Erin's Book #6: Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving

If I had to pick a favorite author, it would probably be John Irving. I love diving deep into one of his novels and completely getting lost in his worlds.

It's been a while between posts for me because a) I've been busy with other things and reading other types of books, b) I started reading Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love follow up, got completely and utterly bored, and returned it to the library, and c) this book is ginormous. At 554 pages, Twisted River is by no means an easy read, but it is classic Irving.

His last novel, Until I Find You, was somewhat forgettable, but Twisted River is back to the Irving I love. Many classic Irving elements are present - writing, Exeter, incest, New Hampshire, etc. and the book also spans a vast amount of time - fifty-five years or so. This is a quality I adore about Irving books; being able to follow a character from childhood through old age feels like a tidy gift, with no wondering about what happens after the last page.

Twisted River follows a widowed cook and his young son living in a logger's camp in a tiny town in New Hampshire. After an unfortunate accident, the two are on the run, as they remain through the rest of the novel. They travel to Boston, Iowa, Connecticut, and Toronto, growing up and growing old, meeting people and then leaving them. Irving books are much more about people than they are about plot. And these are people I really enjoyed spending time with. Dominic, the cook, Danny, the son, and Ketchum, their long-distance logger friend, are very clearly written, endearing, unique characters.

This book is definitely an investment - the inciting incident doesn't even happen until 100 pages in. It is not an afternoon read. But I sincerely cared about the characters and really enjoyed traveling along their long journey with them. While this book doesn't measure up to my favorite, A Widow for One Year, it's definitely worth reading.

Pam's Book 12: A Spot of Bother

I bought this book several years ago, right after reading Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. I started it and was distracted by some other shiny object and didn't pick it up again until a couple days ago. The spot of bother in the title is two-fold: it is an actual spot on George's hip, as well as the idiomatic spot of bother. George Hall, always a perfectly sane if somewhat emotionally distant man, falls apart upon discovering this spot on his hip. He decides that it's cancer and his days are numbered. It's not and they aren't. In the meanwhile, his daughter Katie is planning (and then isn't planning and then is and isn't and is) to marry a man (Ray) whom everybody thinks is beneath her. His son Jamie's boyfriend Tony breaks up with him because he (Jamie) is a commitment-phobe. Jean, George's wife, is having an affair with David, a former colleague of George's. Things for the Halls are, to put it mildly, a bit of a mess. George is slowly and inexorably going insane. Katie is unclear whether or not she should stay with Ray. Jamie wants to get back together with Tony. Jean is torn between her lover and her husband. What ensues is a hilarious yet touching commentary on the modern family.

In some ways, A Spot of Bother reminds me a lot of the Jonathan Tropper book, This Is Where I Leave You, that I read last month. The family in Tropper's book are brought together by a funeral, not a wedding, and the father in Tropper's book is dead, whereas George Hall just thinks he is going to die. The Hall family is somewhat more functional than Tropper's family, but significantly dysfunctional in their own right. Yet both books leave the reader with the feeling that there is hope for all those less-than-perfect families out there. They both have some hilarious scenes but still leave you thinking, "Yeah, that's right. I'm glad my family's not the only one out there like that." And you feel that if the Halls can work it out, so can your family. Because, let's face it, no matter how close we all are, all families are at least somewhat fucked in in our own special ways. And as long as the love is there, so is the bond.

Pam's Book 11: The Pig Did It

"Aaron McCloud had come to Ireland...so he could, in solitary majesty, feel sorry for himself."

"Aaron had been unlucky in love. And now his body and his soul, trapped in perpetual tantrum, had come to parade their grievances within sight of the sea."

"At thirty-two Aaron had given himself permission to fall in love--or so he thought--with a woman inordinately plain..."

Aaron has been obsessed with the idea that Phila Rambeaux would fall in love with him. He had decided that he would love her, and why shouldn't she love him (the fact that her name is Greek for "love" is never acknowledged)? She is plain, he is handsome; he is a published author, she is an aspirant. He doesn't actually love her, but just doesn't realize that, at least not at first. Throughout the increasingly farcical story, Aaron finds himself less and less able to devote the time and energy to wallowing as he feels he should.

When he first arrives in Ireland, Aaron acquires a pig who adheres steadfastly to him, and this pig, as the title suggests, begins the whole ridiculous chain of events. The pig leads Aaron to meet the lovely swineherd Lolly, as well as Sweeney, a man who more than once saves his life. The pig discovers a dead body, but this story isn't exactly a murder mystery, because we never find out "whodunit." Aaron's (two years older) aunt Kitty thinks Lolly killed him; Sweeney thinks Kitty killed him; Lolly thinks Sweeney killed him. Yet who killed the man has very little to do with the stories, which is mostly about ridiculing Aaron and Kitty's pretensions. Aaron is pretentious about everything, and Kitty is pretentious about her work. Kitty "fixes" classic (and some contemporary) literature, changing names and story lines with abandon.

The Pig Did It was an enjoyable, fun-to-read satire. It is the first of a projected trilogy, but I can't see myself reading the other two books. I'm not really sure where the author is going to go from here. Maybe further into the lives of Aaron, Lolly, Kitty and Sweeney, but because of the satirical nature of the book, it's not exactly possible to connect with any of the characters in any deep way. I don't regret the time I spent reading this book, but I'm glad it was just under 200 pages.

Blythe's Book 10: I'm Down

I finished I'm Down about a week ago and have been putting of writing about it ever since. My students have been reading self-selected novels and autobiographies lately, and I caught one of my smarter, cooler kids reading I'm Down last month. Being that he is smart and cool, I decided I wanted to read what he was reading-- even when his endorsement of it was a little lackluster. I should have heeded his reaction (which was something like "Eh. Yeah, it's kinda funny.") BUT... Look at the cover and you'll understand why I was pretty confident I'd like it. I'm Down is the story of Mishna Wolff's childhood (no, you shouldn't know who she is-- yet another memoir by a nobody). Mishna is a white girl whose childhood is spent living with her father in a predominantly African-American community. Her dad is determined that Mishna will be as "down" as possible. He grew up in the neighborhood and excels at being "down"-- which seems to mean he has mastered playing dominoes, enjoying unemployment, and letting down his various African-American girlfriends, who all hold stable jobs and try to support his family. Sound racist? Yeah, well... that's her reality, and her portrayal of it was pretty no-holds-barred. Unfortunately, Mishna just doesn't fit in. She attends a private academic school on scholarship, hates sports, and is at the butt of every cracker joke you could imagine. It doesn't help that her sister is as street as they come and fits in everywhere and with everyone. The memoir is basically devoted to showing how tough Mishna had it, and if it weren't for the dedication (something to the effect of "Thanks to my Dad for providing me with the best childhood I was too stupid to appreciate as a child") and the last few lines of the memoir, you really wouldn't realize anything but how much she hated her life and how out of place she felt. There were some funny parts-- I picked up a few new "yo mama" jokes and had to laugh at some of the eccentricities of her family... but I finished the last page feeling underwhelmed. Maybe that's the bad thing about the genre-- if this was fiction, it could have totally been better. Reading this was the equivalent of watching a kid being punished by their parent in public; part of you pities the kid, part of you empathizes with the parent, but 90% of the experience is wrapped around feeling uncomfortable because you're being forced to witness something that would be better off dealt with behind closed doors. Mishna's dad is selfish and immature; Mishna is selfish and painfully vulnerable; their faults and misunderstandings are exposed in detail-- not my ideal book to cozy up with on the couch.

Pam's Book 10: Lost on Planet China

As far as I'm concerned, it's a toss-up as to whether Bill Bryson or J. Maarten Troost is the best ever travel writer. Bill Bryson is entertaining and informative, plus he's written some cool linguistics books as well. J. Maarten Troos is entertaining and informative, and he goes to some pretty wild places and stays there for extended periods of time. This time I read a Troost book, Lost on Planet China. Maarten and his wife Sylvia have returned to northern California from various out-of-the-way Pacific islands to raise their two young sons. Yet, their once middle class neighborhood in Sacramento has been overtaken by drug-dealing renters and is not quite the place they envisioned their boys growing up. Maarten gets the bright idea that China, being the next big thing, is the perfect place to move. Sylvia is not so sure about all this, so Maarten decides to mount an exploratory mission on his own to China.

Upon his arrival in China, Maarten discovers a world more foreign even, in some ways, than the tiny island of Kiribati, where his adventures began many years ago (The Sex Lives of Cannibals). The air is thick with pollution, pedestrians regularly hock loogies on the street, small children regularly drop trou to take a shit on the street (encouraged by their mothers), waiting in line is a contact sport, and it is necessary to bargain for absolutely everything.

Maarten explores as much of China as he can, big cities, small towns, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet. He explores the political and practical ramifications of China's past, Chairman Mao, the People's Revolution, the Japanese invasion. He explains everything in an informative yet highly entertaining manner. Parts of the book, such as his description of visiting Chairman Mao's mausoleum and his description of eating live squid (with great gusto, I might add) were so highly entertaining that I gut-laughed, out loud, in the Orlando airport, on the plane, in the Atlanta airport. People looked at me funny, but I didn't even try to hold in the laughter, because it would have been futile.

Asia is not at the top of my list of places to visit, but it is definitely on there. After reading this book, I want to visit China both more and less than I had wanted to previously. In some ways I enjoy sticking to the more culturally familiar western nations, but there's much more to be seen and experienced, and until I can afford to go everywhere, I will continue reading books like Lost on Planet China.

Holly's Books 2 and 3: Evelina, and Caleb Williams

So here we are, a month and a half into the year, and I'm finally writing about books number two and three. At this rate, I will end up with exactly half of my goal by December... oh well. And to top off my exceptionally slow pace, both of these are books that I read for class - had they not been, I wouldn't have finished them at all. Anyway.

Evelina by Frances Burney was published in 1778 (I think). It chronicles, in epistolary form, a naive young girl's debut into society. Think Jane Austen, only less interesting. You follow Evelina from assembly to assembly to play to garden to assembly, listen as she obsesses about Lord Orville, the most boring hero ever invented (one of the people in my class described Lord O as a "manners machine," and the phrase fits), and watch as she becomes, perpetually, "mortified" by everything and anything. If all of this is not exciting enough, everyone Evelina comes into contact with expounds upon her beauty and her "sensibility," fighting for her attention and affection. I didn't realize how annoying Evelina was until around page 150 or so, but once I did, it was difficult to get through the next 250 pages. Not to say that Evelina didn't have its high points: Captain Mirvan, who Evelina presents as a buffoon and a burden (because he lacks any sort of manners), is actually hilarious and seems to have more common sense than most of the other characters in the novel - he just doesn't see the need to conform to social conventions.

And, okay. When I think about the novel's plot, it actually was a pretty good book. If I were a young girl living in late eighteenth-century England, I probably would have loved this novel. Being a young girl living in the twenty-first-century US, I thought that cutting half of Evelina's content would have helped its cause: less assemblies, more old lady foot-races. That stuff's hilarious.

Next: Caleb Williams. Same class, different book. This one was written by William Godwin (husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, father of Mary Shelley) in 1794, the year after he published his massive political treatise, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Caleb Williams is about a servant who finds out that his master has killed someone, and who is then persecuted by his master for his knowledge. Again, the plot is interesting I suppose - but so incredibly verbose. The first third of the book (120 pages) is the master's backstory. The middle part drags. Things really don't pick up until the last part of the book, at which point there are only 130 pages left. And sprinkled throughout are moments where Godwin gets up on his soapbox to talk about the political and social system in 1790s Britain. Which, granted, is the reason he wrote the book: to bring his multi-volume treatise down to terms that us normal folk can understand. And, granted, it can be interesting.

With that said, I think I might be one of the few people in my class who read the who book. Most people said that they skipped around until they found parts of the book that actually had some bearing on the plot. The Marxist kid said he skipped around until he found parts of the book that had nothing to do with the plot (ie: the soapbox). I thought it was interesting to see how Godwin fit the two together, especially since this is touted as the first novel to have an explicit political agenda. That's really not reason enough to read this novel, though. I can't really think of a good reason to read this book, in fact.

Pam's Book 9: The Great Gatsby

Okay, so I'm probably going to English teacher hell for this, but before this week I had never read The Great Gatsby. I feel that part of the blame lies on the shoulders of Mr. Hammond, my AP English teacher. If only we had read Gatsby instead of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Fucking Tess. I don't know if I've ever hated a literary character more (except maybe Scarlett O'Hara). Although, of course, I realize that there were innumerable times I could have picked up Gatsby instead of rereading, say, Pride and Prejudice for the fourteenth time. I'm not really sure what kept me from this book for so long. It was an easy, quick read, and very enjoyable.

My favorite quotations:

"'They're a rotten crowd,' I shouted, across the lawn. 'You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.'
"I've always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end." Yet who was the only one who was there for Gatsby at the end? Certainly not Daisy.

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made..." I can think of people like that. It's not malice, just carelessness.

"He must have come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night." Poor Gatsby. To think your dream, your one great hope on which you've built your entire life, is so close, and then to find (or never live to find) that it never actually ever was.

I kept going back in my mind as I was reading to Paris in the '20's, and to Scott and Zelda's life together, there and elsewhere. Trish tells me that Zelda is neither so evil nor one-sided as Hemingway paints her to be, and that I need to read her memoir, so that should appear in a later blog. Still, it seems like old Scott knew a little something about dysfunctional relationships. I have some other Fitzgerald books on my shelves, inherited from a college roommate who took a class on the man, and I'm excited to read those now. I realize I haven't actually said much about the book itself in this post, but I feel that anything I could say about it has probably already been said, and eloquently, so I will leave it at my quotations and random commentary.

Pam's Book 8: The Secret Life of Bees

When my book club started reading The Secret Life of Bees a couple years ago, I found a used copy and opened the book. I hated it. I feel like there must have been some specific reason, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. I loaned the book to a friend, who returned it to me last Friday. I opened it up, began reading, and fell in love. I can't imagine what I had against it.

When the book opens, African-Americans had just been granted the right to vote, and Lily's caretaker Rosaleen makes up her mind to walk to town and register herself to vote. On her way, she is accosted by a group of white men, and she refuses to give in to them, instead spitting on their shoes and landing both herself and Lily in jail. Lily's emotionally distant, bordering on abusive father, gets her out of jail, leaving Rosaleen to be beaten by the white men. Lily springs Rosaleen, and they end up in Tiburon, SC, with a group of beekeeping black women named after the spring and summer months. What ensues is a beautiful story of hope, friendship, family, redemption, and bees. Lily learns about herself and her deceased mother; she learns about forgiveness; she learns about love.

August, June, and May are founding members of the Daughters of Mary who base their quasi-Catholic belief system after a black Mary, Our Lady of Chains. As Lily becomes a member of the family, she too learns to look to "the mother of thousands." (I have to say that after following Black Jesus all around Cusco, Peru, I have a soft spot in my heart for his mother.) Lily comes to the conclusion through her relationships in the book that the world would be a better place if we all were colorless, or at least viewed ourselves and others that way. I know that's not exactly an original sentiment, but it remains a revolutionary one, and one we would all do well to take to heart.

I loved Lily's character, how beautiful and flawed she was, how very fourteen she was, the ways she grew. Lily was definitely a dynamic character, but the changes wrought in her by the events she experienced did not seem at all contrived; they happened gradually, and over and over again. She took steps forward and steps backward, like we all do. She ended up in a different place than she began, but she took her time, and a reasonable route, getting there. I enjoyed the many mother figures and the different roles they all played. I liked that nobody in the book was all bad or all good. Even Lily's father, T Ray, while still a jerk, turned out to have some redeeming qualities. The Secret Life of Bees offers hope up to all, but is never corny. I'm glad I gave the book the second chance it so richly deserved. It was magical.

Pam's Book 7: A Moveable Feast

I loved The Sun Also Rises. I hated Islands in the Stream. I tend to have strong feelings about Hemingway books. Not, however, with A Moveable Feast. My cousin Scotty recommended it to me, and I tend to trust his recommendations. Overall, I enjoy Hemingway. I love reading anything and everything about Paris. Yet, I feel completely ambivalent about A Moveable Feast. I began reading with enjoyment and anticipation. I was recently told that I need to read more travel blogs; this, I thought, was the ultimate travel blog, far before the internet was a twinkle in Al Gore's eye.

Hemingway writes of the cafes of the Paris between the wars, of what it's like to be a writer trying to get on his feet. He writes of other writers: Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford. He weaves in and out of their lives, in and out of his own life, through short sketches and vignettes, moving in and out of time as if chronology were a liquid thing and not linear. There seems to be no rhyme or reason in the ordering of the book. Usually, he's married to Hadley. Sometimes, however, he's married to Pauline. He writes, in the abstract, of the dissolution of his marriage with Hadley, briefly throughout the book, poignantly and in more detail near the end.

Reading this book, one gets the impression that Paris of the 1920's was solely the haunt of the artistic, whether writers or painters, and each cafe held a resident author who daily staked out a table to write what he could not write at home. All the writers and painters knew one another, moved in the same circles, supported, drank with, conferred with, confessed secret needs and desires with one another. Each artist had a strong personality. Gertrude Stein would not converse with the wives and only enjoyed writing by those who had not criticized her own work. Ezra Pound was everybody's biggest fan and supporter. Scott Fitzgerald was an alcoholic with a crazy wife. Ford Madox Ford smelled funny.

Hem and his wife lived the bohemian lifestyle, sacrificing meals (but never booze) to pay for jaunts to Spain to see the bullfights and Austria to ski, writing, going first to horse races then to bicycle races, never thinking farther ahead than the next journey. I think it's good they were in Paris because they never would have survived Prohibition.

I enjoyed what I learned about Paris in the '20's, and about Hem (as everybody seemed to call him) and Hadley, but I feel the writing only scratched the surface, like trying to write about a trip long after one has already returned home: big on logistical details, lacking any emotional investment. By far the best part of the book was the section of sketches at the end that, I believe, weren't even included in the original edition. They, at least, had some depth of feeling.