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After the Revolution by Amy Herzog
5.0
Jeez.
For a couple weeks I've been trying to think of a way to sum up what I loved about this play. It's surprisingly hard to pin down, because it transcends a lot of its traits. The play is original but not unheard of, complex but not ambitious. It's melodramatic and funny. It does a lot of shorthand with a lot of characters. It's built around a very patient backstory and discovery. Yet, all its devices are smooth, its timing, shifts amongst people, exposition, it all comes through like clockwork. Every character clicks and every scene is right on the money. The words sound like they're coming from actual people with many, many unspoken thoughts in their heads. The right questions are left unanswered, both in the story and in the dialogue.
So, as a play it's really good, but also as real genuine deep-feeling writing, it just touches something very legitimate. A few things, I guess. There's the perfect sense that its scenes and themes all dovetail in exact reliance on each other. And the things too small to be themes, the things that just feel like family. The plot is an efficient take on topical politics, but what it's really about are relationships between things like parents and beliefs. There are many ways this comes about, but unquestionably for me the central standoff between Emma and her father bit, fearful and honest. And the list. That she gives.
Often when I read something that gets so much "right" I end up with pages and pages marked with things I need to reread, but I didn't do that while I read this. I think because instead of being a collection of good lines and good ideas, it just was good.
I bought this script because I got to see Herzog's new play 4000 Miles, which was extremely good too. And its central character Vera is a supporting character in this play (earlier both in writing and in narrative). Which is a thing I absolutely love. I hope there's much, much more for the author to find in her ideas behind these people. I want some more of whatever that could be.
(Finally used an ancient Drama Book Store gift that Shannon gave me! I also added this book into the Goodreads system. Oh I am proud.)
For a couple weeks I've been trying to think of a way to sum up what I loved about this play. It's surprisingly hard to pin down, because it transcends a lot of its traits. The play is original but not unheard of, complex but not ambitious. It's melodramatic and funny. It does a lot of shorthand with a lot of characters. It's built around a very patient backstory and discovery. Yet, all its devices are smooth, its timing, shifts amongst people, exposition, it all comes through like clockwork. Every character clicks and every scene is right on the money. The words sound like they're coming from actual people with many, many unspoken thoughts in their heads. The right questions are left unanswered, both in the story and in the dialogue.
So, as a play it's really good, but also as real genuine deep-feeling writing, it just touches something very legitimate. A few things, I guess. There's the perfect sense that its scenes and themes all dovetail in exact reliance on each other. And the things too small to be themes, the things that just feel like family. The plot is an efficient take on topical politics, but what it's really about are relationships between things like parents and beliefs. There are many ways this comes about, but unquestionably for me the central standoff between Emma and her father bit, fearful and honest. And the list. That she gives.
Often when I read something that gets so much "right" I end up with pages and pages marked with things I need to reread, but I didn't do that while I read this. I think because instead of being a collection of good lines and good ideas, it just was good.
I bought this script because I got to see Herzog's new play 4000 Miles, which was extremely good too. And its central character Vera is a supporting character in this play (earlier both in writing and in narrative). Which is a thing I absolutely love. I hope there's much, much more for the author to find in her ideas behind these people. I want some more of whatever that could be.
(Finally used an ancient Drama Book Store gift that Shannon gave me! I also added this book into the Goodreads system. Oh I am proud.)
Real Live Boyfriends: Yes. Boyfriends, Plural. If My Life Weren't Complicated, I Wouldn't Be Ruby Oliver by E. Lockhart
4.0
Oh come on now!!
Wow. So glad I finally bought this book. I think I waited so long because I borrowed all the other ones from Meg, and I guess I forgot that I could... own them. For my own. And then it would just appear, bidden into my life. Like that.
Anyway, to me this was a really pleasing way to pull together the tiny little Ruby series with a hundred things to say. A lot of the arc here is Ruby learning to get rid of a lot of her bad habits that help her not help herself cope, and personally I found that just as tough to read as the books about the things that overwhelmed her entirely out of her control. She's done with the panic attacks now, her mental health is healthily improved, but also, no it isn't. She still is upset, dissatisfied, oversensitive and hurt. Because that is what happens even when you get over something. "Plus a general inability to relate to other human beings in a way that leads to happiness."
And sometimes you have to make yourself quit giving up because you feel bad. Sometimes you have to take some blame. I think at some times it might be easy to read Ruby as a self-centered kid when she sticks to her guns at an inopportune time (painfully, her mom misreads her this way when they fight), but I like following Ruby into those mistakes where what she has to sort out is a lot harder than just whether or not she should really be yelling at someone in a restaurant. Though I think her problems in the other books were really more painful, in some ways doling out those conclusions that have nothing to do with your own bad attitude are much less painful than what she starts to do here.
And I like that she doesn't finish. She starts the growing-up work and isn't done yet when the book is.
I mean, ok, I laughed so hard every time she said she was going to "flush it down with the poo." (I think I should start a new Goodreads shelf called embarrassing-subway-laughter.) But also, I wanted to cry a little.
The other best thing that happens here is the continued complication of life with Ruby's parents, who are super good parents who make super huge normal person mistakes with her. Both her parents get overly caught up in themselves in this book, for different reasons, and screw up their home life and Ruby a little bit. And for the first time, they notice what it does to her. Also for the first time, Ruby bears it pretty well, but she still goes through unnecessary sadness. When her dad realizes, oh, you were worried about this? That worried? I, ah, aw, ouch, Olivers.
I don't know how E. Lockhart does it, the way she writes these books as manifestos, instruction manuals for ownership of teenage bodies, commandments of respect and self-respect. She writes the bluntest advice-column kind of insight into right and wrong girlhood, and makes it a great novel that is so incredibly fun to read. The inner back-and-forths at times when Ruby is frustrated over an email or a non-email or whatever, and her narration pops out in a list breaking down the logic and fairness of the problem -- Am I being dissed? Am I causing myself to be upset? Am I letting him know what I really am saying, or am I saying something different and I want him to read my mind? But don't forget that I must expect respect too. A reasonable person could expect this. -- I don't know, it basically reads like mental health in a can, in an immensely touching, outstanding can. I just am so impressed that this doesn't suck, or ring false, it being as simple as it is. But its transparency works in its favor 300%.
"'But I'm not a forgetting person,' I said. 'I'm not an ignoring person. ... I'm a lay-it-all-out person...'"
Essentially I think I'm still apologizing to the universe a bit for being one of those people who thought these books weren't important because each one has "boy" in the title. I'm sorry, universe. Please keep these books around. And maybe get one in the hands of every single kid, at just the right moment.
And #3 is still my favorite.
Wow. So glad I finally bought this book. I think I waited so long because I borrowed all the other ones from Meg, and I guess I forgot that I could... own them. For my own. And then it would just appear, bidden into my life. Like that.
Anyway, to me this was a really pleasing way to pull together the tiny little Ruby series with a hundred things to say. A lot of the arc here is Ruby learning to get rid of a lot of her bad habits that help her not help herself cope, and personally I found that just as tough to read as the books about the things that overwhelmed her entirely out of her control. She's done with the panic attacks now, her mental health is healthily improved, but also, no it isn't. She still is upset, dissatisfied, oversensitive and hurt. Because that is what happens even when you get over something. "Plus a general inability to relate to other human beings in a way that leads to happiness."
And sometimes you have to make yourself quit giving up because you feel bad. Sometimes you have to take some blame. I think at some times it might be easy to read Ruby as a self-centered kid when she sticks to her guns at an inopportune time (painfully, her mom misreads her this way when they fight), but I like following Ruby into those mistakes where what she has to sort out is a lot harder than just whether or not she should really be yelling at someone in a restaurant. Though I think her problems in the other books were really more painful, in some ways doling out those conclusions that have nothing to do with your own bad attitude are much less painful than what she starts to do here.
And I like that she doesn't finish. She starts the growing-up work and isn't done yet when the book is.
I mean, ok, I laughed so hard every time she said she was going to "flush it down with the poo." (I think I should start a new Goodreads shelf called embarrassing-subway-laughter.) But also, I wanted to cry a little.
The other best thing that happens here is the continued complication of life with Ruby's parents, who are super good parents who make super huge normal person mistakes with her. Both her parents get overly caught up in themselves in this book, for different reasons, and screw up their home life and Ruby a little bit. And for the first time, they notice what it does to her. Also for the first time, Ruby bears it pretty well, but she still goes through unnecessary sadness. When her dad realizes, oh, you were worried about this? That worried? I, ah, aw, ouch, Olivers.
I don't know how E. Lockhart does it, the way she writes these books as manifestos, instruction manuals for ownership of teenage bodies, commandments of respect and self-respect. She writes the bluntest advice-column kind of insight into right and wrong girlhood, and makes it a great novel that is so incredibly fun to read. The inner back-and-forths at times when Ruby is frustrated over an email or a non-email or whatever, and her narration pops out in a list breaking down the logic and fairness of the problem -- Am I being dissed? Am I causing myself to be upset? Am I letting him know what I really am saying, or am I saying something different and I want him to read my mind? But don't forget that I must expect respect too. A reasonable person could expect this. -- I don't know, it basically reads like mental health in a can, in an immensely touching, outstanding can. I just am so impressed that this doesn't suck, or ring false, it being as simple as it is. But its transparency works in its favor 300%.
"'But I'm not a forgetting person,' I said. 'I'm not an ignoring person. ... I'm a lay-it-all-out person...'"
Essentially I think I'm still apologizing to the universe a bit for being one of those people who thought these books weren't important because each one has "boy" in the title. I'm sorry, universe. Please keep these books around. And maybe get one in the hands of every single kid, at just the right moment.
And #3 is still my favorite.
The Greatest of Marlys by Lynda Barry
4.0
As this book is too big for my purse, and a collection instead of a novel, I experimented and made it a bedtime book. I kept it in my nightstand and read a few strips every night. RECOMMENDED. I can't go to sleep if I'm feeling bummed out, and turns out Lynda Barry is THE ANSWER.
The great majority of this book made me incredibly happy. SO HAPPY. The strips are lush with memory and detail, in something like the 1970's though it isn't said outright. They establish a group of five kids who are siblings and cousins, mostly under ten though one is a teenager, and every strip burrows deep in a simple, goofy event that reveals their funny, genuine relationships and imaginations, and the odd, reverent solemnity that kids invest things with. And/or the strip presents all of the dogs living in their neighborhood. Whatever.
All of the kids narrate in these incredible, blazingly authentic voices. I don't know how she does it. I personally have a deep and odd love for what let's call the creative grammar of us people, as talkers, and so this made me so happy. I wanted Arna and Maryls and everyone to say things forever. I wanted to be able to say things like them. Lynda Barry is five zillion times more gifted at writing truthful voice and language than most any playwright I know of, which is just my fancy way of saying, the way these kids talk is pillow-thwackingly hilarious and adorable. I wanted to scream, it was so good. So simple, it seems like anyone could write it. I loved it. It's the kind of talent I want to buy illegally on eBay and inject in my body.
I also came to really like Lynda Barry's drawing style, though I'm no expert on comic art. All I figure is that you can sort of see her living a creative philosophy, often publishing messy drawings with an arm drawn in two places. You get the idea, you get the feeling, so the job's done enough. Sometimes in context they're drawn down faithfully to the skills of an 8-year-old, but that's not really it. Also there's the fact that her characters are all ugly-cute — pocky and freckly and homely, and aren't we all. Whiny children look like oompa-loompas and yelling teachers look as mean as bridge trolls. (But Marlys has got those pigtails so what could go wrong.)
The only thing that did go wrong in this book was the late 90's. Meaning, there's about ten years of strips woven together here, and breezing through the lot of them points out a really huge attitude difference in the writing for a while. 1998 stuff is so different from 1988 stuff, which is totally normal, except for me the different was bad. There was a slice of them 4/5th of the way through where I thought the spell was broken. They kinda stopped making sense and telling stories. For a while, the strips stop being hilarious, bittersweet vignettes and veer first toward the declarative (which is still funny, but not narrative), and then the outright cynical. The declarative strips get weaker, and then the ensuing trailer park strips have this unexpected, critical tone. They get a lot more bleak, but not in a way that seems to lead you somewhere, in a way that is kind of putting people down. I don't know. I wasn't happy I was reading them. And then, it got better. The last 20 pages of strips bring back cousin Arna (I love Arna, I love Arna) and then everything is really, really good again.
4.5 stars. Rounding down for the weird notes, and that I think there's a lot more to get in a lot more books. I'm really, really glad to see there are so many other collections of these characters (and many of them with more focused through-stories), because I'm gonna be wanting to look at a bunch of those. A bunch. Of those.
The great majority of this book made me incredibly happy. SO HAPPY. The strips are lush with memory and detail, in something like the 1970's though it isn't said outright. They establish a group of five kids who are siblings and cousins, mostly under ten though one is a teenager, and every strip burrows deep in a simple, goofy event that reveals their funny, genuine relationships and imaginations, and the odd, reverent solemnity that kids invest things with. And/or the strip presents all of the dogs living in their neighborhood. Whatever.
All of the kids narrate in these incredible, blazingly authentic voices. I don't know how she does it. I personally have a deep and odd love for what let's call the creative grammar of us people, as talkers, and so this made me so happy. I wanted Arna and Maryls and everyone to say things forever. I wanted to be able to say things like them. Lynda Barry is five zillion times more gifted at writing truthful voice and language than most any playwright I know of, which is just my fancy way of saying, the way these kids talk is pillow-thwackingly hilarious and adorable. I wanted to scream, it was so good. So simple, it seems like anyone could write it. I loved it. It's the kind of talent I want to buy illegally on eBay and inject in my body.
I also came to really like Lynda Barry's drawing style, though I'm no expert on comic art. All I figure is that you can sort of see her living a creative philosophy, often publishing messy drawings with an arm drawn in two places. You get the idea, you get the feeling, so the job's done enough. Sometimes in context they're drawn down faithfully to the skills of an 8-year-old, but that's not really it. Also there's the fact that her characters are all ugly-cute — pocky and freckly and homely, and aren't we all. Whiny children look like oompa-loompas and yelling teachers look as mean as bridge trolls. (But Marlys has got those pigtails so what could go wrong.)
The only thing that did go wrong in this book was the late 90's. Meaning, there's about ten years of strips woven together here, and breezing through the lot of them points out a really huge attitude difference in the writing for a while. 1998 stuff is so different from 1988 stuff, which is totally normal, except for me the different was bad. There was a slice of them 4/5th of the way through where I thought the spell was broken. They kinda stopped making sense and telling stories. For a while, the strips stop being hilarious, bittersweet vignettes and veer first toward the declarative (which is still funny, but not narrative), and then the outright cynical. The declarative strips get weaker, and then the ensuing trailer park strips have this unexpected, critical tone. They get a lot more bleak, but not in a way that seems to lead you somewhere, in a way that is kind of putting people down. I don't know. I wasn't happy I was reading them. And then, it got better. The last 20 pages of strips bring back cousin Arna (I love Arna, I love Arna) and then everything is really, really good again.
4.5 stars. Rounding down for the weird notes, and that I think there's a lot more to get in a lot more books. I'm really, really glad to see there are so many other collections of these characters (and many of them with more focused through-stories), because I'm gonna be wanting to look at a bunch of those. A bunch. Of those.
Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell
2.0
The only thing this book ever did for me was that it has reminded me to check under my dish rack for maggots every now and then.
(Read it years ago, finally got rid of it at the Strand recently.)
(Read it years ago, finally got rid of it at the Strand recently.)
The Jams by Ken Quemuel
4.0
I basically bought this as soon as Kfan reviewed it, because firstly it is an awesome idea, and secondly I immediately thought of at least two people I wanted to get to read it too. (Partly on the strength of "End of the Road" all on its own. Come on.)
So, I am a super great one for seemingly useless memories. It's possible that it is my actual favorite thing. Telling a memory. I love telling them, and I love hearing them. Complete strangers, no context, and somehow still a perfect story is rendered. It twinges every emotion at the same time, hearing them. I believe that's the feeling behind this project.
I was 10, 20 years ago, and didn't know a lot of these songs. I think that people who did love these songs will like this, but even though the songs aren't me at all, what's very me is being thrilled by everyone being into it. So it works.
I expected all of the memories to be from people older than me -- like I was somehow opted out by my age -- but in fact about 30% of them seem to be about being a very small kid and absorbing, the way you do. What song your mom loved.
It's a super funny read, though. The shmoopiness is not the top layer. It is at least the eighth layer. Above it there is hilariousness, then odd vagueness, then odd specificity. ("Dat was da shit in Holland. 1990s.") Yes, reading YouTube comments organically is kind of a pain in the ass, and it's quite possible that some people of the type inclined to give speeches on the devastation of the English language what withIMing texting THE INTERNET and KIDS TODAY would rather fork their eye than read this through. But personally I deeply, seriously dig vernacular, like, it is just really important to me ok, and so reading a well-curated collection of it was kind of heavenly.
(My own very short-lived period of popular-music-buying in the form of maxi cassette singles was more like 1995. "Un-Break My Heart." Babyface. I also owned that Enigma song. I really didn't know what I was doing. I had a fairly lengthy phase in middle school of setting my clock radio to "sleep" to Delilah After Dark. I loved that song "Masterpiece.")
22 of 25.
So, I am a super great one for seemingly useless memories. It's possible that it is my actual favorite thing. Telling a memory. I love telling them, and I love hearing them. Complete strangers, no context, and somehow still a perfect story is rendered. It twinges every emotion at the same time, hearing them. I believe that's the feeling behind this project.
I was 10, 20 years ago, and didn't know a lot of these songs. I think that people who did love these songs will like this, but even though the songs aren't me at all, what's very me is being thrilled by everyone being into it. So it works.
I expected all of the memories to be from people older than me -- like I was somehow opted out by my age -- but in fact about 30% of them seem to be about being a very small kid and absorbing, the way you do. What song your mom loved.
It's a super funny read, though. The shmoopiness is not the top layer. It is at least the eighth layer. Above it there is hilariousness, then odd vagueness, then odd specificity. ("Dat was da shit in Holland. 1990s.") Yes, reading YouTube comments organically is kind of a pain in the ass, and it's quite possible that some people of the type inclined to give speeches on the devastation of the English language what with
(My own very short-lived period of popular-music-buying in the form of maxi cassette singles was more like 1995. "Un-Break My Heart." Babyface. I also owned that Enigma song. I really didn't know what I was doing. I had a fairly lengthy phase in middle school of setting my clock radio to "sleep" to Delilah After Dark. I loved that song "Masterpiece.")
22 of 25.
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
3.0
I'm a crabby old woman, and the reason I know that is because I really just hate a show-off. I want to tell them to go sit down and be polite, for goodness sake. Other writers restrain themselves!
Now, I love big writing, I love new writing. I love language that goes somewhere, that tries to say things in ways that aren't normal and don't make sense. Whatever this is, though, I don't love this. It makes me need deep breaths of patience. I don't like the words precious or cloying to describe it, but until there are some others, that's what I have to call the thing I don't like about it.
Some of the novel's unusual elements interested me. The level of meta to the writing and characters is certainly odd. This is one of those books that is also a "fictional novel," where its own character is writing it in the story. Here, we are theoretically reading the result of a co-authorship between the characters Jonathan and Alex. In addition to reading what they've written for the book, we read Alex's letters to Jonathan about the writing process. It's immensely strange the way Jonathan is a meta-character in the novel. We never hear him speak as this character, we only see Alex's rendition (both in his chapters and his letters). In his letters, Alex is allowed to anticipate readers' questions by asking about the moral ambiguity of fictionalizing real events, and also to complain about the weirder parts of Jonathan's book, and ask why they are so weird. Neither Jonathan, Alex's nor ours, ever answers.
It's partly for this reason (him being the truer and more down-to-earth fictional storyteller) that I love Alex's chapters and don't love Jonathan's chapters. Partly this is the nature of the story he gets to tell — the improbable trip through the Ukranian countryside with its questionable outcome. But this is also due to the "real" Jonathan's work, the author's: Alex's voice is an incredible prize, and makes the book worth reading no matter what. His broken-English vocabulary is just adorable and so fun to read. He's kind and beautiful and fucking hilarious, all even when he is ignorant or selfish. He grows and learns things and considers people more than anyone else in the book. As a reader you feel he is on your side, whereas you feel Jonathan is trying to teach you something. Or preach you something.
I feel that in another author's hands, I really should have liked Jonathan's historical chapters very well. They are based on what was real and written as folklore, magical realism. That's a beautiful experiment. But this is unfortunately the part of the book where you'll learn whether or not you like Foer as an author, and I didn't love him. He's twee and messy. He wants to put indelicate moments in your face with the austerity of religion. A virgin was raped at the moment her father died; she loved her husband so much she turned herself toward his beatings; someone ejaculated at this moment that caused the end of the world; 132 women jerked off with the dead hand of his grandfather. Maybe, in someone else's book, but maybe not, here.
And don't yell at me? But I had hoped for answers to the story. It's a story about looking for answers from the past, and in the characters' experience they are unable to find them, a reluctantly realistic outcome. I understand there's meaning in this promise going unfulfilled, but I missed it anyway. We are sidetracked into the discovery that Alex's and Jonathan's grandfathers were from the same place, which is quite meaningful, but not the same.
Strangely, I guess, I want to talk about the movie at this point? Which is a movie I really like, by the way. It portrays only Alex's part of the novel, and really well. Like lots of books-to-films, though, it makes some interesting elisions in order to tell a less ambiguous story. And I felt I had to draw my own conclusions about a few things in the backstory that are presented really differently in the movie, and I wanted to think about that out loud.
In the book, we know more: The woman they meet is Lista, whom Jonathan's grandfather was (of course) lovers with. She knows Alex's grandfather's story of his betraying his friend. We know that Jonathan's grandfather married someone who was not Augustine. (Who actually was Augustine?) When Lista tells her terrible story in the field, she tells a longer version in which her "sister," after her unborn baby is shot (in a far more gruesome way), survived, and collected all the belongings in the village, which are the things in the boxes that Lista lives with. She refuses to say what happened to her sister afterward, or what happened to her so that she survived that attack. Later, we're told she is keeping a dead baby. She is altogether less sweet and sane. I concluded that her story about her sister was about herself.
By the way, I love Eugene Hutz in that movie, so much, so much. Alex is no one else. I would give him 68 Oscars. (What am I saying, 69.) 11 Oscars for the dog, also.
What this book raises, though, is of such great value that it isn't important whether its style delivers your favorite book ever or not. I gave this copy of the book to my sister some years ago after she'd read it from the library and said that she had so many things to decide about it, she had to read it again. I'm glad I finally did too, because I want to keep answering the questions — Alex's, as much as Jonathan's.
Now, I love big writing, I love new writing. I love language that goes somewhere, that tries to say things in ways that aren't normal and don't make sense. Whatever this is, though, I don't love this. It makes me need deep breaths of patience. I don't like the words precious or cloying to describe it, but until there are some others, that's what I have to call the thing I don't like about it.
Some of the novel's unusual elements interested me. The level of meta to the writing and characters is certainly odd. This is one of those books that is also a "fictional novel," where its own character is writing it in the story. Here, we are theoretically reading the result of a co-authorship between the characters Jonathan and Alex. In addition to reading what they've written for the book, we read Alex's letters to Jonathan about the writing process. It's immensely strange the way Jonathan is a meta-character in the novel. We never hear him speak as this character, we only see Alex's rendition (both in his chapters and his letters). In his letters, Alex is allowed to anticipate readers' questions by asking about the moral ambiguity of fictionalizing real events, and also to complain about the weirder parts of Jonathan's book, and ask why they are so weird. Neither Jonathan, Alex's nor ours, ever answers.
It's partly for this reason (him being the truer and more down-to-earth fictional storyteller) that I love Alex's chapters and don't love Jonathan's chapters. Partly this is the nature of the story he gets to tell — the improbable trip through the Ukranian countryside with its questionable outcome. But this is also due to the "real" Jonathan's work, the author's: Alex's voice is an incredible prize, and makes the book worth reading no matter what. His broken-English vocabulary is just adorable and so fun to read. He's kind and beautiful and fucking hilarious, all even when he is ignorant or selfish. He grows and learns things and considers people more than anyone else in the book. As a reader you feel he is on your side, whereas you feel Jonathan is trying to teach you something. Or preach you something.
I feel that in another author's hands, I really should have liked Jonathan's historical chapters very well. They are based on what was real and written as folklore, magical realism. That's a beautiful experiment. But this is unfortunately the part of the book where you'll learn whether or not you like Foer as an author, and I didn't love him. He's twee and messy. He wants to put indelicate moments in your face with the austerity of religion. A virgin was raped at the moment her father died; she loved her husband so much she turned herself toward his beatings; someone ejaculated at this moment that caused the end of the world; 132 women jerked off with the dead hand of his grandfather. Maybe, in someone else's book, but maybe not, here.
And don't yell at me? But I had hoped for answers to the story. It's a story about looking for answers from the past, and in the characters' experience they are unable to find them, a reluctantly realistic outcome.
Spoiler
But I had expected that the point of Jonathan writing his history, up to the life of his grandfather whom he went to such lengths to seek answers about, was that it would include the answer. That we'd learn the past offered its answers only to the reader, perhaps, or something more ambiguous like the truth was what Jonathan decided the truth was, and he had decided something. But we never do learn how his grandfather escaped the Nazis and made it to America. We go up to the very day, and we still don't know how.Strangely, I guess, I want to talk about the movie at this point? Which is a movie I really like, by the way. It portrays only Alex's part of the novel, and really well. Like lots of books-to-films, though, it makes some interesting elisions in order to tell a less ambiguous story. And I felt I had to draw my own conclusions about a few things in the backstory that are presented really differently in the movie, and I wanted to think about that out loud.
Spoiler
In the movie, the woman they meet identifies herself clearly as Augustine's sister, and Augustine as having been Jonathan's grandfather's first wife who was killed in the attack. She recognizes Alex's grandfather as a character mentioned in the book, but not the same person he is in the book, and he is also definitely "exposed" as having been a Jew. (Therefore, because it's entirely made up, the story of his survival that is shown for him in the movie also makes almost no sense.) She tells her terrible story in the field, and that her sister's unborn baby was shot, and she died.In the book, we know more: The woman they meet is Lista, whom Jonathan's grandfather was (of course) lovers with. She knows Alex's grandfather's story of his betraying his friend. We know that Jonathan's grandfather married someone who was not Augustine. (Who actually was Augustine?) When Lista tells her terrible story in the field, she tells a longer version in which her "sister," after her unborn baby is shot (in a far more gruesome way), survived, and collected all the belongings in the village, which are the things in the boxes that Lista lives with. She refuses to say what happened to her sister afterward, or what happened to her so that she survived that attack. Later, we're told she is keeping a dead baby. She is altogether less sweet and sane. I concluded that her story about her sister was about herself.
By the way, I love Eugene Hutz in that movie, so much, so much. Alex is no one else. I would give him 68 Oscars. (What am I saying, 69.) 11 Oscars for the dog, also.
What this book raises, though, is of such great value that it isn't important whether its style delivers your favorite book ever or not. I gave this copy of the book to my sister some years ago after she'd read it from the library and said that she had so many things to decide about it, she had to read it again. I'm glad I finally did too, because I want to keep answering the questions — Alex's, as much as Jonathan's.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
4.0
This is younger YA than my favorites usually are, but undoubtedly a really good book. My sister is an Alexie fan and finally got a copy of this.
It's mostly a comic read, as Junior is funny and good and likes all-caps. He's dear even about the things that make him angry. He sounds to me maybe written a little younger than he is, actually, but he's a great character. He gives a really convincing picture of his surroundings on the Spokane reservation, what people's lives there are like on a micro level, which is really helpful and (I believe) unique. He establishes his background and various environments so well that soon you aren't even thinking about it, and things just start to happen in them.
Most, though, of the things that happen in the book aren't funny things. Near the end, when the tragedies just keep coming, you're confused why this book seemed so funny before. Because then you see the way that Junior has buoyed you up the same way he does with himself. But I really liked, actually, how the book handles its grief. Some stories that encounter grief feel the need to take you there in some deep, evocative, dramatic way. But less often in books does big grief come out in small ways, or (maybe worse) in no ways. Sometimes it is just a going-on or an acceptance of what is now real, and that is sometimes so much sadder. Junior doesn't wallow for a minute. He doesn't even heal in some dramatic way. He just experiences his regular life.
Maybe what's best about the way it's handled is that it isn't the primary theme of the book. Or not the one that seemed heaviest. Junior thinks a lot of thoughts here, and they're often showing something to you very sweetly. I love his feelings about tribes, about loosening the word, making tribes a fluid and inclusive thing. This idea helps him so much. Because, his other main theme deals with leaving, and he learns to find a way to bring what he needs with him. He confronts the spiritual leaving of one's tribe as well as leaving his actual home (at least, being a 9th-grader, just coming to understand the idea of leaving home). And, of course, the eventual leaving of death.
Also this is silly but I really enjoyed the basketball scenes in this book. I don't always enjoy sports scenes in novels, but I followed these really easily (have barely seen a basketball court since I was 13) and got a kick out of them.
Anyway, good luck always, Junior.
It's mostly a comic read, as Junior is funny and good and likes all-caps. He's dear even about the things that make him angry. He sounds to me maybe written a little younger than he is, actually, but he's a great character. He gives a really convincing picture of his surroundings on the Spokane reservation, what people's lives there are like on a micro level, which is really helpful and (I believe) unique. He establishes his background and various environments so well that soon you aren't even thinking about it, and things just start to happen in them.
Most, though, of the things that happen in the book aren't funny things. Near the end, when the tragedies just keep coming, you're confused why this book seemed so funny before. Because then you see the way that Junior has buoyed you up the same way he does with himself. But I really liked, actually, how the book handles its grief. Some stories that encounter grief feel the need to take you there in some deep, evocative, dramatic way. But less often in books does big grief come out in small ways, or (maybe worse) in no ways. Sometimes it is just a going-on or an acceptance of what is now real, and that is sometimes so much sadder. Junior doesn't wallow for a minute. He doesn't even heal in some dramatic way. He just experiences his regular life.
Maybe what's best about the way it's handled is that it isn't the primary theme of the book. Or not the one that seemed heaviest. Junior thinks a lot of thoughts here, and they're often showing something to you very sweetly. I love his feelings about tribes, about loosening the word, making tribes a fluid and inclusive thing. This idea helps him so much. Because, his other main theme deals with leaving, and he learns to find a way to bring what he needs with him. He confronts the spiritual leaving of one's tribe as well as leaving his actual home (at least, being a 9th-grader, just coming to understand the idea of leaving home). And, of course, the eventual leaving of death.
Also this is silly but I really enjoyed the basketball scenes in this book. I don't always enjoy sports scenes in novels, but I followed these really easily (have barely seen a basketball court since I was 13) and got a kick out of them.
Anyway, good luck always, Junior.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows, Mary Ann Shaffer
3.0
Funnily, I'd never heard of this book before it was put in my hands a couple months ago. Popular though it is, it was off my radar. I can see why so many like it, though, because it fits in a really nice place, as a book! Like probably most American readers these days, I don't know a ton (or anything) about the Channel Islands (British dependencies, but nearer to France) or their wartime German occupation. And actually, it's a really happy book.
My friend who lent this to me told me, "This book made me want to move to the Channel Islands and fall in love." These days I am a lot mushier than I used to be, so that sounded like a perfectly fine recommendation to me. In fact I thought it would be moreso, lusher and romantic. But via the epistolary format, it comes out just a bit girl-talkish and is probably its weakest element. Not quite enough whatever it is, longing looks.
It does, to use a phrase that gets a bad rap, romanticize the setting, and to a certain extent even the war. The characters have experienced some hardship and grief and loss, but in a way, just enough of just the right kind. Not so much that their lives are ruined, but enough to make them good characters with good stories to tell, and boatloads of dignity and pathos. I suppose you could read it as cheap, but also, it's nice. A way of showing that people do well with each other.
What you've really got here is straight and good wish-fulfillment, which also gets a bad rap in fiction. It's usually a criticism, but with this book it was just pleasing. Which is the entire point: wish-fulfillment gives you a story about something that most everyone would love to have happen to them in real life. Duh. That is often quite lovely. And that's precisely what you want as you read this. It would be perfectly awesome to enter Juliet's shoes. I'd take it. I might want to bring the internet with me, and a few books newer than 1946, but. (Read: I will totally go see Kate Winslet play her in the movie, come on.)
So, yes, perhaps things go a little too well and everyone is a little too nice, but the book will make you happy. In a way it reminds me of something a bit like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, one of those sweet books that's both extremely optimistic and honest at the same time. There's a spot, it hits, it's good.
My friend who lent this to me told me, "This book made me want to move to the Channel Islands and fall in love." These days I am a lot mushier than I used to be, so that sounded like a perfectly fine recommendation to me. In fact I thought it would be moreso, lusher and romantic. But via the epistolary format, it comes out just a bit girl-talkish and is probably its weakest element. Not quite enough whatever it is, longing looks.
It does, to use a phrase that gets a bad rap, romanticize the setting, and to a certain extent even the war. The characters have experienced some hardship and grief and loss, but in a way, just enough of just the right kind. Not so much that their lives are ruined, but enough to make them good characters with good stories to tell, and boatloads of dignity and pathos. I suppose you could read it as cheap, but also, it's nice. A way of showing that people do well with each other.
What you've really got here is straight and good wish-fulfillment, which also gets a bad rap in fiction. It's usually a criticism, but with this book it was just pleasing. Which is the entire point: wish-fulfillment gives you a story about something that most everyone would love to have happen to them in real life. Duh. That is often quite lovely. And that's precisely what you want as you read this. It would be perfectly awesome to enter Juliet's shoes. I'd take it. I might want to bring the internet with me, and a few books newer than 1946, but. (Read: I will totally go see Kate Winslet play her in the movie, come on.)
So, yes, perhaps things go a little too well and everyone is a little too nice, but the book will make you happy. In a way it reminds me of something a bit like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, one of those sweet books that's both extremely optimistic and honest at the same time. There's a spot, it hits, it's good.
Paul's Case by Willa Cather
4.0
The more I thought about this after I read it, the better I liked it. That isn't a typical pattern for me, but I love when it happens.
It's written in a very distant third-person voice. Nothing you learn about Paul comes from him. His actions are very, very guarded. When the plot takes the turn 2/3 of the way in, and Paul has actually gone and done something, and something entirely unexpected, it's surprisingly riveting. It's such a huge mistake, an he had my heart for it.
This story gets read a lot as being about repressed sexuality, which it might be, but it really just reads to me like it is about repression in general. I don't really care why Paul and his town reject each other, I just see how difficult the situation is. The people around Paul almost want him to fall, even though he's just a young teenager. And he is constantly poised to try and prove how much he doesn't care, how much better off he is without them. (Even though he is still right there, not away from them at all.) He's just lying, all around.
His swings through depression are awful and sad. His night in the rain, after he follows the singer, and decides he can't go home, but doesn't have anywhere else to go, so he does go home but spends the night in the freaking basement, it's terrible.
It seems to also be read as being about money, which he makes a grasp for at the end, and it seems like it's what makes him happy, and that his trouble starts when he runs out of it. I don't think that's right, though: I think it's about the artificiality he is obsessed with. He loves the controlled perfection of theater. He goes to a hotel, for goodness sake, and what is more artificial (and stagey) than that. The means he's using are artificial, the way he's acting is artificial, and of course, all of this feels like it sets him free from what he's trying to escape. But escapes don't work like that.
Unfortunately, I knew how it ended before I read it, because I added it to Goodreads first, which shows it included in the book group right up on the top of the page. DOH. Hate that.
It's written in a very distant third-person voice. Nothing you learn about Paul comes from him. His actions are very, very guarded. When the plot takes the turn 2/3 of the way in, and Paul has actually gone and done something, and something entirely unexpected, it's surprisingly riveting. It's such a huge mistake, an he had my heart for it.
This story gets read a lot as being about repressed sexuality, which it might be, but it really just reads to me like it is about repression in general. I don't really care why Paul and his town reject each other, I just see how difficult the situation is. The people around Paul almost want him to fall, even though he's just a young teenager. And he is constantly poised to try and prove how much he doesn't care, how much better off he is without them. (Even though he is still right there, not away from them at all.) He's just lying, all around.
His swings through depression are awful and sad. His night in the rain, after he follows the singer, and decides he can't go home, but doesn't have anywhere else to go, so he does go home but spends the night in the freaking basement, it's terrible.
It seems to also be read as being about money, which he makes a grasp for at the end, and it seems like it's what makes him happy, and that his trouble starts when he runs out of it. I don't think that's right, though: I think it's about the artificiality he is obsessed with. He loves the controlled perfection of theater. He goes to a hotel, for goodness sake, and what is more artificial (and stagey) than that. The means he's using are artificial, the way he's acting is artificial, and of course, all of this feels like it sets him free from what he's trying to escape. But escapes don't work like that.
Unfortunately, I knew how it ended before I read it, because I added it to Goodreads first, which shows it included in the
Spoiler
"Suicide"
Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway
3.0
I rather liked this. I think it's actually missing a lot of the typical Hemingway style (which may be a good thing) because it is 95% dialogue. It is basically a play. You could stage this right through and not change a thing. I'd like to see it, actually. You're dropped in the middle of this very, very brief moment, and just a few pages of conversation are the only source for your information. It's written with a little mystery, but becomes pretty clear.
Apparently, the timeline of this story is unresolved by critics -- is this taking place before they go, or after? I think it's entirely clear that this is the prelude to their journey, which loads every line of their debate with tension.
That spoiler isn't really a spoiler? Hemingway buries all his clues and wants you to spend time interpreting his meaning. And that, indeed, seems to be the only possible meaning. But. It's not exactly in the precis.
The only analysis that really surprised me: I had laughed at the line, "It tastes like licorice"/"That's the way with everything," because it's sort of a perfectly piquant thing for someone to say when they're not expressing themselves well. But it's followed by a line about absinthe, and someone in another discussion pointed out that this matters. Absinthe was never banned in Spain, and contains ingredients.
Honestly, I can see how this "gets all Hemingway" and everything, via its subject matter, and its gender relationship being just kind of a little bit wrong. A lot of the people I like most really f'ing hate Hemingway, but honestly it's been so long since I've really read some. Since an early grade of high school. I don't know. I'm a little curious, but I have a feeling that if he did offend me, it would be in that really upsetting way that's hard to pin down why he's wrong. Because, why is the gender relationship wrong, here? It's not? The guy's being pushy, but that's what the character's doing. But there is an indefinable sense of the author being on his side. It's not on paper, but it's in the air.
Apparently, the timeline of this story is unresolved by critics -- is this taking place before they go, or after? I think it's entirely clear that this is the prelude to their journey
Spoiler
to get an abortionThat spoiler isn't really a spoiler? Hemingway buries all his clues and wants you to spend time interpreting his meaning. And that, indeed, seems to be the only possible meaning. But. It's not exactly in the precis.
The only analysis that really surprised me: I had laughed at the line, "It tastes like licorice"/"That's the way with everything," because it's sort of a perfectly piquant thing for someone to say when they're not expressing themselves well. But it's followed by a line about absinthe, and someone in another discussion pointed out that this matters. Absinthe was never banned in Spain, and contains ingredients
Spoiler
that may induce miscarriageHonestly, I can see how this "gets all Hemingway" and everything, via its subject matter, and its gender relationship being just kind of a little bit wrong. A lot of the people I like most really f'ing hate Hemingway, but honestly it's been so long since I've really read some. Since an early grade of high school. I don't know. I'm a little curious, but I have a feeling that if he did offend me, it would be in that really upsetting way that's hard to pin down why he's wrong. Because, why is the gender relationship wrong, here? It's not? The guy's being pushy, but that's what the character's doing. But there is an indefinable sense of the author being on his side. It's not on paper, but it's in the air.