"The Woman Upstairs," by Claire Messud

The title of Claire Messud’s new novel, “The Woman Upstairs” (Knopf, 2013), naturally brings to mind such hidden-away women as Rochester’s “mad" wife in the attic in “Jane Eyre.” Nora, the “woman upstairs” in this novel is a variation on that theme: she is also hidden away, although hidden in plain sight. She is a woman who has tamped down her own desires, her hope for artistic expression, fame, and love, as well as her anger at herself and others for her feeling so thwarted. Actually, those feelings are still smoldering, but she doesn’t show them; she purposely puts them aside, being afraid that what she wishes for will never come through, and instead she lives a tidy, helpful, “nice” life as an excellent elementary school teacher, a good daughter, and a good friend. But then something dramatic happens in her life: she meets a family that has settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts for the year, and her gradually increasing entanglement with them changes her life. The mother, Sirena (“siren”?) is an Italian artist; the Lebanese father, Skandar, is a visiting professor at Harvard; and their son Reza is a beautiful, bright student in Nora’s class. Nora finds herself feeling more alive than she has for years; she shares an art studio with Sirena and starts working on her art again (unsurprisingly, her art is all small-scale, obsessive, and preoccupied with other women artists who were somehow hidden away); she becomes closer and closer to all three members of the visiting family, to the point of, in a manner, falling in love with each of them in different ways. Messud describes the intensity and even urgency of her feelings with great understanding; we are reminded of how the way a person appears to the world may not at all reveal her or his true emotional self. But the visiting family’s visit inevitably draws to an end, and Nora has to deal with her feelings of abandonment. Then, when we think the story is coming to a close, it takes one more shocking (but in retrospect, not so shocking) twist, leaving readers to figure out what it all means for Nora’s future. This is a very feminist novel, one about the repression of women’s desires and ambitions and the pressures to play it safe and be a “good girl.” Messud is obviously emphasizing this theme through the title and through the name of the main character, which surely is meant to evoke Nora in Ibsen’s play “The Doll House.” This Nora’s character and intense repressed, and then finally expressed, feelings are almost scarily well portrayed here. "The Woman Upstairs," like Messud’s 2006 novel, “The Emperor’s Children” (which takes place in barely post-9/11 New York), has its finger on the pulse of a certain intellectual, literary, professional urban class, and explores themes of interest especially (although not only) to that class. At the same time, her stories and characters are gripping. Given the author’s reputation, my enjoyment of her earlier novel, and the feminist aspect, “The Woman Upstairs” was one of those novels that I couldn’t not read, so to speak, and I am glad I did read it.

"All That Is," by James Salter

James Salter’s long-awaited new novel, “All That Is” (Knopf, 2013), is beautifully written, in a calm, reportorial style that is deceptively simple (owing a bit to Hemingway). It is the story of a man’s life, a man who fought in World War II, then became a successful editor, enjoying the world of literature and all that New York and surroundings had to offer during the 1950s and onward. This character, Philip Bowman, reminds me of a kind of classic fictional character of this age (an age to have fought in WWII) found in the works of many male authors of the mid-20th century, such as John Updike, Norman Mailer, John Cheever, and William Styron. The story is mainly about Bowman’s work, travel, and serial relationships with women (he married once, early, and divorced soon after; the rest of his relationships are fairly brief and often either unexciting or, in one case at least, troubled, in a sad way). I wish there had been more about his work and about the authors he knew, and perhaps less about his love and sex life. Although Bowman is at the center of American literary life, in Manhattan post-WWII, and although he has adventures in Europe and elsewhere, his story, and his character, seem curiously subdued; his emotions seem tamped down, perhaps typical of the way men of that era were supposed to deal with emotion. When he once commits a rather shocking act of revenge on a woman he had loved who betrayed and cheated him, this act stands out dramatically for its breach of his usual understatedness. I have to say, finally, that I admire “All That Is” more than I actually like it.

Blurbing's Gender Bias

There has been much written over the years, including a recent flurry of articles, columns and blogposts, on the fact that women writers (especially of fiction) are still disadvantaged in that they are less often asked to write reviews in major venues, and their books are less reviewed in those venues. Also, their novels are treated as if they are just for women: “women’s writing about women’s topics” (or some such words, usually said ever-so-slightly condescendingly; most people know better than to say this out loud), even when male writers who write about the same topics (often love, relationships, families) are lauded. I have posted several times on these issues. Recently I have been noticing that the blurbs on the back of novels by women are either by women and men writers, although slightly tilted to women writers, but the blurbs on the back of male writers’ novels are generally almost all by fellow male writers. For example, to name just a few recent novels that I have read, am reading, or will read and post on: “Z,” by Therese Anne Fowler is blurbed by women only; “The Humanity Project,” by Jean Thompson and “The End of the Point” by Elizabeth Graver are blurbed by an almost 50/50 mixture of men and women writers; however, “All That Is,” by James Salter, is blurbed by five (all very famous) male writers. In no individual case is this gendered difference necessarily pre-planned (I am guessing, although I may be wrong), nor is it “wrong” in any individual case. But the cumulative effect of such blurbing practices, conscious or unconscious, also erodes the respect that is given to women’s fiction, and perpetuates the notion that men’s endorsements mean more, and that men's literature is a different world than women’s literature. Blurbing practices may seem of trivial importance, but I believe they contribute to the whole picture, a picture that is still distorted rather than representative of the writing and reading populations.

"The End of the Point," by Elizabeth Graver

When I first read a description of Elizabeth Graver’s novel “The End of the Point” (Harper, 2013), I thought it would be a typical novel about generations of a family at their summer house in New England. I am attracted to this genre of novel, but such novels are generally on the “beach read” end of the continuum, not highly literary, so those were my expectations going in to this novel. Then I read much praise of the novel -- one which fits the above description of a family with a summer house -- from some of the writers I follow on Facebook, so I became even more interested in reading it, and at the same time had higher expectations of it, literarily. It is in fact a serious novel about four generations of a family during the years of 1942-1999, and although it has some of the “family saga”/family drama aspects of the “beach novel,” it is sadder, more wistful, more tentative, more aware of depression and death in the midst of life, than such novels generally are. There are moments of beauty, of connection to the land and sea, and moments of historical insight. There is war, there is peace, there is drama, there is prosperity, there is illness and there is death. The characters are at times compelling, but more often seem remote, unknowable, perhaps largely because of the pain and depression several of them endure. Probably the best thing about the novel is the connections among the family members, even when they are torn by the events that separate them, or puzzle them about each other.

A Writer's "Revenge Edits" on Wikipedia

We know that technology has both enriched and invaded many parts of our lives; it has affected the world of literature as well. I don’t just mean e-readers and online publishing; I just read a fascinating article, titled “Revenge, Ego, and the Corruption of Wikipedia,” by Andrew Leonard in Salon (5/17/13), about a novelist who secretly (under a pseudonym), over a period of years, negatively edited the Wikipedia pages of several writers with whom he was feuding, and positively edited his own page. Apparently writer Robert Clark Young, under the name “Qworty” (and occasionally under other false names – which are apparently in the Wikipedia world called “sock puppets”) changed, for example, the late writer Barry Hannah’s page, making 14 edits, including one deleting his reputation as a good mentor, and one changing the cause of death from “natural causes” to “alcoholism” (although, Leonard says, Hannah had been sober for years). Leonard, through his investigation, was able to show strong evidence that Young was in fact “Qworty,” and after initially denying it, Young finally admitted it, but claimed that all the editing had been done within Wikipedia’s rules. It turned out that Young had been at one of Hannah's workshops and felt he hadn't been well treated. Young has now been banned by Wikipedia from editing biographical pages of living persons. The reason Leonard finds this case so disturbing is that it undermines the idea of Wikipedia's being a great living mechanism in which many readers/writers can update and share knowledge, and that inaccuracies are corrected by other Wikipedia patrons. The idea of contributors secretly using Wikipedia to carry out feuds, in what some label “revenge edits,” compromises the lofty goals of the online encyclopedia. It is perhaps particularly disturbing for those of us interested in the world of literature to hear of this behavior, behavior that can erode or destroy reputations with false “information.” I am guessing that Young is not the only one to carry out these reprehensible actions, and perhaps readers who don’t expect it are naïve. Still, it is disappointing and disturbing, and I hope Wikipedia will find better ways to prevent such behavior.

"The Humanity Project," by Jean Thompson

I “discovered” Jean Thompson’s fiction in the past few years, and was very impressed by it, but then she disappeared under my radar for a while. She doesn’t seem to get a lot of reviews and publicity. I recently saw a brief mention of her new novel, “The Humanity Project” (Blue Rider Press/Penguin, 2013), obtained a copy, and just finished reading it. I was not bowled over by it, but I did find the interweaving stories of the various characters engaging. I also liked the story’s being set in Marin County (just north of San Francisco), where I live; although the author lives in Illinois, she must have spent quite a bit of time in Marin, as the descriptions of the local towns, roads, parks, schools, and other sites are quite frequent and detailed. The title of the book comes from the name of a rather quixotic and unfocused foundation set up by Mrs. Foster, an older woman with money she is determined to give away (much to the distress of her adult daughters). Other characters include her assistant, Christie; Christie’s neighbor Art, whose teenaged daughter Linnea (whom he has barely seen for years) moves across the country to live with him after a horrific school shooting traumatizes her in her old home; and the beaten down, very unlucky Sean and his resourceful son Conner. The psychological and social aspects of these characters and their relationships are well portrayed and intriguing. Perhaps because there isn’t a clear arc to the plot, the book at times, and even at the end, feels a bit inert. This is a book that is definitely about character and social/moral questions rather than about plot. Questions about how and why some people have more opportunities and material wealth and some have so much less, and what should be done about it, are certainly timely. There is an air of low-key hopelessness that pervades much of the book; fortunately, there are a couple of cautiously high notes at the end of the novel.

For Mother's Day: "What My Mother Gave Me," edited by Elizabeth Benedict

Today's post is in honor of Mother's Day tomorrow. As a woman who has a wonderful mother, and is a mother to a wonderful adult daughter, I was of course drawn to a collection of essays by women writers titled “What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts that Mattered Most” (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2013), edited by the novelist Elizabeth Benedict (whose edited book, "Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives," was one of the very first books I wrote about on this blog). This book is easy to read quickly, but many of the contributions merit being read, or re-read, slowly. This could easily have been a collection of Hallmark-y, tritely sentimental pieces, but it isn’t; the brief essays are original, thoughtful, surprising, and touching. Not all of the writers had good relationships with their mothers, and some are very clear-eyed about their mothers’ shortcomings. But each of the writers has a memory of some point of connection and love, whether it be representative of a wonderful relationship or an exception in a difficult relationship. Sometimes the gift described is a physical object; sometimes it is a shared memorable experience; and sometimes it is a trait passed on from mother to daughter. Among the gifts are a photograph, a book, jewelry, clothing, a quilt, trips, a love of dressing well or of creating a hospitable home, and a positive attitude toward life. A bonus for me, and for many other readers, I am sure, is the chance to read some of our favorite writers as they share these very personal memories. The writers include, to name some of the authors with whose work I am most familiar, Mary Gordon, Joyce Carol Oates, Elissa Schappell, Caroline Leavitt, Katha Pollitt, Rita Dove, Lisa See, Marge Piercy, Mary Morris, and Elinor Lipman (about whose two 2013 books I have very recently posted).

"The Mothers," by Jennifer Gilmore

I am usually wary of novels that are “about” a certain topic. “The Mothers,” by Jennifer Gilmore, is decidedly and unapologetically about adoption, and it is worth reading because Gilmore creates an emotionally gripping novel about the painful, long drawn out process a couple often goes through when trying to adopt. Although I knew intellectually that prospective adoptive parents often encounter difficulties, I wasn’t truly aware of how difficult it (usually) is to adopt, and of the enormous emotional toll it often takes on those hopeful couples. (I know single people adopt as well, and I believe it is even harder for them, but this novel focuses on a heterosexual couple, Jesse and Ramon.) Children to adopt are less and less available in the United States, and many other countries do not permit, or have stopped permitting, Americans to adopt their children. An added source of stress is the constant wonder about the best answers to give, and the ideal ways to present themselves, to adoption agencies and/or, in the case of open adoptions, to the pregnant birth mothers who will decide to whom their children will go for adoption. A strange courtship process goes on in these cases, causing the main character of this novel, for example, to constantly second guess herself, her communication with the birth mothers, and the birth mothers’ motives. Gilmore makes us live through and feel every stage of the decision, the search, the hopes, the setbacks, the scams, and more. She never lets us off the hook. I won’t spoil the story by revealing what happens at the end of the novel. __

"The View from Penthouse B," by Elinor Lipman

Elinor Lipman has had a good year this year. In addition to her new collection of essays, "I Can't Complain," which I posted about last time, she has just published another 2013 title, the novel "The View from Penthouse B" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Written with her usual wry humor, this novel tells of recent middle-aged widow Gwen-Laura Schmidt's moving in with her recently divorced older sister, Margo, in her beautiful penthouse apartment. Margo's husband Charles is in prison; he is a doctor who was found to be practicing medical fraud of an unusual sort. In addition, Margo lost all her divorce settlement to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. So the sisters live in a beautiful Manhattan apartment but have little money. They take in a renter, young gay aspiring pastry chef Anthony, who becomes a kind of surrogate son and friend. The three of them create their own version of family, and are very involved with each other's lives. Other characters include Gwen and Margo's sister Betsy, Gwen's support group, Charles' recently discovered 19 year old son, Chaz; Anthony's sister Olivia; and a few others. A major plot line is whether and when Gwen will be ready to date again; her adventures into the dating world are humorously described. Another plot line is, upon his release from prison, Charles's courtship of his ex-wife Margo. There are several topical themes, including the Madoff issue, and the vicissitudes of middle-aged dating, especially meeting potential dates online. But finally the main topic is how we all need people who care about us, who have our backs, and how these people may be family members, romantic and/or marital partners, roommates, and/or friends; we all -- if we are lucky -- make our own versions of family, our own support systems. Lipman is perhaps not among the very top literary writers of this generation, but she reliably produces well written, engaging, entertaining, funny and touching books, novels that embody her deep sense of humanity couched in a humorous mode. Her books are generous gifts to her readers.