Full disclosure: I must admit that I have not read Jonathan Safran Foer’s first novel Everything is Illuminated, which was such a big deal a few years ago (which also has a movie adaptation starring Elijah Wood and directed by Liev Schreiber coming this August). It’s just one of many books that I have not gotten around to reading. However, I received the ARC of his new book Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and started casually flipping through it. Before I knew what happened I was already deeply engrossed in this brilliant novel.

ELIC follows 9 year old genius Oskar Schell as he travels through New York City in an attempt to find the lock that fits a special key. Oskar found this key while searching through the closet of his father, who was killed on 9/11. In an effort to keep close to the father he idolized, Oskar sets out on this quest. Intertwined in the novel, is the story of Oskar’s grandparents, survivors of the bombing of Dresden in WWII. This second story is not as successful as the main story, but it weaves in nicely at the end as they come together.

Foer uses colored text, photographs and graphics to enhance the story. One of the characters has lost the power of speech (through psychological reasons) and has to write everything in a journal in order to communicate. At one point in the book as his mind gets busier and busier, he begins to run out of room in his journal. So the pages get darker and darker as the text runs together. In another part, the same character tries to talk to someone on the phone by pressing buttons. So we get several pages of numbers. I found this kind of annoying actually. I got the points of these parts, but it felt too contrived and cute in my opinion. The passages with pictures work better. There is one at the very end that works better than if he had written text himself. The pictures have more power than words in that case.

Taking on the collapse of the World Trade Center towers is pretty risky, especially doing so through the eyes and mind of a 9 year old. But the reader can’t help but be charmed by Oskar. Foer manages to capture the train of thought of a boy beautifully. Oskar at times seems as naive as his age implies he should be, but sometimes he seems to know more than he should. His precocity and honesty attract older people, but repel most of the kids his age. This story works despite minor flaws and brought me close to tears several times. At the end, I found myself staring into space, awed by the mind and emotions of a 9 year old.

I’ve decided to put my fate in your hands, dear reader. I cannot seem to decide on the next book to read. I have too many choices. Here are some of my possibilities:
The Archivist by Martha Cooley
God Lives in St. Petersburg by Tom Bissell
The Orientalist by Tom Reiss
Spice: The History of a Temptation by Jack Turner
Pinkerton’s Sister by Peter Rushforth
The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake

You can see my dilemma here. So you are going to tell me what to read next.

Elizabeth McKenzie’s debut novel Stop that Girl is getting mentioned in many places. Scott of Conversational Reading has a more detailed and longer review. And Beatrice has a great Author to Author conversation between McKenzie and Curtis Sittenfeld, whose own Prep is making headlines.
Mine own take on Stop that Girl is mixed. The connected series of short stories tell parts of the life story of Ann Ransom. Some stories work and othes don’t in my opinion. The later stories felt deeper and more fleshed out than the stories concerning Ann’s childhood. Ann has a troublesome relationship with her mother (who doesn’t?) who in turn has an even worse relationship with her domineering doctor mother, simply called Dr. Frost. The early stories just felt thin to me. I am looking forward to reading a novel by McKenzie someday. She has a great deal of talent.

After reading The Heart of the Matter, I really needed something a bit lighter. Unfortunately, with my poor planning, I had no light choices. Rather I moved on to The Fixer by Bernard Malamud, set in 1911 during the period of virulent anti-Semitism in Tsarist Russia. It tells the story of Yakov Bok, Jewish handyman, who moves to Kiev after his wife leaves him. Not following the Jewish traditions, he ends up working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society (his reasoning makes sense in the book) and living in a area forbidden to the Jews. When a boy is found with his blood drained, Yakov is blamed and immediately arrested. That is the the first few chapters of the book of course. Most of the novel takes place in prison, as Yakov fights against the conspiracy against him.

Yakov has no choices. Acccused of “ritual murder” by people who have no understanding of the Jewish faith and in fact do nothing but distort the truth (some understand and choose to lie anyway), he must stand strongly as forces move against him. Malamud won both a Pulitzer and the National Book Award for this work and it’s easy to see why. The power of this tale really affects you. Bok refuses to confess to a crime he didn’t commit and not because he wants to remain on the high moral ground. He does not come across as too moralistic. Instead, Malamud makes him realistic. How can he not bow under the cruel pressure the government puts him under? It’s a message we should really listen to today.

Continuing with the social satire and prophecy, I read Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood next. Wow. It’s equal parts funny, scary and heartbreaking. The narrator Snowman recollects a time similar to ours (though slightly in the future), a time when a boy named Jimmy loved a girl named Oryx and a genius named Crake. As the story unrolls, you learn what happeded to the world in which Snowman lives. The best part (or the worst) is that it’s not too far-fetched.

Atwood has an amazing ability to make her science fiction completely believable. I could not put this book down. I started in one day in the evening and all through the next, while snorkeling and seeing things I have never seen before, I was thinking about this book. And one of the best things about this book is that Atwood keeps you guessing until the end. This is a 2 thumbs up book in my opinion (in fact, all of the books I read were 2 thumbs up).

The final book I read, and perhaps my favorite, is Collected Stories by Richard Yates. How I got this far without reading this brilliant man is beyond me. Seriously, I want to run out and get copies to give to everyone I know. Revolutionary Road, supposedly is best book, has moved up on my TBR list. I was actually remind of Z.Z. Packer while reading his stories (yes, I realize that she would have been influnenced by him rather than the other way around, but I read her first).

They both have this wonderful, simple realism in their writing. Most of the stories take place in an America that is trying to recover from WWII. The soldiers are back and attempting to find their way back to normalcy. The veneer of a happy life is in place, but it’s slipping. The characters find their lives unfulfilling and full of disorder. He can get into the mind of any character. I do not think I can adequately explain what is so great about Yates’ writing. Just run out and buy anything he’s written. I swear you won’t regret it.

To end this long post, I read some great books while in Belize. I wish I had more time to read during ‘real life’. Maybe it’s time I devote more time to just sitting down with a good book.

Finding oneself stranded on the island in the South Seas may be a dream for some people. Melville certainly thought so, or so it seems at first. In Typee, which is largely autobiographical, the narrator is a crewman on a whaler, who has been out at sea for six months. Under the fist of a cruel captain, our ‘hero’ decides it best to jump ship while anchored at the Marquesas. He and a companion from the ship find themselves in the clutches of the Typee, renowned for their cannibalism. Yet the ‘savages’ turn out to be gentle and good-natured for the most part.

Melville clearly has problems with his own civilization. He compares and contrasts the so called ‘gentle’ behavior of the English against the ‘savage’ behavior of the Typee, and the Western society comes out looking the worse. His own experiences with the missionaries in the South Seas soured him on the belief that the societies could co-exist. In the end, however, the Typee are not the idyllic society as he first thought. The narrator realizes eventually that he is not permitted to leave—-no matter what (he has a very bad ailment that they cannot treat, but won’t let his companion return with medical help). Part sociological treatise on the daily life of the islanders and part journal of an escape gone wrong, Typee has an enduring appeal. One of the best reasons to read this book is to see the native islanders before Western culture has a chance to influence them too much.

The exoticness of the setting of the novel is what brought me to my next read. Well, that and the fact that I’ve been dying to read Graham Greene since I heard Michael Gorra and James Wood discuss him months ago. I chose to read The Heart of the Matter after learning that it takes place in an unnamed country in Africa (I often follow themes when I read on vacations. I read all of Dumas’ works while traveling through France years ago. That’s why I now have a cat named d’Artagnan). Set during WWiI, the novel’s ‘hero’ Scobie, assistant police commissioner, seems to get not pleasure from love. Married to Louise, who suffers from depression, his pity for her has replaced the love he once felt. When she leaves for South Africa (to get away from it all apparently), he meets Helen, recently widowed when her ship is torpedoed and sinks. They fall into love. But the love is reminiscent of the ‘love’ he feels for his wife. Meanwhile Wilson, new to the town, also in love with Scobie’s wife, keeps tabs on Scobie. And there is Yusef, the shady smuggler who blackmails Scobie. Weaved into the story is plenty of Catholic guilt.

The plot sounds complicated, but this amazing book has the power to hold you as you must find out what happens to all the flawed characters. No one comes off unscathed in Greene’s novel. No one is sympathetic. Rather, most are pathetic. But you can understand Scobie’s personal crisis. I am not doing justice to this great work. Another great thing about the edition I picked up was the James Wood introduction. I waited to read it after I had finished. It illuminated the novel. Adding more Graham Greene to my TBR list is a must.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the rest of my vacation reads!

In Inventing Japan: 1853-1964 Ian Buruma writes elegantly about the Japanese transformation from an inward-looking country to a colossal superpower that threatened the Western empires. This book not only tells what happened during these most fateful years but also why these changes took place. Though the book seems deceptively short, a great deal of information is packed into 177 pages. This really is a great example of a concise but elegant examination of modern Japanese history.

Our Random House rep gave me a galley of Epileptic by David B. some time ago and it took me until now to read it. Jessa from Bookslut really loves this book, but I have to admit that I do not love it as much as she did. She’s a graphic novel fan and I am more of an admirer. I think David B. has extraordinary talent as an artist and as a writer, but it didn’t grab me with that much force.
Epileptic is David B.’s autobiography. He was born Pierre-François Beauchard in a small town near Orleans, France the middle of three kids. His childhood was idyllic—gangs of children to play with including his older brother and younger sister. That changes when his brother Jean-Christophe develops epilepsy at the age of 11. His parents embark on a quest to alleviate if not cure their son of the disease. They become involved in alternative medicine, exploring macrobiotic diets, magnetism, and even mediums. David B.’s world is disappearing as his family moves from locale to locale and Jean-Christophe gets no better.
In fact, his brother seems to give up and David B. explores the anger he felt as he feels so isolated growing up. Many of the drawings show the disease as a monster that holds him as well as his brother in its clutches. The illustrations in this book are at once beautiful and intricate. They really grab your attention and are great representations of the story and what is in the author’s mind. It’s a good book that shows a very personal struggle with epilepsy. I think the fault with it lies with me not the author. I find it difficult to lose myself in graphic novels, as arresting as they can be. Something about the movement of the eyes I think. This book is very good though.

I’m home sick from work today, but I can’t manage to stay away from the computer. Day time television sucks by the way. There are 2 articles—one from the Boston Globe, the other from the Guardian—that discuss upcoming books in 2005. Of course the new JK Rowling Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince(is it just me or does this title really suck?) gets mentioned first in both pieces.

Today’s paper featured a column called Worth Rereading written by Sam Allis. He reviews The Power and the Glory, pushing the book up on my TBR list. I am hoping that this might be a regular feature of the Sunday book review.

I am not as eloquent as Scott over at Conversational Reading. He spread his Top 10 favorite books out over 10 posts. Plus I just don’t have the time. I blog at work and you can imagine what a retail store is like at this time of year. So I will just put up the books I loved the most. I know 10 is nice, good round number but I really had a hard time coming up with the tenth book. I read so much, I often forget books. The ones that do manage to stick in my mind are usually the good ones (or books I did not care for, such as The Names by Don DeLillo, which is odd since I really liked White Noise). Without further ado, my favorite books of 2004:

1. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who reads this blog. I loved the creativity of this book. Each of the 6 tales were wonderful in their own rights and as a group they became quite a powerful novel.

2. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
The story of Private Detective Jackson Brodie investigating three unrelated cases of missing persons. Except the cases start to relate to one another as the victims’ families each deal with the loss in their own ways. It’s a brilliant story with great character development.

3. Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village by Sarah Erdman
Erdman moves to a small village in the Ivory Coast as a member of the Peace Corp. She has the responsibility of aiding in the health of the community, but she really shines as she becomes one of the villagers. This is a great book filled with many fascintating people.

4. The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers
An underrated novel by a great author, I loved the story of this complicated family. A German Jewish immigrant meets an African American singer, they marry and produce a family through the violence of the 60s. They want to raise their kids beyond race, in a musical atmosphere but it becomes more complicated as the children get older.

5. The Late George Apley by John P. Marquand
Little Brown is thankfully reprinting the works of this Pulitzer Prize winning author (this is the book that won the prize). This tells the story of a distinguished Boston family in the early 20th century. Through this adept portrait of Boston Brahmins, you glimpse Marquand’s satire as depression and regret reveal themselves in the characters.

6. American Pastoral by Philip Roth
I started reading Roth with his most recent book The Plot Against America. I was so blown away with it, I decided to read some of his older work. In American Pastoral, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1998, you find an average man lamenting how extraordinary his life has become. His daughter blew up a post office in 1968, killing a man, and has been on the run for years. Swede Levov is left with the aftermath and wonders where he went wrong. A powerful and sad novel, it leaves you feeling somewhat hollow inside.

7. Aloft by Chang Rae-Lee
The narrator of this book Jerry Battle lives on Long Island and flies planes for a hobby. He does not seem to fully inhabit his life, preferring to soar in his two-seater plane over the neighborhoods around. On the verge of turning 60, he must deal with the death of his wife 20 years ago, his live-in lover, and his two children, who have had to deal with his faults. It’s a great novel on ther risks of living.

8. You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon
Two characters wonder what their lives might have been like in this sad novel. Moving back and forth through time, one of the characters struggles with his daily life. And the other, his brother given up at birth, wodners how his life might have been better had he not been adopted. It’s moving in places and makes you think about how fragile time can be.

9. The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer
I just read this a few weeks ago. It had been on my list ever since reading Ed’s review in January magazine many moons ago. So read his review, as it’s better than mine. I’ll just say that there is wonderful play with time and it deals again with the chances that life presents.