GUEST POST: "The Song of Achilles" and "Circe," by Madeline Miller

I am very pleased that my colleague and friend Cathy Gabor has written a guest post on two books by Madeline Miller. Thank you, Cathy! Here it is: "I recently read two books by Madeline Miller, both retellings of—or, more accurately, elaborations on—Greek myths: The Song of Achilles (2011, winner of the Orange Prize) and Circe (2018). They are roughly analogous to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey but with clear departures. If people know anything about Achilles, it is most likely that he was a hero in the Trojan War. And, indeed, a good part of Miller’s Song of Achilles takes place during that war. Despite the title, the book’s main character is Patroclus, not Achilles. Readers may remember Patroclus as a minor character in Homer’s Iliad, known as Achilles’ trusted friend. Miller’s telling of their lives starts when they are both young boys. Achilles is a demi-god, fated to become Aristos Achaion: the best of the Greeks. He is handsome, lithe, and as talented with the lyre as he is with the sword. Patroclus, conversely, is a pudgy youth, awkward, striving to find what he might be good at. In a word, Patroclus is unnoticeable. But Achilles notices him—and falls in love with him. Song of Achilles is a tale of war, yes, but it is mostly a poignant story of young lovers discovering themselves and each other. In the end, Miller’s book does not celebrate heroes; it celebrates the fumbling, fallible humanity of Patroclus, and all of us. Although Song of Achilles is markedly different from the Iliad, it does follow the same narrative arc. Circe, on the other hand, intersects with Homer’s Odyssey much less often and less neatly. If readers know anything about the minor goddess Circe, it is probably that Odysseus spent time on her island while traveling home from the Trojan war. Homer’s story is about him; Circe is but a chapter in his journey. For Miller, Circe is the main character: an immortal witch involved in many different stories from Greek mythology, some familiar and some created anew. When I had read roughly one-third of the book, I felt as if I were at the end of a narrative. Miller had successfully woven Circe into the myths of Daedalus and the Minotaur, and had seemingly concluded. I wondered what could possibly fill up the next 285 pages. In the middle of the book, Miller delivered another episode of Circe’s millennia-long life, this time paralleling Homer’s familiar tale, ending with Odysseus leaving her island. Now two-thirds of the way through the book, I feared a 100-page long denouement. Not so: Miller conjured up a creative sequel to the Odyssey, starring Circe and Odysseus’ wife Penelope. Circe’s greatest strength is its greatest weakness: it is three stories (more, really) in one. In the most interesting part of the book, Miller fabricates a female-centered myth, pitting mortal Penelope, magical Circe, and the Goddess Athena against one another. I recommend these books to readers who know Greek mythology well: you will nod at unexplained allusions, surely, and enjoy the backstories Miller paints for some of the most beloved myths. I recommend these books equally to those who could not name one Greek god or hero. These books stand on their own: they are tales of love, heartache, aging, parenthood, and pride. While the characters are fanciful and ancient, their stories are our stories. Read, and recognize yourself."

Yet More Memoirs: By Vicki Laveau-Harvie and Natasha Trethewey

Two more memoirs that I have recently read are powerful and painful. Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s “The Erratics” (Knopf, 2020) tells of an extremely dysfunctional family. The two adult children of a delusional and dangerous mother and a cowed, abused father are called back to their parents’ home in a cold and isolated area of Canada when their mother is sick and their father is starving. They feel obligated to help their elderly parents, but all the old destructive patterns are still there. The sisters’ work for their parents is heroic, given their extremely difficult childhoods. Readers are forced to confront wrenching questions of family and history and loyalty. Natasha Trethewey’s “Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir” (Ecco, 2020) is tragic in a different way, but still related to family. The author’s former stepfather shoots and kills her beloved mother, and the nineteen-year-old is left to wrestle with the emotional devastation this violent event leaves in its wake. The author writes of her family’s history, and of how she has tried to move forward. Race (the author is biracial) and domestic abuse are themes throughout. But so, blessedly, is the place of the arts in our lives. The author is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and a former U.S. poet laureate, and her poetic prose is a beautiful feature of this short, intense memoir.

"Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger: A Memoir," by Lisa Donovan

As I have mentioned more than once, I have recently been reading more memoirs than ever. Lisa Donovan’s “Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger” (Penguin, 2020) is yet another memoir I have read from the world of food and restaurants. Donovan is a well-known pastry chef who put a spotlight on traditional Southern food. But the book is at least as much about the author’s family, her insecurities, her struggles, as it is about her actual work in restaurants and in food writing. (Besides being a renown pastry chef, she is a winner of the James Beard Award for her writing in “Food and Wine.”) She writes in detail about her life with an abusive man (whom she found the strength to leave), her children, her parents and other relatives, her financial struggles, her praise of some food world mentors and her criticisms of others in the restaurant world, and her eventually finding love and happiness with her husband and children and the cherished family members and friends in her life. Themes throughout include the importance of family (even occasionally difficult families whom one has to find a way to understand and come to terms with), of being rooted in one’s place of origin and other places that feel like home, and – perhaps most of all – of honoring other women and oneself as a woman. The book is perhaps overwritten a bit, with sometimes melodramatic signaling of events to come, but overall it is a story in which the author honestly (it seems) shares what she has been through, what she has learned, where she has gone wrong, and how she has gradually discovered her true self and her true values. Despite all the difficulties she has undergone, there is a stubborn resolution to be true to her values and to trust herself to find her way.

Two Compelling Short Story Collections

Short stories are often harder to write about than novels or memoirs, as one cannot be as specific about the plot, character, settings, etc. when there are a dozen or so separate stories to describe. I remember that my former reading group used to have the same issue -- difficulty knowing what to focus on -- when we discussed short story collections. Of course there are usually things to say about themes, topics, and styles that are true across the stories of a collection. And regular readers of this blog know that I am a big fan of short stories. In this post I will very briefly describe and recommend two recent short story collections that I have particularly admired and enjoyed. The first is “The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories” (Riverhead, 2020), by Danielle Evans. This is a book that will make any reader sit up and take decided note. The stories, mostly about African American women, are powerful, original, astringent, relatable (even when the reader has no obvious overlap with the characters’ defining qualities), sometimes humorous, and definitely very frank. Caroline Kim’s “The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories” (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020) features very different locales, time periods, and characters, focusing on Korean and Korean-American characters (often but not always women) from ancient Korea to the present. Yet there are commonalities between the two books. Both feature vividly described, intense experiences and emotions. In both, readers learn about cultures that may (or may not) be different from their own, but are also universal in some ways. I sometimes think I overuse the adjective “compelling” when I write about books, but the word certainly aptly describes both of these excellent collections. I promise you that you will find each of them engaging and rewarding.

"The Book of Eating," by Adam Platt

Again with the restaurant memoirs, you might be thinking! Longtime readers of this blog know that I love restaurants and I love restaurant memoirs. I have read at least a couple of dozen of these over the years, starting with the late Anthony Bourdain’s notorious and wildly popular “Kitchen Confidential,” and most recently our own San Francisco chef Dominique Crenn’s “Rebel Chef” and New York’s David Chang’s “Eat a Peach.” In between, the food world memoirs I have read include those by Bianca Bosker, Frank Bruni, Phoebe Damrosch, Betty Fussell, Gabrielle Hamilton, David Kamp, Danny Meyer, Ruth Reichl, Eric Ripert, Marcus Samuelsson, and Kim Severson. I just finished restaurant critic Adam Platt’s “The Book of Eating” (Ecco, 2019). For many years I have subscribed to New York Magazine, and read Platt’s restaurant column there. Although I do not live in New York, I enjoy keeping up a bit with the restaurant scene there. And I have always liked Platt’s down-to-earth persona and style in his reviews and articles. This memoir completely comports with his magazine pieces. In addition, I was fascinated with his stories of his upbringing in Asia (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, China) as the son of a U.S. diplomat. Most of his stories of those days, besides showing a very happy family, are about his family’s eating adventures in those countries, sometimes with the whole family and sometimes with his two brothers roaming the cities and trying every kind of food available. Perhaps one reason for my being so intrigued by these stories was the way they resonated with my own upbringing in Asia, in my case in South India. As I started thinking about this connection, food memories came to life, and I became quite nostalgic. In my case some of the foods were basmati rice, biryani, pilau, all kinds of curries, dosa, idli, mulligatawny, papadams, patchidi, perigoo, chaat, pulaharam, guavas, mangos, custard apples, saportas, and more. I remember feasts with food served on stitched together waxy palm leaves. I remember vacations on the beach when we would buy fish straight from the returning fisherman and cook them immediately. I remember going with my friends to the bazaar near our boarding school in the Palni Hills and eating all kinds of food, and drinking tea tossed in the air between two containers. I also, more mundanely but also pleasurably, remember “food parcels” from Canada, including American goodies of various sorts, especially candy bars. Back to Platt’s memoir: He writes of his various jobs as a journalist, his travels, and his gradual focus on becoming a restaurant reviewer/critic. He tells some amusing stories about the process of reviewing, as well as about various people in the food world, some very famous, with whom he interacted along the way. He obviously loves his work. But not all of being a critic is exciting and glamorous; he also tells of eating hundreds of mediocre meals in cookie-cutter restaurants, and of dealing with much criticism of his criticism. He also tells of how things have changed since everyone can now be a critic on the Internet, on Eater and such sites, as well as on Yelp. Readership of newspapers and magazines is dwindling (alas!) and there are fewer and fewer print food writers. Platt also struggles with his weight, and writes about various diets he has been on. A throughline in the memoir is his loved and loving family of origin (fun fact, by the way: one of his brothers is the actor Oliver Platt) and his own equally loving family of his wife and two daughters. Some endearingly candid photos are included. Because some of the chapters are revised versions of already-published pieces, there is some (very minor) repetition from one chapter to another. And there are a couple of sections that drag just a bit. But overall, this is a thoroughly enjoyable memoir by a writer who is companionable, down-to-earth, wry and funny, and a wonderful guide to his adventures and life in the world of food and restaurants.

Celebrating, once again, our wonderful independent bookstores!

I apologize in advance for coming back to a theme I have written about several times before: the importance of supporting independent bookstores. It is just that I feel so strongly about this, and that these stores are endangered by the pandemic. As I have written about a couple of times, most recently on 12/23/20 when I wrote about realizing how many memoirs I had ordered, I have been ordering books online from independent bookstores since the beginning of the pandemic. Pre-pandemic, I either went in person to those same stores, or borrowed books from the library (and donated -- and still donate -- regularly to the Friends of the Library in my town). So I am spending more money than ever on brand new books, but I believe it is more than worth it to give myself this gift during the stay-at-home months, as well as to contribute to the survival and health of these oh-so-important stores. In a recent San Francisco Chronicle article, “Indie Book Shops Have Nurtured Us. It’s Our Turn: We can save them all this winter if we just give them our business,” by Peter Hartlaub (12/20/20), local writers and readers speak of how important these local, well-loved institutions are in our communities. The author tells of writers who sign hundreds of their books especially for their favorite local bookstores, and who ask their readers to buy from independent bookstores; schools that have begun ordering from these independent bookstores; the many customers who attend Zoom readings and other events; and customers and neighbors who have been buying from the stores, and/or making donations. Several writers recall falling in love with books when they were taken regularly to certain bookstores as children. Some speak of the personal attention given, and the deep knowledge of the people who work there. One writer mentions that she often runs into other writers in her favorite local bookstore, intensifying the feeling of community. As the writer Stephen Pastis is quoted in the article: “If you’re not supporting the local bookstores, you will rue the day that bookstore closes. Those people care about the community. They’re another essential part of it.” The reporter reminds us that we can either order from our favorite local bookstores, “or adopt a new one using Indiebound.org, which has a bookstore finder on its home page.” An added pleasure of this article, for me, is that the bookstore featured in the piece, the famous Green Apple, is one I have been going to (or now occasionally ordering deliveries from) since I first arrived in San Francisco, lo these many years ago, and rented an apartment six blocks away from it. I, like many many others, would be devastated if this, or any other of our favorite bookstores, had to close for lack of support from the community of readers. So let’s all keep patronizing these beloved and essential institutions; long live our local independent bookstores!