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jennifer's reviews
173 reviews
The Snow Geese by William Fiennes
5.0
A beautifully written meditation on what home means and one man's journey to define it following a serious illness, told through the lens of a natural history book on the migration of snow geese. Somehow it manages at the same time to be one of the more compelling American road trip memoirs I've read. I love the detours the book takes into the etymology of nostalgia and homesickness. The prose is of a particular variety of precision and care that requires equal care in reading. In lesser hands such care could have been tedious, but Fiennes manages to make it a tool of transcendence.
Outline by Rachel Cusk
4.0
It's been a while since I read Joan Didion's fiction, but this reminded me of the lingering sensation of those novels--that is, the sense of the lone, disconnected female protagonist. The story structure is a series of narratives told by other people the protagonist, Faye, who is visiting Athens to teach a writing course, encounters during her trip. At first I thought it unrealistic how detailed and intimate some of these stories are given they are essentially told between strangers. Then I remembered all the things that have been said between my hairdressers and me over the years and was reminded how we humans are sometimes most comfortable being most intimate with strangers. So there's this constant tension between the detail and intimacy of these stories and the fact that we don't really know the protagonist who's the conduit of them. The plot and the structure are interesting but not at the expense of being enjoyable.
Delancey: A Man, a Woman, a Restaurant, a Marriage by Molly Wizenberg
4.0
Lovely, foodie memoir. I had the pleasure of eating at Delancey once a few years ago on a visit to Seattle and I still remember their pizzas and salted chocolate chip cookies. Now I know exactly how much work went into creating those pizzas, including how the author's husband painstakingly assembled the pizza oven himself.
Redeployment by Phil Klay
4.0
If there's a required reading list for Americans, this deserves to be at the top. The description on the back says it all "Taking readers to the front lines of the war in Iraq and back, Redployment asks us to understand what happened there and what happened to the soldiers who returned."
It seems the least we can do and a poignant, somewhat mortifying request when I consider this paragraph from the story "Unless It's a Sucking Chest Wound" in which a former Marine has gone on to law school at NYU:
"Some of them, highly educated kids at a top five law school didn't even know what the Marine Corps did. (“It's like a stronger Army, right?”) Few of them followed the wars at all, and most subscribed to a "It's a terrible mess, so let's not think about it too much" way of thinking. Then there were the political kids, who had definite opinions and were my least favorite to talk to. A lot of these overlapped with the insufferable public interest crowd, who hated the war, who couldn't see why anbody'd ever do corporate law, didn't understand why anyone would ever join the military, didn't understand why anyone would ever want to own a gun, let alone fire one, but who still paid lip service to the idea that I deserved some sort of respect and that I was, in an imprecise way that was clearly related to action movies and recruiting commercials, far more "hard-core" than your average civilian. So sure, I was a Marine. At the very least, I wasn't them."
Did he nail you somewhere in this description? He definitely nailed me.
It seems the least we can do and a poignant, somewhat mortifying request when I consider this paragraph from the story "Unless It's a Sucking Chest Wound" in which a former Marine has gone on to law school at NYU:
"Some of them, highly educated kids at a top five law school didn't even know what the Marine Corps did. (“It's like a stronger Army, right?”) Few of them followed the wars at all, and most subscribed to a "It's a terrible mess, so let's not think about it too much" way of thinking. Then there were the political kids, who had definite opinions and were my least favorite to talk to. A lot of these overlapped with the insufferable public interest crowd, who hated the war, who couldn't see why anbody'd ever do corporate law, didn't understand why anyone would ever join the military, didn't understand why anyone would ever want to own a gun, let alone fire one, but who still paid lip service to the idea that I deserved some sort of respect and that I was, in an imprecise way that was clearly related to action movies and recruiting commercials, far more "hard-core" than your average civilian. So sure, I was a Marine. At the very least, I wasn't them."
Did he nail you somewhere in this description? He definitely nailed me.
Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids by Meghan Daum
4.0
Having written a book, Americashire, myself that is more or less a tale of my mildly angst-ridden decision over whether not to have kids dressed up as a travel memoir, I was naturally interested in Meghan Daum's collection of essays by writers without kids. It delivered the entire childfree spectrum of opinions, including:
1. The woman who is more boldly childfree than I ever was or will be but who I secretly envy for the strength of her conviction. In this case, that woman is Laura Kipnis who served up gems like this one:
"Still, I confess to feeling an unseemly pleasure at having eluded nature's snare, saying "fuck you" to all that, though nature's going to get us all in the end, obviously. It's also my little "fuck you" to a society that sentimentalizes children except when it comes to allocating enough resources to raising them, and that would include elevating the 22 percent of children currently living in poverty to a decent standard of living."
2. The man who says what I'm thinking but I'm too scared to say lest all my parent friends hate me, in this case Paul Lisicky: "If the desire to have children is just a way to build some noisy tribe of distraction around oneself, I'd rather be alone." (Besides, I am very good at building a noisy tribe of distraction around myself without the aid of children.)
3. One that truly surprised me from Lionel Shriver, who concludes her piece with this corker:
"In the Middle East, birthrates are still quite high, whereas many Europeans, Australians, and European Americans cannot be bothered to scrounge up another generation of even the same size--which would presumably mean fewer holidays, more tedium, less leisure time--because children might not always be interesting and fun, because they might not make us happy, because some days they're a pain in the butt. When Islamic fundamentalists accuse the West of being decadent, degenerate, and debauched, you have to wonder if maybe they've got a point." Speaking earlier in her piece about her tribe of London, childfree women friends she makes the hilarious observation: "In a word, they're my friends. Nevertheless, in sufficient aggregate, we are deadly."
4. The one I related to most myself, which was Tim Kreider's view that the real reason people choose not to have kids is as "subconscious and primal" as the reason people do. I could also relate to his observation of pictures of him holding a child: "I look in these photos as if I am holding some South American animal I have never heard of before that I've been assured is not dangerous."
It is, on the whole, an excellent collection. Enjoyed it thoroughly.
1. The woman who is more boldly childfree than I ever was or will be but who I secretly envy for the strength of her conviction. In this case, that woman is Laura Kipnis who served up gems like this one:
"Still, I confess to feeling an unseemly pleasure at having eluded nature's snare, saying "fuck you" to all that, though nature's going to get us all in the end, obviously. It's also my little "fuck you" to a society that sentimentalizes children except when it comes to allocating enough resources to raising them, and that would include elevating the 22 percent of children currently living in poverty to a decent standard of living."
2. The man who says what I'm thinking but I'm too scared to say lest all my parent friends hate me, in this case Paul Lisicky: "If the desire to have children is just a way to build some noisy tribe of distraction around oneself, I'd rather be alone." (Besides, I am very good at building a noisy tribe of distraction around myself without the aid of children.)
3. One that truly surprised me from Lionel Shriver, who concludes her piece with this corker:
"In the Middle East, birthrates are still quite high, whereas many Europeans, Australians, and European Americans cannot be bothered to scrounge up another generation of even the same size--which would presumably mean fewer holidays, more tedium, less leisure time--because children might not always be interesting and fun, because they might not make us happy, because some days they're a pain in the butt. When Islamic fundamentalists accuse the West of being decadent, degenerate, and debauched, you have to wonder if maybe they've got a point." Speaking earlier in her piece about her tribe of London, childfree women friends she makes the hilarious observation: "In a word, they're my friends. Nevertheless, in sufficient aggregate, we are deadly."
4. The one I related to most myself, which was Tim Kreider's view that the real reason people choose not to have kids is as "subconscious and primal" as the reason people do. I could also relate to his observation of pictures of him holding a child: "I look in these photos as if I am holding some South American animal I have never heard of before that I've been assured is not dangerous."
It is, on the whole, an excellent collection. Enjoyed it thoroughly.
The Shepherd's Life: A People's History of the Lake District by James Rebanks
4.0
A book about the Lake District that turns the classic incomer version of the rural idyll memoir on its head. Told by an Oxford-educated fell sheep farmer, The Shepherd's Life gives an insider version of life in the Lake District that's compelling (and a little chastising) to anyone who's ever visited and loved the area. There are obligatory mentions of Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter (who became a respected sheep farmer herself), but this story of the families who've farmed the fells for generations was mostly new to me. As an itinerant, I've always find stories of people so deeply rooted to one part of the world -- "hefted" in sheep terminology, as the author explains in the opening pages of the book -- deeply compelling.
The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink
4.0
So I read the New Yorker profile of Nell Zink and I don't recall anything about her making a bet with Franzen to rewrite Freedom, only better, shorter, and with a female protagonist. Nonetheless I got the distinct impression that's what she was doing in The Wallcreeper, much to my benefit as a reader (I also liked Freedom). Despite Zink doing her best to make the female protagonist, Tiffany, hate-able, I was charmed. I also had to look up a lot of vocabulary words (reading this book on a Kindle came in handy in that respect) since Tiffany, and Zink, are smarter than I am. But, on the bright side, I now know that an incubus is "a male demon believed to have sexual intercourse with sleeping women." I'll be looking for ways to use that in sentences frequently from now on. I might also have to read Mislaid now.
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
5.0
I've read two striking things by Lionel Shriver this year: her standout essay in Meghan Daum's anthology of childfree writers, Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed, and a review of Nell Zink's first two novels in the Weekend Financial Times that perfectly captured both the brilliance and frustration of reading a Nell Zink novel. It seemed about time that I got around to reading We Need to Talk About Kevin since it had been lingering on my Kindle for years.
I suppose part of the reluctance to read the book is that everyone knows what it's about--a teenager goes on a killing spree at his high school--and given how often this kind of thing happens in real life, it's not that tempting to wallow in the same subject in my leisure time. But from the start Shriver does tempt you by somehow turning an epistolary novel into a thriller (the whole thing is written in letters to her husband following the horrible event, referred to simply as "Thursday"). And by thriller I don't mean she sensationalizes mass murder but rather turns the ordinary events of a marriage into a page-turner through the remarkably sharp and self-aware voice of the narrator, Eva.
I never saw the movie based on this book, but now I feel compelled if only to see how Hollywood treats the blazingly honest but not always sympathetic Eva.
I suppose part of the reluctance to read the book is that everyone knows what it's about--a teenager goes on a killing spree at his high school--and given how often this kind of thing happens in real life, it's not that tempting to wallow in the same subject in my leisure time. But from the start Shriver does tempt you by somehow turning an epistolary novel into a thriller (the whole thing is written in letters to her husband following the horrible event, referred to simply as "Thursday"). And by thriller I don't mean she sensationalizes mass murder but rather turns the ordinary events of a marriage into a page-turner through the remarkably sharp and self-aware voice of the narrator, Eva.
I never saw the movie based on this book, but now I feel compelled if only to see how Hollywood treats the blazingly honest but not always sympathetic Eva.