Intrigued by the idea of the 100 Mile Diet, I eagerly grabbed the galley of this book which details a Vancouverite couple’s year of eating locally. I like the idea, I really do, but I live in New England. If you plug in my zip code on their handy map which will give you your 100 mile boundaries, I saw that I might be in some trouble in winter. But this couple did it, almost ruining their relationship in the meanwhile, but still, they went a whole year. And they were very hardcore. No salt, sugar, whatever, unless is came from a local source.

As for the book, the subject matter is the most interesting aspect of the book. It’s broken up into months and Alisa and James alternate writing the chapters.  Their personal lives go through some tumult as Alisa deals with the loss of her grandmother and James tries to get to know his brother better. These parts, while adding some depth to the writers, detract in the end. I wanted to know more about how they persevered. How exactly did they can all those vegetables? I felt like I was getting fleeting glimpses into this diet, rather than the in depth perspective. It’s still an interesting read nonetheless. The chapter they spend in their cabin up North is particularly charming.

I felt rather dirty reading the climatic chapter of McEwan’s upcoming book on the subway last night. This novella recounts Edward and Florence on their first night together as man and wife in 1962. You might have read the first chapterin the New Yorker’s Fiction issue. It’s an odd, intimate book. McEwan carefully dissects this couples’ relationship. He goes almost minute by minute through their awkward honeymoon dinner to the bedroom and the aftermath. Woven into this narrative are flashbacks that help illustrate the complexities of the relationship.
What’s lovely about this novel is the way in which McEwan describes all of these details, letting the reader infer how the characters feel about one another. He also lets you see the class differences between Edward and Florence without it seeming like he’s deliberately pointing them out. At Florence’s family house, Edward is assigned what the family calls the “small room”. “The ‘small room’ was larger than any of the bedrooms at the Turville Heath cottage, and possibly larger than the its sitting room.” It’s too early for the sexual liberation to have reached them. The sexual oppression reaks havoc with their relationship in ways that they can’t even communicate. We the reader understand what each is feeling but they don’t have any idea or have the capability to talk about their nervousness. Edward worries about “arriving to soon” while Florence fears the whole act of sex. She’s even repulsed by French Kissing. Both believe that their love for one another can protect them. What’s remarkable about this book is that McEwan can paint such a wonderful portrait in such a short space. This book might be 176 pages, but it’s a smaller format hardcover—4 1/2″ x 7 1/4″. It’s truly a superb work.

I’ve been reading up a storm:

• Rules for Saying Goodbye by Katherine Taylor (coming in June from FSG)—pretty good first novel about a girl who never quite fits in or grows up. Taylor draws a nice portrait of a character always on the lookout for something but they’re not quite sure what.
• Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber (coming in June from W.W. Norton)—Abu-Jaber’s first mystery, she does a brilliant job of creating both a complex enough plot with real, interesting characters. Lena, a fingerprint expert at a lab in Syracuse, investigates a series of crib deaths that might be cases of SIDS or murders. Meanwhile, she begins to question her own shadowy childhood. The book engaged me completely on this past chilly Sunday.
• After Dark by Haruki Murakami (coming in May from Random House)—Short novel from one of my father authors. Set over the course of an evening, the chapters cut between several interconnected stories: trombonist Tetsuya, entering a Denny’s one evening, runs into Mari Asai. He was once interested in Mari’s beautiful older sister Eri, who has been asleep for a month, trapped in some netherworld. Meanwhile, a Chinese prostitute is beaten badly by an officeworker at a love hotel and the propietor, Kaoru, needs Mari’s Chinese translation skills. The book doesn’t go anywhere. Rather it seems to be more of an observation on coincidences and time.
• The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones (coming in May from Houghton-Mifflin)—While this book is nicely written, I feel like I’m not it’s target. It’s about a woman who has lost her husband in a tragic auto accident. Then she learns that a paternity suit has been filed in China against her husband’s estate. Reeling from this news, she goes to China to investigate the suit and also to write an article on an up and coming chef Sam Liang. She and Liang form an instant bond and each help each other come to terms with major events in their lives. While not a bad book by any means, it just didn’t move me in any particular way. We just weren’t meant to be.

I recently finished two books that one could consider “experimental fiction” even though these two books differ greatly. What is even considered experimental fiction anymore? Is that different from a “novel of ideas”? The terms get thrown around so often. Is it a book that simply plays around with the parameters of the novel? Some people seem to confuse cult fiction with experimental fiction, though cult fiction can be experimental in nature, just because a novel plays with form doesn’t make it cult fiction.

The first book I’ll mention is Scarlett Thomas’s The End of Mr. Y. Others have raved about this book—I really liked it myself. Graduate student Ariel Manto gets a hold of the cursed Victorian novel The End of Mr Y written by Thomas Lumas. She uses the instructions in the book to enter the “Troposphere”, an alternate dimension where human thoughts connect and where visitors can jump from one person’s thoughts to another. It sounds complicated and it is, but Thomas explains it all with ease and it makes sense. I loved Ariel Manto’s brilliance. It’s nice to read a book featuring a strong female lead that doesn’t apologize for her intelligence. Manto is somewhat of a renegade scholar. She jumps from subject to subject rather like the old Renaissance scholars, absorbing science, literature and philiosophy. Despite a few flaws in the book, I think this is a really strong effort for Thomas and I’m looking forward to her future work.

The second book I’ll mention that I finished last week was Matthew Sharpe’s  inventive novel Jamestown. Set sometime in the future, this book chronicles a group of settlers from Manhattan traveling South in a large bus/tank to establish an outpost in southern Virginia. The book features historical figures like John Smith, Pocahantas and others. Each chapter tells the story from a different character’s perspective. The settlers are led by John Ratliff, whose mother’s boyfriend is the CEO of the Manhattan Company, who are enemies of the Brooklyn Company. The Indians, who speak English (which they try to conceal to the visitors), aren’t technically Indians. They just try to live like them and are “red” because they’re not using strong enough sunscreen. Powhatan leads them with the help of his advisor Sidney Feingold. Pocahantas falls in love with greasy haired communications officer Johnny Rolfe and saves the life of Jack Smith. I’m not going to adequately convey how great I think this book is—-it’s hard to explain without sounding like nut. It’s a wonderfully imaginative and Sharpe uses language to play with the future and the past that made me giggle and fall in love with the book.

These two books are so different from one another, yet I would call them both “experimental”. Thomas’s book plays with ideas and Sharpe’s book plays with, well, everything.

I had finished the Haig by the time I got to Dallas and I found myself purchasing Edward Jones’s The Known World for the next flight (the choices at the bookshop were minimal–it was either this or Sophie’s Choice). Edward Jones is a true master. He is one of the best American writers around today—I know I say this after reading only one book, but I really mean this. Clearly I loved the book and I’ve now moved his most recent story collection All Aunt Hagar’s Children to the top of my TBR queue. Jones weaves together stories of the residents of the made-up Manchester County, Virginia. Moving back and forth in time, you read about Henry Townsend, a black slaveowner and the people who surround him. It’s complex and beautifully written.

Once I finished the Jones, I moved onto Steven Hall’s debut novel The Raw Shark Texts. I met him at a Grove dinner while in Portland—he’s charming—but didn’t get to talk with him at length unfortunately. I had been worried about his use of textual play, but it worked pretty well in the novel. The main character Eric Anderson wakes up one day not remembering who he is. He finds a note telling him to call a Dr. Randle who informs him he is going through yet another memory lapse.  For the last two years he has been suffering from an acute dissociative disorder after the death of his fiance Chloe. But then he begins to get notes from “The First Eric Anderson” and he embarks on a journey to reconstruct what has happened to him. It involves a conceptual shark that is eating away at Eric Anderson. Not sure how else to describe it without giving a lot away. It’s fast paced and very focused. By that I mean, I had no sense of what was going on in the world around Eric Anderson, the story involves only what he’s thinking and feeling. It also feels like a very male novel, not that I didn’t enjoy it. The plane made a great place to read this book with that focused light above my chair for the four hour flight.

I began my first leg of the journey with Nathan Englander’s The Ministry of Special Cases. I had not read his previous book of short stories, but everyone always raved about and since there was a chance I might be having dinner with him in Portland, I decided to give his new novel a go. It’s set in Buenos Aires at the start of the Dirty War. The story revolves around a family: the father Kaddish Poznan, the mother Lillian, and their son Pato. The father and son don’t get along—old values versus new. College-aged Pato begins dabbling in the counterrevolutionary activites going on around him and one day he is “disappeared”. Englander spends over half of the novel setting this up and the second half follows the parents as they try to discover what has happened to their son. I admit that I didn’t like the book at first. I thought Pato was a spoiled brat—he’s very hard to like. I couldn’t get into the story. It wasn’t until I finished it that I realized what a powerful and well-written book this is. Funny how that happens.

I moved on to read Matt Haig’s The Dead Father’s Club after the Englander. Imagine Hamlet set in modern day England where Hamlet is an eleven year old boy. Inevitably, comparisons will be made to Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, not because the main character here, Philip, is autisic (he’s not), but because Haig writes the book entirely from the perspective of an 11 year old boy. Not everything makes sense to him that adults do. Philip’s father has died in a tragic car accident and his ghost pops up to tell him that his uncle killed him and that Phillip must avenge his death in the next 11 weeks before his father’s birthday. Uncle Alan has already made his move on Philip’s mother and taken over the operation of the family’s pub. While he plots his move and tries to cope with his father’s death, he also gains a girlfriend and some friends. I found this book easy to read, but not especially as deep as I wanted. Others will disagree, but perhaps this just isn’t my kind of book.

This lovely debut novel takes place during a crossroads in Japan’s history. During late nineteenth century, Japan began opening it’s doors to the West. The old and new cultures clashed and had to find a way to coexist. The Teahouse Fire tells the story of Aurelia, a French girl who moves to Japan with her missionary uncle after the death of her beloved mother. Escaping a fire that kills her uncle, she’s found the next morning by Yukako, daughter of the masters of the tea ceremony Shin family. Aurelia becomes Yukako’s closest companion, taking on the Japanese name Urako. As the Shin family faces challenges as the world around them changes, Urako tells how her puppy love for her older sister Yukako becomes a deep unrequited love over the years. Eventually stuck in a disastrous marriage, Yukako finds that she has the skills and ingenuity to keep the family afloat as she adapts the traditional tea ceremony to her purposes. Told with lush and precise details through the eyes of a complicated narrator, I enjoyed this inventive novel.

Here’s a few books I’ve read over the past few weeks.

The Mistress’s Daughter by A.M. Homes

I’m a big A.M. Homes fan and when I read her essay in the New Yorker on being adopted, I grew excited learning it would be turned into a book. This is her memoir of being adopted, meeting her biological parents, and overall what it means to belong. I enjoyed parts of the book more than others. Her encounters with her biological parents reek of hurt and angst. They’re some of the strongest parts of the book. Her growing obsession with genealogy I found less interesting, perhaps because it lacked the visceral punch of the rest of the book. Still, this book works to truly make you understand what it might feel like to be adopted, something other books have failed to do for me.

The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud

This book has been reviewed all over the place and I say that it deserves the praise it’s been receiving. Described as a comedy of manners, the story follows three friends from college, Danielle, Marina, and Julius, now entering their 30s. Set over nine months in 2001, we watch them agonizing over their love lives, trying to establish careers, and realizing that they’re not getting any younger. What sets this book apart is Messud’s ability to take the stock characters and setups and do something more with them. Yes, 9/11 looms over the whole novel, but she avoids the treacly Now-I-Realize-What’s-Important realizations that many novelists fall upon. And even though none of the characters are that likable, you like them enough to empathize.

His Majesty’s Dragon, Throne of Jade, and Black Powder War by Naomi Novik

I read the entire trilogy over the course of a few days. They’re very fun and good. Imagine an alternate reality with the Napoleonic Wars and dragons. The series starts as naval captain Will Laurence captures a French frigate and seizes its cargo, which turns out to be a soon to hatch dragon’s egg. There’s a whole set of lore about the dragons and their habits in the books, but to make it short, Laurence becomes the dragon’s master/friend and is at once swept up into the Aerial Corps. I can’t wait for the fourth book to come out. Also, Peter Jackson just bought the movie rights I believe.

Old Filth by Jane Gardam

One of Europa Editions lovely volumes, this novel After a lucrative life as a judge, Sir Edward Feathers, or Filth as he is called (which stands for Failed in London Try Hong Kong), retires to Dorset. Going back and forth through time, he reflects on his childhood as a “raj orphan” and its consequences. Gardam doesn’t waste any words. She’s brilliantly evokes the stifled atmostphere of Feather’s life. It took me about 25 pages to get into the novel, but after that I found it a very pleasurable book, if not a touch depressing.

Anyone attempting to write a biography of Augustus faces a monumentous task. Not only are sources limited during the era, but the information that is available is often biased. Not to mention the fact that so many important events occurred during such a short period of time. Everitt manages to take all this in stride and presents a readable and interesting portrait of a man who transformed a crumbling republic into the world’s largest empire with his new book. Beginning with Augustus’s rise through Roman society including his adoption by Julius Caesar to his power struggle with Mark Antony to his becoming the head of state, the author makes all of this fairly easy to follow. Names and dates can be a little confusing. Some diagrams and family trees interspersed throughout the book might have helped. Instead they were unhelpfully placed at the beginning with no information that would tell you what part of the book they were relevant to. Everitt paints a thorough picture of a man who worked hard to create an image of power, simplicity, and above all else a near mythic aura. His novelistic reconstruction of Augustus’s last days offers a bold new interpretation, which he carefully backs up with historical research. Written to reach a wider audience than Classicists, Everitt even attempts to make some comparisons to today’s world events. Overall, I found the book a fresh recounting of historical events.