The Marriage Plot

by: Jeffrey Eugenides

This book was a lot of fun, and a bit of a surprising departure from Middlesex, but every bit as good. (I mean, heck, it’s been named Best Book of 2011 by a variety of sources.)

Actually, this is the book I wish I had in college, when I was reading up on critical theory. This book would have made all that so much more interesting and inviting – it even inspired me to do a quick refresher and wikipedia a bunch of theorists to learn about their lives and ideas. (Don’t tell my old professors.)

Anyway, the book. The Marriage Plot is set in the early 1980s, where three students – the beautiful Madeleine Hanna, charismatic Leonard Bankhead, and earnest Mitchell Grammaticus – are studying together at Brown. Madeleine’s professor contends that the Novel died with Jane Austen and her ilk, and that what was good for women’s rights, ultimately killed the marriage as plot. That very idea gets tested as Madeleine, and incurable romantic, navigates her own way through college and into real life, torn by these two very different men who have their own journeys to explore.

This book is both light-hearted and deep, witty and wry, sweet, with just a touch of bitter irony. Plus you learn a bit along the way! If you’ve ever read and loved Sophie’s World, by Jostein Gaarder, this is a book for you. The beginning third, especially, is very much like Sophie’s World - for adults.

The Lost Wife
Alyson Richman

I seem to be finding quite a few books these days through stumbling across intriguing quotes from the author. Richman said she got the idea for the book from a comment she overheard at a wedding. The groom’s grandfather happened to meet the bride’s grandmother at the wedding rehearsal. He recognized her immediately and asked her to lift her sleeve, revealing the number tattooed on her arm. He knew her. “You were my wife,” said he.

From this true story, Richman weaves a really touching tale of love and loss, loyalty and separation, the depths to which we will go for family even amidst the most horrendous, incomprehensible destruction. The characters are full and rich and endearing, and the premise hooks you from the very start.

I only had two quibbles with the book. One, in several scenes the writing keeps switching back and forth between past and present tense. It gets really distracting. If it was intentional, I can’t figure out why. If it wasn’t intentional, I have no idea how that got past editorial. And two, the part focusing on life in the ghetto and work camps dragged on a bit too much for me. I feel horrible saying that, but I say it only because it felt like this book wasn’t a book really about the Holocaust and what happened there. If it was about that, then it glosses over the horrors and doesn’t serve its function much. I certainly wasn’t reading it to learn more about the Holocaust, because there are plenty of other resources for that, that do a much better job. Meanwhile, what I would have liked to see more of was the aftermath: life after destruction. That part was pretty much summarized just before the end, and it felt like a lost opportunity.

While I was reading the book, I felt annoyed by these two things and prevented me from fully immersing in the latter half of the book. However, after I put the book down, it really did stay with me. I found myself thinking about it as I went about my day, and even bringing it up at dinner with my husband, and if a book can do that, that’s saying something. I think, because it was at hear about love and the impossible decisions we’re sometimes confronted with, it made me feel in a much stronger way what things were like before the Final Solution. I found myself wondering how long I would have waited. I can’t even comprehend how or what choice I would have made in the same situation. I wonder if I, too, would have waited until it was too late.

All in all, a worthy read and not your typical story from the Holocaust.

Are you a writer, or someone who wants to get back in touch with writing? Join in our book club for writers at Bigger Picture Reads! Find me there today!

 The Book of Salt
by: Monique Truong

When I normally introduce books to savor, I usually mean we can savor the language, the beauty of the words, the sharp poignancy of meaning… This book might actually be delicious.

The Book of Salt tells the story of Binh, a 26-year-old Vietnamese cook working in the house of GertrudeStein (said all as one word) and Alice Toklas, in Paris in the 1920′s. He’s the silent observer to all that goes on in the literary echelons, and he brushes fingertips with power of the likes of the young Ho Chi Minh, as he battles his own questions and memories of home in Saigon, and looks for love in the city that both flaunts it and smashes it to smithereens.

{Aside: Am I just on a kick, or is there a remarkable resurgence of all things Jazz Age, especially Paris? Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Paris, 1920′s, slick prose and loose morals…these elements keep popping up all over the place! I suspect there’s a renewed fascination with that age since we seem to be going through its mirror image now, what with the highlife followed by a market crash and the malaise that follows. I digress…}

This book was actually a Christmas gift to me, but Vietnamese cook transplanted on foreign soil, food, literature and Paris? I’m in. The language is beautiful and erudite, told in a compelling voice, all that much more plaintive and rich in contrast to the protagonist who himself is silenced and fumbles for words in a foreign tongue he can never own. In lieu of French expressions, he must convey all his sensibilities through the language of food, a thousand words served in an omelette, a hundred hopes on a plate of foie gras.

Truong’s debut novel is full of delights and fascination. The narration does stretch past a few traditional limits at times, frankly observing and relating what the narrator could not quite plausibly see. I don’t mind a little rule-breaking so long as it makes sense. In this book, most of the time the narration gets a bit far out of course, the reader can blithely make excuses and continue along her merry way. But there was an instance or two where the narration says something that the narrator simply would not have said, it being so contrary to his nature, and there my willingness to play along ran a tad thin.

Nevertheless, that’s a minor quibble for a book that should otherwise be a tasty treat to the foodies, the wishful, and the transplanted.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by Helen Simonson

This book. was. awesome. The story of Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), whose brother passes away leaving the rather sticky question of how best to reunite a pair of precious heirloom guns unresolved. The Major is left quite alone to deal with a generation of unrepentantly irreverent younger relatives and community folk who all seem to have abandoned everything he finds good and essential in life: honor, decorum, duty, and a decent cup of tea served in a proper mug.

But as the story unfolds, he finds himself drawing ever closer to Mrs. Ali, a Pakistani shopkeeper and perennial foreigner in his English countryside town, as they bond over literature and the loss of their respective spouses. Their deepening relationship unfolds, despite the follies of interfering society hens and boorish relatives, all told in delightfully droll British wit that had me literally laughing out loud as I turned the pages.

It’s a perfectly quick read, where one gets immediately drawn in. It’s light and sweet and funny, wonderful for lazy afternoons. But there’s surprising twists and little poignant moments, where themes of honor and tradition, prejudice and presumption offer resonating bass notes to make you stop and pause and truly appreciate that this man, who so stoutly believes in tradition, becomes tempted to flout it in the pursuit of happiness and love.

The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain

To be honest, I picked this book up simply because of a line I read in an interview with the author. She said she had been looking for ideas for her next book and, in the midst of reading Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast and other assorted snippets of his writing, she came across his admission to his first wife that he wished he had died before loving any one but her.

It was a catalyst for her novel, and the spark that made me want to pick up her book too.

The Paris Wife is a novel that traipses into the love life of one of literature’s greats, from before he became great, told from the point-of-view of a woman who loved him. McLain’s research is meticulous, her ear for the voice of the age is spot-on, and the story is one that will keep you riveted, as you follow Ernest and Hadley through the treacherous streets of 1920′s Paris. They’re deeply in love, and we’re kept both reticent and clamoring to know if their love can survive the hard, fast life of the Jazz Age, which values anything but family and monogamy.

It’ll make you want to read more Hemingway.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you’ve ever wanted to know what a good metaphor looks like, you should read Kim Edwards’ writing. This book is stunning for the inundation of words that tumble out at you, speaking straight to the core, without saying anything bluntly at all. Whatever other qualities that stand out about her writing: the intriguing premise, the bittersweetness of perfect, flawed characters, and the exposition of the slow way lives are destroyed by all the things we don’t say, it’s her use of metaphor that renders her writing poetic.

The story begins on a snowy night in Kentucky in the mid-1960′s, with important portions set against the backdrop of Kent State. The wife of a young doctor, David Henry, is about to give birth and they can’t make it all the way to the hospital, so he takes her to his own office and helps her deliver their son with the help of his nurse attending. Their son comes out a beautiful, healthy baby boy…and then they realize she is about to have twins. Their daughter comes out, clearly afflicted with Down’s Syndrome. In those days, the belief is a child with Down’s Syndrom will live a painful, weak life and soon die. The doctor, who had a sickly sister die and watched his own mother waste away after her death, could not inflict that kind of pain upon his family. So he asks his nurse to take the child to an institution. The nurse does so, but upon seeing the institution, decides to keep the child herself and leaves town. And the doctor tells his wife the second child died at birth, all the while knowing she was indeed alive and out there somewhere in the world.

But secrets always have consequences, even if you don’t get caught, and the book is a deft and poignant look at how lies spiral out from us, despite our best intentions.

I’ll give you a taste of her talent here. This excerpt is from about halfway into the book, when the doctor is speaking to his son about their passions, trying desperately to connect with his child.

“Photography is all about secrets,” David said, after a few minutes, lifting the photo with a pair of tongs and slipping it into the fixer. “The secrets we all have and will never tell.”

“That’s not what music is like,” Paul said, and David heard the rejection in his son’s voice. He looked up, but it was impossible to read Paul’s expression in the soft red light. “Music is like you touch the pulse of the world. Music is always happening, and sometimes you get to touch it for a while, and when you do you know that everything’s connected to everything else.”

What a beautiful way to express the central conflict between the father and son: the father who remains distant, because of all the secrets he must keep, and the son who argues that secrets can’t be kept. They’re not isolated events you can hold up out of the water like a treasure you don’t want to get wet. They touch everything.

This book is the kind of book that stays with you, long after you turn the last page.

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Dreams of Joy by Lisa See

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was a good sequel to “Shanghai Girls.” In this book, Pearl’s daughter, Joy, runs away to Red China in an effort to escape the lies she’s lived her life believing and her sense of guilt over her father’s suicide. Pearl runs after her daughter and we follow the story of both women as they go into China during the Great Leap Forward. We follow them on a journey of hope and idealism turned to shattered dreams and the struggle for freedom, identity and mother-daughter understanding.

The story is very well-researched and gives us a detailed glimpse into life in China during that period, and especially towards the end of the book, paints a really brilliant tapestry of the world around them. It was a little shorter on phrases that sing and poignant universal truths than “Shanghai Girls,” though it did still deliver, and kept me up past 1 a.m. to finish it.

If you enjoyed “Shanghai Girls,” then I think you’ll definitely enjoy the sequel.

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Ellis Island by Kate Kerrigan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What shall I do with a book I’d like to recommend, but with which I still have a few quibbles? I’ll go ahead and say this is a good read for those of you who enjoy historical fiction. It delves nicely into themes of independence and a young woman’s burgeoning sense of identity. And it has plenty of love and friendship in it to entice the romantic at heart. It has a nicely-constructed, fast-moving plot. I love the place in history into which it delves, and it’s another one opening my eyes to the wide world of historical fiction which, until recently, I had thought was too obsessed with European royalty or heavy, depressing tomes.

This, thankfully is neither, but, as I said, there are a few quibbles I have that prevent me from giving it the full 5 stars. First, the beginning of the book is a bit spare in the luscious detail of setting that give color and texture to the pages. While I enjoy a fast plot and never was one to enjoy wading through long passages of pure description, I felt the beginning of this one could use more for the simple reason that it would help with the pacing. The plot moves so quickly it left me a bit breathless and a few extra sentences here and there to give the reader a chance to rest between plot moments would be helpful. But, by about a quarter or so of the way into the novel, the author really hits her stride and starts developing the setting and characters in far more detail and her world really begins to come alive, full of dimension and peopled with characters one really cares about. The main character is lively and interesting, even/especially as she sometimes makes me wonder if she’s completely taken leave of her senses.

The second quibble I have is with Ellie’s husband, John. I won’t go into too much detail here, but he was such a lovely, engaging character at the beginning. He, quite understandably, falls into bitterness later, but with it became more of a cardboard character. It would have been nice if the author had spent a little more time developing the complexity of his emotions, treating him with as much care at the end of the book as she had in the beginning.

***SPOILER ALERT. PLEASE SKIP THIS SECTION OF THE POST IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE BOOK.*** Another quibble I have is with the epilogue. The epilogue concludes with what Ellie is purported to learn: what she gained from her life in America and was eventually able to look past it. Except I didn’t really see any evidence of her looking past it. We’re told, rather than shown this. In the last chapter of the book in particular, in a scene involving perfume, it seemed to me that she was still trapped by it, remembering her love for John at the very end. She keeps her secrets and her regrets and it’s her lover for him and what joy she has found in the new life that seems to sustain her. But the lessons she claimed to learn in the epilogue? I just have trouble seeing it. I’m not convinced.

And the final, tiny quibble I have is that I kept expecting something to happen with Ellie’s American stocks, given the story takes place just a little before the great stock market crash and that she decided not to cash them in when she withdrew her other money. It seemed like this detail would lead to something later, but it never did, and so felt like an unfinished detail.

***END SPOILER ALERT***

But other than that, it was a lovely read. One of those that I stayed up late to continue, and woke up early to finish. Perfect as summer wanes and we begin to look towards autumn.