Posted on by Ann@BooksontheTable

Perfect Reading Weather

It’s currently -15 degrees in Chicago — and that’s at noon, with the sun shining. Yesterday I saw a Facebook post from Garrison Keillor’s bookstore in St. Paul, Minnesota, showing a digital thermometer reading -14 degrees, with the caption, “Dear Rest of the World, in Minnesota we call this ‘book weather’. Enjoy.” Thank you, Common Good Books, for giving voice to what I have always thought: the worse the weather, the better the day.

www.randomhouse-1I love to hibernate. If I am reincarnated as an animal, I would like to be a bear. The only problem is that bears are not literate, and I like to spend my hibernation time reading. On New Year’s Day (which is always a wonderful day to stay home in pajamas), I finished reading Rachel Joyce’s Perfect. I adored this lovely novel, and have been thinking about it ever since. Joyce tells two stories, in alternating chapters: the story of Byron, a young boy whose innocent childhood comes to an end when something happens on an ordinary morning on the way to school, and the story of Jim, a middle-aged man whose life is crippled by obsessive-compulsive disorder. The reader may or may not anticipate the way in which these two lives end up intersecting ( I didn’t!), but that doesn’t matter — the beauty of this book is in the characters. Perfect is one of the rare character-driven novels in which the plot is well-paced and full of surprises.

As I’ve said before, I have no problem with unlikable characters in literature. The best fiction helps us understand human nature, and unlikable characters are necessary for that. Still, it’s a real pleasure to read about lovable characters. By “lovable” characters, I don’t mean “endearing”; I mean characters that the reader grows to understand and love. There are no perfect characters in this book. They all make grave mistakes that have unforeseen and unfortunate consequences, but they are trying to do what they think is right. Byron and his friend James develop “Operation Perfect” to protect Diana, Byron’s mother, after she is involved in a potentially dangerous situation. Diana is a kind, fragile. and sensitive woman, married to a domineering husband, who is easily manipulated. (She is reminiscent of another sad and lovely English woman, Princess Diana  — am I reading too much into the fact that Rachel Joyce named her Diana?) She loves her children fiercely, but is ill-equipped to care for them — and Byron takes on the burdensome role of parent.

Whatever happened, he must never tell his mother what she had done. Of all the people to know, she was the most dangerous. He told himself this over and over while her fingers crept through his hair and the rain pattered on the leaves and the thunder grew tame.

Perfect is filled with ambiguity, which is part of what makes the book so haunting. Are some of the events imagined by the characters, or did they really happen? And does it matter if they actually occurred? Because, as Byron notes, “Within months, everything had changed, and the changes could never be put right. Nothing could atone for his mother’s mistake.” Jim knows that the obsessive rituals he is compelled to perform won’t prevent tragedy from striking, but his rational mind is overpowered by his need to compensate for what he sees as unpardonable sins: “How can he start again with Eileen? What about the rituals? . . . What she has no idea about is who he is, what he did in the past and all that he must continue to do to atone for that.” Did he really do anything unforgivable?

I’m looking forward to discussing this book in person and online — it raises many, many interesting questions about friendship, class, marriage, parents and children, guilt, truth . . . and perfection. As my first read of 2014, Perfect sets a high standard.

Posted on by Ann@BooksontheTable

Those Amazing Ephron Sisters — Part I (Delia)

9780399166556HFour sisters, brought up in Hollywood by  famous screenwriter parents, all grow up to be successful writers. Sounds like a novel or movie script, doesn’t it? In fact, the youngest Ephron daughter, Amy, was named after the youngest March daughter in Little Women. In an Oprah magazine article, Hallie Ephron says:

As we got older, we grew comfortable in roles that met our parents’ expectations. Nora was the smart one. Delia, the comedian. I was the pretty, obedient one. And Amy was the adventurous mischief-maker. But in reality, we were more alike than we were different—all bossy and opinionated, witty and articulate, like our mother. At dinner, a three-course event that anchored every evening at 6:30 sharp, the competition for airtime was Darwinian.

This morning, I listened to Terry Gross interview Delia Ephron about her collection of autobiographical essays, Sister Mother Husband Dog. In the interview, Delia described the Ephron dinner table. Her father would shout, “That’s a great line — write it down!” whenever one of his daughters said anything clever or amusing. The four girls were groomed to be writers from an early age. Nora, the eldest, was an early success — “published when she was born”, according to Delia. The other three were relatively late bloomers. Delia published an essay, “How to Eat Like a Child”, in the New York Times when she was 32, and her writing career took off from there, including  over a dozen books and numerous plays and screenplays. Many of the scripts were co-written with Nora. Amy began writing in her late thirties, and Hallie got started when she was close to 50.

Delia covers a lot of territory in Sister Mother Husband Dog. The first essay, “Losing Nora”, made me cry . . . and made me deeply grateful for my own sister. (And it also made me grateful that I was fortunate enough to see Nora’s last play, Lucky Guy, last year on Broadway.) My favorite essay is called “Bakeries”, and of course, it’s about bakeries — but also about “having it all”. You’ll have to read the whole essay to see how Delia gracefully segues from bakeries to the concept of “having it all”, but here’s one of my favorite passages:

To me, having it all — if one wants to define it at all — is the magical time when what you want and what you have match up . . . It might be a fleeting moment — drinking a cup of coffee on a Sunday morning when the light is especially bright. It might also be a few undisturbed hours with a novel I’m in love with, a three-hour lunch with my best friend, reading Goodnight Moon to a child, watching a Nadal-Federer match.

Delia has a wicked sense of humor — honed, she says, at that Ephron family dinner table. She says, “That’s where I learned how to tell a story and that I was funny.” Her thoughts on her  wayward hair, the banks taking over her neighborhood,  Twitter/modern technology, the “name-jacking” of her website, and Anthony Weiner made me laugh out loud. Weiner, she tells us, “could not have it all”.

Sister Mother Husband Dog starts with an essay about Nora’s death and ends with “Collaboration”, about the scripts Nora and Delia worked on together.  I loved reading about their writing process and about the inner workings of the movie business. One of their most successful projects was the screenplay for You’ve Got Mail, one of my favorite movies. Delia says that screenplay was “an especially good collaboration”; they chose to set it in the world of books because “we both loved books, had grown up in a house were books were worshipped”.  When I finished reading “Collaboration”, I wanted MORE — more of Delia Ephron’s wisdom, insight, and humor.

In the Fresh Air interview, Terry asked Delia how Nora’s premature death affected Delia’s feelings about getting older, pointing out that one of Nora’s best-known works is her collection of essays about women and aging, I Feel Bad About My Neck. Delia’s poignant response was, “I do feel that I have to do everything quickly. I don’t want to waste a day”.

Read Hallie Ephron’s thoughts on growing up with three talented sisters here:  http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Nora-Ephrons-Mother-Hallie-Ephron-Essay/3#ixzz2n0AJevCV

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Mob Wives Chicago: Renee Rosen’s Dollface

I recently met Renee Rosen at a Palatine Public Library event called Writing the Past– a panel discussion with three historical novelists. Renee and two other Chicago-area writers (Charles Finch, author of the Charles Lenox Victorian mystery series, and Melanie Benjamin, author of The Aviator’s Wife, Mrs. Tom Thumb, and Alice I Have Been) talked about the challenges and rewards of writing historical fiction. I’d just finished reading Dollface and was especially interested in Renee’s perspective on historical fiction.

816Several years ago, when Renee published her first novel (Every Crooked Pot, a contemporary novel), I recommended it again and again to both teenagers and adults. Renee’s portrayal of the relationship between a young girl with a disfiguring birthmark and her complicated father has remained one of my favorite coming of age stories. At first, I was surprised that the same Renee Rosen wrote both Every Crooked Pot and Dollface. But both books are about young women who feel like outsiders, struggling to belong and to find out who they are. Vera Abramowitz (a.k.a. “Dollface”), the title character and narrator,  just happens to be a gun moll.

In a Chicago Tribune review, Rick Kogan says:

There are few local writers who are more determined than Rosen. Her first, the novel Every Crooked Pot, was published in 2007, and she has spent the intervening years immersing herself in local history and polishing her style. These have been years well spent and excitingly realized in Dollface.

In the panel discussion, Renee mentioned that her original manuscript focused on male gangsters of Prohibition-era Chicago. In a post on her blog (“The Original Bad Boys”), Renee points out that these deadly criminals were very young men:

When you think of bad boys, they didn’t get any “badder” than Al Capone and Hymie Weiss.  In fact, Hymie Weiss was so bad that even Capone was scared of him.  And yet, in reality these original bad boys were indeed really just a bunch of boys.  During the Roaring ‘20s, the average age of a gangster was probably twenty-five and most of them were gunned down before their thirtieth birthdays.

imagesEveryone knows that Prohibition was a colossal flop that did more to accelerate the consumption of alcohol than curb it. But it was also a breeding ground of opportunity for young street thugs, safe crackers and petty thieves. Practically overnight these kids went from scuffed up boots and soft caps to doubled-breasted suits and fedoras. They suddenly found themselves with money, power and broads. Girls everywhere chucked their corsets, defiantly bobbed their hair and flocked to these dashing young men who were just as forbidden as the hooch they were bootlegging.

Renee followed valuable advice from an editor to “move the men to the sidelines and give your women their due”.  We’re all familiar with Al Capone and his contemporaries, but the story told from the point of view of the female characters is fresh and imaginative.  Vera wrestles with the morality of loving a gangster:

I looked at the others and wondered how they could live with it — knowing what their men had done. I thought I’d found a way to justify it. I told myself that Shep was different from other gangsters, that he would never hurt anyone unless it was in self-defense, that underneath it all, he was a kindhearted, loving man. But what was I supposed to tell myself now that he’d been arrested and was out hunting Capone?

After listening to the panel discussion, I had many more questions for Renee — here’s the Q and A.

I loved your debut novel, Every Crooked Pot. (I’m always on the lookout for adult novels that appeal to teenagers — I’m not a fan of the “YA” genre.) Your second novel, Dollface, is historical fiction and clearly a departure from your first novel. What inspired you to move into historical fiction?

I actually started working on Dollface before Every Crooked Pot was published. I always loved history, especially the 1920s. I was drawn to that era even before Boardwalk Empire and the remake of The Great Gatsby came on the scene. I figured if I was that interested in this time period, maybe others would be, too.

For you, what is the line between fiction and fact? How much liberty do you think a writer of historical fiction can take with the facts? Is Vera Abramowitz based on a real person?

Great question. I’ve talked to other authors about this very thing and I admit that it is something I wrestle with. In Dollface I really tried to be as historically accurate as possible and spent a lot of time on my author’s note in the back to point out wherever I deviated from a timeline or a historical fact. I also tried to indicate what really happened because fact is definitely stranger than fiction, which is one of the great joys of conducting research.

As to how much liberty I take depends in part on how much information is available. For example, in my next book, What The Lady Wants, there was very little written about Marshall Field and Delia Canton’s personal lives so I’ve had to fill in the blanks. However, when I do that, I’m very conscious of basing it on other information that I’ve uncovered.

And lastly, Vera, the main character in Dollface is purely fictional, but again, I tried to make her true to the time.

Which current-day authors do you most enjoy reading? Do you read historical fiction? I read an interview with another historical fiction author who said she never reads historical fiction, only fact, because she is afraid she will then get fact and fiction confused in her mind. 

The usual suspects instantly come to mind: Jhumpa Lahiri, Michael Chabon, Michael Cunningham, Donna Tartt. And yes, I do read historical fiction, though I can see why some would shy away from it. When I started researching Dollface there weren’t a lot of novels based in the 1920s so bleeding fact with fiction wasn’t really an issue. I’m finding many more novels set in my new time period from 1870s – 1900s and I’m loving it. I personally love getting a history lesson in while I’m reading.

If you had lived during the 1920s, what sort of life do you imagine you would have led?

I’m certain that I would not have had half the excitement that Vera has. And that’s a good thing! But knowing me, I’m sure I would have gone to speakeasies and I’m probably just enough of a rebel that I would have bobbed my hair and worn lip rouge. Probably would have flashed a kneecap or two as well!

How long did it take you to write Dollface — and how much of that was spent on research?

I worked on Dollface for about 10 years and the research was ongoing. I found that as the story evolved, I needed to learn more about a particular aspect of that era. I spent a lot of time meeting with people, everyone from Al Capone’s great niece to local historians as well as digging up old newspaper clips from the 1920s. It was really thrilling. I loved every minute of it!

As I’m sure you discovered with the publication of your first book, a whole new phase of a writer’s job begins when the book is published. How do you feel about that? Do you enjoy promoting the book, which involves networking and public speaking?

I’m actually loving it, mostly because I love the material so much. The gangsters and the Roaring Twenties were just fascinating so it’s very easy for me to talk about. I also have a background in advertising and marketing so for me, promotion is second nature. I know a lot of authors struggle with this and for me the most challenging aspect is finding the time to do it all and still continue working on the next book. Because there’s always a next book in the works!

The characters in Dollface are vivid and three-dimensional. Do you identify with any particular character — or with more than one? 

Another really terrific question! I definitely didn’t base any of the characters on myself but I can relate to aspects of their personalities. For example, given her background, I can appreciate why Vera is seeking security and a more glamorous life. I also can understand Evelyn’s insecurities and I feel for her when she tolerates Izzy’s abuse. I loved Shep’s diplomacy as much as Basha’s brashness. And something all the characters do is justify and rationalize their lot in life. I think many of us can relate to that, even if we don’t approve of their choices.

What are your favorite books set in Chicago (besides Dollface!)? (Mine would have to be The Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen . . . I also loved Crossing California by Adam Langer.)

I’m with you on The Devil in the White City. I’d also add another non-fiction book, Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott.  I adore Sister Carrie and The Jungle and for a fascinating historical overview of the city, I don’t think you can beat City of the Century.

Do you belong to a writers’ group? Do you see yourself as part of the literary community in Chicago and how would you characterize that community? 

I do have a critique partner but I’m not currently part of a writer’s group. However, I would say that I’m fairly involved in the Chicago literary community, which is vibrant and very much alive. There’s an ever-expanding group of folks here comprised of writers, booksellers, reps and agents that meet once every other month for Publishing Cocktails that Keir Graff and Javier Ramirez started up. It’s always at a different location—sometimes we’ll do a cash mob at a bookstore and then move on to a local watering hole, other times, we’ll do a book swap. It’s always great fun.

Something else that has kind of taken on a life of its own is our All-You-Can-Eat-Sushi Lunches. And I know, no one should look for a bargain when it comes to sushi, but we’ve found a great little place (best kept secret in Chicago) and once a month we meet and eat and drink and talk for hours about books and writing and reading. It’s our version of the Algonquin Round Table.

What are your favorite places to go in Chicago — for example, any special parks? museums? restaurants? 

I do adore the Chicago History Museum and the Art Institute. I’m also fortunate enough to have the lakefront within walking distance from my home and there’s nothing better on a beautiful day. Another great thing about Chicago are all the wonderful restaurants—new ones popping up and old favorites you can always count on.

Gang violence continues to plague Chicago. How would you compare the violence that took place nearly 100 years ago with the violence that’s happening today?

Wow, that could be a thesis! I’m sure there are many people more qualified than I am to answer this, but I’ll try. Sadly, there are still a lot of parallels in terms of loyalties, the oath of silence, territories, bloodshed, etc. But, I will say that in the Twenties there were far fewer innocent people and children who became victims of gang violence. I also think that the gangsters of the Twenties saw themselves as businessmen first and foremost. They were much more likely to mingle and do business with other legitimate, established businessmen and even celebrities. Some gangsters, like Capone, even became a celebrity of sorts in his own right.

Posted on by Ann@BooksontheTable

10 Books the Critics (And I) Loved

I’m not really a book reviewer; I’m a book recommender. If I’m reading I book I don’t like, I have no problem putting that book down and moving on to the next one in my stack.  There are far too many 9781400067558wonderful books in the world to bother with those that don’t capture my attention. That’s why I wouldn’t want to be a critic. People who agree to review books end up having to plow through a certain number of books they don’t enjoy — and then, if they’re honest, enumerate what they see as the failings of those books. I prefer to ignore the books that aren’t to my taste and to spread the good word about the ones that are. Maybe that attitude comes from 15 years of bookselling? When someone comes in the store and asks for a recommendation, I don’t point out the books that the customer wouldn’t like! If I’m asked point blank what I think of a book, and it’s one I disliked, I usually say, “It wasn’t my cup of tea”. That response covers a lot of territory. . . . although I’m always happy to expand on it.

Apparently, there is a controversy in the world of book reviewing about the value of negative book reviews. The well-regarded critic Laura Miller addressed this issue in an article for the online magazine Salon entitled “The Case for Positive Book Reviews”, stating “Critics who have a choice generally prefer to call attention to books they find praiseworthy”.

In yesterday’s New York Times review of The Death of Santini, Frank Bruni quotes the author, Pat Conroy:

I trained myself to be unafraid of critics, and I’ve held them in high contempt since my earliest days as a writer because their work seems pinched and sullen and paramecium-souled . .  No writer has suffered over morning coffee because of the savagery of my review of his or her latest book, and no one ever will.

Although Bruni finds Conroy to be self-righteous in his refusal to criticize other writers (especially, Bruni notes, when his sensitivity doesn’t seem to extend to the Conroy family members who are used as material in his books), I appreciate Conroy’s position. Jacob Silverman, a columnist and book reviewer, does not.  In an article in Salon,  “Against Enthusiasm: The Epidemic of Niceness in Online Book Culture”, Silverman argues that there is a place for critical voices and negative reviews, saying “reviewers shouldn’t be recommendation machines” — that they should all “think more and enthuse less”. I appreciate his position as well — but I would rather keep my negative thoughts to myself.

cover-1I certainly respect the work that book critics do, and I am an enthusiastic reader of book reviews. Every Sunday, the book review section is the first one I pull out of the paper. I know I could read it earlier, when it arrives in the mail at the store, or online, but I like the ritual of reading it on Sundays. During the week, I read other book reviews online, in magazines, and in newspapers, but there is something special about the Sunday New York Times Book Review. I have a love-hate relationship with the Book Review — I’m mystified, and frequently annoyed, by the editors’ choices of books they deem worthy of review. But when I read a review of a book that I thought was terrific and find that the Times thought it was terrific too, I feel validated as a reader.

Here is a list of 10 books published in the last year or two that I loved, and that the critics loved as well. (Maybe sometime I’ll make a list of books that I thought were wonderful that the critics dismissed.)

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini; reviewed by Michiko Kakutani/New York Times www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/books/and-the-mountains-echoed-by-khaled-hosseini.html

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo; reviewed by Janet Maslin/New York Times www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/books/katherine-boos-first-book-behind-the-beautiful-forevers.html

Big Brother by Lionel Shriver reviewed by Julie Myerson/The Observer www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/11/big-brother-lionel-shriver-review

Blue Plate Special by Kate Christensen reviewed by Max Watman/Wall Street Journal online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324354704578636141281560474

Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker reviewed by Mimi Swartz/New York Times www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/books/review/lost-girls-by-robert-kolker.html

The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson reviewed by Michiko Kakutani/New York Times www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/books/the-orphan-masters-son-by-adam-johnson-review.html?pagewanted=2a

9780062236678-1The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan reviewed by Susan Vreeland/Washington Post articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-01-21/entertainment/36472794_1_dancers-sisters-marie-van-goethem

Sister Mother Husband Dog (Etc.) by Delia Ephron reviewed by Elinor Lipman/New York Times www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/books/review/delia-ephrons-sister-mother-husband-dog-etc.html

This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett reviewed by Maureen Corrigan/NPR www.npr.org/2013/11/13/244996958/a-marriage-a-divorce-a-dying-dog-and-essays-done-right

With or Without You by Domenica Ruta reviewed by Margaux Fragoso/New York Times www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/books/review/with-or-without-you-by-domenica-ruta.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0

 

Posted on by Ann@BooksontheTable

My Reading Life with Pat Conroy

I was saddened to learn that Pat Conroy died yesterday (March 4, 2016), at the age of 70. In his obituary, the New York Times says that Conroy’s “legion of admirers . . . hung on his every word, entranced by the naked emotionalism of his male characters, the Lowcountry atmosphere and the page-turning Southern yarns.” Two years ago, I wrote about Conroy’s last book, The Death of Santini (published in 2013) and my long nearly 30-year membership in the Pat Conroy fan club.

How many aspiring writers have been told to “write what you know”? If Pat Conroy was given that timeworn advice, he’s certainly taken it to heart.  Both his novels and his memoirs are about what he knows — growing up as the son of an abusive Marine Corps fighter pilot, attending the Citadel as a basketball player and budding writer, losing a brother to suicide, coping with a sister’s mental illness. In his latest memoir, The Death of Santini, Conroy says, ” My books have always been disguised voyages into that archipelago of souls known as the Conroy family.”

coverI discovered Pat Conroy in 1987, with a paperback copy of The Prince of Tides. My first baby was born that year, and when he was asleep, I was reading Pat Conroy. As tired as I was, I stayed up late, immersed in the drama of the Wingo family — a violent and cruel father . . . a suicidal poet sister . . . escaped convicts on the loose . . . and a ferocious pet tiger. When I finished all 664 pages, I couldn’t wait to read more of Conroy’s writing. I quickly went through The Water is Wide, The Great Santini, and The Lords of Discipline — and then I was finished. The books went on the shelf, and my love affair with big, fat books continued when Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities grabbed my attention.

Conroy disappeared for years, and finally published Beach Music in 1995. I wanted to love the book, but found I couldn’t get past the flowery prose and stilted dialogue. So it was with trepidation that I picked up My Losing Season several years later. On the surface, this memoir recounts Conroy’s senior year playing basketball at the Citadel, but it’s really about his relationship with his father, his coach, and his teammates, and finding his voice as a writer.

Do you think that Hemingway knew he was a writer at twenty years old? No, he did not. Or Fitzgerald, or Wolfe. This is a difficult concept to grasp. Hemingway didn’t know he was Ernest Hemingway when he was a young man. Faulkner didn’t know he was William Faulkner. But they had to take the first step. They had to call themselves writers. That is the first revolutionary act a writer has to make. It takes courage. But it’s necessary.

Even though I’m not interested in college basketball, I was captivated by Conroy’s story of failure and how it shaped him into the person and writer he became. It remains one of my favorite memoirs . . . along with My Reading Life, which Conroy published in 2010. (I wasn’t enamored with South of Broad, Conroy’s 2009 novel.) My Reading Life isn’t exactly a memoir; it’s a collection of essays about the powerful role of reading in Conroy’s difficult life. A person can’t be a writer without first being a reader, and Conroy tells us how he became a reader:

My mother turned me into an insatiable, fanatical reader. It was her gentle urging, her hurt, insistent voice, that led me to discover my identity by taking a working knowledge of the great books with me always. She wanted me to read everything of value, and she taught me to out-read my entire generation, as she had done hers. . . I have tried to read two hundred pages every day of my life since I was a freshman in high school because I knew that I would come to the writing of books without the weight of culture and learning that a well-established, confidently placed family could offer its children. I collected those long, melancholy lists of the great books that high school English teachers passed out to college-bound students, and I relied on having consumed those serious litanies of books as a way to ease my way into the literary life.

Even today, I hunt for the fabulous books that will change me utterly. I find myself happiest in the middle of a book in which I forget that I am reading, but am instead immersed in a made-up life lived at the highest pitch. Reading is the most rewarding form of exile and the necessary discipline for novelist who burns with the ambition to get better.

The Death of Santini covers some familiar ground — the relationship between Conroy and his terrifyingly abusive father, Don Conroy (a.k.a. “The Great Santini”). But this is a story of redemption — Don Conroy has transformed himself from a monster into a loving father and grandfather. At the end of The Prince of Tides, Tom Wingo (Pat Conroy’s alter ego), says, “I learned that I needed to love my mother and father in all their flawed, outrageous humanity. And in families there are no crimes beyond forgiveness. But it is the mystery of life that sustains me now.” Fact reflects fiction in The Death of Santini, for Conroy shows us how he is able to forgive Don Conroy for his vicious cruelty towards his family. The writing of the book was a necessary part of Conroy’s healing; he says in the prologue:

Mom and Dad, I need to go back there once again.  I’ve got to try to make sense of it one last time . . . Then I’ll be finished with you, Mom and Dad. I’ll leave you in peace and not bother you again. And I’ll pray that your stormy spirits find peace in the house of the Lord. But I must examine the wreckage one last time.

Don Conroy was, according to his son, far more cruel and abusive than Bull Meecham, the”Great Santini” of the novel. When Conroy sent his editor a first draft of the novel, she told him she was troubled by his potrayal of the Colonel — “no  reader could expect to believe that such an unsavory man could exist without a single virtue to recommend him. To make him credible, I had to include scenes that displayed a softer and kinder man.” This softer and kinder man eventually came to life, in the person of the elderly Don Conroy. Throughout his life, he enjoyed attending his son’s book signings; in fact, father and son made a pact that no customer would ever leave without a book signed by them both. (Of course, he often bragged that his line for autographs was longer.) He was enormously proud of Conroy’s success, and, in fact, wrote a letter to his entire extended family defending The Great Santini:

Pat is a very clever storyteller and I was totally absorbed and encountered every emotion, as reading very slowly, life with father unfolded in this work of fiction. It was as though I knew some of the characters personally . . . Pat did a superb job in developing the character Mary Ann . . . with all modesty, fell far short on Santini — which is quite understandable with such a dashing and complex character.

Yes, Don Conroy is a complex character — and Conroy does an extraordinary job of portraying that complexity in The Death of Santini. In one of the most moving scenes in the book, Conroy describes his father’s grief after his youngest son’s funeral: “Forgiven at last, my father sat in a chair in the living room, not even trying to control his crying. His kids surrounded him, because his love of Tom provided us an understanding of his own love for all of us. It was a day of surreal, uncommon beauty.”

Conroy closes the book with the eulogy he wrote for his father’s funeral. Is this really the last time Conroy will “examine the wreckage” of his tumultuous family? In an interview in BookPage, he claims it is: “I’m going to try to leave the family in peace. There are other things to write about.” We’ll see.

Posted on by Ann@BooksontheTable

Men, Women, & Reading

Today is my husband’s birthday (Happy Birthday, Jeff!) and that made me think about the differences between men’s and women’s reading tastes.  I was trying to decide which book to give him for his birthday. When I started working at Lake Forest Book Store, our owner, Sue Boucher, gave me a “tour” of the store. The space we occupied at the time was only 1000 square feet, so the tour didn’t take long, but I learned some interesting things along the way. Sue pointed out the “men’s” and “women’s” sections. The men’s, as you might guess, was filled with murder mysteries and spy thrillers, while the women’s shelves contained literary fiction.

I had never given much thought to which books might appeal primarily to men and which might be “women’s” books. I had always dismissed a few authors as men’s authors I didn’t want to read, (such as the recently departed Tom Clancy), but I had always liked all kinds of books and vaguely assumed everyone else was the same.  I knew that my sons didn’t want to read The Babysitters Club series and my daughter wasn’t interested in science fiction, but they had all enjoyed listening to us read Charlotte’s Web, The Witches, the Narnia books, and the Little House books.

Now I was learning to think like a bookseller, not just as an independent reader, and what I learned fascinated me. First of all, I discovered that the differences start early. If a book features a female as the main character, boys, for the most part, won’t read it. However, girls are happy to read about either boys or girls. Why do you think J.K. Rowling wrote about Harry Potter, not Helen Potter? Yes, Hermione is a smart and independent girl, but she’s still a sidekick. Do boys want to read about “the girl who lived”? This difference carries through to adulthood — it’s a rare male reader, in my experience,  who is interested in reading a novel featuring a female character.

Over the years, I found that another generalization held true — boys and men are more interested in novels featuring action, humor, and factual information than they are in books about love, family relationships, and young people coming of age.  And men are much more interested in nonfiction than women. If you tell a woman a work of nonfiction “reads like a novel”, that’s a great selling point —  but it’s not necessarily for a man. I wonder why elementary school teachers insist that boys read fiction, when so many of them would much prefer to read a sports biography or a factual book about war? Is the literary value of any novel greater than the literary value of nonfiction?

TheBoysintheBoatAnyway, I finally decided not to get my husband another book. I looked at his nightstand and realized I had already provided him with enough reading to take him through 2013 and well into 2014. (By the way, he’s not a fan of mysteries or spy thrillers — but he does love history.) He’s now reading The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown — which was my favorite book from the last few months.  Everyone knows about Jesse Owens’s famous victory at the 1936 Olympics, but how many know about the University of Washington crew team’s win?

This is a perfect book for both men and women — if you’re looking for a book to share with your spouse, this is the one.  On the surface, it’s an underdog sports story in the vein of Seabiscuit or The Greatest Game Ever Played,  but it’s much more than a sports book. The “boys in the boat” were the nine students at the University of Washington (eight rowers and one coxswain) who overcame obstacle after obstacle to defeat the Germans at the 1936 Olympics. The fact that they were attending college at all was a miracle — almost all of them were from dirt-poor families struggling to feed their families during the Depression. One of the boys was actually abandoned by his family and had to forage in the woods for food. This book hooked me from the first page, when Daniel James Brown describes his first meeting with his neighbor, Joe Rantz (one of the legendary nine):

I knew only two things about Joe when I knocked his daughter Judy’s door that day. I knew that in his mid-seventies he had singlehandedly hauled a number of cedar logs down a mountain, then hand-split the rails and cut the posts and installed all 2,224 linear feet of the pasture fence I had just climbed over — a task so herculean I shake my head in wonderment whenever I think about it. And I knew he had been one of nine young men from the state of Washington — farm boys, fishermen, and loggers — who shocked both the rowing world and Adolf Hitler by winning the gold medal in eight-oared rowing at the 1936 Olympics.

It’s a thrilling story, even though the outcome is known from page one. The personalities involved, the historical context, and the details about rowing and boatbuilding all combine to create a multi-dimensional narrative. It’s an inspirational story as well; Brown starts  each chapter of The Boys in the Boat  with a quotation by George Pocock, the British-born boatbuilder and unofficial coach and guru to the University of Washington crew. The final quotation in the book is posted in the boathouse at the University of Washington:

Harmony, balance, rhythm. There you have it. That’s what life is all about.

Link to a video of the famous race, complete with a German announcer:

 

Posted on by Ann@BooksontheTable

Early Decision — Book Review

9780062240699The clock is ticking for thousands of privileged high school seniors — the early decision deadlines at top colleges are looming. Lacy Crawford’s roman à clef, Early Decision: Based on a True Frenzy, is a glimpse into the world of an independent college counselor and her clients. The main character in Early Decision is Anne, a 27-year-old Chicagoan with degrees from Princeton and the University of Chicago who’s not quite sure what she wants to do with her life. She stumbles upon a career as a “college whisperer”  to students from wealthy families in Chicago and the North Shore. To the mothers, she’s a shoulder to lean on; to the fathers, she’s a voice of reason; and to the stressed-out teenagers, she’s a buffer between them and their anxious parents. But she wonders why:

. . . she was dating a man who cheated like mad and helping high school kids with their college applications .  . Every year, in late December as the application deadlines were bearing down, Anne swore she would never do it again. And then come spring, the phone calls came.

What I enjoyed most about Early Decision wasn’t the insider’s look at college admissions.  There have been several recent novels on that topic — most notably, Admission, by Jean Hanff Korelitz (made into a terrific movie starring Tina Fey) — as well as a spate of nonfiction accounts. Readers seem to have an endless appetite for information about the mysterious world of college admissions. I am no different — although, having weathered my three children’s college applications, I am growing a little tired of the whole subject. But I think  Early Decision is about much more than college — it’s about what it means to become an independent adult, and what it means to raise productive citizens. What decisions should parents make for children? How do we teach our children to make decisions for themselves? How can young adults gain self-knowledge and take control of their own futures? Anne, as well as her students, is struggling to make a life for herself:

Here is what was going to happen: Anne was going to wake up one morning in full possession of the authority she needed to go out and start her life. To acquire the position she really wanted — whatever that was — and succeed. . . She did not know how to explain why it hadn’t happened yet. She had been careful and diligent. She’d earned terrific grades. There had been classes in college about which she was passionate, and books she underlined so hard she tore the page . . . Her professors loved her, but none of them shared with her the knowledge she needed: How did such work lead to a life full of days? What, exactly, did one do?

Like her protagonist, Lacy Crawford was a private college admissions counselor.  As a high school English teacher, she discovered a talent for helping students with their personal essays for college. Parents began asking her to help their children with the admissions process, and a successful, 15-year career was born. When asked in an interview with The Atlantic why she didn’t write a tell-all memoir, Lacy said:

I have no interest in hurting people who have already been hurt by their parents’ ambition. These are stories of real devastation. And I was able to shine a spotlight on things with fiction that I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise . . . I also didn’t want to write a memoir. I don’t have to relive my 20s. It wasn’t that fun the first time.

But reading Early Decision is fun — the humor is satirical without being mean-spirited, the writing is clever and fluid, the main characters are interesting and three-dimensional, and the ending is very satisfying.  Without giving too much away, I can tell you that nearly everyone makes the right decision. There’s an epilogue with updates on the five students that the book follows (four are wealthy, one is the daughter of a maid), as well as on the other characters — including April, Anne’s obnoxious neighbor. If you like ends tied up neatly in a book, this one is for you.

The literal French translation of roman à clef is “novel with a key”. The term originates from 17th century France when it was common for novelists to portray political and public figures masked as fictional characters. There might have been an actual key in the form of epigraphs. Today, the term is used a little more broadly, to describe a book about real events or people, with details obscured. (My favorite roman á clef of all time: Nora Ephron’s Heartburn.)

Posted on by Ann@BooksontheTable

Unlikable Characters — Why I Love Them

As a writer,  I subscribe to Chekhov’s world view — “It’s not my job to tell you that horse thieves are bad people — it’s my job to tell you what this horse thief is like.”  Claire Messud

We all have favorite characters in literature — but often, those aren’t the most likable or admirable characters. They’re usually the most interesting ones.  Jay Gatsby is complicated and fascinating, but would you want to have dinner with him? (Although you might want to go to one of his parties.) Holden Caulfield would probably be annoying. And who wants a friend as conniving and disingenuous as Scarlett O’Hara?

In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Claire Messud (The Emperor’s Children, The Woman Upstairs) took issue with the idea that characters should be likable. When asked, “I wouldn’t want to be friends with Nora (the protagonist of The Woman Upstairs), would you? Her outlook is almost unbearably grim,” Messud answers, “What kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert . .  Hamlet . . . Raskolnikov . . .Antigone. . . If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn’t ‘Is this a friend for me?’ but “Is this character alive?’ “.

A couple of weeks ago, our store hosted a luncheon for Maggie Shipstead in honor of the paperback release of her wonderful comedy of manners, Seating Arrangements. Maggie mentioned that she had participated via Skype in book group discussions of her novel and that a common criticism was that the characters weren’t likable. Seating Arrangements takes place over a single weekend, on an island very much like Nantucket, as a family of New England WASPs gathers for a wedding. Not everyone in the novel behaves well — in fact, most of the characters behave rather badly. Winn, the father of the bride, lusts after one of the bridesmaids and is obsessed with joining a golf club that won’t admit him. No, I don’t want him at my next party. A lesser writer would have portrayed Winn as a stereotypical upper-class jerk, but Shipstead makes him come marvelously alive.

The runaway hit of summer 2012 was Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn — and it’s still selling so well in hardcover that it hasn’t been released in paperback yet. Now there’s a book with unlikable characters! Even Nick, the supposed “good guy” in the book, is not really a sympathetic character.  Amy is the “horse thief” in the book and certainly Flynn tells us what this horse thief is like. Is that why Gone Girl has been so popular? Or is it the intricate plot with twist after twist — and that controversial ending?

coverFor me, The Dinner, by Herman Koch, was this year’s Gone Girl. (Actually, the Wall Street Journal calls it the “European Gone Girl“, but I thought of it first, I promise.) The entire novel unfolds over the course of a dinner at a fashionable restaurant in Amsterdam. Two couples meet to discuss a problem with their teenage sons. We gradually learn that the boys have committed a crime. But what is it? Who among the four parents is culpable? Not one of the characters in this book is someone you’d like at your dinner table. In her review of this book for the New York Times, Claire Messud says, “North American readers care inordinately that fictional characters be likable. This premise is strange, given that few real people are thoroughly nice and those few aren’t interesting.  Surely what actually matters is that characters clear this vital hurdle: that they be interesting.” The characters in The Dinner clear that hurdle . . . how about a book group meeting over dinner to discuss them and their motivations?

For more on likable/unlikable characters in literature, check out this link to Page-Turner,  the New Yorker’s book blog: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/05/would-you-want-to-be-friends-with-humbert-humbert-a-forum-on-likeability.html.

Posted on by Ann@BooksontheTable

Summer Reading?

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Here in the Midwest, summer is almost over — school is in session and the leaves are just starting to turn. September is a glorious month, usually full of warm sunny days and cool nights. Book clubs are meeting and debating their reading lists, 2014 calendars are hitting our shelves, and children are writing book reports (“I need to read a memoir by Friday!”). So maybe this isn’t the best time to talk about summer reading (a.k.a. “beach reading”). I’ve never quite understood why I’d want to read differently in the summer than I would any other time of year — what’s the difference between reading on a lounge chair on the porch and reading on a couch in front of a fire? But it seems that most people want to read lighter books in the summer. Customers circle our fiction table, saying they want something “light . . . not depressing . . .funny . . . but not trashy.” There simply aren’t too many good books that fit that description.

Well, I have just had the pleasure of reading a book that is clever and amusing, with only a touch of sadness.  Even though it’s September, it’s not too late for some summer reading.  Where’d You Go, Bernadette? would be just as addictive and wickedly funny on a cold rainy day as it was on the August day when I reluctantly read the last page. Maybe that would be even more appropriate, since the book is set in the Pacific Northwest.

Bernadette Fox is a once-famous architect and a reluctant transplant to Seattle. She’s the wife of a brilliant Microsoft executive and the mother of a brilliant 15-year-old daughter, Bee– and so antisocial that she hires a virtual assistant from India to take care of almost all her personal business. She hates the other mothers at Bee’s politically correct private school, calling them “gnats”:

Because they’re annoying, but not so annoying that you actually want to spend valuable energy on them.

When Bernadette disappears, just before a family trip to Antarctica, it’s up to Bee to track her down.  Exactly how she does that is told in a series of emails, letters, blog posts, notes, and interview transcripts — involving the police, various Microsoft employees, school administrators, neighbors, and cruise line officials. The book  has just the right amount of dark humor — it’s satire with the edges sanded down. Author Maria Semple is a TV writer (Arrested Development and Mad About You), and that comes through in her sharp dialogue and surprising plot twists.

One more thing . . . Bernadette is not the most likable of characters. But she is certainly an interesting one, and isn’t that more important in a novel? That’s a subject for another post.