"Primates of Park Avenue," by Wednesday Martin

“Primates of Park Avenue: A Memoir” (Simon and Schuster, 2015) got a lot of attention when it came out a few months ago. Its cover shows the side and legs of a slim-but-curvy woman in a leopard skin skirt and shoes, and that sets the tone. The articles about, and even the reviews of, the book emphasized the most “shocking” aspects of the book, such as its assertion that very rich men on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid their wives bonuses for doing a good job as wives in this hyper-wealthy and competitive area. The book itself is a strange mixture of a memoir, a tell-all, an anthropological study, and a compendium of tabloidish stories. The author, Wednesday Martin, tells us often that she has a PhD and works as a “social researcher.” When she moved from lower Manhattan to the Upper East Side because of her husband’s job, she decided to a. fit in as well as she could, for her children’s sake; and b. study the mothers and families in this elite neighborhood as if doing anthropological field work in an alien culture. She tells us about these mothers’ exclusive cliques at the expensive private schools where her children go, how the women exercise obsessively, how they shop and dress, how they spend money, how they decorate, how they socialize, how and where they vacation, and much more. Interspersed among the stories are mini-lectures on the anthropological and primatological aspects of all this, including comparisons to primates (gorillas, etc.) and their societies and customs. There is also some standard-issue (and certainly endorsed by me, albeit going over much-covered territory) feminist analysis of how the women’s high-flown lifestyle was very dependent on their husbands, and how the women had to always be very thin and beautiful and well-dressed. Also included are the author’s own feelings about how she was treated at first (as an outsider) and how she gradually became part of the society, even when she was somewhat horrified by some of the customs. She also openly admits that she had trouble keeping her outsider’s "neutral" research stance, as she began to care very much whether she was accepted by these women. She does have a slightly humorous and self-aware voice, which makes it easier for the reader to connect to her writing. Near the end of the book, we hear about a sad loss she suffered, which takes us readers into a much closer and more sympathetic relationship with her. So the mixture of aspects and sections and perspectives sometimes seems a bit confusing, undigested, and even unnerving, but still oddly intriguing. Throughout, I wondered how much of the book was written for shock value and titillation (“see how these crazy rich people live”), how much out of a genuine academic interest, and how much as the author’s own story and experience (the book is, after all, billed as a memoir). Throughout, I felt the book was aimed at bestsellerdom, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but somewhat compromises the earnestly scholarly tone taken sporadically throughout. It reminds me a bit of an extended Vanity Fair article (and I say this as someone who subscribes to and reads and enjoys Vanity Fair, but who knows to expect a certain type of article, a certain tone). So, to be blunt, the book is a bit of a mishmash, and it seems to me that there is less “there” there than advertised. Nevertheless, the book is entertaining, and has a few mildly interesting insights about gender and social class, served up with many dollops of fashion and bling and a soupcon of scandal.

"The Pawnbroker's Daughter," by Maxine Kumin

Maxine Kumin’s posthumous memoir, “The Pawnbroker’s Daughter” (W.W. Norton, 2015), reminds me a bit of Gail Godwin’s memoir, which I posted on a few days ago (8/22/15). They are both slim volumes, focused on both the writers’lives and their writing. The two writers are about half a generation apart in age: Kumin was born in 1925 and died in 2014; Godwin was born in 1937. Kumin was mainly a poet but also wrote fiction and essays; she was a U.S. poet laureate and won a Pulitzer Prize. Godwin is a novelist who has also written in other genres; she too has won various awards and honors. Both had supportive husbands; Kumin’s survived her, while Godwin’s died a few years ago. Both liked living or at least regularly retreating outside of cities, although Kumin’s situation was much more isolated and rural; she and her husband created a horse farm where they happily raised their family. Of course these two wonderful writers’ biggest commonality was/is their intense devotion to their writing. In “The Pawnbroker’s Daughter,” Kumin wrote fairly chronologically, describing her childhood, her meeting of and long marriage to her husband, her poetry, and her life on the farm. Although she does not dwell on it, we also see her strong feelings about politics and especially about women’s lives; she was a feminist, an environmentalist, and an activist. Throughout, Kumin shares some of her wonderful poetry, as well as evocative photographs.

"Valley Fever," by Katherine Taylor

On 8/11/15 I wrote about Katherine Taylor’s debut novel, “Rules for Saying Goodbye.” Her new novel, “Valley Fever” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015) is also well written, and also features a semi-lost young woman as the main character who is trying to figure out what she wants to do in life. “Rules” took place mostly in New York; the very different setting for “Valley Fever” is Fresno, California, where the character Ingrid returns to be with her family after a relationship breaks up. Fresno is a midsize city in the San Joaquin Valley (which is in turn part of the Central Valley) with agriculture as the main focus. Ingrid plans to stay only a short time while she figures out what to do next with her life, but gets drawn into helping her father with his vineyards. Also, although there are things she dislikes about Fresno, in other ways it feels like home, and she soon takes up with old friends and old ways (e.g., she immediately returns to the same bars and restaurants she used to go to, and starts hanging out with some of the same people, including her former boyfriend). The novel is unusual in its close, detailed portrayal of a site rarely focused on (“The Valley”), and of actual working people. Not people working in offices in New York, or writing, or doing any of the more glamorous jobs often featured in novels, but people working hard at keeping an agricultural enterprise going. There is so much that can go wrong with the grapes and other crops grown in California’s great valley, to do with weather, diseases, shortages and gluts, labor, politics, and much more. So this novel is a refreshing change in this way, although it is also a grim reminder of the difficulties and uncertainties faced by farmers. Ingrid finds herself drawn to this work, and even feels good about the hard work and long hours. She finds she is quite good at the work, and manages it well. But she, like her father with his trust and integrity, also finds that it is very hard to know whom to trust, and that competing with the big boys can be a treacherous enterprise. “Valley Fever” also gives us insights into family dynamics, the intimate connections among the main players in the story, the shifting friendships mixed with business relationships, and the ways in which people can in some cases support, but in other cases profoundly betray, their “friends” and those they do business with. I realize that this may sound less than enticing as a novel, but it kept my attention, and I think other readers might also appreciate the unusual setting and the portrayal of a world not so often delineated in fiction these days, along with the insightful portrayals of the characters and their relationships. I also found it interesting because although I never lived there, I have family in Fresno; they have no personal connection to farming or vineyards, but agriculture is part of the environment and ethos of the area. I could recognize some of the descriptions of the city and the surrounding areas. Katherine Taylor is definitely a writer to watch.

Sarai Walker's "Dietland" - An Angry, Funny, Wonderful Feminist Novel

Sarai Walker’s novel “Dietland” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) reminds me of Marilyn French’s furious 1977 novel, “The Women’s Room.” That novel described the lives of women in the U.S. during the 1950s and early 1960s, and was full of anger about the restricted roles, prejudice, and discrimination that women faced at the time. Although not tremendously well written, in my opinion, the book struck a chord with many, many women, including me; I remember being riveted by it. “The Women’s Room” was, in a sense, the novelized version of Betty Friedan’s hugely influential 1963 nonfiction book, “The Feminine Mystique,” but angrier and more radical. Those of us who were feminists in the 1970s and onward hoped and believed that most of the problems of sexism would be remedied in the coming decades. And of course much progress has been made. But “Dietland” reminds us how many problems still exist, even in “developed” countries such as the United States. Walker starts with the issue of the pressure on girls and women to be thin and beautiful, no matter what they have to do to achieve that status (hence the title). But we soon see that this issue is only part of the focus on larger issues of discrimination and violence against women. The novel -- and it is a novel, not nonfiction, but it deals with many issues -- describes a group of women who fight back, using unorthodox and even illegal means, which they feel are justified by the crimes and violence done against women. The central character and narrator, Plum Kettle, is a very large woman who has experienced daily discrimination as such, and is planning to have weight loss surgery. She is contacted by several loosely connected women who try to convince her not to have the surgery, and not to give in to society’s expectations regarding women’s bodies and lives. Soon she is both supported by these women and drawn into some of their activities, legal and not-so-legal. The novel is powerful and, as two of the back cover blurbers term it, “subversive.” But the novel is not just a feminist screed (not that there would be anything wrong with that, in my opinion!); it is also a page-turner of a story, with plot twists, surprises, fascinating characters, and touches of humor. I haven’t seen such an explicitly feminist novel for a while, and I welcome it; we need more fiction that engages with important social issues, including those regarding women’s lives. Brava, Sarai Walker!

Why I Am Not Reading "Go Set a Watchman"

A reader asked me what I thought about the publication this year of “Go Set a Watchman,” by Harper Lee, and if I would be reading it. As I am sure readers know, this is the story of the same characters and events (more or less) as those in Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” but set some years later. There is some dispute about whether this was actually a separate novel, or an earlier draft of Lee’s famous masterpiece. I have gone back and forth about reading it, but have concluded that I probably will not, for the following reasons. 1. It is disillusioning to find that Atticus Finch was actually quite racist, and not the pure hero that the other novel portrayed him as. This in itself should not be a reason not to read the book, as one should not flinch from the hard facts about the prejudices of that time period. But I am also concerned about the following. 2. The fact is that the novel, from all reviews I have read, is much less well-written than “Mockingbird,” and is in essence an early, unpolished draft, which Lee thoroughly rewrote following the suggestions of her editor, including changing the time frame and narrating the story from the point of view of the young girl, Scout. Reviewers have been restrained and diplomatic, on the whole, but it is clear that there is a big difference in quality between the two novels. This point leads to the third. 3. There is a bit of mystery about how and when the manuscript of “Watchman” was “discovered,” and about how much the author had to do with the decision to publish it. It seems that Lee had forgotten about this manuscript, and/or thought it was long lost. After her sister, who had managed her literary affairs, died, another person who got involved claimed to have discovered this manuscript, but the story that person tells about the discovery has changed several times, so what we know about what happened is a bit murky. Lee is elderly and in poor health, and it isn’t clear how much she understood about the decision to publish. I know that some readers are just so glad to have another novel by the author of “Mockingbird” that they welcome it no matter what, and indeed sales have been good. But some reviewers and others have felt, and I concur, that there is a whiff of exploitation about this whole publishing event. It would be sad if Harper Lee’s reputation were marred by the airing of a manuscript that was never intended to be published as such, and that reflects badly on the author. I may change my mind in the future, but right now I just don’t want to read “Go Set a Watchman.”

"Publishing: A Writer's Memoir," by Gail Godwin

Gail Godwin is both a critically acclaimed author and a popular one, although, by her own description, less popular than in the past. She is the author of fourteen novels, two short story collections, and two nonfiction books. Her best-known novels include “The Odd Woman” and “A Mother and Two Daughters.” Her style is a bit understated, and often alludes to spiritual and ethical themes. She focuses on relationships between and among people, and does so beautifully and thoughtfully. Over the years, I have read, admired, and liked all of her novels and short stories. Thus I was pleased to read “Publishing: A Writer’s Memoir” (Bloomsbury, 2015), a kind of behind-the-scenes story of how the author came to write; how she found an agent and publisher; how negotiating for publishing contracts worked for her; how publishing companies kept changing, along with their editors and other personnel; what it is like to do a book tour; and the various wonderful and occasionally not-so-wonderful people she met through her writing and publishing life, among other topics. The story is not told in chronological order, but rather in thematic chapters that move backward and forward in time. In a sense, each chapter is a mini-collection of relevant vignettes. Godwin is diplomatic, so there are no shocking disclosures or even putdowns of people she met along the way, yet her feelings are subtly conveyed and we readers are drawn in to listen to her stories. There are many fascinating details about how books are edited, how titles are chosen and sometimes argued over, how book covers are selected, and much more. There are also a few brief glimpses of her life with her late husband, her beloved retreat in Woodstock, and other personal aspects of her life. This is a slight and quiet book, but one that attracted me, and I think would be of interest not only to Godwin’s readers, but to anyone interested in the world of book writing and publishing. The writing is illustrated and enhanced by charming, simple line drawings done by Frances Halsband.

Favorite Living Fiction Writers Recently Read

Today I list some of my favorite living writers of fiction. To keep the list from being too long, I include only authors whose books I have read at least one of during the past three years. These conditions of course do not allow me to list “classic” writers, or those whose works I have enjoyed in the past but haven’t read lately. So, given those conditions, here is my list of the authors, in alphabetical order. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Rabih Alameddine, Kate Atkinson, Margaret Atwood, Julian Barnes, Robin Black, Peter Cameron, Kate Christensen, Anne Enright, Joan Frank, Jane Gardam, Gail Godwin, Mary Gordon, Tessa Hadley, Joshua Henkin, Hester Kaplan, Jhumpa Lahiri, Penelope Lively, Alice McDermott, Ian McEwan, Claire Messud, Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, Antonya Nelson, Stewart O’Nan, Ann Packer, Ann Patchett, Edith Pearlman, Richard Russo, Lore Segal, Jane Smiley, Zadie Smith, Colm Toibin, Anne Tyler, Kate Walbert, Meg Wolitzer. The parameters of this list made me leave out some favorites, such as Kent Haruf, who died very recently, and Lori Ostlund, whose wonderful first book I read more than three years ago, but whose second book ("After the Parade") will appear next month and is much anticipated. Note that of the 36 writers, 28 are women; those who read this blog regularly will not be surprised at this. In any case, like any list, this list is in no way definitive of anything, but it provides a summary of some of my most-treasured current novelists and short story writers. Note that I have posted here on many of these authors’ books during the past three years.