New Century Reading

Green Girl

Green Girl by Kate Zambreno is another in what appears to be a series, for me, of books that make me wonder about generational divides. When I reviewed this book on Goodreads, all I had to say was: I think I'm far too old to appreciate this book.

This novel is about Ruth, a young American woman living in London, working at a department store she refers to as Horrids, spritzing people with perfume after asking them if they've ever experienced Desire (the name of the scent). She wanders aimlessly from man to man, party to party, occasionally reflecting on HIM (yes, all caps), the man that got away, and she thinks about how people are watching her. She is, according to the narrator, one of many Green Girls, a phrase pulled from a line in Hamlet: "You speak like a green girl, unsifted in such perilous circumstance."

That's pretty much it, as far as I can tell.

The back of the book makes a comparison to Sylvia Plath's The Bell jar, and good little Plath-ite that I am, I have to take issue with that. Plath's Esther Greenwood was a young woman sinking deeper and deeper into mental illness, exacerbated by the times she lived in (the early 1950s). Esther was a bright young woman crushed by societal expectations and social mores, living in an era that urged her to simply find a good man and become the best wife and mother possible, and to not want anything more than that (which makes me wonder why even more women didn't suffer from mental illness then). In contrast, Zambreno's Ruth seems to live in the current day, and I'm not saying that women's roles are perfectly equal and free, but in contrast to the 1950s, things are a lot better. Ruth has more freedom, and she squanders it. The extensive literary and cultural references seem to indicate that Ruth is bright and well educated, but nothing in her actions supports this.

So, maybe I'm old and cranky and don't get today's younger women. 

I also did not love the narrative structure. There's a narrator of sorts who watches Ruth and occasionally comments on her. The opening makes the narrator sound like she's giving birth to Ruth, but later the narrator sounds more sinister than maternal. Is the opening scene meant to show the author giving birth to the character, with the following commentary operating as metafiction? I dunno. I didn't like it. It seemed tricksy and pretentious to me, without adding any particular value to the overall story. 

Finally, because I am such a Plath geek and the back of the book makes such a big deal about comparing Green Girl to Plath, let's look at some of the language used:

Ruth describes how free she feels after her mother dies: "Like an umbilicus had been snapped." Plath's vitriolic poem about her mother, Medusa, says: "My mind winds to you/Old barnacled umbilicus".

Ruth: "Immersed in the glow of thingness." Plath: "I love the thinginess of things."

Ruth: "She hadn't known she desired a beast. Someone to destroy her." Plath: "There is a panther stalks me down:/One day I'll have my death of him".

Ruth: "Phrases flit through her head. My mad girl's love song, a hymn of HIM." Plath: poem titled "Mad Girl's Love Song."

Ruth: "He had a slight bruise around one eye, that lent him a sort of dangerous vulnerability. A bit of a brute." Plath: "Every woman adores a Fascist,/the boot in the face, the brute/brute heart of a brute like you."

Derivative of Plath and the Bell Jar, but that's a tough act to emulate. For me? It didn't work.

Our Mutual Friend

Whoa! Sorry about that! I fell behind when I went to visit my Dad in northern MN and forgot to bring my book along. D'oh. I even stopped at a bookstore along the way, but alas, that particular Dickens wasn't on the shelf.

But now I'm caught up and current. So. 

How creepy is Mr. Headstone? What kind of guy drags a girl round and round a churchyard to try to convince her to marry him, even after she's firmly said no? Geez. Oh, and Charlie Hexam? You're getting too big for your britches, buddy.

Mr. Rokesmith becomes clearer and clearer as the title character, and I loved the chapter where he considers whether or not he should come clean about who he is and how he's still alive. To pass up the riches that would immediately come to him, not to mention the forced marriage to the beautiful but prickly Bella, must be a huge temptation, and yet he reasons out that it's better if all is left alone. Really, you can't help but love that about him.

Between Lizzie refusing to be strong-armed to accept Mr. Headstone, and Bella refusing to accept Mr. Rokesmith on the grounds that all she is is someone's property, it's pretty clear that women had a great deal of societal pressure when it came to marriage, and that rejecting a proposal was not to be done on a whim. Still, one feels for both women. I sure as hell wouldn't want to marry Mr. Headstone, who's as creepy as his name, and while you just know Mr. Rokesmith is the right man for Bella, her reasons for saying no are surprisingly well thought out.

Speaking of good decisions--I did NOT see it coming that Mrs. Lammle would suddenly develop a conscience regarding the plot against Miss Podsnap, but I'm so very glad she did. 

And was there ever a silver anniversary dinner as dismal as the Wilfers? Good lord.

A couple snippets of text that I especially liked, as they show Dickens' amazing power of description while also using that description to put forth a subtext:

"The court brought them to a churchyard; a paved square court, with a raised bank of earth, about breast high, in the middle, enclosed by iron rails. Here, conveniently and healthfully elevated above the level of the living, were the dead and the tombstones; some of the latter droopingly inclined from the perpendicular, as if they were ashamed of the lies they told."

"It was a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark. Animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing, and choking; inanimate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and so being wholly neither."

 

The Last Brother

The Last Brother, written by Nathacha Appanah and translated by Geoffrey Strachan, could be a companion piece to The Sense of an Ending, in that both are brief novellas with an older male narrator reflecting back on events in his past. Unlike the Barnes, though, the narrator of The Last Brother doesn't have any significant surprises awaiting him in his old age that will make him re-evaluate his past and his role in the past. 

Instead, Raj is thinking back 60 years to his childhood on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. His childhood was spent with his loving mother and highly abusive father; he knew nothing of the outside world, was unaware of WWII happening across the globe. All he knows is his life with his two brothers, which does give him joy, and his life with his father, which does not. 

You might guess from the title that Raj loses his brothers (not really a spoiler, it happens early on in the book). His father uproots the remaining family and moves to another community, where he takes a job as a prison guard and Raj has the opportunity to go to school. When a severe beating sends Raj to the hospital, which happens to be part of the prison, he meets David, a young boy who is a Jewish refugee, part of a group of Jew who were trying to escape to Palestine but were detoured, and then incarcerated, in Mauritius. Their brief friendship has an enormous, lifetime effect on Raj.

Whereas the narrator of the Barnes book has lost some of the details of what happened in his past, Raj can't forget. Raj also comments on the fragility of memory, but if anything, what he remembers is too powerful for him. His past, and his connection with David, are fraught with violence, brutality, and just the briefest shining moments of hope. The losses sustained by both boys are almost beyond imagining. But so is the change that making a friend after losing his brothers becomes:

"We very rarely notice changes within ourselves at the time, we perceive them later, in the light of events and our reactions to them, but, sitting there as I did, motionless in the dark, I sensed it, a change in myself, I felt as if I were getting bigger, growing, like the trees around me, and it seemed to me that the exhalation of the green, dark forest had something to do with it. I was still puny, my clothes fluttered loosely about me, my mother could still close her hand around my calf, but there was this new hope within me, the promise of less lonely a life, the bond that had formed between David and me."

It's a gut-wrenching story, packing an immense wallop in a short space. At times the run-on sentences got on my nerves, but overall, it was hard to put down, even when it was hard to read because I knew the outcomes weren't necessarily going to be very good. But the characters are wonderfully drawn; Raj's mother is a fascinating character all by herself, and even Raj's despicable father, often drunk and brutal, is sometimes shown in a different light so that the reader, while not condoning what he does, at least understands a bit about why he is the way he is.

This is one of the things I love about the Tournament of Books. I never would have picked this up to read otherwise, but I'm so glad I did--it's a strong read, an interesting companion to the Barnes, and it taught me about a piece of WWII history that I'd never heard before. 

For more thoughts on this lovely book, check out Kerry's post. 

The Marriage Plot

Early on in The Marriage Plot, we learn this about one of the main characters, Madeleine: "She'd become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she loved to read."

Well! Right there, it appeared that Madeleine and I had an awful lot in common, being that's why I majored in English (and knowing I had no capacity to teach, my English degree did not for many years prove to be very useful). With a grin on my face, I decided I was probably going to love this book.

So much for my ability to predict early on whether or not a book will agree with me.

Madeleine is graduating from Brown and trying to get over a recent break-up with her boyfriend, Leonard. Leonard has issues of his own in the form of manic-depression which becomes increasingly difficult for him to control, even with medication. In the meantime, Madeleine's friend Mitchell, who pines over her from the moment he meets her, watches her growing relationship with Leonard with growing jealousy as he buries himself in religious studies and, after graduation, a trip to explore Europe and India.

That all sounds good and well, but by the time I was halfway through, "slogging" was how I described my progress to a friend. Eugenides uses an odd structure for this book: he often starts in a current moment, then backtracks to take us to the beginning point of that moment. So the book opens with Madeleine waking up very hungover on the morning of her graduation. Then we go back and build the story up to that point. I'm not sure why Eugenides thought this was a good structure; I found it annoying after a while, like a bad episode of House.

This book is also awfully long for the story. Maybe that's because I read it right after reading the beautiful, and short, The Sense of an Ending. But there were many pages I found myself sighing and impatient and thinking, "Did he really need to tell us all this? Um, no." It felt like he was trying to approach developing his characters the way Franzen did in Freedom, piling on the details and backstory. But with Freedom, I bought it--I felt that Franzen had given us the critical elements we needed to understand Patty and Walter, whereas Eugenides provided lots of details that were extraneous.

Although, as I wondered with both Freedom and The Sense of an Ending, maybe this book is more meaningful to certain generations. Maybe I would have loved the whole thing when I was in my 20s. I will give Eugenides points for his frightening, in-close portrayal of Leonard's mental illness. But several of the secondary characters weren't fleshed out, and the ending had me rolling my eyes. 

So--did you read it? What did you think?

Our Mutual Friend

This short section seems to be here to demonstrate character, mostly good. Bella Wilfer, who is not always in the fairest of moods, shows herself in very good form when the Boffins give her a tidy sum of cash, which she promptly turns around and lavishes on her father, treating him to elegant new clothes and a sumptuous meal. In a short but heartbreaking scene, little orphan Johnny dies, and Mrs. Boffin, far from being discouraged about adopting, decides to not be selfish and only choose a child that suits her, instead looking for one who is most desperately in need. And that turns out--of all people--to be Sloppy. 

In fact, the only person not looking so good at the end of this section is that wag Mr. Wegg, who grumbles that Mrs. Boffin ought to adopt him. Really, Mr. Wegg! As if you haven't benefited quite a lot from the admirable Boffins!

I haven't much to say about this section, but am definitely ready for the next. 

Wonder what Mr. Dickens would have made of the life of Whitney Houston?

The Sense of an Ending

When I was in college, I was lucky enough to be part of a large, jolly group of friends who often did the silly things college students do just because they can. An active participant in our mostly harmless antics was my friend Lesa. Lesa joined the Peace Corps after graduation, and a few months into her assignment in Lesotho, she was murdered.

A memorial service was arranged at the dorm most of us had lived in for the first couple of years of college. Friends got up and spoke about Lesa, shared memories, many funny, because Lesa had a great sense of humor and enjoyed a good joke or prank. One friend stood up and talked about an evening a bunch of us drove over to Lake Calhoun for an evening's stroll. I was part of that evening, and it brought back wonderful, fun memories, a bunch of silly college students enjoying a beautiful spring evening. I remembered that Steve Winwood's "Higher Love" was on the radio on the drive over. 

And then I remembered that although Lesa had come along in the car, she didn't join us on the walk, instead visiting a boyfriend who lived nearby. While the speaker was talking fondly of Lesa and how much she'd enjoyed that walk, and how it was just the kind of thing Lesa loved doing, I was sitting thinking about the fact that Lesa really wasn't on that walk. Of course I didn't say anything--I certainly didn't want to spoil someone else's wonderful memory. And yes, it was exactly the sort of thing she loved to do, so you could say she was there in spirit, if not reality. But it really drove home to me how memory is fallible, or perhaps the better term is malleable. 

Which brings me to Julian Barnes' wonderful novella, The Sense of an Ending. This short book is told from the perspective of Tony Webster, who reflects (mostly fondly) on his own crew of friends from school. He's looking back over a lifetime; he's divorced, retired, lives a quiet life that he pokes a little fun at. He seems to have come to terms with the things that were hard in his life, and is just riding out what's left with a willingness to accept contentment. 

Yet, for all that he's a most genial narrator, there's a sense of unease about the past:

"It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others."

The ongoing narrative returns to that theme again and again, creating a tension, even a sense of dread, in the reader (at least, this reader). 

"Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn't life's business to reward merit, why should it be life's business to give us warm, comfortable feelings towards its end? What possible evolutionary purpose could nostalgia serve?"

He even calls into question his own narrative:

"How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but--mainly--to ourselves."

There are painful things in Tony's past. A girlfriend who manipulates him, breaks up with him, then starts dating his friend. The suicide of a friend. But over time, these pains have eased. Haven't they? And he understands their actions. Doesn't he?

Maybe; maybe not. When he finds out that he is the unexpected recipient of a small inheritance from his former girlfriend's mother, he makes the effort to find out why, and his memories of his past suddenly are clarified in ways he never would have imagined.

This is a short book by a narrator who, in some ways, is unreliable, but only in that he knows memory is faulty and continually reminds you of that. He's a congenial narrator, good company, much given to conversational sidebars that are interesting. He'd be wonderful company at lunch. Yet as likable as he is, Barnes skillfully uses each and every word coming out of Webster's mouth to contradict the sense of calm that Webster professes to. It's a wonder of precise writing, a character fully drawn, a book in which not a whole lot happens but it feels like a lifetime of events happens. To Barnes' credit, he doesn't drag it out to make a more traditionally sized novel. At 163 pages, it's exactly as long as it needs to be.

It's the rare book that I checked out from the library but now plan to buy and reread when it comes out in paperback. I suspect it will be a rewarding second reading.

I chose the 2/7 publication date for this post because it would have been Lesa's 57th birthday. Gone, but not forgotten. My memories of her are all wonderful, and I'm sticking with that.

Our Mutual Friend

First: what is Dickens' London like today? Perhaps not that different from 150 years ago, says this article. It includes a visit to what appears as the Six Jolly Fellows Porters Pub.

OK, so, Miss T. pointed me in the direction of Wikipedia, which has the original publication schedule right here. (Don't scroll around the entry if you want to avoid spoilers.) Looking at that with an eye to both following the rhythm of publication while gently speeding things up, I propose this schedule:

Today I'm talking about Book 2, chapters 2-6.

2/12: Book 2, chapters 7-10
2/19: Book 2, chapters 11-16
2/26: Book 3, chapters 1-4
3/4: Book 3, chapters 5-10
3/11: Book 3, chapters 11-17
3/18: Book 4, chapters 1-7
3/25: Book 4, chapters 8-11
4/1: Book 4, 12-17

That will get us to the end of the book by the end of March. Satisfactory?

If the last section's reading seemed to take aim at the way children lived in Dickens' times, this section pokes some acid fun at politics of the day with the wonderful chapters regarding Veneering's sudden "desire" to enter politics.  

He also has some very pointed attitudes about whether or not women should be educated. Mr Wrayburn, for all of his not-quite-above-board ways, wins me over by insisting he provide education to Lizzie and the Person of the House, now known as Jenny Wren and, as we see, as someone who may not be as dreadful as she first seemed. Contrast that to Lizzie's brother, too much under the sway of Mr. Headstone. What exactly does Mr. Headstone think will happen in Lizzie gets some education too? Never fear--I think Mr. Wrayburn is more than a match for Mr. Headstone. But what exactly is Mr. Wrayburn hoping to get out of the transaction?

Oh, and Fascination Fledgeby--scoundrel, or victim of the Lammles? Only time will tell. But I have great fear for the hapless Georgiana, herself almost certainly a victim of the Lammles, and definitely a victim of too much Podsnappery.

However, this little exchange delighted me:

"'Your people [Jews] need speak the truth sometimes, for they lie enough,' remarked Fascination Fledgeby [to the elderly Jewish man who has been hired to teach Lizzie and Jenny Wren].

"'Sir, there is,' returned the old man with quiet emphasis, 'too much untruth among all denominations of men.'"

Ooooh, snap, Fledgeby.

I digress

Just a little. My apologies.

Like many people, I'm at that point of life where my elderly parents are looking to shed their home. My mom is already in a memory-care facility; my dad wants to move into the adjacent assisted living. To do that, he must empty out their home of 51 years. 

And of course there's a train of thought going through his head that says, "I'm sure the children [there are two of us] will want lots of this stuff."

Well...no.

Not all of it. 

But some of it?

Here's the happy couple, on their wedding day in 1959. It was my mother's second marriage. They eloped. Don't they look excited??

Now you know why I got a chuckle when Mom's first memory-care facility said (in a wonderful use of jargon) that she exhibited "exit-seeking behaviors" and was an "elopement risk." I guess some things never change.

I had seen this photo before, but didn't have my very own copy. Now I do.

This one, however, I'd never seen before:

Dad, in 1946, at the end of his stint with the Navy.

Dude! My dad was hot!!!!

How did he celebrate leaving the Navy?

Buying himself a good-quality dictionary. I'd never seen this before either, but look how well-used it is. He even proudly inscribed it:

Man, I wish I'd inherited that handwriting.

I love this old dictionary. Just look at the font.

Not to mention the antiquated definition of "Eastern".

With all these treasures, I'm sure you're wondering what it is I don't like. I'll spare you the sight--but there was an entire photo album of my Lutheran confirmation. At the age of 14, I had Coke-bottle-bottom glasses, acne so bad it looked like I had chicken pox, and my mother, who loves the color yellow, made me wear a bright yellow dress. Unfortunately, yellow makes me look jaundiced. So, yeah...an awkward teenage girl who appears to suffer from jaundice and chicken pox, with enormous ugly glasses and a bad perm.

That will never see the light of day.