"The World Without You," by Joshua Henkin

Female authors have, over many years and then with renewed objections in the past couple of years, spoken out about how male writers are still taken more seriously. In particular, they have pointed out that when women write about families, relationships, and other “female” topics, their work is considered less important, but when men write about those topics, they receive kudos. A case in point, they say (and I agree) is the novels of Jonathan Franzen. To quote Jennifer Weiner (from an interview in the Huffington Post, 8/26/10), whose objections to the high praise for Franzen’s novels for their attention to family I have written about before: “It’s a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds when a man writes about family and feelings, it’s literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it’s romance, or a beach book.” She also says that the big reviews and articles in The New York Times and other prominent periodicals tend to be about “white guys. Usually white guys living in Brooklyn or Manhattan, white guys who either have MFAs or teach in MFA programs.” I have just read “The World Without You” (Pantheon, 2012), by Joshua Henkin, who, according to the back flap, “directs the MFA Program in Fiction Writing at Brooklyn College.” Bingo! This book -- very much about family and feelings -- has already been extensively reviewed, and since it just came out last month (and since his earlier novel "Matrimony" was well-reviewed), it is likely that it will be reviewed much more in the months ahead. Although I agree with much of what Weiner has said, for some reason I feel different about Henkin’s novel than I did about Franzen’s “Freedom” – I like it better. (Readers may remember my extreme ambivalence about "Freedom"; I did like Franzen’s earlier novel, “The Corrections.”) “The World Without You” tells of a family torn apart by their grief at their son/brother Leo’s death in Iraq, where he was a journalist. The family meets at their summer house one year after Leo’s death for his memorial service. Leo’s parents David’s and Marilyn’s marriage is suffering because they don’t know how to comfort each other, and each is going a different way. The responses of his older sisters Clarissa, Lily, and Noelle are each affected by their complicated relationships with their parents and with each other, not to mention with their spouses, partners, and children, as well as their very different relationships with being Jewish. Leo's widow, Thisbe, is there with her toddler son Calder, wondering about her future and about her relationship with Leo's family. The main focus of the novel is on the family and their complex reactions, interactions, and expressions of grief. But an also important although less emphasized theme is the unnecessary tragedy of the war in Iraq and of all the terrible losses so many families suffered (and still suffer) because of it. This novel puts a human face on those great losses.

"The Receptionist," by Janet Groth

The New Yorker. New York. Literary stories and gossip. An independent woman figuring out what she wants in life, having adventures, (mostly) happy in her work, longing for love as well. All of these elements and more make Janet Groth’s memoir, “The Receptionist” (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2012), a delight to read. Groth, like so many other Midwestern young people, moved to New York after college to seek a bigger and more exciting life. In her case, the move was from Minnesota, and the year was 1957. She became a receptionist at the offices of The New Yorker magazine, and stayed there for 21 years. During those years, she met and became friends (and sometimes lovers) with many well-known writers, editors, artists, and other members of the New York literary/art world. She went to their parties and became their confidant. She knew about their writing blocks, their affairs, their secrets. She herself hoped to be a writer, but it took a while. She was also a great traveler. And she loved literature, and knew it well. After a few years at the New Yorker, she started studying for her PhD in English literature, and only ended her receptionist job when she got a position as a university professor. She finally did write; her main publications have been on the great critic Edmund Wilson. And now she has written this generous memoir, candidly sharing her experiences and feelings during those 21 New Yorker years. And although the literary stories are wonderful, so too is the portrait of a young woman making her own way in a time before it was common for women to be single, self-supporting, independent, and adventurous. Although she had her troubles and doubts, she seems to have had a strength and belief in herself, and a desire for a full life, that carried her through. This book is beautifully written and a great pleasure to read.

"They Knew Mr. Knight," by Dorothy Whipple

I have now written about several of Dorothy Whipple’s novels, thrilled with having “discovered” her work. (See my posts of 1/24/12, 1/30/12, 2/10/12, and 7/24/12.) I seem to be slowly working my way through her fiction, feeling fortunate that the USF Library has several of her books. The most recent I have read is “They Knew Mr. Knight” (originally published 1934 by John Murray; Persephone republished version, 1968 – and once again, I thank Persephone for these republishings of Whipple and other women writers who would otherwise have faded into the woodwork of the past). This novel tells the story of a robber baron type, Mr. Knight, who seems to succeed at everything he touches in business, and who becomes a benefactor to Thomas and Celia Blake and their family. He helps them prosper, and they are grateful. But, well, not to give away the ending, things change…. This novel was published at a time of a problematic economy (in the U.S. and in England too), and reading it now in another time of a seriously struggling economy is chilling. Mr. Knight prefigures the same class dominating the economy and the news today: a ruling class of businessmen (and I use the term “men” advisedly, although of course there are a few women involved as well) who think it is acceptable to do anything that benefits their businesses and profits (or simply don’t care about the ethical or even legal aspects of what they do, or about whom they hurt along the way). Such names as Bernie Madoff spring to mind. But this novel is not simply a polemic; there is much more in the story, regarding the psychology of the family that gets drawn into the world of Mr. Knight, and regarding the relationships among all the characters, as well as regarding the place of money and class in England and in its people’s lives. In this, as in her other novels and short stories, Whipple’s writing is so very good that the reader luxuriates in reading it.

"The Forever Marriage," by Ann Bauer

I know I sounded a little crabby when I wrote about “The Kissing List,” “Seating Arrangements,” and a couple of other books recently, and now I am going to be crabby again, this time about “The Forever Marriage” (The Overlook Press, 2012), by Ann Bauer. It is hard to warm to a novel that starts with a wife’s being happy when her husband dies of cancer. Not happy because he is no longer in pain, but happy because she is finally released from a marriage of 22 years in which she has been disappointed from the very beginning. Carmen knows and fully admits that Jobe is a good man, but she has never been in love with him, and their love and sex life has been tepid and unsatisfying for her. She married him because she felt grateful to him, and sorry for him, and because she felt grateful to his mother (I know, this reason is strange, but true in this story), and because he had the money that would allow them a comfortable life. She did her duty as a wife and mother, and took good care of him in his illness, but did have affairs. Although it is clear that the marriage was unhappy, one still does not feel comfortable rooting for a character such as Carmen. Yet it slowly becomes clear that Carmen is not a bad person, and that there is more to the story than it seems. The tone of the book is an odd tension between the wrong and even -- seemingly -- despicable, and on the other hand, the heartwarming. This would be unsettling in a good way if the book were better, but as it stands, it just seems a bit artificial. There is a subplot about Jobe’s being a genius mathematician, and about what will happen to his ideas and discoveries in that area; this subplot is mildly interesting but seems tacked on, especially as it brings us to a sort of false-feeling closure at the end of the novel.

"The Kissing List," by Stephanie Reents

Is it my age that makes me come close to disliking the stories and their characters in “The Kissing List: Fiction” (interlocking short stories) (Hogarth, 2012), by Stephanie Reents? Although well written, the stories seem like so many others I have read about smart, well-educated, urban twenty-somethings stumbling their way through life, full of angst, having lots of sex and doing lots of drinking, but not seeming to really enjoy even those pursuits. The characters are not unlikeable but not particularly likeable either. Some of the characters blur; their lives are so similar and so intertwined. I am sure that even for these privileged young people, Reents’s portrayal of the disappointment and difficulty involved in searching for meaningful work and fulfilling relationships is accurate. I also suspect that – except for the unfortunate young woman with cancer – these characters will land on their feet and lead comfortable lives. It is not that I don’t like reading about young people. I do. I enjoy reading about characters of all ages. But this particular subset of young people has been done, and done, and done by young writers. Although each book, including this one, has its own twists and its own rewards, the problem is still a sort of wearying predictability. (P.S. I confess that I skipped one story; when I saw that it featured a mouse, my rodent phobia kicked in, and I thought “No, I just don’t want to read this." So it is possible that this is the one story that would change everything I have written above. But I doubt it.)

"Lulu in Marrakech," by Diane Johnson

Like Alix Kates Shulman, about whose novel “Menage” I posted last time, novelist Diane Johnson was born in the early 1930s. Both of these writers started writing about 1970, and now in their late 70s are still publishing. This is impressive and inspiring. Today I am posting about Diane Johnson’s 2008 novel, “Lulu in Marrakech,” which I just finished listening to in my car on CD (Books on Tape, 2008). I have read most of Johnson’s novels over the years, so when this novel came out, I thought about reading it, but somehow it didn’t sound appealing, probably because the main character is a spy, although a nontypical one, and I am not at all drawn to spy stories (even knowing this novel – despite the spy character - wasn’t actually in that genre). But when looking for books on CD for a recent driving trip, I saw this one on the library shelf and decided to try it. Johnson’s novels, such as her French trilogy (“L’Affaire,” “Le Mariage,” and “Le Divorce”) tend to be beautifully written but light and entertaining rather than profound, although they do make interesting points about marriage and about cultural differences. “Lulu” too has some of this light, comic aspect. But it also reminded me of Johnson’s earlier (1998) novel, “Persian Nights,” about an American woman’s visit to Iran; it has some of the same balance of almost frivolous lightness and more intense political and cultural commentary. To me the main question about Lulu is whether she is intended by the author to be taken as a serious character, or a sort of parody, or a representative of the sort of clueless bungling that spies – American and otherwise – are sometimes known for…or some combination of these elements, or maybe something else entirely. The way Lulu is portrayed, as a kind of girly-girl and yet an independent and fearless woman, is intriguing. Overall I thought this novel was lesser Johnson, but I must admit I enjoyed it more than I expected to.

"Menage," by Alix Kates Shulman

Alix Kates Shulman has had a permanent place in my pantheon of admired women, ever since I read her classic feminist novel, "Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen" (1972). She is (or at least was) also well known for being one of the first to write about how married men and women should share housework (and everything else). Let me take a minute here to thank, once again, the pioneering second wave feminists of the late 60s and the 70s who made such a huge difference for women. As for Shulman: I have only read a couple of her books over the years since then, but I just read her new novel, "Menage" (unfortunately I can't figure out how to insert the accent mark over the first "e" in this blog program)(Other Press, 2012). This is the story of a married couple who invites into their home an intense, respected-for-his-celebrated-past-work-but-with-no-recent-work emigre writer originally from an unnamed Eastern European country. He has fallen on hard times, and they provide him with a space to live and write in their large, luxurious house in the woods of an upscale part of New Jersey, where the couple has moved from Manhattan. The husband, Mack, is an expansive, kindly-but-calculating real estate entrepreneur. His wife, Heather, wants to be a writer but so far mainly only writes an online column on the environment; she rationalizes that she will write more - preferably a novel - when their two children get older. Meanwhile, she is vaguely dissatisfied with her life, and Mack thinks that inviting Zoltan to stay with them will be good for her, as she will be able to discuss writing, literature, and other intellectual topics with him. Complications arise when the prospect of sex enters the picture, and when the expectations of the three main characters teeter out of the delicate balance of who will get what from the arrangement. This novel is quite interesting as a psychological study of the three characters and of their complex interactions. Overall, though, it does not have the heft, the impact of a book that the reader will remember much past reading it. (Now, on a completely different note, I would like to register a small complaint against some paperback books' being given an inside cover flap, similar to those on a hardback book's paper cover; these are fine for hardbacks, and eventually get removed anyway, but on paperback books, since the flap is actually attached to the front cover, it is thicker, and can't be detached (especially as in this case, when the copy I read is from the library), and keeps rising up and getting in the way. I think the publishers who use these are trying to raise their paperbacks to a higher level than the regular ones, to "class them up," so to speak, but the annoyance outweighs any such positive impression.)