Jane Austen on England's ten-pound note!

I opened my newspaper a couple of days ago to see my beloved Jane Austen's face on a sketch of a future British ten-pound note -- hurray! The new bank note will appear in 2016 or 2017. Apparently there had been many complaints about the lack of women on English money; fortunately, "The Bank of England chose the chronicler of 18th century English country life as the new face of the note, bowing to critics who complained that the venerable institution was ignoring women on their currency" (San Francisco Chronicle, 7/25/13, p. A6). It seems to me that the issue of equal treatment of women, although a very important one that readers of this blog know I am passionately positive about, is not the main one here; the main point is that next to Shakespeare, Austen is the greatest English writer ever, and should be honored as such. In any case, I am thrilled to learn this news.

"Where She Went," by Kate Walbert

More Kate Walbert! As I wrote on 7/24/13, I so admire Walbert’s fiction. Because I enjoyed the three books I have already written about, I looked for and read her earlier book, “Where She Went: Stories” (Sarabande, 1998). This collection of stories is really, like Walbert’s “Our Kind,” a “novel in stories,” although not labeled as such. The first half of the book tells the stories of a mother, Marion, and the second half tells the stories of Marion’s daughter, Rebecca. But in fact both halves include both women’s stories. The stories start in the 1950s, and move back and forth through the years up to 1992. Marion escaped her own background in “the middle of the country, near a Great Lake few could remember the name of” (great line! Even though I lived in Michigan for many years, I still can't remember the names of all the Great Lakes....), moved to New York, and married a man she had only known for a short time. After all, at that period in our history, most women’s main goal was to find a husband. Marion’s husband Robert is a good man, but they are very different. His job took them to many cities over the years – Rochester, Norfolk, Baltimore, Tokyo, and many more. Every time, Marion tried to establish herself, decorate the new house, and build a new life. Her daughter Rebecca, who came of age in the 1970s, was determined to lead a more independent life, as were so many young women at that time. Intriguingly, she too lived in many different places, but in her case it was because of her restlessness and her longing to find out what kind of life she really wanted. Marion and her mother have a loving but somewhat wary relationship. Marion encourages Rebecca to do the traveling and have the freedom that she, Marion, wishes she had had. So Rebecca is sometimes torn between feeling she is doing what she is doing for herself, and wondering how much of her behavior is based on trying to fulfill her mother’s dreams. Like “Our Kind,” this book – without being preachy – clearly focuses on the dilemmas faced by (American) women in the second half of the twentieth century (and of course some of these dilemmas continue now). My only small reservation about this book is that occasionally it tends to get sidetracked with rather dreamlike, poorly integrated descriptions of the various locations and scenes. Because -- captured by the author's more recent books and wanting more -- I am reading “backward” in Walbert’s career (this is the earliest-published of the books I have read), naturally the writing here is slightly less accomplished than in the later books. Even so, the writing is generally beautiful and insightful, and this book, like the others by Walbert that I have written about, is well worth reading.

"Our Kind," by Kate Walbert

I am increasingly convinced that Kate Walbert is an exceptional writer of fiction. I wrote admiringly about two of her novels: “A Short History of Women” on 6/13/12 and “The Gardens of Kyoto” just a few days ago on 7/13/13. “Our Kind: A Novel in Stories” (Scribner, 2004) is also astoundingly well written. The interrelated stories are about a group of women living in a small town that could be anywhere in the U.S.A., over a period of time roughly the second half of the twentieth century. The specific times are vague, but these are women born about 1930, by my calculations. The book seems to embody some of the assertions of Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” (1963), the early feminist book about how the majority of women were staying at home as they were “supposed to” and quietly going a little crazy, wondering why raising children and running a home just wasn’t fulfilling enough. The women in “Our Kind” don’t explicitly talk about such feelings, except in a late chapter when Viv remembers how as a scholarship girl at a Seven Sisters college, she was encouraged by an admired professor to go on for graduate school, but gave it all up to get married. The women in general have been happy at times, but their husbands often leave or die, and their children move on, and then they wonder what to do next. Their greatest comfort seems to be each other’s company. This book is both somewhat hazy about exact dates and plots, and very concrete and thus evocative of the lives of these women. Happiness and sadness are interwoven, as the women get older, lose family, lose their health, drink too much, in some cases see their children struggle and even die, yet the women keep on, always keep on. To me this is a very sad novel about the waste of so much talent and energy, but also a positive novel about the power of female friendship and support of each other. Walbert is so insightful about women’s lives, yet without being didactic. A lovely, wistful book that thoroughly captivated me. Do put Kate Walbert's fiction on your "must-read" list.

"Shakespeare's Kitchen," by Lore Segal

The name of the author Lore Segal is familiar to me, yet I cannot remember what I have read by her. Perhaps, a long time ago, her early novel, “Her First American”? She also writes children’s books, so perhaps I read some to my daughter when she was young? In any case, I have now just read her “Shakespeare’s Kitchen” (The New Press, 2007), a collection of short stories that reads very much like a novel, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The book has nothing to do with “the” Shakespeare; one of the three main characters is named Leslie Shakespeare. The others are his wife Eliza and his mistress Ilka. They, along with most of the other characters, work for or are connected to a think tank in Connecticut, the Concordance Institute. The novel is about the small and big events in the lives of this group of colleagues and friends. Even more, as the author points out in an “Author’s Note,” she was “thinking about our need not only for family and sexual love and friendship but for a ‘set’ to belong to: the circle made of friends, acquaintances, and the people one knows.” I think this is a wonderful, fascinating theme; as Segal says, most of us have, or want to have, such a network of people to be part of. In this book, she shows us the daily interactions, gatherings, connections of this particular group of friends; many of these interactions take place in the “Shakespeare’s kitchen” of the title. Most of the action takes place over a period of perhaps 20 years, with a bit of looking back at the end of the book. There is love, sex, work, conflict, kindness, conversation, illness, deception, reconciliation, gossip, intrusions from the outside world, and much more. There is, too, a bit of humor, even gentle satire, about the think tank and its members. This is a very human and completely engrossing book; I highly recommend it.

"Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules," edited by David Sedaris

David Sedaris is a funny, original, insightful writer. The CD I recently listened to, “Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules” (Simon & Schuster Audio, 2005) (Sedaris’ titles are usually quirky) shows his philanthropic side; the five stories in this collection were not written by Sedaris but rather selected, edited, and introduced by him. The stories on this audiobook are taken from a larger collection in a book of the same name that Sedaris also edited. He reads one story himself, and the others are read by writers and actors, including one by the wonderful actor Mary-Louise Parker. Sedaris published this audiobook “to support 826NYC, a nonprofit tutoring center in Brooklyn, New York, designed to help students ages six to eighteen develop their writing skills through free writing workshops…and one-on-one help with homework.” This organization, I happen to know, is an offshoot of writer Dave Eggers’ “826 Valencia,” here in San Francisco; the original San Francisco site for this wonderful and worthy project has inspired several others. The stories – one each by Patricia Highsmith, Tobias Wolff, Charles Baxter, Amy Hempel, and Akhil Sharma (what a marvelous selection of writers!) – are excellent, with a slight tilt to the eccentric and gloomy, and the readings do them justice. The only thing that seems a bit strange to me is that the label on the copy I borrowed from my local library says “Fiction, Children”; while this audiobook benefits children, the stories themselves are definitely adult-oriented (not as in "adults only," meaning sex and violence, but as in -- see above -- at times rather dark and gloomy). For readers who listen to audiobooks in their cars, as I do, or elsewhere, this is a short, well-chosen collection. That it benefits a good cause is a bonus.

"Mother Daughter Me," by Katie Hafner

Reading-wise, fiction has always been my first love by far. Novels, short stories are my reading life’s blood. But once in a while I enjoy a good memoir, and the one I just finished is a powerful one. Katie Hafner’s “Mother Daughter Me” (Random House, 2013) tells the story of her decision to invite her mother, Helen, to move from San Diego to San Francisco and live with her and her teenaged daughter Zoe. Helen has lived for over 30 years with Norm, but Norm’s daughter has just put him in a nursing home. Katie hopes that this three-generation household will bring her and her daughter closer to her mother, but unfortunately it doesn’t work out that way. In fact, the living together turns out quite badly. This should not have been a surprise for Katie, as her mother was a very neglectful, difficult parent, due largely to her alcoholism but also to her own unloving parents. When Helen and Katie’s father divorced, Katie and her sister Sarah went back and forth between them, and when Katie was ten years old, her father won custody of the girls, based on the mother’s binge drinking, promiscuity, and inability to maintain an adequate household for her daughters. Over the years, the mother and daughters have had a rocky but continuing relationship, and Katie feels that she and her mother -- who no longer drinks much -- are now quite close. Now over the course of less than a year, they realize the living-together experiment is a failure, despite therapy and other efforts to make it work. Finally, though, they reach a kind of rapprochement, with Helen living separately but nearby. This last piece of information may seem like a spoiler, and perhaps it is, but really the fascination of the memoir is the back story and the process, rather than the details of the conclusion. Hafner, a journalist and author of six nonfiction books, is a good writer, and expertly moves back and forth between the present and the past. We also learn about her own marriages, one mostly good and one bad, and her current far better relationship. A perhaps trivial but extra attraction of the story for me is that it takes place in San Francisco, and in an area of San Francisco that I know well (because my daughter went to school there for thirteen years); I can picture the streets, houses, hills, sights, and restaurants of the area; I also recognize some of the local personalities she mentions. Finally, an important feature of this memoir is that Hafner strikes just the right note: she is candid about what she has been through, but she is also thoughtful and tries to understand the reasons for her mother’s neglect, to understand ways in which others were responsible as well, and to be open about her own bad choices too. And of course the topic of mothers and daughters is always of interest to me and to almost any woman; many of the recognitions relate to fathers and sons as well -- in other words, to anyone who is part of the tangle of family life.

"The Innocents," by Francesca Segal

I am both attracted to and skeptical of novels based on other novels, especially those by great authors. Sometimes these new versions are wonderfully reimagined tributes to the original; sometimes they are just a botch, making one feel they are either cynically or cluelessly riding on the coattails of far better novels and writers. Fortunately, “The Innocents” (Voice/Hyperion, 2012), by Francesca Segal, is a worthy contemporary version of Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence.” Of course it is not at the same level as Wharton's work, but it is an excellent novel in its own right. Although set in the present, it retains a whiff of the late 19th century of Wharton’s work, because the characters all live in a tightly connected group of family and friends, in this case all Jewish, in an affluent suburb of London called Temple Fortune. This community is as close as the high society of Wharton’s New York. The reversal of the two cities in the two novels is interesting, and the Ellen/Ellie character also reverses directions in her going away and returning. Speaking of the characters: the names of several characters in “The Innocents” have echoes of Wharton’s characters; for example, Newland Archer becomes Adam Newman, and Ellen Olenska becomes Ellie Schneider. Several other characters are clearly modeled after specific characters in the original novel; part of the pleasure of reading this new novel is making those connections with the original. The main story replicates Wharton's story quite closely, at least in its bones; there are of course minor adjustments for a different time period, and other small changes. This novel, to its credit, is enjoyable both for its reconstruction of the original and for its own self. One would not need to have read “The Age of Innocence” to admire and enjoy this new novel, although having done so certainly adds to the pleasure of the experience. As a quick summary and/or reminder of the plot: Newland/Adam is part of a close traditional and prosperous society, and is engaged to the very suitable May/Rachel. But then May/Rachel’s cousin Ellen/Ellie returns from a long time abroad, beautiful and trailing scandal behind her. As a (future) family member and a lawyer, Newland/Adam wants to help, but before he knows it, is deeply in love with Ellen/Ellie. They admit their mutual attraction, but Ellen/Ellie, out of loyalty to her cousin May/Rachel, refuses to allow Newland/Adam to leave May/Rachel. There is much tension, several side-but-related plot lines, and finally a bittersweet resolution. In the course of reading each novel, one also is given fascinating and detailed insights into these two close-knit, affluent societies, societies which have much in common despite being divided by a century or so, and by the Atlantic Ocean. Despite my initial skepticism, I was very much won over by this beautifully written novel, full of realistic characters, evocative of a specific community and way of living, and providing the tension of a classic love triangle in which there is a fourth side: a family/community/commitment that is as real and compelling as any character.