"Suburban Dreams"

My friend Beth Yarnelle Edwards has had exhibitions of her art photography all over the United States and Europe, and in India. Her work has been featured in many publications, including Harper's and The New Yorker, and has received multiple awards. Now she has had a book of her photographs published by Kehrer in Germany; there is also an English language version, soon to be available in the United States. These stunning color photographs are windows into middle class life in Silicon Valley, California, as well as in France, Germany, Spain, and The Netherlands. They are impressive in their composition and fascinating in what they reveal. One could spend a long time looking at all the telling details in each photograph. There's an older couple in their kitchen, several teenagers and children in their suburban bedrooms and playrooms, and several people in bed, just to name a few subjects. The settings are various rooms of various houses, often elaborately overdecorated but sometimes artistically spare, as well as driveways with basketball hoops, and garages. Each one suggests a whole world. Viewers become curious about the individuals, about the families, about the cultures that are portrayed; our imaginations are engaged. This book is a large, handsome one, beautifully produced; each photograph has its own page. There are introductory essays by the critics Robert Evren and Christoph Tannert that are illuminating, putting Edwards' work in context and helping readers see some of the artistic subtleties of the work. This is an impressive collection of photographs.

"Cross Channel"

On 5/21/11, I posted about how much I liked the stories in Julian Barnes’ new book, “Pulse.” I have now just read a much earlier collection of his stories, “Cross Channel” (Knopf, 1996). As you might guess from the title, these stories feature the visits, brief or extended over many years, of British people to France. The stories take place over a period of 300 years, and they capture some of the fraught feelings of the British about France: fascination, attraction, mystification, suspicion, arrogance, inferiority, superiority, envy, and more. I found some of the historical stories less appealing than those from the 20th century, but that is just my personal preference. The story I liked best was a haunting one titled “Evermore,” in which the main character takes a week every year to go to France and visit the grave of her brother, who died in World War I. On the way, she honors not just her brother but all the war dead by visiting other soldiers’ cemeteries along the way. She is old herself now, but she has made this honoring of the war dead her life’s work, and she will continue doing so until she cannot do it any longer. I had mixed feelings about this collection, but as I said, that might be due to my own preferences regarding time periods and subject matter. In any case, this theme -- the British in France -- is an interesting organizing principle, and Barnes, as always, writes intriguingly and well.

Memorable Children in Novels

I have posted lists of memorable characters (3/6/11) and memorable settings (3/11/11); today I list some memorable child characters in novels for adults. Some of these are children throughout the novels in which they appear; some start as children and grow up during the course of the novels. Some of these child characters are memorable in a positive way, some in a frightening way. They are a very diverse group. But in all cases, the authors’ portrayals of these children are vivid, and stay in my mind even sometimes decades after reading the novels.

- Pip (in Great Expectations)
- Jane (in Jane Eyre)
- Jude, called “Little Father Time” (in Jude the Obscure)
- Maggie (in The Mill on the Floss)
- Susan, Rhoda, Jinny, Louis, Bernard, and Neville (in The Waves)
- Miles and Flora (in The Turn of the Screw)
- Antonia (in My Antonia)
- Ralph, Jack, Simon, and Piggy (in Lord of the Flies)
- Sandy and Rose (in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)
- Frankie (in The Member of the Wedding)
- Scout (in To Kill a Mockingbird)
- Phineas (in A Separate Peace)
- Holden Caulfield (in The Catcher in the Rye)
- Owen Meany (in A Prayer for Owen Meany)

"The Year We Left Home"

I think Jean Thompson is a wonderful writer, and have enjoyed reading her books ever since I discovered her fiction in about 2007. So I was pleased to read her latest book, “The Year We Left Home” (Simon & Schuster, 2011). This novel portrays an Iowa family over a period of thirty years, from 1973 to 2003. The Ericksons -- father, mother, and four children, as well as their various relatives -- are rooted in Iowa, but some of the younger generation feel the eternal call of young people to go “away” –- somewhere bigger and better and different. Yet there is always the countervailing call of the place and community called “home.” This push-pull between home and away, between the old and the new, between the known and the unknown, is a major theme in the novel, as is the eternal theme of the deep, primeval connection with family. The family events take place against the backdrop of national events such as the Vietnam War and its aftermath for veterans, the women’s movement, and the vicissitudes of the economy. The characters are very believable, and the story is compelling.

"The Love of My Youth"

I remember discovering Mary Gordon’s work when she published her first novel, “Final Payments,” in 1978; what a jolt of originality that novel was, and all her succeeding novels, stories, and nonfiction have been! So of course when I saw she had a new novel out this year, I found and read it. “The Love of My Youth” (Pantheon, 2011) tells the story of Miranda and Adam, who were the loves of each other’s lives during high school and college, until a great betrayal took place. While they were together, they spent one glorious summer in Rome; they now meet in Rome again, by chance, some 35 years later. They are each happily married now, with children. Wary of but drawn to each other, they spend three weeks walking, seeing the sights, sitting at cafes, and –- most of all –- talking. Gradually they relearn about each other. The novel goes back and forth between Miranda’s and Adam’s past and present together. This novel is a love letter to young love, as well as to the city of Rome, whose light and beauty is described in gorgeous detail. But to me -- probably influenced by being about the same age as the protagonists -- this novel is most of all about our relationships with our pasts. How did we get to this stage in our lives? What is our relationship now with the people we were all those years ago -- years that seem long and at the same time fleeting? How would our lives be different now if we had done this instead of that, been with this person instead of that one, moved to this city instead of that one? What happens when our pasts and presents collide? Have we kept the intensity of feelings we had about those dramatic and intense times in our lives -- especially the years of late adolescence and young adulthood? Or have we mellowed, moved beyond them, even let them go, as we have gone on to live our adult lives in predictable and unpredictable ways? “The Love of My Youth” brings all these questions to the fore.

On E-Readers and Libraries: No Comment

The following two items are among those in the "Fresh Ink" column of the San Francisco Chronicle's "Books" section today (5/22/11, p. G8) -- a telling juxtaposition. As Ms. Magazine's last page of each issue, a compendium of outrageous ads and other affronts, is titled: "No Comment."

Item 1: "Amazon.com has reached a milestone: The company now sells more e-books than printed books. For every 100 printed books sold, the retailer said, it sells 105 e-books. The company introduced its e-reader, the Kindle, in 2007."

Item 2: "Charles Simic, the poet, has written a powerful piece on the importance of public libraries. 'I don't know of anything more disheartening than the sight of a shut down library,' he writes in the blog post at the new York Review of Books (www.nybooks.com). 'Their slow disappearance is a tragedy, not just for those impoverished towns and cities, but for everyone everywhere terrified at the thought of a country without libraries.'"

"Pulse"

"Pulse" (2011) is an apt title for a collection of short stories that has its finger on the pulse of the (mostly) contemporary, (mostly) English characters in these very readable stories by the esteemed English writer, Julian Barnes. Representative of these educated, liberal, witty, self-aware characters are those recurring in the four very enjoyable "At Phil & Joanna's" stories, which consist almost entirely of lively, entertaining dinner party conversations. But the stories that most appealed to me, and will linger in my mind, are contemporary but with roots in the characters' pasts. For example, the two aging female novelists in the story "Sleeping with John Updike" are both resilient and canny, and both support and are critical of each other; they help each other survive and prosper, in a modest, low-key way, with only a few regrets, bravely borne. The best and most touching story is the last one, "Pulse," with its portrayal of the narrators' parents and their long and loving marriage. Their undramatic but rock solid and tender love for each other is the narrator's inspiration, yet makes his own failed marriage a sad contrast. But also inspiring and lovely is his great regard and love for his parents, and all he learns from them about love, courage, and grace...truly the "pulse" of life at its best.