"Living to Tell," by Antonya Nelson

Antonya Nelson’s novel “Living to Tell” (Scribner Paperback Fiction, 2000) is all about family, family, family. An older couple, their three grown children, and two grandchildren all live in the house in Kansas in which the children grew up. They are slightly aware of the oddity of the situation, yet proud of being a close family, taking care of each other. But there are big cracks in the closeness. The son, Winston, the golden boy, has just gotten out of jail for driving drunk and accidentally killing his much-loved grandmother; his father can’t seem to forgive him, although he does not show his feelings overtly. The older daughter, Emily, seemingly so calm and competent, has had her walks on the wild side, but now is taking care of her two children very well without the help of her immature ex-husband. Mona, the third adult child of the family, is emotionally unstable, has attempted suicide, had an affair with her brother-in-law and now is having another unsuitable affair with another married man. The father of the three adult children, “Professor Mabie” as the retired academic is always called, struggles with missing his sick and then deceased best friend from work, Betty, along with worrying about all of his children. His wife, Mrs. Mabie, tends her family fiercely, yet has withdrawn in recent years, sometimes seeming more connected to her garden than to anything or anyone else. There are other characters too, but the core of the story is the five adults in the Mabie house. The ambivalent connections among the family members are perhaps manifested in the family name Mabie (maybe?). This is a curious family story: the family sticks together, yet sometimes does not trust each other. And Nelson dares to make the five main characters not entirely likable. The reader feels torn between pulling for the family and pulling away from them. Nelson also dares to leave us with an ambiguous ending. This is an author I have come to count on as always writing something interesting, something different, and this novel does not disappoint.

"This is the Story of a Happy Marriage," by Ann Patchett

As I approached the counter to pay for some books a couple of days ago in one of my favorite independent bookstores, Books Inc., in Laurel Village, San Francisco (part of a very local mini-chain), I heard a customer ahead of me and a salesperson discussing Ann Patchett’s independent bookstore in Nashville. I said (horning in on their conversation, but they didn’t seem to mind), “Oh, I am reading her book ‘This is the Story of a Happy Marriage’ right now!” The customer enthusiastically replied, “Oh, me too! I love it!” So the three of us started talking about the book, and Patchett’s earlier books (including “Bel Canto” and “State of Wonder”), and her bookstore. We all are big fans. And we agreed that this latest book, “This is the Story of a Happy Marriage” (Harper, 2013), a collection of essays, is absolutely absorbing, and makes us feel we actually know Patchett. I think of this little episode (which is, by the way, the kind of thing that happens often in independent bookstores, one of the reasons I so love these centers of literature and community) as an example of how Patchett is not only a gifted writer, but an engaging one, and as the creator of an independent bookstore in Nashville when its other bookstores had closed, a heroine to those of us who are rooting for the survival of such local, special bookstores. I have now finished the book, and was absolutely caught up in it. Patchett writes about her childhood, her apprenticeship as a writer, her relationship with her grandmother, her childhood teacher (a nun) with whom she reconnects as an adult, her beloved dogs, her book tours, the controversy over her book about her late friend Lucy (the book was chosen as the assigned freshman book by Clemson University, and then protested by many conservative parents and others in the area), and much more. The title essay tells how, as the child of a family riven by multiple divorces over several generations, Patchett was reluctant to marry, and even when she found the right person, it took her eleven years to agree to marry; the couple is now -- as the title indicates -- very happy. In each essay, Patchett’s warm voice makes us feel we are actually in conversation with her. Of course the conversational style of the writing is deceptively simple, and is in fact extremely well-crafted…that is one of the marks of a true writer. I can’t help thinking, though, that no one could present such a seemingly candid and engaging self if she were not really like that. Is that naïve of me? In any case, for fans of Patchett, as well as for those who have not read her before, I strongly recommend this book.

"If I'd Known You Were Coming," by Kate Milliken

The short stories in Kate Milliken’s “If I’d Known You Were Coming” (University of Iowa Press, 2013) are full of quirks, hard edges, sharp angles, and surprises. The characters are often confused, and confusing, but still make witty remarks and offer sharp observations. The women characters in particular are very bright but sometimes make strange decisions, often about relationships. The narrator in “Man Down Below,” for example, moves away from her apartment in order to get away from a stalker neighbor, yet when she runs into him later, is strangely drawn to him. “No, no, no!” you want to exhort her, but being a mere reader, you are helpless to change the course of the story; you cannot sway her from her clearly unsuitable feelings and actions. Some characters appear in more than one story, allowing us to get to know them better on each appearance, yet still mysteriously changing and disappearing at will. The final story, “Inheritance,” starts off uneventfully, but after a while we see how sad and sick one of the main characters is, and must watch helplessly as she self destructs, but at least is supported by her new friend in his inherited house. And somehow, even in her self-destruction, this character manages to keep and display a flash of her personality, and make us wonder if she will perhaps survive after all.

"Someone," by Alice McDermott

I’ve just read a lovely novel: “Someone” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2013), by Alice McDermott. “Lovely” is a word not commonly found in book reviews, but that is my response to this beautifully written story of an “ordinary” woman, Marie Commeford. Marie’s life is extraordinarily ordinary; it is the gift of the author to make her character’s story utterly alive, utterly compelling in its ordinariness. Marie grows up in Brooklyn early in the 20th century, the child of an Irish Catholic immigrant family. In this first person narrative, Marie tells of her family, her neighborhood and neighbors, her adolescence, her work in a funeral home, her marriage, her motherhood, and her old age. Particularly strong characters, besides Marie herself, are her mother, her brother, and her husband. Throughout Marie’s life, there are happy times, worrying times, sad times, and inconclusive times. We are immersed in Marie’s life; we live and breathe with her. To me, this making an “ordinary” woman’s life so individual, so distinct, and so compelling is what literature is all about. I was impressed by McDermott’s earlier novels, such as “That Night” and “After This”; “Someone” reaches new heights of revelatory writing.

"Topaz," poems by Brian Komei Dempster

My colleague Brian Komei Dempster has edited two moving collections of the memories of Japanese-American internees in the United States during World War II, thus preserving this sad part of history and allowing the now-elderly survivors of this experience to tell their stories in their own words. (See my post of 6/7/11 about the second of these books). Dempster has now published a stunning collection of his own poetry, “Topaz” (Four Way Books, 2013). I started reading “Topaz” (the name of the internment camp where some of the poet’s own relatives were incarcerated) one recent evening, planning to just dip into the book for now and read it more thoroughly later, but found I could not put it down until I finished it. The poems are beautifully written and gripping. In fact, they are amazing poems, touching on so many elements of family, history, ethnicity, connection, sexuality, youth, aging, illness, spirituality, anger, reconciliation, and much more. The thread running through all these topics is a fierce commitment to family and to claiming and remembering history, both personal and cultural. Throughout the collection, there is striking and beautiful imagery and there are provocative connections made. Some of the poems are meditative, some mournful, some quietly angry; many portray love in its many varieties. All brim with the life force. The poems, and the book, are incandescent.

On Resisting Reading What We "Should" Read

Do you ever feel that you “should” read a certain book? Whether it is a classic that you somehow never got around to reading, or a current book that everyone is talking about, do you experience a nagging feeling that you are somehow negligent in not reading that book or those books? I have often felt this as well. In the past, especially during college, grad school, and the decade or so after that, I often read books because they were assigned, or because I felt that as an educated person, I should read them. And I am very glad I read all those books – classics, international literature, feminist theory and fiction, and much more. But there is no way to keep up. Although throughout my whole reading life, I have read about 100 books a year, there are of course thousands more out there -- older books and the constant onslaught of new ones. Once in a while someone will assume that I have read a certain book that is being much talked of, and express surprise that I have not. But it boils down to this: we all have to choose what we spend our reading time on. And we each have our own standards and reasons for choosing what we choose. And as I have gotten older, I have gained a certain freedom from the pressure of “I should read that book.” Now I read pretty much just what I want to read. Even when I feel small pangs of the “I should” feeling, I am increasingly adept at telling myself “but I just don’t feel like it,” and ignoring the book. There is never a shortage of books that I do want to read.

"Longbourn," by Jo Baker

Of COURSE no current writer can even touch the hem of Jane Austen’s gown. But writers keep trying to enter Austen’s world, with their prequels, sequels, and alternate versions of her novels. And some of us who love Austen’s novels keep reading these versions, hoping against hope that they will provide a new way to connect to Austen’s original work. They always, it goes without saying, disappoint. But there are degrees of disappointment. I have to say that English novelist Jo Baker’s new novel, “Longbourn” (Knopf, 2013) is a much-better-than-average Austen-related work. As Austen followers well know, Longbourn is the name of the house where the main characters in “Pride and Prejudice” live. The focus of this new novel is on the servants in this house, and their parallel lives during the course of the events described in “Pride and Prejudice.” This is no “Upstairs, Downstairs” or “Downton Abbey”; the house is far smaller, and the servants’ lives are much drabber and harder, or at least harder than the portrayals in those two television shows. The novel opens with the housemaid Sarah’s doing the laundry, with all the miserable details of scrubbing and cleaning the clothing for a family with five daughters. “Washday could not be avoided, but the weekly purification of the household’s linen was nonetheless a dismal prospect for Sarah. The air was sharp at four thirty in the morning, when she started work. The iron pump-handle was cold, and even with her mitts on, her chilblains flared as she heaved the water up from the underground dark and into her waiting pail. A long day to be got through, and this was just the very start of it” (p. 3). We learn of Sarah’s background and dreams, and of those of the other servants: Mr. and Mrs. Hill, the child Polly, and the mysterious Joseph Smith who is taken on as a footman, and who turns out to have a secret prior connection with the household. The Bennet family is generally kind to the servants, if occasionally thoughtless; there is love and support among the servants; and there are some happy events as well. But there is no getting around the drudgery of the work to be done. Meanwhile the events of the Bennets’ lives go on in the background, in this “inside out” version of the story. Interestingly, Elizabeth Bennet is portrayed as less lively and witty, and more worried and sometimes muted, than in the original novel. “Longbourn” is well written, and is a good reminder of the lives of the majority of the English people at the time, those who were not in the upper class. So, unlike in the case of some other Austen-connected novels, I am glad to have read “Longbourn.” But as with those other cases, the final impression we are left with is that no one can hold the proverbial candle to the real thing, the original masterpiece, “Pride and Prejudice.”