It’s a cliche I realize, but I find Sarah Waters books immensely readable, meaning that once I start one, I have a hard time putting it down. Fortunately, her new book The Night Watch continues this tradition. She’s made a career writing about sex and love in Victorian era England, but this new book she set in London during the 1940’s and moves backward through time. Beginning in 1947, we move through 1944 and end at the beginning in 1941. It follows 4 Londoners, 3 women and 1 man, whose lives connect in both small and large ways: Kay, an ambulance driver during the war, dresses in mannish clothes. Helen, sweet and honest, harbors a secret. Glamorous Vivian remains loyal to her married soldier lover through hard times. And Vivian’s brother Duncan has his own demons to battle.

The mastery of the settings is one of Sarah Water’s greatest strengths. You can picture and smell the London streets from her descriptions. She also understands the intricacies of relationships–the jealousies, the feelings of unworthiness one can feel, the intensity of a new love. Another strength of this book was her choice of telling the intertwining stories backward. It doesn’t take away from the book, it enhances the stories. While the depth of her main characters strengthen the story, some of the minor characters did not seem developed enough, especially where it might have helped the plot. But even with its flaws, I enjoyed this book immensely.

Since I liked Revolutionary Road so much while in Spain and having enjoyed his short stories, I grabbed a copy of The Easter Parade by Richard Yates last weekend. This might be the most depressing book I’ve ever read, or at least in the top 5. Here, Yates follows the Grimes sisters for over 40 years from their parent’s divorce in childhood through old age. Younger sister Emily, who searches for happiness through various jobs and men in her peripatetic life, provides the eyes through which we watch them. Sarah, the elder, seems happily married throughout her life, at least to Emily, but all is not as it seems of course. As it turns out, Sarah’s husband, the genial English Tony, beats her. The other major character in EP is their divorced mother “Pookie” who moves them around from house to house as children. Both sister’s resentment for her is palpable and she dies alone in a home, having lost much of her mind to drink.

Why was this book so depressing? Perhaps it’s Emily’s bad relationships that she falls into one after the other. Each man comes with huge problems (who doesn’t?) and none of them seem to see Emily as herself, but as an answer to their troubles. They gravitate to her because she doesn’t know herself and therefore though she appears she’s always listening to them, it’s more that she has nothing to say for herself. In the end, Emily ends up alone and bitter, in the same position she found her mother at the end of her life. Lives never stepped into, that’s what I kept thinking, the constant yearning for something and not even knowing what to look for. I finished this book very late one night and it kept me awake most of the rest of the night.

Well, I suppose my vacation really was in Fall, but I was going for that whole essay everyone had to write about what they did over summer feel. I got to the airport early on my way to Spain and impulsively bought Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival by Dean King at the Borders even though I already had several books packed. It’s a book I’ve been wanting to read and it seemed like a great plane book. I was not wrong. This book not only has an amazing story to tell, it’s also very well-written and researched. King tells the story of Captain James Riley and the crew of the merchant ship Commerce as they shipwreck on the coast of Africa in 1815. He uses two separate first person accounts from the crew as well as traveling to the areas himself. The men hiked for four days without food and water, drinking their own urine to survive, only to be caught and sold as slaves. Eventually they are bought by Hamet, a man who has lost his own money on a failed caravan, but who sympathizes with the crew. They set off on a hellish journey to Swearah, where Hamet can collect on a bounty for them. Throughout the book, King peppers the account with facts about camels, the body’s need for water, so the reader can get a feel for what life in the Sahara is like. Upon returning home, Riley became an ardent abolitionist. Even Lincoln read Riley’s bestseller about his experiences as a slave. The compassion and understanding between Riley and Hamet who come from two very different worlds also rewards the reader.

I packed Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates because it’s another book I’ve long wanted to read. Everyone raves about this author. I read his complete short story collection while in Belize in February and loved his writing style. Would RR be as good? Set in the suburbs of Connecticut in the 1950s, Yates details the inner lives of April and Frank Wheeler. They think themselves the untypical suburban family and spend time with a set of friends making fun of the other suburbanites never quite realizing that they’re just as boring and unfulfilled. Frank languishes at his office job constantly fighting against the tide of his inbox while April mourns the loss of an acting career that she never had. The character who represents what I think the Wheelers resent most about their age is Mrs. Givings, the real estate agent. Her son rebelled against the staid lifestyle and got put into a mental institution as a result. In the end of the book, her husband shuts off his hearing aid as she drones on about how she knew the Wheelers weren’t quite right (even though she sang their praises in the beginning of the book).

In an effort to stave off the consumerist demands of their life, April comes up with the idea of moving to France where Frank can develop his artistic abilities (even though he knows he has none. He spent a lot of time embellishing his own personality, in a way which Yates gets dead on). This throws them briefly into a period of joy, until April realizes she is pregnant. Also, Frank has a tawdry affair with a secretary in his office, which has about as much passion as a conversation between Dick Cheney and well, anyone, but April doesn’t seem to care. Their whole lives come undone by the end of the book. I could go on about the fruitlessness of the Wheelers’ lives and how this is an accurate portrait of the emptiness and loneliness of suburban life, but one, it’s been said before and two, I imagine one can get the picture already. I will agree with everyone before me who has said that RR is a beautifully and evocative book.

Next time I will talk about at least books 3 and 4, which were Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski and The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon. I have to discuss them together because the reading of one definitely affected my reading of the other, so stay tuned.

I finished this book before I left for vacation, but had no time to write anything about it until now. I’ll admit that the neat cover of Jesus Land first attracted me to it. I find that memoirs can be tricky things; Too often people often feel that their lives are a lot more interesting than they really are. Julia Scheeres’ life on the other hand is one definitely worth reading about, and not only for her graceful writing. The title of her book comes from a sign the author stumbled across when she moved to rural Indiana with her parents and 2 adopted brothers, who are African-American. It’s the mid-80s, the same era in which I grew up, but our lives could not be more different. Her dismissive, extremely religious mother and abusive father do nothing to soften the harshness of the intolerance and cruelty the children suffer. Rather, they add to an already difficult life. Eventually, Julia follows her brother David to the Dominican Republic to a reform school, where life does not get any easier. This is no tell-all about an unjust childhood. Rather Julia Scheere’ candor and lovely writing make this memoir seem like more of a catharsis and I found it difficult to put down.

I’m home sick today, bored. Thought it would be fun to take some pictures of my shelves, so y’all can see what I have. They are surprisingly organized now, which happened after we moved in April.

Here’s the nice bookcase:

This one is the first of the fiction cases:

This is the second fiction case:

And here is some of the Classics and Philosophy:

I still have a few unpacked boxes of books, but no room for to put them. Alas, bookcases cost so much! So, do you see anything interesting?

I’ll admit that when I read the description of Mockingbird, I thought, ‘You’re shitting me’. But it was Gavin Grant himself who gave me the book when he and Kelly Link were reading at my store several months back. I think very highly of those two, so I knew he wouldn’t steer me wrong. In short, this book involves a vivacious Southern woman who also happens to be a seer and who has also recently passed away, leaving behind two grown daughters and a confused husband. The eldest daughter Toni, who is trying to sort out the mess her mother left behind and take care of her sister, inherits her mother’s ‘gift’. This sounds ludicrous I know. So just ignore what I am saying and read the book anyway because it’s fucking hilarious. Really, it is. I read it over the course of an evening and a morning, almost spraying Mr. Bookdwarf alternately with beer and with coffee, laughing at parts of this book.

It’s always troubling when I get my hands on a long-awaited book and find it very disappointing. I love the food writing genre and couldn’t wait to read The Seasoning of a Chef: A Journey from Diner to Ducasse and Beyond by Doug Psaltis. But only half way through now, I am extremely disappointed. The back of the book bills Doug Psaltis as the anti-Bourdain, which is fine. We don’t need a million Bourdains in the kitchen. But being the anti-Bourdain doesn’t mean you have to be completely boring and self-involved. Sure, it’s his autobiography (written with the help of his twin brother Michael) so of course it’s self-involved, but the guy always seems to make himself out as the star in every kitchen. He has no humility and no sense of humor. It’s the most boring kitchen book I’ve read. He claims to be the most passionate chef, but that is not evident reading this book. Everything is a learning situation, every kitchen a schoolroom for him. That’s fine–but it’s not compelling reading to hear again and again that he’s the hardest worker and learns from every mistake.

There’s a tendency to repeat himself and to overuse literary devices, which could be forgiven if the subject matter were more interesting.
One of the more irritating devices is that of the ominous sentence: “On the day that marked the beginning of the end of Panama Hatties for me, I arrived as early as anyone else in the kitchen.” Or “On the day that I knew was my last, as I came into the kitchen Peter was leaning over a cookbook on the pass amid the general level of accepted chaos around the rest of the kitchen.” They really lead to nowhere. And he tries to give you these build-ups to something exciting: “One day in late January, when New York got hit with its first big snowstorm of the year, I faced a real test.” Okay, this seems promising. Some big kitchen mishap? The snowstorm prevents food deliveries? Nope. He goes on for several pages about how difficult it can be starting in a new kitchen, as you try to learn the new system. But as I already know, he loves learning and hard work. And then he starts discussing the use of sauces. Finally he gets to the big “test” which amounts to the chef/owner coming in and using his station to cook some salmon for a VIP. Wow.

I know I sound particularly harsh here, but it comes from disappointment. I suppose not everyone can be Anthony Bourdain, who just as self-important maybe more so, at least has the decency to realize it and joke about it. Psaltis’ ego gets in the way of what could have been an interesting book. I’ve certainly read other books where the writing isn’t polished, but the subject matter is interesting enough to make up for it, for example Japanland: A Year in Search of Wa by Karin Muller. I found her writing clumsy at times and lacking finesse, but I also thought the strength of the book was the story she was telling. Psaltis’ book is poorly written, plus it’s just very boring.

I got to 10 pages til the end at lunch yesterday, and I just couldn’t go on with my day until I had finished The Insult. I then spent the rest of the day thinking about this strange and wonderful book. Maud was right, this book was better than The Divided Kingdom, though I still love that one, maybe because it was my introduction to Rupert Thomson. Thomson has elements in his writing similar to Haruki Murakami, you know that dreamworld in which his stories take place. But Thomson’s dreamworld is darker and dirtier, tinged with grays and sepia tones (sorry, that’s how I imagine it). I can’t explain the plot too much, but it involves a man, Martin Blom, who has been shot in the head as he walks toward his car in the supermarket parking lot. Rendered permanently blind, he has to find his way back into the world. But one night, he discovers that he can see, but only at night or in the dark. At some points you think Martin has gone crazy. At some points you don’t know what to believe. And the book takes strange turns, but I loved every minute of the journey.

I asked Mr. Bookdwarf to write reviews for me of books he’s reading. This might be a new feature or a just a one time thing. Who knows? Recently he read Kelly Link’s Stranger Things Happen, which incidentally you can now download for free, and this is what he thought:

Fantasy and science fiction ask us to imagine what might be possible if things were slightly different: What if you could really become a part of the internet? What if instead of jail time and fines we forced criminals to have weird plastic surgery to denote their crimes? What if a parallel magical world existed hidden from everyday sight? What if dragons existed, and we could fly them, and use them to defend our planet against space-fungus that fell from the sun?

Kelly Link’s collection of short stories, Stranger Things Happen is a different sort of animal altogether, although I’m still trying to figure out exactly what to say about it other than “it’s wonderful, you need to read it.” Her characters certainly have some very strange things happen to them, but the sensibility is probably closer to magical realism, and definitely has its dose of fairy tales with their original Grimm Brothers death-blood-and-sex unhappy endings.

Her fairy-tale elements mix with a sly, contemporary humor: a woman’s lover runs off with the Snow Queen in a sleigh pulled by geese, and she walks halfway across the world on broken glass to tell him she’d been faking all her orgasms the whole time; Cinderella’s prince is unhappily married and satisfies his shoe fetish with prostitutes. Other stories, especially those about children observing the emotional or physical collapse of the adults around them, carry intense emotional weight without drawing on a specific mythos.

Each of these stories is disconcerting in a carefully honed manner, and after each one, I find I have to put the book down and breathe carefully and catch my balance before I continue to the next.

Highly recommended.

I finished Pretty Birds yesterday. It did not end in the way I thought it would. Now of course, I can’t tell you more because it will give away too much information and ruin it. Overall I thought the book well-written and the insight into war-torn Bosnia excellent (particularly how they knew that the world was ignoring their plight). The startling realization that they are in fact at war felt real, as well as the descent into a weary acceptance to a way of life that includes bombs, bullets, and hunger. Simon developed Irena into a well developed character. What happens to her at the end of the book mattered to me. And he’s done a remarkable job demonstrating the absurdity of the situation.

Also, here’s a Q and A with Scott Simon on the book I found.