"Do Not Become Alarmed," by Maile Meloy

Last time I posted about a rather predictable and only mildly amusing “travel” novel, “The Last Laugh.” The “travel” novel I write about today is much less predictable, much more gripping and suspenseful. “Do Not Become Alarmed” (Riverhead, 2017), by the well-regarded Maile Meloy, tells of two families who take a cruise together from the U.S. into Central America. The families, two couples with two children each, are related, and the trip is planned as a change of pace and healing distraction for one of the women, whose mother has died recently. At first everyone is excited about the luxuries and variety of activities on the ship, and the sense of adventure they feel. But one day soon, they take a day trip into an unnamed country, and suddenly everything goes horribly awry. The children, along with two adolescents they have met on the ship, disappear. (This has been mentioned in every review of the book that I have read, and happens early on, so this is not a spoiler.) The rest of the book consists of how the children deal with being lost and falling into the wrong hands, and how the parents panic and do everything they can to find the children, but feel horribly helpless and overwhelmed with fear and grief. The stories are told alternately. To tell the truth, when I initially read the reviews that revealed this plot, I thought I would not be able to bear to read the book, but somehow I changed my mind and read it after all, and am glad I did. It is in fact painful to read in some parts, but the story is so vivid, so well told, with such interesting characters and plot developments, that it completely captured my attention. Clearly it has done the same for many other readers, as it has been on some bestseller lists. Meloy is a gifted writer.

"The Last Laugh," by Lynn Freed

Lynn Freed’s novel “The Last Laugh” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017) is a sort of slightly dispiriting, rather self-conscious making-fun-of-the-genre romp. Three women friends in their late sixties with backgrounds in South Africa, Europe, and the United States decide to live on a Greek island together for a year. They (or at least two of them) decide they have outlived passion and men, and are also tired of the complications of their grown children’s lives; they just want to take a break from all that and enjoy the pleasures of Greece with good friends, good food, sunshine, and the other cliches about this kind of adventure. Of course real life intervenes in the form of badly-timed family visits, love affairs, a bit of jealousy, and more. I kept thinking of the most famous older (early 20th century) example of this genre, “Enchanted April” (about which I posted on 12/20/14), and how lovely it was, although (because?) it was set in an earlier time. At one point, one of the characters in Freed’s novel alludes to “Enchanted April” as unrealistic. Perhaps “The Last Laugh” is more realistic, but it is also clumsier and more self-consciously whimsical. It is a quick, fun read but rather forgettable.

"The Burning Girl," by Claire Messud

Fiction about young girls and their friendships is important, and I am happy to find such novels when they take those girls and those friendships seriously. Claire Messud, an undeniably serious writer (see, for example, “The Emperor’s Children” and “The Woman Upstairs,” the latter of which I posted about here on 5/29/13), has written about such a friendship in “The Burning Girl” (W.W. Norton, 2017). The narrator, Julia, looks back on her long, intense childhood friendship with Cassie, a friendship that ended four years earlier in late middle school when the two drifted away from each other and then experienced a dreadful event that brought them together in a way that their friendship could not survive. The two girls had always been extremely close, despite somewhat different family backgrounds. They felt they could almost read each other's minds. Julia’s family is more traditional; her loving parents are still married and middle-class. Cassie’s single mother is also loving, and a little less middle-class; Cassie's father died when she was very young. Some of the events the two girls go through are the usual ones of early adolescence, but nothing is “usual” about Messud’s dead-on description. The friendship starts to go awry when Cassie first endures the entrance into her life of her mother’s new and controlling boyfriend, and is further derailed as she imagines that her father might still be alive, which belief preoccupies her and leads to trouble. There is also a sort of complicated competition for a boy, Peter. Messud’s achievement in this novel is not so much about the specifics of the plot (although it is a compelling one) as it is about its portrayal of girls’ lives and relationships at that critical and delicate time period when they are emerging from childhood. Adults often do not take the intensity of girls’ (or perhaps of boys’ either) feelings and experiences as seriously as they should. Those adults vaguely remember some of this, but experiences and feelings fade, and we perhaps downplay their importance and their longterm influences on us. We may remember very well that those years were intense, but we can’t really recapture the depths and textures of that intensity, and life moves on. It is both pleasurable and painful to be reminded by this very evocative portrayal of what those years can be like.

RIP Kate Millett

RIP Kate Millett, leading second wave feminist, brilliant scholar, writer, activist, and artist. Millett died Sept. 6, 2017, in Paris, where she and her wife had gone to celebrate Millett’s upcoming 83rd birthday. Her “Sexual Politics” (1970) was a groundbreaking book on feminism that made a huge impact. It was based on her dissertation at Oxford, and blended literary analysis, history, politics, and philosophy. Millett wrote ten books, on topics such as her bisexuality, her mental illness, and the lives of various other women. She also created much visual art. Her life was not easy, but she never gave up on trying to make a difference for women and others. Gloria Steinem (as quoted in the New York Times) remembers her as follows: “She wrote about the politics of male dominance, of owning women’s bodies as the means of reproduction, and made readers see this as basic to hierarchies of race and class.” It is hard to say strongly enough how influential Millett’s work was, especially “Sexual Politics,” and how it was a critical part of the heady days of second wave feminism. Steinem also notes that Andrew Dworkin said that Millett "woke us up." I remember those days well, and I still have on my bookshelf a somewhat worn copy of “Sexual Politics,” which indeed, along with other feminist classic books, woke this lifelong feminist up. I also read several of her other books. Here I want to offer my heartfelt tribute to Kate Millett and to thank her for her powerful and original writing and her fearless activism.

"The Customer is Always Wrong," by Mimi Pond

I hadn’t read a graphic novel for a while, but have just read Mimi Pond’s “The Customer is Always Wrong” (Drawn & Quarterly, 2017). This was enjoyable to read, although (because?) very similar to her 2014 graphic novel, “Over Easy” (about which I posted here on 5/11/14). Both books are semi-fictionalized versions of the author/artist’s time working in a restaurant in Oakland, California, back in the late seventies and early eighties, and the characters and story lines are quite similar, although this seems to be a sequel to the earlier novel. It could easily be titled something like “More Stories of My Crazy Days in the Restaurant” or some such. The main character, Madge, is a little older and a little less naive than she was at the beginning of “Over Easy,” and since she has had some comics published, she has her ambitions to move to New York and make a career as a comics/graphics writer; she is saving money toward that, but that stash of money keeps getting diverted. Meanwhile she continues to be a server at the restaurant, and tells the stories of the various fellow workers there as well as of some of the “regulars.” There are still a lot of drugs, and there is still a lot of sex. And lots of drama, in this case even including some rather scary criminals (although this storyline ends up softened, eventually…). And some sadness. The manager of the restaurant, Lazlo, is probably the most interesting character: a poet, a confidant to Madge and others, tough but kind. The drawings are still in green ink. The facial expressions of the characters are, again, a highlight.

"Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage," by Dani Shapiro

Dani Shapiro has written a lovely, thoughtful, sad, inspiring, and thought-provoking memoir about marriage (and life…). “Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage” (Knopf, 2017) is Shapiro’s fourth memoir, so does not claim to be an all-inclusive take on her life, but instead focuses on the 18 years of her (third) marriage, to the man she here calls “M.” Before their marriage, M. was a foreign correspondent all over the world, including in many dangerous war-torn countries. He is now a writer, notably a screenwriter. Shapiro herself is a longtime writer. The couple married when she was 35 and he was 41. They are now in their fifties, with a sixteen-year-old son, and live in Connecticut. This memoir appears to be remarkably candid, yet at the same time Shapiro is respectful of the feelings of her husband; this is a true balancing act. They seem to be deeply in love, yet have had to deal with difficult pressures and questions and events, as almost all married couples do. Both the author and M., individually and together, wonder about the roads not taken in the past, and worry about the future. Shapiro faces head-on the fact that all married couples know (if they allow themselves to think about it): no matter how much they love each other, and no matter how long they have been together, they never truly know each other completely, and they can never be completely sure about what the future will bring to their marriage and their lives. Shapiro’s writing is insightful, beautiful, full of vivid examples, and always inconclusive, just like life. Marriage is both made of specific events, feelings, and phases, on the one hand, and completely mysterious, on the other hand. And it is sometimes heartbreaking, as Shapiro clearly shows. She effectively draws on literary sources. She gracefully moves back and forth between the immediate and the longterm, between the specific and the general. Intertwined with the topic of marriage are, as the title indicates, the topics of time and memory. This is a beautiful, evocative little (145 pages) book that I recommend to anyone who is or has been or plans to be married, or in a similar relationship. I know that while and after reading “Hourglass,” I did some thinking about and made some connections with my own longish (OK, 38 years long) marriage. Here I want to give tribute to my very recently widowed friend B. and her late husband S., the latter of whom died last week, and their 67-year marriage. They have had their share of ups and downs regarding life circumstances, but they have had one of the most solid, joyful, and inspiring marriages I know, along with being two of the kindest, best people I know.

"Isn't That Rich?" Life Among the 1%," by Richard Kirshenbaum

Because of my scholarly interest in social class issues (I have spoken about these matters at academic conferences and published about them in academic journals and as chapters in books), I am always on the lookout for related books, whether scholarly or popular. “Isn’t That Rich? Life Among the 1%” (Open Road, 2015), by Richard Kirshenbaum, is decidedly of the latter type (popular). Kirschenbaum is in Advertising and is also an author; the essays in this book are taken from his New York Observer column about the lives of the rich and famous in New York City. He appears to mingle freely with many of these, and writes with what appears to be inside knowledge and authority, as well as with humor. He (wisely!) mostly doesn’t name names, but uses aliases for his examples and informants, such as Master of the Universe, Chic Brunette Heiress, International Playboy Posse, and Our Lady of the East River. His tone is diplomatic, fond, and bemused (but very aware) rather than sharply critical or mocking. In fact, he takes a sort of faux-anthropological perspective on the New York one percent. His writing is lively and his examples are entertaining (although sometimes it is hard to deal with the excessive behavior that goes with excessive wealth in some cases). His topics include marriages of rich people, divorces, nannies and drivers, exclusive private schools, art collecting, “paid friends,” restaurants and food, charity events and other parties, the Hamptons, the Upper East Side, international travel to the most fashionable places in Europe and elsewhere, “social climb-overs” (using one rich friend to meet a new, probably even richer, friend), and “the reverse brag.” Although the world of the richest New Yorkers isn’t directly connected with my academic topic (wealthy and well-traveled international students in the United States, and the implications of having many such students at U.S. universities), this book contributes overall context. And, I must admit, it is fun to read, if somewhat horrifying at times; it definitely sets off alarms and offends my political/social belief in more equality and a much smaller gap between the rich and the poor. So I read it not knowing if I should feel guilty when I was amused and entertained. It is a good thing that I can (honestly) tell you (readers of this blog) that my excuse for reading the book is that it informs my academic research!