The Pullet Surprise

Not usually drawn in by awards (maybe because I'm jaded by Oscars and the like), I am still drawn to the Pulitzer Prize winners each year--not that I always read them, but I at least check them out. This year, I started Cleopatra: A Life as an electronic book then tried the hard back, only to give up for awhile. Now I am listening, and find it much easier to get through--even with, perhaps even because of, the footnotes.

The prize for fiction this year went to Jennifer Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, a book recommended to our book club before winning the prize. After reading it, I find that description of the book falls short of the experience. I couldn't even say, if my life depended on it, whom I would call the protagonist. The setting itself ranges from the early seventies at least until a time noted only as 202_, a future less bleak than that of Super Sad True Love Story, but at least more communication dependent and more arid then the present. It also moved from San Francisco to New York.

Each chapter in the book weaves in characters from prior chapters: Sasha, a college dropout, drop in, recovering kleptomaniac, and mother; Bennie, at first a member of a rock band called th Flaming Dildoes, then a music producer, and a washed-up has-been hoping to make a comeback. Other characters, just as significant are childhood friends of Bennie, family members, even a sleazy music producer who preys on younger women, dragging his own children along on trips with the woman of the day. Scotty makes an appearance first as one of Bennie's young band members, then a practically homeless man who brings a huge fish he's just caught to Bennie's office and then--well, no spoiler for you now.

I'd love to know something about the Pulitzer process, since I sometimes find myself surprised to find that I've just read the winner (Edward P. Jones, The Known World and Elizabeth Stout's Olive Kitteredge come to mind). This year, I wonder what books didn't quite make the cut.

I can't help believing that this book has those small incidents and images that will keep coming up in my reading memory for awhile. Maybe that's part of the criteria.

The Pullet Surprise

Not Going Ape over Ape House

Without question, I have been a picky reader much longer than I was ever a picky eater (although now only my elementary report cards bear testament to that former affliction, which I wish had lasted into adulthood). There are some authors (whom I will not name for fear of offending others whose literary palates differ from mine) whose works I will not read--or even pick up. I think of one, beloved by high school girls everywhere, who spoke at a national conference I attended a few years ago. I skipped the session and chose, instead, to line up at the UPS office in the hotel to mail home my free books. Right behind me was the woman tapped to introduce the man. She had stayed long enough to do her job--then left without hearing him speak. I understand that.

Sometimes, though, I'll find myself loving a book that my friends or colleagues scorn or criticize. I may understand their opinions and choose to like the book anyway. As a rule, I can buy into "the willing suspension of disbelief." While I am deeply satisfied by a satisfying ending, I don't even require a happy ending, or a tidy ending. No resolution? That's fine as long as it's not just a pretense to make way for a sequel. (I quit reading James Patterson after one book, threads left hanging everywhere.)

I have been listening to the audiobook of Sara Gruen's Ape House. I loved Water for Elephants. This new book has come recommended by people I trust. Maybe the listening experience contributed to my disillusionment, but I think not. The underlying premise was clever and quirky. Who doesn't find the apes who can communicate in ASL fascinating? Gruen also does a remarkable job building uncomfortable tension and suspense, compelling me to keep reading (okay, listening), but the thread of the story involving John Thigpen (derisively called Pigpen) and his wife, the aspiring author, was too unbelievable. Over and over, I wanted to yell, not at them, but at the author: He wouldn't have said that, done that. . . . She would never have acted that way one instant and then this way the next.

I found myself wishing this had been one of those "choose your own adventure" books, giving me some editorial say so. I wanted to give obvious advice to the characters. I don't think the book would have ended far sooner had I done so. Spoiler alert: Who in her right mind would adopt a meth lab pitbull that had escaped a crippling explosion and sneaked his way into an unrelated man's hotel room? A dog named Booger? Who would have made the dog wear sweaters? Who would have been distracted by the dog for an hour or more after finding her husband's hotel room ashtrays overflowing with lipsticked cigarette butts and stinking of smoke and cheap perfume?

But I finished the book, and I'll continue to find the Bonobos fascinating. Now, though, I'm ready to go on to my next possibly great read.

Not Going Ape over Ape House

Blood, Bones, and Butter

Sometimes when I read a book I know others will enjoy, I simultaneously realize there is no way I can explain it in a way that piques their interest as it should. Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir Blood, Bones, and Butter is just such a book. To say the book is about food, while true, is also an understatement.

The author grew up in a family where food was central. She opens with her memories of the book outdoor lamb roast her father organized and carried out each year. Even her accounts of her pure delinquency when her mother left and she and a brother remained behind--basically alone--don't prepare the reader for the woman who develops.

Hamilton didn't end up with her own restaurant Prunes in New York City after going the traditional route--culinary school. In fact, after having to complete high school and college in a nontraditional setting, she earned a MFA in fiction writing from the University of Michigan, "the Harvard of the Midwest." She learned everything she knows about the food industry the hard way, from the bottom up.

She started out waiting tables, prepping for huge generic catered meals, tending bar, even underage, finally landing in her spot as owner and chef by following anything but a logical business plan.

And that is only part of the story. Hamilton married an Italian (an Italian Italian-from Italy), the father of her two sons, and went with him each July for three weeks in Italy with his family, going from Rome to their summer villa in the South, then back. These vacations not only provide rich materials for food writing but such introspection and awareness of family dynamics.

Hamilton's rich use of imagery, of figurative language might slide by a reader not mining for such, but would land smack in the subconscious, prompting one to mull over just why this book is so evocative and provocative. I'll admit that I had to figure out how to add notes and highlights to my eBook so I could return to some of the most powerful passages. For now, though, I think I want to cook some eggplant.

Blood, Bones, and Butter

Famous Men and Their Women

By one of those odd coincidences that occur in my reading life, I just finished two books that were oddly parallel: Nancy Horan's Loving Frank, the story of Mameh Cheney, the woman for whom Frank Lloyd Wright left his wife and six (count'em six) children. I'll confess that by chance, I had an abridged audio (which I consider something of an abomination), and I could often tell where the cuts were made. For a lot of reasons, I can't (or won't) reveal much of the plot, and I'll even encourage you NOT to read anything about the relationship if you plan to read the book.

I've always been interested in Wright, particularly since one of the homes he designed is located in my hometown, Florence, Alabama, built for the Rosenbaum family. In my absolute favorite high school class, Humanities, we had an architecture unit and were able to tour the home. Over the last several years, I've also read Blue Bailett's YA novel The Wright Three before visiting and touring Chicago, and I made the trip out to Oak Park for the F. L. Wright tour, as well as to the Robie House near the University of Chicago.

I couldn't help, though, as I read the book, sympathizing with the spouses and families abandoned.

Then I read Paula McLain's The Paris Wife, a novel based on Hadley Richardson, Hemingway's first wife. The writing was particularly good, I thought, and the author used historical and biographical research as well as Hemingway's fiction to weave her tale. Perhaps the most memorable turn of events occurs when Hadley manages to lose Hemingway's only drafts of writing, a detail I must research.

The story was such a name-dropper, bringing in all the expatriates--Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, and Gertrude Stein, credited with dubbing the crew the "Lost Generation." While much of the story is set in Paris, it begins back in the states and travels throughout Europe,--Lausanne and, of course, Pamplona.

In both books, I marveled at how these not-yet-discovered geniuses managed to travel and live either on credit, hope, or the generosity of wealthier friends. Both stories were heartbreaking, and although neither purported to be anything more than a novel, the bones of the stories, grounded in truth, were both compelling.

Famous Men and Their Women

I've Seen the Future--Again!

Recently, I found myself in the future through all three of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy (the first now about to be filmed just a few miles from here!) Now I've just made my way through Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, and once again, the future looks bleak.

During grad school, I took a comp class in which the instructor used utopian and dystopian literature as a central focus of much of our writing, particularly the research. I remember reading Samuel Butler's Erewhon, published in 1872. Reading his view of the future--or Orwell's 1984--after the fact was thought-provoking, but provided a reminder that it's often not what we worry about that happens. It's what we weren't expected.

In Shteyngart's case, though, he certainly taps into current concerns--our Chinese debt for instance (the big gold yuan symbol on a heavy gold chain appears around necks of at least two characters), the effects of our wars in faraway places and our treatment of returning vets, and of particular concern to me--the replacement of text and talk (called verballing) with electronic options. Even the iPhone is mentioned as retro in the book. Everyone wears tinier and tinier devices called apparats, used for everything. Lenny Abramov, the main character, collects and yes, even reads, books. But when he attempts to read on a plane, people around him complain about the smell.

The extreme worship of youth is central in the novel. Lenny works for a company selling eternal youth--or life--to HNWI's (High Net Worth Individuals). The central love story examines Lenny's obsession with Eunice Park, a first generation Korean American twenty years his junior. Told through Lenny's diary and Eunice's electronic communications (some modern version of email and Facebook), the tale plays on the dramatic irony in the difference between contrast between Lenny's and Eunice's interpretation of events in their lives both small and large.

I guess I'll have to wait a little longer for a more positive view of a future with a sound America, a peaceful world--and a future in which books are safe, even valued.

I've Seen the Future--Again!

War Stories from Closer to Home

The structure of Siobhan Fallon's You Know When the Men Are Gone reminded me from the beginning of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, short stories with a common setting whose characters overlap. Fallen too writes a fictional account based on her own experience, a Ft. Hood wife of a soldier deployed to Iraq.

The stories move back and forth between the base, where wives are facing fears that range from roadside bombs to females serving in the field near their husbands. They deal with gossip, cancer, and childrearing alone --or with the makeshift families developed among the other wives.

The most painful accounts are those of the less-than-perfect homecomings, especially the story of Kit, a soldier returning injured to his young wife who wants her old life back--alone.

With my own friend's sons and even former students having spent time in Ft. Hood, I'm reminded that Fallon's stories only offer a slice of that experience, but what she offers has the ring of truth.

War Stories from Closer to Home

In and Out of Room

Sometimes a book review will draw me in, I'll buy the book, and then hesitate about starting to read it. Room by Emma Donoghue was just such a book. The premise was obviously inspired by a true story that surfaced not long ago--a young woman abducted and held for years against her will, giving birth in captivity--but the use of Jack, the five-year-old son who had never ventured out of the 11 X 11 room where he was born, as narrator certainly gave this novel a twist.

The book sat on my shelf, about eye level, and still I hesitated. Then after a couple of strong recommendations, I came across it in audiobook at the library. This version (a Hachette audiobook) used a young boy as Jack, but also incorporated other voices for Ma and other characters--and it worked.

I hesitate to say too much about the plot because it's a tale told in a way readers need to experience without too many preconceived notions. Too often, if I think I already know a plot, I am reminded just how much more there is to a good book that just plot. In this book, though, the plot peaks midway through the story, and just when I think I've reached the resolution, it takes a completely different turn. Since I was listening on my ride to and from work, I'll admit that at times, I wished I had taken the print copy along too, so that when I was forced to leave my car in the parking lot and go in to work, I could have at least sneaked a peak at what happens next. At times the suspense was killing me. I wanted to have what NPR tags "driveway moments."

Aside from the story, which made me care so much for the two main characters, the victims of a horrendous crime, I also found myself thinking so much about underlying issues the books subtly touches: our overwhelming abundance of possessions, the toll our national curiosity takes on survivors of such experiences, the complications in multigenerational relationships, particularly as marriage and remarriage come into play.

My favorite exchange in the novel occurs when the mother tells her psychiatrist, after the ordeal, that she sometimes wants to slap her mother. He asks if she ever wanted to slap her before the abduction. She laughs wryly and says, "Oh. I have my life back."

At its best, Donoghue's novel shows not only the resilience of the human spirit, but the capacity to make the best of what we have, creating the best world we can with what we have within our grasp.

In and Out of Room