When I first flipped through this book, I noticed the many recipes accompanying each chapter. I hoped this wasn’t some hokey gimmick and as I read this book I wasn’t disappointed. Diana Abu-Jaber grew up with a father passionate about most everything, but particularly about food. Living in upstate New York, surrounded by her extended American and Arab family, she describes the various meals shared with them. What’s impressive about Abu-Jaber’s writing is her ability to inhabit the ages of which she writes. What I mean is that when she writes of her life at age 8, it’s not her looking back and reflecting, you really feel how she saw the world at age 8. It’s an amazing way of writing.

She describes being torn between two cultures with spare beauty:

I have recently come to understand something about myself, which is that I am—as my uncle Hilal might say—a hopeless case. Even if I had somehow, down the line, brought myself to have babies and to stay in my hometown in a house with an easy, wide-hipped porch, none of that would have made any difference to the sleepless part of me. Like a second, invisible body, I sit up out of my sleep at night, wander across the room, stop beside a darkened window, and dream my way through th eglass. It is more than looking: the elements of darkness and distance release my mind liek a dash of sugar on the surface of hot water. In the distances between stars, it seems there is no flavor or scent (although I think I might detect the purple black glisten of eggplant skin within the night air, the slyest reminder of how the forms of life and the physical world are infinite and everywhere). Come back, I want to say to my second self, there is tea and mint here, there is sugar, there is dark bread and oil. I must have these things near me: children, hometown, fresh bread, long conversations, animals; I must bring them very near. The second self draws close, like a wild bird, easy to startle away: It owns nothing, and it wants nothing, only to see, to taste, and to describe. It is the wilderness of the interior, the ungoverned consciousness of writing.

Continue reading →

The Winter/Spring publishing season will soon be upon us and I have received some really great galleys:

Fascination: Stories by William Boyd. If you have never read any Boyd, run to the store and grab some. He is one of my all time favorite authors.

Epileptic by David B. A graphic autobiography about growing up with an epileptic brother, the book looks beautiful and meaty.

Spice: The History of a Temptation by Jack Turner. This has been out for a while, but I just managed to get a copy (from our wonderful rep). It’s the history of the spice trade tracing them through history, literature, and myth.

Pinkerton’s Sister by Peter Rushforth. This is out in the UK already and has gotten some good reviews. It’s a sizeable book (729 pages) that follows Alice Pinkerton in turn of the century New York.

And finally The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life by Tom Reiss. This is the story of Lev Nussimbaum’s short life. Born to a wealthy Jewish family in 1905 in Baku, he escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan. His life seems fascinating.

Comments:
TEV says:
I love Boyd, too – especially Any Human Heart. Let us know what you think of the stories …

It’s not until I reread the first line of this enchanting novel that I really understood it. ‘We are each the love of someone’s life.’ The entire novel seems to revolve around missed chances and wrong times. Max Tivoli is born an old grizzled man in 1871. He appears wrinkled and white at birth, but ages backwards, appearing younger and younger as time passes. The story is told in 3 parts but with the twist—youth, middle age, and old age are each ‘confessed’ to us. And we realize as we read, that Max is writing this in his old age, but living as a young boy. ‘Be what you are’ is what his mother tells him. Max does just that, playing whatever role his physical appearance imposes on him.

What is remarkable about this book is not the twist, but the melancholic and observant tone. Max is not completely sympathetic—-he does some remarkably selfish things. But so much of Max’s life is observed rather than experienced, since he never feels like a part of the world due to his condition. The one thing Max truly experiences is love. He meets Alice when she is 14 and he is 17, but of course he is living as an older man. In fact, his mother has told the neightbors that he is her brother-in-law. He spends his life loving Alice and writing about Alice. The other character you keep reading about is his lifelong friend Hughie, who plays a major role in Max’s life as well.

The whole thing sounds gimmicky, but Greer makes it work with his wonderful writing. He has a real feel for the period (there are echoes of Proust). This isn’t to say that the novel does not have its problems. I wish Max’s sister was more than briefly mentioned. But all in all the problems fall away with the very human story of a man who loves a woman but doesn’t know how to fit himself into her life.

Over this past weekend, the host of my server upgraded us to Moveable Type 3.something, which is great. But now I can’t get the comments to work. People have been kind enough to comment on their idea of the Worst Books of 2004, but they are not appearing for reasons I can’t figure out. If anyone has an answer, can you email me at bookdwarf at bookdwarf dot com? Thanks. And here is what people have been saying so far:

Scarecrow says:

Oh Yes – that spoiled mess which won this years Booker!!!

Ed says:

Tom Wolfe, “I Am Charlotte Simmons”

Patricas says:

Well, I wouldn’t say it’s one of the ‘Worst Books’, but after all the hype, I gotta say that ‘Fortress of Solitude’ did not meet my expectations. It really fell apart in some areas. But like the Curate’s egg, I will admit that ‘parts of it were excellent.’

Jimmy Beck says:

Little Children by Tom Perrotta. Whiny, 2D narcissistic characters, gratuitous pop culture references (like a fucking billboard) and a pedestrian story add up to a major disappointment. This was supposed to be my mid-life crisis talisman. Instead it’s just sappy dick lit. And comparisons to Chekhov? Blogga please.

and Verbal says:

Well, I think “The Metrosexual Handbook” sucked.

Hopefully, I will get this comment mess worked out soon, but please keep on sending the comments and I will post them.

Well, everybody is putting out their ‘Top 10 Best Books of the Year’ lists. The Literary Saloon helpfully links to them. But I want to know what are the ‘Top 10 Worst Books of the Year’. And I am not talking about obvious crap here, but books that were supposed to be good—got lots of hype—but were just sucked. Any suggestions?

I suppose it is timely that I read this book over the weekend and today the NYT posted its own review of Case Histories. Janet Maslin and I agree on several points. “There’s nothing fancy about the way Kate Atkinson’s new novel unfolds. Ms. Atkinson simply starts her story, grabs hold of the reader and doesn’t let go.” I knew the basic plot before I even began the book. There are 3 unsolved cases: a 3 year old girl goes missing one hot summer night in 1970, an obese widower sets in motion the chain of events that leads to the death of his favorite daughter in 1994, and an 18 year old new mother finds the onus of mother-and wife-hood too much to bear in 1979. The main character of the novel that ties all these together is Jackson Brodie, private investigator. You know that he will investigate these cases and that is the plot of the book.

So what makes this book so special? It is Atkinson’s writing that helps make this book more than just a standard detective story. She has a keen eye for details and that helps when you are twining together 4 stories. The plots twist and turn in unexpected ways. But it is also her exploration of the characters that makes this a lovely book. Jackson Brodie, recently divorced, has moved into a non-descript cottage.

“When he moved out of the house he had shared with his wife and daughter, Jackson went round every room in the house to check that nothing had been left behind, apart from their lives, of course. When he walked inot the bathroom he realised that he could still smell Josie’s perfume—L’Air du Temps—a scent she had worn long before he had ever met her. Now she wore the Joy by Patou that David Lastingham bought her, a scent so old-fashioned that it made her seem like a different woman, which she was, of course……When he moved into the rented house he bought a bottle of L’Air du Temps and sprayed the tiny bathroom with it, but it wasn’t the same.”

Brodie emerges from this book as almost too gentle of a soul to be doing the work he is doing—but that is what makes him good at it. You don’t even discover until towards the end of the book why he works as an investigator and then his work becomes all the more meaningful.

There is no great evil in this book, but neither are the cases easily solved. The answer is teased out and there are surprised in there, even though you think you might have it figured out. Once you pick up this book, you can’t seem to put it down until you get to the end.

P.S. Go here for more reviews.

Manohla Dargis managed to articulate today precisely why I dislike the Bridget Jones books so much in her review of the sequel (which sounds awful). Now, Bridget Jones the movie I think was much better than the book. This is one of the few cases I can think of where the movie was better than the original book. But the book was not that good to begin with in my opinon. The movie managed to flesh the characters (no pun intended) out in a way that Helen Fielding was ubable. Bridget Jones seemed shallow and petty in the book, whereas in the movie, she seemed like a real person, albeit a really goofy one.

“I understand why otherwise reasonable, sensible women eagerly took to Helen Fielding’s original book, even if I couldn’t stand all the phony self-loathing and the irritating cutesy constructions like “singleton.” It’s one thing when Martin Amis renames a Fiat a Fiasco; he can write. And because Ms. Fielding can’t write a true, human-motivated character, I never understood why Hugh Grant’s and Colin Firth’s characters would be remotely interested in Bridget. My assumption was always that she must work some seriously strong dark magic in the bedroom (the sequel proves me right), though I have to admit the woman did look cute in that Playboy Bunny outfit in the first movie, even if I gasped aloud at a glimpse of cellulite. Ms. Zellweger’s dedication to her craft at that moment was totally awesome.”

The stupid constructions irritated me too. Who the fuck talks like that? Singletons? And sure some people worry about lack of men in their lives, but most of the people I know don’t obsess about it to this level. I am disappointed that the sequel sucks, but not too surprised.

“Americans were forever proclaiming their freedom and individuality, meanwhile settling for whatever was in fashion.”
——Christopher Benfey The Great Wave

Sarah Erdman wrote a wonderful book about her 2 years in the Peace Corps. Nambonkaha, in the northern part of Côte d”Ivoire, is a small village on the cusp between the old world and the new one; in the old world, sorcerers still practice magic and the women grind their corn daily with pestles. In the new world, they face some of the toughest obstacles—the coming of electricity, hunger, AIDS, and a growing unrest in the political climate. Erdman deftly weaves the tales of her days spent in this wonderful place. Instead of sounding like a condescending European, like many other memoirs of whites in Africa, she firmly melded herself into the village life. In the beginning, she had no idea how to help the people. As a health aide, she worked with the village nurse and learns about their customs. Eventually she sees a way she can help the village take control with their health care. Most of all, this is a beautiful story of a woman noticing all the details of life foreign to her. When her tenure in Nambonkaha was up, I didn’t want her to leave. I wanted her to remain in the village to continue writing about its inhabitants. With an eye for details, Erdman’s prose softly makes points about sharp subjects.

Well, I had to put down Birds Without Wings. I couldn’t get into it enough. Maybe it is all the baseball. I haven’t been taking it with me when I leave the house. It was reserved for home reading (too heavy and cumbersome). Instead I started reading The Great Wave the other night. It was after Game 5 of the ALCS. I was too keyed up to go to sleep right away, so I grabbed this off my shelf. So good! I stayed up another half hour reading it. The first chapter of Melville is fascinating.
And I have found some other great stuff to read as I’ve been trolling the shelves of the store in search of things for the holiday promotions we do here. At my store we have books each month that we recommend and discount 20% (along with the NYT bestsellers and the top 10 bestsellers of hardcover and paperback each week). But in November, we put up our Holiday Hundred—100 titles that we recommend from throughout the year, plus a few new things. It’s much more difficult to choose, because they are books we think are some of the best to come out this year. But I’ve enjoyed browsing the past few days. I miss that.
On a side note, I will be attending the Michael Gorra-James Wood event next week. And I will try to provide some details about what happens. I might also see the David Lodge and Ha Jin events.