents' memories to protect them, murder-by-snake, and kindly old men raising children so that they will be prepared to sacrifice themselves to save the world at seventeen?  Those are only a few of the things of which my nightmares were made after I read HP7  at twenty-six.  (M and I recently rewatched HP7: 1 & 2, and during the scene where Voldemort murders Charity Burbage, I muttered that any future children of ours would not be watching the movie until they were at least seventeen.  That age got revised upward as the evening progressed.)  I can't quite see letting Rose read Deathly Hallows before the teen years, but nor can I see telling Rose she can't read the rest of a story with which she has fallen in love.  One could try to steer Rose clear of Harry altogether until she is thirteen or fourteen, but Sorcerer's Stone is just too perfect for the eight-to-eleven set not to share it at that age.  And a thirteen-year-old might find the first two or three books too young for her, both in content and in style--and that might put her off the whole series.  What a shame that would be.  So, what to do?

I've heard the theory that one should let her children read whatever they want; that if they are old enough to comprehend a book, then they are old enough to deal with a book.  Maybe.  I've also read a good deal of theory about the prevalence of evil people, horrible situations, and tragedy in books written for older children and young adults--that dealing with such things in literature is an important part of children's development and their ability to deal with whatever is happening in their lives.  I'll buy that.  There's probably also something to be said for the notion that adults perceive horrors differently from children, that adults overestimate the effect unpleasantness in stories will have on kids.  I was an avid and strong reader from a very early age and have no recollections whatever of my parents forbidding me to read any particular books; nor can I remember being really, truly disturbed by anything I read as a kid.  I read a lot, I think, that was a bit beyond my comprehension and was unsettled by some of it, but struggling to find meaning in the books I didn't really understand was probably an integral part of my growing up.

All of which, I suppose, argues for letting Rose read the later Harry Potter books when she thinks she's ready for them.  She'd probably read them under a blanket with a flashlight if her parents forbade them anyway.  Better to be prepared, maybe, to know that your baby is going to show up at the side of your bed at three in the a.m. terrified of whatever twist her unconscious put on Dementors and Nagini and Killing Curses. 

And no one can protect Rose from growing up forever.  What a shame that would be.

Book Review: She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb

I'm not sure what made me pick up She's Come Undone and rip through it in less than two days, as I've always shied away from it before, thinking of it as one of those books about "Woman's Experience"--a topic which generally makes me cross (as if there could be such a thing).  But I enjoyed She's Come Undone more than I expected to--the narrator's voice is engaging and pulls one right along, and Lamb creates characters and scenes seemingly effortlessly.  The sentences read smoothly, and the novel is sophisticated in its movement.  The final pages made me smile with happy satisfaction at the outcome of Dolores's story. 

But something bothered me throughout my reading, and I'm still unsure of what, exactly, was the problem.  Perhaps it was the relentless parade of wretched human beings in the book, people who seemed uninterested in, or incapable of, love in any of its guises and who were wholly uninteresting except in the specific ways they affected Dolores.  Perhaps it was the wearying way nearly every man in the story was a misogynistic jerk.  Or the disconnect I felt between the experience of Dolores, born in 1952 in Rhode Island, and my mother, born in 1951 in Pennsylvania.  No reason, really, exists to think that two women of the same generation born in roughly the same part of the country would have similar experiences, but Dolores seemed to live in an entirely different world than the one my mother grew up in.  Where were the kinds of good, loving, strong characters who inhabited Mom's stories of growing up in the fifties and sixties?  Why was nearly every adult in Dolores's world so touched by and damaged by The Times In Which They Lived? 

Or perhaps it was that the events of the novel began to feel like a checklist of Bad Things That Happen to Women (I'm going to get a touch spoilery here).  Dolores witnesses verbal and physical abuse against her mother by her father; sees her parents go through a divorce caused in some part by her father's adultery; watches her mother have a nervous breakdown, spend time in a mental hospital, then come home and engage in an affair with a married man; flirts with a handsome neighbor and then is raped by him at thirteen and convinced by him that "their" indiscretion is her fault; becomes mentally depressed and morbidly obese; experiences the death of her mother in a horrible traffic accident; is maliciously and sexually teased by a boy at a college party who then calls her horrible names and destroys her property when she fights back; nearly commits suicide; spends four years in a mental institution; marries a man who threatens to leave her if she does not abort their child; has an abortion she does not want; gets a divorce; and eventually must give up on her dream of bearing children.  While Dolores does learn to stand up for herself and eventually finds happiness; loyal, loving friends; and a good man (and the moments when she has these breakthroughs are satisfying and exciting), this litany of misery began to feel a touch dishonest.  It is not that I disbelieve that all of these things could happen to one person (and I will say that Lamb deals with each one beautifully), but that I began to suspect that these events existed in the novel for reasons that had little to do with story.  And that put me off a bit.      

In the end, I was impressed by Lamb's handling of structure and sentences and, in some cases, character.  But despite the satisfaction I felt in Dolores's eventual triumphs, I also felt manipulated by the novel.  And that will always leave a sour taste in my mouth.


This review originally appeared on my LibraryThing account. 

Book Review: The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Margot Livesey

(For the most part, if you know the plot of Jane Eyre, you know the plot of The Flight of Gemma Hardy, but I get a bit spoilery in my fourth paragraph for events specific to Gemma Hardy.  The whole review will completely spoil Jane Eyre for you if you do not know it.)

I'm afraid that this retelling of Jane Eyre just doesn't quite work.  Livesey's sentence-level writing is clean and impressive, and she has a knack for writing the kind of crisp prose that can effortlessly pull a reader along. And taken alone, Gemma's story serves as a decent character study.  The problem is that Gemma's story cannot be taken alone.  This is Jane Eyre, moved to Scotland in the 50s and 60s, and given some minor make-overs to make the plot plausible in the mid-twentieth century (Gemma's employer with whom she falls in love has a secret, but it does not involve a mad women stashed away in an attic--who would believe such a thing of a businessman in the late sixties?  Or if one did believe it, the whole thing could not help but be a great deal more inescapably, irrevocably dark and sinister.)  But transplanted to a world that is familiar to the modern reader, much of the plot of Jane Eyre becomes incredible.  It is hard to imagine an aunt suddenly treating her niece as less than a servant among automobiles, telephones, jumpers, and boyhood dreams of playing soccer for England.  It is difficult to see how a school could treat its pupils so poorly in days so close to our own.  It is entirely possible that such things might have happened in this setting (the nineteenth century did not have a monopoly on cruelty, after all), but fiction does not hinge on what might be possible in the real world, but on what has been made to seem possible on the page.  And Livesey fails to overcome her source material in making these Gothic-infused plot elements seem possible in the pages of her fictional world. 

Jane's transition to Gemma encounters other obstacles as well.  Mr Sinclair, the employer with whom Gemma falls in love, contains none of the mysteriousness of Mr Rochester, none of the sense of danger and intrigue wrapped up in enigmatic moods and veiled personal history.  Blackbird Hall and the Orkney islands do not ooze with atmosphere and gloom as Thornfield Hall and the moors do.  Mr Sinclair's secret is not terribly damning, and while it is believable that its revelation would make Gemma think twice about marrying him, her flight from him comes over as foolish and over-dramatic; Jane's flight from Mr Rochester and his attempt to commit bigamy through deceit (and the subsequent effect Jane may well have thought this would have on her soul) seems almost rational in comparison.  This difficulty with suspension of disbelief is not helped by the fact that Gemma and Sinclair's love for one another reads like a result of the novel's paralleling Jane Eyre rather than a natural development springing from these characters themselves.

In fact, much of The Flight of Gemma Hardy appears to exist because it must do so in order to stay true to the source to which it is indebted.  Reading the novel was a bit like going down a Jane Eyre plot point checklist.  Confrontation with bratty older cousin? Check.  Locked in a frightening room?  Check.  Sent off to a miserable boarding school?  Check.  Make friends with a doomed pupil?  Check.  Get job teaching the ward of a rich, absentee landowner?  Check.  Unwittingly help employer on the road when he returns unexpectedly?  Check.  And so on.  While Livesey does infuse her telling with new elements, while she does, in many ways, make the story her own, her changes and updates to the tale often feel uninspired; they rarely made me think about Jane Eyre in new ways or provided much insight into how the story of a girl growing up with this particular set of disadvantages changed in one hundred years.  I thought for a while that perhaps that sense of things not having changed much was the point of the novel, but if so the illustration of that fact falls flat.  Having dismissed that notion, I considered the possibility that the novel was meant to illustrate how Jane Eyre, when looked at from a distance, becomes rather silly, how it might have seemed so to its contemporary readers, just as some of its plot elements seem unbelievable when placed in a (roughly) contemporary setting today.  But, no, the book does not suggest to me, in its unfolding, in it careful retracing of the plot of Jane Eyre, any sort of critique of the original novel. 

Except, perhaps, in the end.  Finally, finally, in the last fifty-or-so pages, The Flight of Gemma Hardy departs from its strict adherence to the plot of Jane Eyre.  Upon discovering that she may have family on her father's side still living, and in the aftermath of refusing a perhaps practical but certainly passionless proposal of marriage, Gemma (unlike Jane) goes in search of that family.  And here are some of my favorite parts of the book.  Gemma finds living relatives in Iceland and learns (as Jane does not), a fair amount about her childhood before coming to live with her aunt and uncle, about her family, about, as a result, herself.  And Mr Sinclair comes to find her, rather than her going back to him.  And they do not get married (though there's a strong intimation that they will, once Gemma comes to understand herself a little better).  This is the sort of thing I was hoping the whole book would do--put a spin on the familiar story, show how Jane Eyre would be if she'd been born in the aftermath of World War II.  And in some ways I suppose it does do that, but I never really felt that the novel was fully reimagining the original story.       

I did so want to love The Flight of Gemma Hardy.  Jane Eyre is one of my favorite novels, and I thought a retelling of it had a lot of potential.  Unfortunately, Livesey doesn't quite tap into that potential--I spent much of the novel wishing she (or someone) had reimagined Jane Eyre in its original setting, taking up the story from some crucial point in the original narrative and exploring what might have happened if Jane had made different choices.  Alas.  But I do give mad props to Livesey for trying, and on the strength of her prose, I will be looking out for some of her previous novels.



This review originally appeared on my LibraryThing account.

Packing for a Reading Retreat

I've never been on a Reading Retreat, but I've heard of them.  Comfy accommodation in some secluded, scenic spot; meals provided; evening gatherings of other retreat attendees to discuss bookish things.  No television, no phone, no obligations--nothing to do for a week but read, read, read.  I've no immediate plans to go on such a retreat either, as paying handsomely to do something I can just about get away with at home with some forward planning always seems just a little too extravagant.  But gosh, I'd like to.  And sometimes I imagine what it would be like, and what books I'd take.  Thus, about once every four months (I'll shoot for around 1 April, 1 July, 1 October, and 1 January), I'll share what I would pack for a reading retreat if I were lucky enough to be heading out to one soon.

I've done my share of packing for regular vacations, of course.  And I always take too many books.  It's just so hard to choose, and I'd hate to get there and realize that the book that I really want to read, the book that would be just perfect, is the book I left behind.  The knowledge that I will almost surely be someplace where I can get another book, or borrow a book from a friend, has no effect on my overpacking.  The books I pack tend to fall into one of three categories: something I've never read, or books that are new to me; books I've read before and would like to visit again, or old favorites; and one or two books that catch my eye after I thought I'd finished packing, or those that are just in case.  So in each "Packing for a Reading Retreat" post, I'll pick three books that are new to me, three old favorites, and one just in case--and I'll say a little about each one.  That's may still be too many books for a week, but who could choose?

New to Me

The Mirage, by Matt Ruff
From the front flap: "11/9/2001: Christian fundamentalists hijack four jetliners.  They fly two into the Tigris & Euphrates World Trade Towers in Baghdad, and a third into the Arab Defense Ministry in Riyadh.  The fourth plane, believed to be bound for Mecca, is brought down by its passengers."  Chilling.  And tantalizing.  I have steered clear of, or been disappointed by, books I've read that center around 9/11, but this one intrigues me.  Perhaps it is a suspicion that reading about those events turned on their head will be easier to stand, while still providing some insight.  Perhaps it is just that I am fascinated by speculative fiction, with things that posit "but what if it were just this way?"  Either way, I've heard good things, and this is the first 9/11 novel I've really wanted to read, rather than just thought I probably ought to.  Here's hoping. 

The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Margot Livesey
Gemma Hardy loses her parents and then a kind guardian and is left in the care of a mean aunt.  She subsequently goes away to school, hoping for a better life, only to find the conditions living there little better than staying with her aunt.  Eventually she takes a job as an au pair, and finds herself intrigued by her employer.  Yar, it's Jane Eyre, and consciously so.  If there's anything that fascinates me more than speculative fiction, it's a retelling.  And Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books, not only because I loved reading it, but because it was one of the few classics I read as a teenager entirely because I wanted to.  It wasn't for school, it wasn't suggested by my mother, it wasn't to help me pass any kind of test.  I'm a little wary of Gemma Hardy for that reason, but I've heard really good things about this one, too.

Buddenbrooks, by Thomas Mann, translated by John. E. Woods
I had to read Death in Venice for one of my comps a few years ago, and I expected it to be a slog.  Au contraire!  I loved it.  Since then I've been picking up John E. Woods's translations of Mann's major works, but I've yet to sit down and read one of them.  The Magic Mountain always seems like a too-intellectual introduction to Mann in long form, and I shy away from Doctor Faustus fearing it may wreck me somehow.  Buddenbrooks strikes me as the least intimidating.  And such a long novel would be the perfect thing for a weekend of uninterrupted reading. 

Old Favorites 

The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Yes, yes, I hear many of you crying foul, claiming this is too obvious, demanding I pick something else.  But this is no knee-jerk, I-always-want-to-read-Rings-again kind of a choice.  M just reread The Hobbit the other week, and we've been dipping into the films of an evening here lately.  And I've realized that it's been quite a while since I've read Rings in its entirety.  There are always new things to discover in Tolkien, no matter how many times you've read him, and I always think that Rings suffers greatly from being read in snatches.  One should really sit down with it for hours at a time and let oneself settle comfortably into Tolkien's style, let oneself get caught up in Middle Earth.

The Sound of Summer Voices, by Helen Tucker
My mother read the first chapter of The Sound of Summer Voices to me when I was home sick from middle school.  (It was probably a nasty headache, otherwise I likely would have read it myself.)  The story has a mystery to it, though it is not a mystery story, and I remember calling out what I thought were deeply important clues as she read.  The story involves a pre-adolescent boy who decides that one of his aunts must actually be his mother, and follows him as he tries to find out the truth.  Tucker has a knack for capturing small town life and the characters who live in them.  And the plot is fun.  I've been meaning to read this one again for a long time.

Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier 
You gotta take along one slightly creepy book in case of thunderstorms.  Rebecca is probably my favorite "slightly creepy" read.  The atmosphere DuMaurier creates is tangible, and the mysterious goings on at Manderley hold up brilliantly even when you already know what all the fuss is about.

Just in Case

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen 
I can practically recite Pride and Prejudice without looking at the pages.  And that's largely why it's here.  It's an old, comfortable favorite, and will serve splendidly in cases of homesickness, duds, or freak-outs caused by The Mirage.  Austen's language is so smooth that her sentences have a kind of soothing, inevitable rightness to them.  And the characters are just delicious, the plot just twisty enough, and the humor just delightfully pointed.