Tag Archives: Review

Proust’s Overcoat by Lorenza Foschini / Review

15 Aug

 Proust’s Overcoat is an unusual little book.  Not to say that it isn’t interesting; in fact, I was surprised how very interesting a book about a man who collected Proust’s worldly possessions could be.

It’s hard to categorize this book — it’s a the true story of Jacques Guerin, a wealthy parfumier who became obsessed with collecting Proust paraphernalia. His quest was not solely relegated to manuscripts — no, Guerin’s fascination (which seemed to be more with the man himself than the literature he created)  extended to Proust’s furniture, furnishing, and, indeed, the overcoat he was famed for wearing in bed as he wrote. 

Proust’s Overcoat is partially the story of Jacques Guerin’s passion, partially the story of the politics of the Proust family, and partially the story of the things themselves. Most of the items in the collection would have likely been destroyed and forgotten had it not been for Guerin’s motivation to track them down and save them.

Most interesting to me was Foschini’s role in the book. She frames it almost as a fable of literary zeal, a lesson more about the art of the pursuit of a quest than the object of the quest itself. While it appears that she did some research for the book, most of it covers the story she was told about Guerin’ by a third party. It’s as though she just recorded a good story she heard once and thought others might enjoy.

I did enjoy it. It was interesting and accessible, an amusing fact considering how inaccessible Proust is generally regarded to be.  It’s a good book about love of books and love of writers and the need for preservation of both.  At just 120 pages, I would recommend it to anyone who loves literature. I’m off to pick up Swann’s Way. :)

The Lovers by Vendela Vida / Review

3 Aug

 Vida’s novel opens with Yvonne, a middle-aged widow, lost and looking for her driver in a Turkish airport. Vacationing alone in an attempt to recapture the magic of her honeymoon in Turkey twenty-six years before, lost is how Yvonne spends most of the novel, metaphorically speaking. 

 While her husband was killed in a car accident years before, this is Yvonne’s first trip without him. Even though the reader hears stories about Yvonne’s life at home in Vermont, it feels to the reader as though this is Yvonne’s first trip out of the house at all without Peter. She seems incredibly fragile and somehow unable to fully cope with the activities of daily life. She is wholly unmoored.

The Turkey that Yvonne finds upon her arrival is not the same Turkey of her youth. Like Yvonne, Turkey is weathered and decayed. It is the physical emblem of the grief that cripples her. Yvonne rents a house from a successful businessman and becomes entangled in his marital problems when his wife, Ozlem, becomes a frequent visitor at the house.  “Entangled” is actually a very apt word for Yvonne’s experience in Turkey as she also becomes deeply entangled in a friendship with a local boy who sells shells.  While it is entirely innocent — and really a way for Yvonne to connect to her children by proxy — a local waiter and the boy’s grandmother clearly express their skepticism and disapproval.  This constant juxtaposition of isolation and connection pervades the text.

I could not stop turning the pages as I read. Beyond some very tightly woven motifs about marriage, decay, and grief, the formal structure of the novel also fascinated me. Without chapters and clocking in at only 240 pages (and it felt shorter!), I found myself thinking of The Lovers as a novella — somehow denser and more punch-packing than a differently-paced novel separated into sections.  This decision also affected the pacing of the story — causing me to read faster and faster, mimicking the out-of-control spiral in which Yvonne finds herself.

The only problem I had with this book at all was the title — why The Lovers? Obviously, this is a love story between Yvonne and the memory of her husband. While their marriage was far from perfect, the power of her grief and the tenderness of her memories conveys  a different kind of passion but passion nonetheless.  Ozlem and Ali, the house’s owner, also take separate lovers and spend the novel working out the terms of their relationship as lovers.  And Yvonne sees honeymooners everywhere.  I would love to know why Vida chose this title to encapsulate Yvonne’s story.

This is a really beautiful book — a short and fulfilling read. It’s the quiet kind of book that not everyone will like — there is little action other than wandering around Turkey and while the ending is surprising, it’s not the kind of surprise that most readers might expect. For me, this book is an unexpected triumph.

Fiela’s Child by Dalene Matthee / Review

30 Jul

I usually immediately sit down and fire off a review upon finishing a book.  However, I needed time to ruminate on this one. I needed to let the book simmer in my mind.  In a way, I just couldn’t think of anything to say about this book beyond simple gushing.  Sometimes I feel like my enjoyment and appreciation of a book is inversely proportionate to the number of words I can find to describe it.

In rural South Africa,  three-year-old boy Lukas van Rooyen wanders into the forest, becomes lost, and presumed dead. It’s a rough terrain populated by “bigfeet” (elephants) who some believe trample humans in a calculated, predatory way. No child could survive.

On the other side of a vast mountain range, a white boy appearing to be about three years old shows up on the door step of Fiela, a black woman whose husband is in jail. She takes the boy in, calling him Benjamin, and raises him as a “hand-child” given to her by God.  Understanding the complications inherent in a black family caring for a white child, Fiela keeps the boy relatively hidden  — he doesn’t attend church or school with the other children.

Despite Fiela’s caution, Benjamin’s existence in the Komoetie family is thrown into question when two census-takers arrive at the farm, see a white child living with this black family, and remember the story of a boy being lost in the forest six years before. The men take Benjamin to the regional magistrate who summons Barta van Rooyen. When Barta points to Benjamin in a lineup, he is given back to the van Rooyen family. Now Lukas again, and not Benjamin.

Like Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country (my #3 favorite book of all time), this evocative novel is firmly rooted in the land of South Africa — its beauty, its brutality,  the duality of its ability to both give and take away life. As in many books I deeply love, the landscape becomes a character, literally and metaphorically separating Benjamin Komoetie from Lukas van Rooyen, separating Fiela from her hand-child. 

The novel is also incredibly moving. Matthee’s Fiela jumps to life, coming off of the page and making the reader’s heart break along with hers as she loses Benjamin. I cried multiple times reading this book — not something that often occurs in my reading.  Yes, Fiela’s Child is a book about race and class, but more importantly it’s an incredible example of a story about the meaning of ones identity, the things that define a person, and love above all else. GO READ THIS BOOK!

Petite Anglaise by Catherine Sanderson / Review

20 Jul

 Eh.

That was my first reaction after finishing Catherine Sanderson’s memoir about life as a Parisian blogger extraordinaire. And how her life more or less falls apart as a direct result of it.

Although initially lured to the city of lights from jolly olde England, Sanderson (or “Petite”, if you prefer to use her blogger nom de plume) finds herself disenchanted with gay Paris, her long-term relationship with boyfriend “Mr. Frog”, and their two-year-old daughter, “Tadpole.” Her dead-end secretarial job gives her time to pen a blog at the advent of bloggerdom. As a result, she becomes Internet famous and is romantically pursued by a reader, ultimately causing her to leave her relationship. And when romance with her reader fails, Petite is left alone in Paris with her daughter.

Trés triste.

I picked this book up for the beach because I wanted to get back to Paris and read about those who have lived the dream becoming a French expat. That’s not this book.  Paris is more of a catalyst than anything in this book. While, happily, landmarks and parks are mentioned (causing me to ooh and la-la-ed), the story is more universal than a Paris story; this kind of heartbreak and resurrection could happen anywhere.

It was a super-speedy and compelling read; I just felt sad and rushed through the reading because I wanted to get to the part at the end where all of Sanderson’s choices became okay. In fact, she spends most of the memoir sad … and thus, a downer was born. Not really a beach read.  In that way, it reminded me a lot of the book version of Julie and Julia. (The movie was infinitely happier, as would be a movie version of Petite Anglaise.)

Interestingly, after finishing the book I looked up the blog from which all of the drama sprang and was surprised to see that Petite’s last post was in November of 2009. In it, she reports that she doesn’t feel it’s likely that she will be blogging much in the future. That part of her life is behind her. I will likely pick up Sanderson’s follow-up, French Kissing, because I am nosey and wants to know how the story ends. Nevertheless,  Petite Anglaise isn’t a particularly happy story. I can’t say I loved it.

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti / Review

19 Jul

Baby  Ren is left at an orphanage in New England with one shirt to his name and a missing arm; the true origins of all three are a complete mystery. With impending military conscription on the horizon, Ren is adopted one day by Benjamin Nab, a man claiming to be his long-lost brother.  Though the situation seems questionable,  Ren is released to Nab’s custody. Almost immediately, Ren realizes that Nab is not what he seems.

Although Ren has misgivings about the lying and thievery undertaken by Nab at every turn, he nonetheless falls under the spell of the charming charlatan, realizing that he himself has always had a penchant for pilfering.  Ren soon becomes a helpful accomplice — skillful if not always completely willing — to Nab’s hijinx.

What ensues is a rollicking adventure — full of bad bad guys and good bad guys.  The truth of  who and what Benjamin Nab truly is becomes slowly unraveled as well as the truth behind Ren’s own history. The novel seems constantly poised on the edge of disaster — similar to Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Oliver Twist — but the good guys (whatever that means in the context of these characters) pull through in the end.

Simply put, I. Loved.This.Book. … a lot. :)

I constantly found myself in need of a reminder that I was reading a book with a 2008 copyright, rather than 1908. It felt classic to the bones. This novel was full of wit and warmth — Ren is as pious as he is mischievous, and his incessant prayers for forgiveness and do-the-right-thing-no-matter-the-cost attitude make him a precious hero. I really loved him.  Tinti’s prose is just … good. It’s not overwrought. It’s not trying to be something it’s not.

 In fact, I feel certain that Tinti wasn’t trying to be a modern American Dickens, even though she nearly achieves this otherworldly feat. The characters are precocious, the plot twisting and yet believable. AND I was genuinely surprised 2.5 times while reading this book — something that doesn’t happen to me often. Tinti thoroughly sucked me into Ren’s world of mystery, intrigue, grave-digging, body-snatching, grand larceny, love, and happy endings. This is a tremendous read!

One L by Scott Turow / Review

16 Jul

Dear Dad,

Thanks for giving me One L to read! You rarely impress upon me the need to read any one book in particular, so when you put this book in my hands I actually put down the book I had recently started and instantly began devouring Turow’s memoir about his first year of law school. I don’t do that often. It stresses me out to put a book aside unfinished in favor of another book (which is also ironic considering the content of One L — it’s all about stress!).  One L was also a little unusual for me because it’s an older book — first published in 1977. I typically don’t read books written between 1955 and 2000, not as a matter of strategy but rather an accident of practice.

I had a lot of thoughts about this book! I read this book slowly because I was really paying a lot of attention, stopping to think about it, stopping to discuss it, before starting a new page.  I think Turow fully realizes all of his goals in this memoir — he thoroughly conveys the rigors, terrors, and hysteria of his first year at Harvard Law School. Beyond simply relating his experience, Turow immerses his reader in the experience of law school. He doesn’t candy-coat it; he tells it all — good, bad, and neurotic.

Aside from pondering Turow’s experience of law school, I also found myself thinking about why you put this book in my hands. Probably so I would understand what you, too, experienced when you were in law school. I’ve always been proud to say my dad is an attorney. In my little kid (and big kid) brain, this meant you were smart. And that meant that I could be smart, too. But I have a whole new respect for those smarts after reading Turow’s account of the demands — both intellectual and emotional — of law school.

You probably also gave me this book to read because you know that I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer — that I still think about being a lawyer from time to time. This book gave me a lot to think about. I’ve always figured that I have the rational mind to think through legal problems, and I love speaking and writing (and noble causes). So I’d be a great lawyer, right? After One L, I don’t know. It’s possible if not probable that, indeed, I shouldn’t have been a lawyer after all! There are a lot of still-appealing factors. I think the mental exercises are fascinating. I think reasoning out the law based on precedents that often contradict one another is a stimulating way to spend time. I love researching. I love writing.  However, throughout One L, Turow emphasizes “learning to love the law”. .. and I don’t know that I ever would. Not in that way. Actually, I love education! Thinking through educational issues excites me and stimulates my mind. I  am interested to talk law, but I adore talking school. For maybe the first time in my life, reading One L gave me a real sense that I didn’t somehow miss my legal calling … however alluring I might find it. :)

Thanks for a great read, Dad. :) It made me see your legal education in an entirely different light.

Love,

Rebekah

Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman / Review

10 Jul

 I literally gulped down this book. In one sitting.

First of all, allow me to confess that the real reason I pulled this book out of my TBR pile is because I think the cover design is beautiful. And I wanted to read something beautiful. I wasn’t disappointed.

Waldman’s novel opens with a graceful “prelude” — a sixteen-page description of a photographer attempting to take a large family portrait after a wedding. While the photographer attempts to wrangle various family members and configure the perfect shot,  the cast of characters is presented and relationships are revealed. It sounds plodding, doesn’t it — but it was gorgeous and evocative, setting the tone for a “compulsively readable” story of two families over the course of four summers.

Immediately after the family portrait for Becca and John’s wedding, the bride and groom are killed in a horrific car accident on the way to their reception. The four summers’ action examines the aftermath — how these two very different families grieve, adapt, and evolve in the face of unimaginable tragedy.

Beyond the characters’ individual and collective grief over the loss of Becca and John, conflict is created in the relationship between Iris and Jane, the mothers of the respective bride and groom.  Iris’ marriage to Daniel begins to fall apart at the seams. Ruthie, Iris and Daniel’s daughter, becomes unmoored and seeks solace in the arms of Matt, John’s brother.

It sounds melodramatic, but it’s not. This novel works … although it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why. Partly, Waldman crafts what boils down to a simply good story. The plot is tragic and hopeful at once. The coast of Maine comes to life — not in an overly-descriptive or cheesy way. Rather, Waldman’s prose is transporting — another delightful example of the importance of the role of place in literature. (I’ve really been on a soapbox with that recently, haven’t I?) The characters are well-rounded and real.

The prose is lovely. And perhaps this is what makes the most significant difference in making Red Hook Road real literature rather than something simpler and more stereotypical. There is a strong motif of music throughout the novel, reinforced by the Prelude and Coda which open and close the novel. Further, Waldman subtly explores the relationship and juxtaposition of music and literature in terms of their study versus the passions they ignite.

I really enjoyed this novel, so much so that I will probably pursue reading Waldman’s other work in the future. Red Hook Road was a surprise treat!

Thanks to Doubleday for the review copy of this novel!

Look Me In the Eye by John Elder Robison / Review

9 Jul

In this memoir, John Elder Robison writes about life with Asperger’s in a world in which Asperger’s did  not yet exist. Compound Robison’s natural social deficits with a general lack of knowledge about Autism Spectrum Disorders and  a disastrous family, bound by addictions and mental illness, and you can understand why guidance counselors most frequently categorized him as a future sociopath rather than an Aspergian.

I picked this book up with a teacher discount through Random House to see if it might be a good fit for some small group reading in class. Shockingly, not every kid loves fiction. I thought a memoir (much less a memoir that could really teach them something about how they relate to and treat others!) might be a nice addition.

Having just finished the book only moments ago, I’m still on the fence.

In many respects, this is a really entertaining read. I particularly enjoyed the chapters in which Robison goes on tour with KISS as a guitar special effects technician for Ace Frehley.  Really, he was the first person to figure out how to make guitars burst into smoke, light up, and fly through the air. Truly, it would be amazing for any person with Robison’s family background (and as a high school drop out) to become such an incredible self-made success. I was also fascinated by his belief that in his thirties, his brain actually became rewired. As he taught himself to use more socially appropriate behavior and sift through his own emotions, he lost part of his savant-like electrical genius. He recounts that as he looks back today at the circuits he designed twenty years ago, he can’t even understand them anymore. He is happier and healthier using new parts of his brain, but it has distinctly changed.

My only trouble with Robison’s memoir is that I had trouble connecting to the voice.  Which, I suppose, is the story of Robison’s life. It’s not that the text suffered from lack of voice (it was very distinct and funny), but it was just a voice I had trouble with. While I truly believe that this is what he really sounds like, I would try to redirect any student who wrote so technically.

So, the big question, will I teach it? Yes, I think I would really consider it. I think students who prefer nonfiction (particularly boys who love machines, pyrotechnics, and trains like Robison) would enjoy this book. It’s a long-ish read for the genre, but I think they would stick with it. I also think this book would be invaluable in helping guide their character as they learn how to respect those who are different in their school microcosm. I would also strongly endorse this book for adult who want to know more about Asperger’s. It’s an eye-opening read and educational without being clinical.

The House on Salt Hay Road by Carin Clevidence / Review

7 Jul

Usually the difference for me between a book I like and a book I don’t like comes down to the characters. I love quiet books that seemingly do nothing but serve to showcase part of a rich character’s life. Like Olive Kitteridge. But recently I am finding that after strong characterization, I am particularly drawn to a strong sense of place and the way that, in many great books, place becomes another character. One I fall in love with.

Carin Clevidence’s debut,  The House on Salt Hay Road, is a rare feat of both character and place. On the eve of World War II in a quiet Long Island town, Nancy and Clay Poole, orphans, move in with their Grandfather Scudder, unmarried uncle Roy, and abandoned aunt Mavis.  Initially, it is hard to understand what keeps this family together — Scudder displays his affection for his grandchildren through reserve,  Mavis can’t connect to her niece and nephew, Roy is haunted by his past.  Clay, twelve, is the only one who seems content with his life of sailing and crabbing. Nancy Poole, nineteen, unbridled, and independent, longs for a more adventurous life. She thinks that is what she has found one day when the fireworks factory explodes and a stranger comes to town to study rare birds.  Within weeks, Nancy is engaged and preparing to move to Boston with her new husband. And the family, only tenuously linked before, begins to crumble under the weight of her impending loss.

What the readers, if not always the characters, come to realize is that this dissolution is inevitable — if Nancy didn’t leave, something else would happen that would pull the family in different directions. In fact,  the factory explosion at the beginning of the novel catalyzes the more quiet and more natural explosion of lots of things in the family’s life — friends die,  literal storms come to change the landscape. Even the threat of World War II on the horizon subtly looms over the novel, reminding the reader that indeed this family, this time, this place will change.

The prose is evocative but simple,  and Clevidence masterfully pulled me into a seaside world that I know little about. But I felt like I was there. I felt like I knew these people and this nameless house on Salt Hay Road. It’s a fantastic debut. The scope broadended a little too far for me in the final pages — sweeping out through the whole war. It just felt too big for a book so tightly woven and quiet. Still, my favorite thing about this book is the brother-and-sister story it tells. I love the relationship between Clay and Nancy — the forces the drive them apart as juxtaposed with the love and obligation that eventually always brings them back together. The final lines of the story are my favorites, as Clay returns from the war, missing his sister and preparing to reconcile with her,

He is going to see his sister, he reminds himself, he will finally tell her he is sorry. For a moment he can’t remember why. And then it comes back to him how he went out to the beach that morning when he should have been at school. He shouldn’t have gone. But his sister loves him, he remembers now. She will forgive him. His hands are tightening on the smooth wooden handle of the crab net as it rises above the water, and drops scatter, painfully bright. A flock of gulls wheels in the air. He is on a ferry, leaving the dock behind, leaving a white blur that swings back and forth like a handkerchief waved in a wide arc. He is riding in a dark car down a potholed lane, a boy pressed half asleep against his sister’s shoulder as they travel together down a bumpy road toward a room that smells of bread dough and potato peelings.

That simplicity of emotion summarizes this novel for me; it’s beautiful and a well-worthy read!

Thanks to Farrar, Straus, & Giroux for sending me a copy of the novel for review!

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind / Review

5 Jul

 Straight up, Perfume is weird.

On the eve of the French Revolution, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born in a fish stall to a mother who intends to leave him to die  but, upon being discovered, is herself sentenced and executed. The beautiful baby is passed around between orphanages and wet nurses; no one will keep him for long because while the baby is lovely to look at he possesses no smell. His lack of natural odor is frightening to those who encounter him, and thus from his very infancy Grenouille becomes a paraiah.

Despite his lack of odor (perhaps because of his own lack of odor), Grenouille has a supernatural sense of smell. He quickly rises through the ranks of perfumers in Paris, concocting the most intoxicating smells known to man. He is haunted, though, be the particularly persuasive smell of young virgins. In his deperation to capture the smell, he becomes a serial killer.

Murder. Orgies.  Existentialism. Cannibalism. There is a lot going on in this story.

Like so many pieces of world literature that I read from the IB prescribed book list, I found this book fascinating although not thoroughly enjoyable. Suskind’s novel is dark and very dense. It’s the kind of book where you have to carefully process each and every word lest you miss something. The narrative voice is charming and mischievious; for me , this was probably the highlight of the read. But again, like so many IB books, I fully believe Perfume would yield fascinating class discussions and ample material for excellent writing. 

This is certainly an interesting book. But I wouldn’t recommend it for a light, fun read. :)

← Older Entries

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.