Book Flashes

Sometimes as I am walking or driving, flashes of characters, bits of dialogue, and traces of elusive scenes dart unbidden through my mind. Here I do not mean whole, coherent scenes and thoughts (which I also have on other occasions!), but jumbled, inchoate, dreamlike images and sensations that don't stay long enough to analyze. On the one hand, this is slightly bothersome in a tantalizing way, as I can seldom remember or figure out which specific novels these visiting "excerpts" come from. On the other hand, it is strangely comforting, as it reminds me of all the company I carry in my head, the throng of wonderful characters, scenes, events, and knowledge...knowledge of the immense variety of human life and experience...knowledge of a wider and more complex world than I could ever experience in one lifetime without the multiple windows into multiple lives provided by wide reading.

Novels on Women on their own

There are many novels on women alone, women on their own. The works of three twentieth century British women novelists stand out in this regard. They all often focus on lone women, their complicated and often sad entanglements that never seem to last, and their efforts to manage living and making their way alone. Each of the three novelists has a different approach, and employs a different tone. The novels of Jean Rhys (1890-1979), such as "Good Morning, Midnight," "After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie," and "Voyage in the Dark," have a desperate, tragic, hopeless, depressing tone; the main characters are often too dependent on alcohol to help them cope with their loneliness and sometimes poverty. The single women characters of Barbara Pym (1913-1980) take a more humorous, "chin-up" attitude toward life. They are often unhappy, but they believe in making the best of a situation, and keeping up a good front. They are often involved with the arts in a sort of peripheral way, and/or volunteer at their churches (Church of England, of course!); their attitudes are very "British," but often with a slightly satirical edge. Pym's wonderful novels include "Excellent Women," "A Glass of Blessings," "Less than Angels," and "Some Tame Gazelle." The third novelist, Anita Brookner (born in 1928 and still living), also frequently writes about women alone. Her characters are often sad as well, but feel it is their duty to appear calm, cool, collected, somewhat stoic. Brookner's characters don't often have financial problems, and are sometimes well-connected, but they are very reserved and have trouble opening up to anyone about their feelings. Brookner's novels include "Hotel du Lac," "The Rules of Engagement," "Leaving Home," and "The Misalliance." I have read and very much liked most or all of each of these writers' novels, but the author I keep going back to over the years is Barbara Pym. A ridiculous number and variety of authors are -- with no basis or justification -- compared to Jane Austen, but in Pym's case, the comparison is actually apt; although of course NO author can live up to Austen's level of writing, Pym's writing is squarely in the same tradition and style, and Pym is a worthy follower.

Ellen Gilchrist

Although during one time period I read most or maybe all of Ellen Gilchrist's novels, I hadn't read any for many years, until a couple of weeks ago, just before my trip to Boston, when I picked up a paperback copy of "Sarah Conley" (Little, Brown, 1997). As I read it on the airplane, my mental image of an Ellen Gilchrist typical main character came rushing back to me. The character of Sarah Conley embodies the quintessential Gilchrist woman: headstrong, bold, quirky, insecure, alternating in almost whiplash fashion between fearlessness and crippling fear. She is rooted in the South but has sometimes escaped to the North, is deeply connected to but often rebels against her family and its demands, gets involved in multiple messy relationships, and is predictable in her unpredictability. I enjoy reading about her and at the same time sometimes get immensely annoyed at her. I am never sure whether I am meant to admire her, pity her, identify with her, or dislike her. However, she is always intriguing to read about, and the novels she "stars" in (Gilchrist novels are mostly one-women shows) are never boring. And after all, most of us are as full of contradictions as Gilchrist's women are.

On Being a Book Reviewer

One of the pleasures of reading widely is recommending books to others. I have always done this informally, but in my adult life, I have also occasionally done it more formally, through published book reviews. My first taste of such reviewing came perhaps thirty years ago, when for several years, I had a column in the alumni bulletin of the boarding school I attended in India; my column was titled "Books about India." Later I was the book review editor for, and reviewed several books myself for, the journal "Peace Review"; those reviews were of books related to peace and social justice topics. Since then, I have fairly frequently published book reviews in various professional journals in my field and related fields. One of the reasons I so much enjoy writing this blog is that I can informally "review" books of various types that I read for my own enjoyment.

"The Gin Closet"

I have just finished reading, in one big draught (I started it last night and finished it this morning), the novel "The Gin Closet" (Free Press, 2010), by Leslie Jamison. In brief, the plot involves Stella, a young woman unsure about what to do with her life, going to find her long lost aunt, Tilly, who left home after being raped and has spent the past 30 years as an alcoholic and prostitute. This novel is mostly about women: Tilly, Stella, Stella's mother Dora and grandmother Lucy, and Tilly's friends Fiona and Winnie. All are sympathetic characters, despite their frightening weaknesses and vulnerabilities. The men are mostly absent, dangerous, or useless, with a few exceptions, the most important one being Abe, Tilly's grown son, who truly cares about her and tries to save her. The main subjects of the novel are alcoholism and family. Readers are ineluctably confronted with the hard truths of alcoholism, and even when we are given brief reprieves and signs of hope, we are always jarringly and painfully forced back to the reality of the world of the alcoholic. The same dynamic plays out regarding family: the tangles, deep misunderstandings and longlasting resentments, fears, and love are all heartbreakingly portrayed, yet we are granted reprieves and hope as characters reach out and try to help each other. Even when they fail in their efforts, as they usually do, there is a residue of hope and possibility, and of belief in the family connections that are never completely severed. Although my description of "The Gin Closet" may discourage readers, I recommend the novel for its honesty and for the human kindness that leavens the bleakness of the main characters' lives. The author of this novel, amazingly, is only 26 years old, but exhibits the control and mastery of a much older writer.

My 1992 List for Women Students

In 1992, when I gave an invited talk,"Books by and about Women: How They Teach, Nurture, Sustain and Delight Us," in a women's dormitory at the university where I teach, I gave the students a list of women writers of fiction. I recently ran across that list in an old file, and decided to post it here. Although I am less impressed by a few of the listed authors (e.g., Alice Hoffman, Whitney Otto, Marge Piercy, Robb Forman Dew, Diane Johnson, Alice McDermott) now than I was in 1992, I still think it is a pretty good list. If I were to make such a list today, I would include more writers of more varying ethnicities and national backgrounds, as we are fortunate to have more diversity in published authors now than we did back then. Below is the list:

Adams, Alice
Allende, Isabel
Atwood, Margaret
Austen, Jane
Bowen, Elizabeth
Bradley, Marion Zimmer
Bronte, Charlotte
Brookner, Anita
Cather, Willa
Chopin, Kate
Colette
Desai, Anita
Dew, Robb Forman
Drabble, Margaret
Eliot, George
Erdrich, Louise
French, Marilyn
Gaskell, Elizabeth
Gibbons, Kaye
Godwin, Gail
Gordimer, Nadine
Gordon, Mary
Hoffman, Alice
Humphreys, Josephine
Hurston, Zora Neale
Johnson, Diane
Kingsolver, Barbara
Lessing, Doris
Marshall, Paule
Mason, Bobbie Ann
McCorkle, Jill
McDermott, Alice
Miller, Sue
Morrison, Toni
Mukherjee, Bharati
Munro, Alice
Naylor, Gloria
Otto, Whitney
Piercy, Marge
Pym, Barbara
Rhys, Jean
Robinson, Marilynne
Settle, Mary Lee
Simpson, Mona
Tan, Amy
Tyler, Anne
Walker, Alice
Welty, Eudora
Wharton, Edith
Woolf, Virginia

On Not Finishing "Lit"

Mary Karr's first memoir, the searing, raw, and devastating story of her childhood with alcoholic parents, "The Liars' Club" (Viking, 1995), is considered by many to have precipitated the flood of memoirs since then. After "Liars' Club," Karr published another memoir, "Cherry" (Viking, 2000), and now her third memoir "Lit" (Harper, 2009) has appeared. I resisted "Liars' Club" for quite a while, but finally read it at the urging of several friends, and was glad I did. I skipped "Cherry," but good reviews of "Lit" led me to check it out of the library and begin reading. I acknowledge that Karr is a gifted writer, and that her sad, defiant, honest, courageous, and even sometimes funny story is often compelling. But the book also started to feel repetitive and dreary, and although I suppose that is part of the point of a memoir that focuses on alcoholism (this time hers) and its sometimes horrific consequences, I just didn't feel like trudging any further into the story. So I didn't. I stopped reading at page 175, just under halfway through the book. In the past ten years or so, I have increasingly given myself permission to stop reading books that I am not enjoying or am tired of reading or just don't feel like reading more of. I didn't expect "Lit" to be one of those books, but there it is.