"Cambridge," by Susanna Kaysen

Like Mona Simpson’s recent novel, “Casebook,” which I posted about last time (on 5/13/14), Susanna Kaysen’s new novel, “Cambridge” (Knopf, 2014), is told from the perspective of a child. In this case the child is a girl, Susanna, and the story tells of a family that moves from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Cambridge, England, with stays in other European cites as well, and back. Her family is academic, intellectual, and artistic. She has a kind of privileged life, but she is not necessarily happy with that life. She is obviously bright and perhaps too self-involved and self-conscious. The fact that the narrator has the same first name as the author, along with the fact that the author is best known for her memoirs, including the famous “Girl, Interrupted,” blurs the line between memoir and fiction, as other reviewers have pointed out as well. In any case, reading this novel at almost the same time as I was reading “Casebook” was instructive for me. Although the early adolescent angst of the narrator, and her complicated relationship with her family, is well portrayed and both familiar and of interest, the novel as a whole seems episodic and meandering, and the writing suffers in comparison to Mona Simpson’s. Even if I had not read these two novels almost simultaneously, I think my response to "Cambridge" would have been mild appreciation, mild enjoyment, but no more.

"Casebook," by Mona Simpson

I have read most of Mona Simpson’s novels; she is a gifted author who writes absorbingly. Her newest novel, “Casebook” (Knopf, 2014), follows one of the main themes in her fiction: family members trying to find and/or figure each other out. The story in this novel is a stand-in for those of all the children everywhere who are confused by the lives of their parents and other adults in their lives, and who are trying to puzzle out what adult life is all about. Young teenagers Miles Adler-Hart and his best friend Hector play boy detectives in order to understand Miles’ divorced parents, and his mother’s somewhat mysterious boyfriend, better. They listen to conversations, snoop through possessions and mail, and even enlist an actual private investigator who eventually becomes a friend of the family. There are wrenching revelations and profound betrayal in this story, but there is also great love. Fortunately the love wins out. Besides the focus on the search for knowledge, there are strong and engaging portrayals of a rich variety of characters. Simpson’s novels always remind me of journeys to understanding, jam-packed with adventures, misadventures, and surprises, as well as many human, touching, sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes heartwarming moments. The setting in the various communities of Los Angeles serves as another character.

"Over Easy," by Mimi Pond

I have written about a few graphic books (novels and memoirs) I have read (e.g., 7/26/11, 1/23/12, and 2/1/12), and I am increasingly interested in the creativity shown by the authors/artists of contemporary graphic books. The latest one I have read is “Over Easy” (Drawn and Quarterly, 2014), by Mimi Pond. It is the author’s memoir of taking time off during her art school days to earn money as first a dishwasher and then a waitress in The Imperial Café in Oakland, California. One appeal of the book, for me, was its Oakland setting, just across the Bay from San Francisco; the book captures some of the gritty, original, hipsterish/punkish, sometimes exciting and sometimes dreary feel of the part of Oakland where the café is located. There is not a lot of plot in this book, but there are terrific, entertaining, moving, funny portrayals of the cast of characters at the restaurant, mostly those who work there but also some of the customers and friends who come in to eat, talk, drink, sell and use recreational drugs, start sexual and/or romantic relationships, and more. The narrator portrays herself as somewhat plain and naïve, yet eager for experience; she soaks up all the drama around her, and soon is participating in that drama as well. The drawings are wonderful, especially the facial expressions of the characters. The dialogue is entertaining and sometimes revealing. The drawings are all in black, white, and a kind of muted green, which subtly affects the reader’s perceptions. This book is clever, observant, and humane in a mostly non-sentimental but very approachable way.

"Novels Written by Young and Youngish Men"

Soon after I started reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel “Americanah,” (about which I will likely blog soon), I ran across the following passage, which resonated for me. The main character, Ifemelu (a Nigerian woman educated in the United States), thinks about the differences between books her American boyfriend Blaine likes and those she likes. Blaine speaks “in that gently forbearing tone he used when they talked about novels, as though he was sure that she, with a little more time and a little more wisdom, would come to accept that the novels he liked were superior, novels written by young and youngish men and packed with ‘things,’ a fascinating, confounding accumulation of brands and music and comic books and icons, with emotions skimmed over, and each sentence stylishly aware of its own stylishness” (p. 12). I have to say her description both rang true and made me smile with recognition. Of course I would never claim this description was true for all male writers, or even all "young and youngish" American male writers; this is far from the truth. But there is certainly a subset of young male writers who are rather accurately described by this passage. I have sometimes felt that I “should” appreciate and like such novels, but at a certain point I got over that feeling. I can’t help applauding Adichie’s offhand but razor-sharp critique!

"And The Dark and Sacred Night," by Julia Glass

Julia Glass, the bestselling author of “Three Junes,” which I read and enjoyed, has since written four other novels, the latest of which is “And The Dark and Sacred Night” (Pantheon, 2014). The main character, Kit, is stalled in his life, and decides to go on that classic quest: the quest for his father. His loving mother has never told him who his father was, and he is now realizing -- with a push from his wife -- that in order to move on with his life, he needs to find out. He speaks to his former stepfather, who gives him a clue, and as one thing leads to another, he eventually learns what he needs to learn, but with a twist. Along the way, he connects to several people related to him, to his mother, and to his father, and he realizes he is part of a larger and more loving family than he ever knew. There are some great characters in this novel, along with a brisk and engaging plot, and we readers learn much about families and identities. In other words, this is a rich, satisfying novel.

On Re-reading Multiple Times

I have several times written about re-reading certain books or authors, but have not written much more generally about the habit of re-reading fiction. My dear friend, the late C., kindly contributed a wonderful post about that topic here on 10/17/10. Lately I have been thinking a lot about my own re-reading of certain novels over the years. Re-reading favorite books offers great rewards and pleasures. Often the experience is a perfect combination of rediscovering the greatness of the book and finding new – to the reader – nuances and understandings. I have to admit that occasionally re-reading produces a feeling of disappointment and anticlimax, but much more often it is a rewarding and even exhilarating experience. With my greatest favorites, I have to ration myself not to re-read too often, for fear of wearing out my enthusiasm for the books (unlikely as that seems!). This latter point most applies in the case of my beloved Jane Austen’s six brilliant novels, the books I most often re-read. I love them so much that I dare not risk over-reading them. I have read each of them many times, perhaps as many as 15 to 20 times in the case of “Pride and Prejudice.” Other writers whose work I have re-read several times, and plan to continue to do so, include George Eliot (especially “Middlemarch”); Charlotte Bronte (especially “Jane Eyre”); Virginia Woolf (especially “Mrs. Dalloway,” “To the Lighthouse,” and “The Waves”); E. M. Forster (especially “Howards End,” “A Room with a View,” and “Passage to India,”); Edith Wharton (especially “The House of Mirth” and “The Age of Innocence”); Willa Cather (especially “My Antonia”); Barbara Pym (especially “Excellent Women”); and Carol Shields (especially “The Stone Diaries,” “Larry’s Party,” and “Unless”). Others whose novels and short stories I have re-read more often than once, but less often than the ones just listed, include Leo Tolstoy, Kate Chopin, Colette, Alice Munro, Anne Tyler, Margaret Atwood, and Penelope Lively, to name those that spring to mind.

"Off Course," by Michelle Huneven

I remember that when I read Michelle Huneven’s first novel, “Round Rock,” I felt that I had “discovered” a new writer, because I hadn’t read any reviews of her books, and just ran across the book by chance. I couldn’t decide if she was only good, or in fact very good, but I certainly was riveted by her story of characters at a sort of rehab center for alcoholics. Later I read her rather different next novel, “Jamesland,” which attracted me not only because I liked the first novel, but because I couldn’t resist a novel so informed by and infused by the writings of Henry James, with whom the main character was fascinated, partly because he was a distant relative. Thus when I read reviews of Huneven’s new book, “Off Course,” I was primed to want to read it, and now have done so. This novel gripped me from the first page, and kept me interested throughout. It provides an interesting case of a mixture of academe, on the one hand, and a much less book-and-idea focused life, on the other hand. It has much to say about class, and how it affects our lives, overtly or more subtly. It also illuminates much about the lives of young women today, women in their late twenties who are educated and who are told they have all the choices in the world, but who for one reason or another can’t bring themselves to decide what they really want to do with their lives. Like women of the past, they sometimes fall into a sort of waiting stance: waiting for someone to decide for them and to bring meaning into their lives. In the case of this novel, the main character, Cress, goes to stay at her parents’ cabin in the Sierras in order to finish her PhD dissertation. She doesn’t get much writing done, but she soon gets drawn into the local community and into an intense, almost obsessive relationship with a married man. Like so many “other women,” she suffers as the relationship fluctuates, and as she waits for her lover to visit or to come back after their breakups. She is in fact waiting to find out what will happen; in other words, her life is on hold. Should she wait for Quinn, her lover, to leave his wife? Or just stay near him and take the scraps of time he can give her? Should she finish her dissertation and look for a college position? Should she just move somewhere completely different? I won’t tell you how it all works out, but it is quite an emotional ride. In the meanwhile, the small community in the Sierras becomes almost like another character, a quirky, multi-voiced character at that. This has been true in all three of the Huneven novels I have read: they are about communities and relationships, no matter how sometimes dysfunctional and changeable those communities are.