Olive Kitteridge

I just finished reading, "Olive Kitteridge" by Elizabeth Strout. This is probably a book that I would have had by my bedside for months without reading it if it had not been chosen for book club this month. Olive is an large, opinionated, and unsentimental woman whose presence is woven in and around the lives of the people in her small town of Crosby, Maine. At times I identified with Olive. I can be as unsentimental and opinionated as she. Towards the end of the book, I began to identify less with Olive and more with her grown son, Christopher. Olive started to take the form of a someone or another that I may have known at some point in my life. I believe that we have all known an Olive Kitteridge at one time or another. Certain themes are constant, illness, death, suicide, loving and loveless marriages, people living lives without ever saying what they really mean. This is the stuff of daily living, life stripped of excess. Olive faces this life in a frank and non-questioning way, bad things happen, if you don't think so, then where have you been?

New Year, New Book

I don't know how new this book is, I am talking about Elizabeth Gilbert's latest, "Committed," which I have seen on bookshelves in almost every store that I have been in lately and that includes my local grocery store. My conclusion: Elizabeth Gilbert has too much time on her hands. I dimly enjoyed "Eat, Pray, Love." The part I didn't ever understand happened at the beginning and that was when she left her husband. So she fell out of love or something like that. Truly, based on her description of things, the marriage didn't seem that bad, certainly savable if one were so inclined. It seemed as though Ms. Gilbert found taking a year out of her life to spend a lot of money on going around the world in order to "find herself" more alluring. In those travels she did, it seem, meet Mr. Right. They apparently had a great relationship because they decided not to get married. Then they had to get married or they wouldn't have a country to live in and this sparked the seed for the latest book on how to elevate self-centered behavior onto a pedestal, "Committed." Unless, someone who's opinion I really respect tells me that this is a must read, I think that I will pass on Gilbert's latest monument to self proclaimed achievement.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

I just got through reading the book, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," by Harriet Beecher Stowe. I know, such a "positive" tale just in time for the holidays. Although there were quite a few "bad happenings" as is to be expected in such a book, the ending was very novelistic. Most of the people, sans Uncle Tom, were tied up in a happy ending for the reader. In the author comments section, Mrs. Stowe talks about how many of the stories presented in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" were based on truth and events the she had witnesses in her life and in knowing escaped slaves. That is a perspective that none of us in the 21st century will ever have. It is horrifying to think of how an entire race of people was once treated en masse in the USA.

I thought of this again today when I was perusing my blog listing and my friend at Upside DownUnder posted a video about detainees from Guantanamo Bay. While maybe it is not mass suppression here in America our prejudices about the quality and trustworthiness of other races is certainly not alleviated. I can see where many of the attitudes prevalent in slave holders still exist today in the general public, especially when talking about persons of Middle Eastern descent.

Also, slavery does still exist. When reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin" I was swept away by the expository language and over-riding christian theme of the time. That theme being used to justify slavery and all of its cruelties. When I look at the sex slave traffiking trade I have to ask myself how far we have come and answer "not very." Do I think that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is a good read? Well, that depends on why you want to read it. I am a firm believer that history repeats itself and by reading back into history I can see the same actions repeated in today's society. I am only one individual, but as one individual I have to ask myself how I can alter my life and thoughts to create a better history in my own tiny sphere of influence and that is mostly why I read the book. That was one reason, the other being that it is a book commonly used as a reference in many discussions that no one seems to have read. So, if you want to take it on and you can wade through the utter lack of political correctness and high dose of flowery christianity, go for it!

Twenty-First Century Help

I just got through reading "The Help" by Kathyrn Stockett. It is her first novel. This was a book club pick, but I loved the book and had a difficult time putting it down. Now I am done and find myself missing the characters. Ms. Stockett lives in New York City, but she grew up in Mississippi. Her father's family had a full-time maid like many Southerners of that era. Ms. Stockett grew up close to this maid, who died when Ms. Stockett was 16. Ms. Stockett never got to ask her what being a maid felt like. This is why she wrote the book. The focus is on several characters, but mainly a white woman and two black maids and the daring thing that they conspire to do together in Mississippi in the early 1960's.

Granted, by today's standards, this was a long time ago. But, how has "the help" really changed in this century? Many of the women who perform household and childcare services are not American. They don't have to wear a maid's uniform to be admitted to the "whites only" supermarket, but I can't help but think that the discrimination is still there. Maybe it is more subtle, or maybe I just know nice people. At this time I don't actually know anyone who has help that comes everyday. I wonder if this standard still exist for wealthy Southerners and I wonder if the help is still black, or have they moved on to Latino, Filipino, and Vietnamese household helpers? What is the discriminatory nature of "the help" and the women who employ them in the twenty-first century? Have we come very far when it comes to race relations or have we just switched ethnic backgrounds?

Unexpected Good Read

I just got through reading an excellent book called "Expecting Adam" by Martha Beck. This is not a new book, it was published about ten years ago. It is a memoir about Martha's pregnancy with a Down Syndrome child. Martha and her husband were both graduate students at Harvard University at the time (1988) and they had an 18 month old daughter when Martha found out that she was expecting again and that she was carrying a "Down Syndrome fetus." She was 25 years old. What would you do?

The prevailing thought on the Harvard campus at the time was that such a fetus should be aborted. Martha decided not to do this. Her pregnancy journey was quite a spiritually compelling one. I have heard that sometimes women are open to such experiences during a pregnancy, but had never heard or read about a long duration of such an "experience." It seemed, in reading the book, that not only was this pregnancy blessed, but that the fetus, Adam, had picked these two people to be his parents.

Coincidentally, Martha was studying social sciences and women's studies at the time. During her pregnancy with Adam she was in a class where the debate was about advances in obstetrical technology. One student brazenly informed the class that women had a social obligation to terminate any pregnancy in which the fetus was deformed.

When Martha's son, Adam was a child she watched him help an emotionally traumatized young girl go on a carnival ride. She thought about those student's words from years before and of a couple of notorious Harvard geniuses including the unabomber and a South American dictator who maimed and killed people. If Adam was on one side of the debate and these Harvard geniuses are on the other, what kind of world are people who think that the pregnancy of any child who might not be "perfect" hoping for?

Movies and Books

Lately I have been doing more reading and watching of movies. I think that it has something to do with it being the end of the school year and thus the end of activities for my kids. We are actually home more! Summertime is great. I read "Loving Frank." This was a "required" read for book club, which meets next week, I think that this "true" story will provide the fodder for quite a lively discussion. The book is about Frank Lloyd Wright and his longtime mistress, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. I believe their affair lasted from 1907-1914. I can tell you that the affair ended with her death, it won't be giving the ending away because anyone can find that out via a cursory search of the internet. The details of her death were what ruined the book for me. I guess that there is no way to alter such events. The book is a novel, but based on true events. She died the way that she died and it really can't be re-written. I think of all of the time that I spent living in Frank Lloyd Wright land in the midwest and I have to wonder how I missed this part of his life. It certainly captivated my interest enough to want to read the book. I think there has been a "hush, hush" factor going on for about the last century, distancing America's most famous architect from the scandal that he helped to create.

Onto movies, I finally saw "Gran Torino." What an oversight, I should have seen this one earlier. I loved the story and I liked the way that it ended. In fact I thought that the ending was just perfect. Of course, the elderly pistol carting Clint Eastwood mounting a single man campaign of justice against neighborhood gangs was a bit unbelievable, other than that it is a story true to city neighborhoods all over America. Dirty Harry is bound to live forever.

Last night I saw "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." This movie made use of a number of Hollywood stock story lines including; the getting hit by a car tragedy, the loss of virginity to a prostitute routine, the aged, sick, and dying mother finally telling her story bit-which narrates the entire movie, resentful, grown daughter included. I haven't read F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story, but now I am curious and will probably have to check it out. Despite its many cliches, this movie worked. Of course there is always Brad Pitt looking devastatingly handsome as always. The movie was well cast so the story matched the visual. Pretty interesting concept, I hate to admit it, but I would love the thought of getting younger everyday. Of course this may mean dying, like Benjamin Button, as a demented infant. Hey, at least I would be "cute" in my "old age."

The Book Thief

Finally, I finished "The Book Thief," it felt like it took forever to read and not because it was a bad book, in fact it was quite a good book to be sure. Neither was it an oustandingly long book, I just haven't had much time to read lately, plus the weather is nice and it is always more fun to be outside so I get distracted.

A book narrated by "death" doesn't sound like it would be a winner, Nor does it sound like it would be very hopeful. People die in this book to be sure. In some cases the reader knows early on that the character will be dead by the end of the book. This is unusual in that most authors don't allow the reader this kind of insider information. There are other mysteries though regarding who will live and who will die and who will test the bound of wartime dictates and who will succomb to them. The grains of hope are tiny and scattered throughout the narrative in such a way that the reader is able to take these gestures in full measure and forget, for a moment, the despair.

Unique also to this book is that it is told from the German perspective during WWII. Maybe that isn't completely true, because many of the characters in this story do not uphold the prevailing "German perspective" during WWII. That is where the hope comes in and kindness, there is plenty of that as well.

In this book I love the definitions. The definitions of words, motives, points of view, and people really bring the reader into the story. This is one of the best novels about WWII that I have read because it is so panoramic and at the end of the war, there truly are no winners.

The God of Small Things

Yes, I finally finished "The God of Small Things." This is not a "long" book, yet the language is densely packed, it took me longer than I thought that it would to read. The author made outstanding use of repetitions (something that I am forever trying to work on in my own writing) i.e., "Elvis the pelvis with a puff and a fountain in a love-in-Tokyo" or "Lay-ter." Single word and two word sentences within one thought were also a specialty. This had the effect of making this book read like poetry. There is violence, sadness, poverty, and shame hinted at and described outright throughout the book. The author leaves the walloping violence towards the last pages. Even if she hadn't started out describing the emotional damage of the "two-egg" twins in the first chapters, the reader would be hard pressed to miss how their emotionally damaged lives would play out after finishing the book. At it's heart is the anger and bitterness of unrequited love acted out in fierce lashings against those who fulfill love a generation later.

The author is a political writer. The politics of caste are the essence of the story. That and love, love gone seriously awry. How much has to happen before a childhood is completely destroyed before ones eyes? The emotional dysfunction of this family is palatable and, as many of my reads seem to be (I wonder what this says about me?), not for the emotionally faint of heart. I would compare this book to "A Fine Balance." It can be compared, as a book about India, but the themes in "The God of Small Things" are much more forceful to the reader (because of the children) and seem to be more truthful across cultures. "A Fine Balance" is artistically woven, a cruel and beautiful work of fiction that comes together tightly in the end or is it from the beginning??? At any rate, the books are just plain different. While we don't have the caste system in our country, I could easily imagine (and it has happened) a very similar story right here in America, maybe now, but most certainly a generation ago. Childhood and innocence lost by a stoic and twisted view that people of different classes and/or races must never mix.

What is here, at the heart of the darkness, is a love story. A love story of a mother and children, fathers and sons, yearnings that defy caste/class, religion, and wealth/poverty. Contrasting themes. It all ends in the dilapidated house in the rain forest, covered in moss and rotting. No amount of hope will bring back what was lost and the "two-egg" twins are left in the midst of tragic young adulthoods to piece their lives together within this loss.

Even in the midst of this, this was not a hard book to read, the poetry of the writing coddled the reader in some ways. It made the reader feel compelled to keep reading. The author also went back and forth in time and sequence, so the beauty of the story was forever juxtaposed against it's harshness and in the end it just made the reader think about love, life, loss, and how was any of this my childhood? if it wasn't, how lucky am I ? The God in this book is indeed the God of small things, the God of big things seems to have removed himself entirely from the story of this family.

Revolutionary Road

I finally got around to reading this book, Revolutionary Road, I have yet to see the movie, though now my interest is piqued and I think that I will have to. If there were ever any doubts that a man could write masterfully about domesticity from both sides, this book would dispel them. Richard Yates did a fantastic job of turning this 1950's marriage inside and out. It helped that the couple spent so much time talking, it helped in terms of writing the novel, it certainly didn't help in terms of the couplehood which was in sad decline from the get-go. There was a short period in the middle of the novel where the reader had a sense of hope for Frank and April Wheeler, this hopeful period was shrouded though in the reader's mind. Reading this book one does get a sense of doom.

In my opinion it was a great romance. Depressing, surely, but great nonetheless. I am not, nor have I ever been a sappy, happy romance kind of gal. Nicolas Sparks is not for me. I like pivotal realities in the relationships that I read about or view cinematically. While I don't like the fact that love and romance isn't all happy, I like it even less when books and movies make it into something that defies everything, even individuality. Revolutionary Road did not defy individuality. Even when the couple was their most together, one sensed that the individual would come out, the foreshadowing was there. All-in-all a fantastic read.

Who is the "Other?"

I recently read this book for my book club. We had the discussion last night, a more rousing discussion than we typically have, this could have been because everyone present actually read the whole book. It also could have been because we didn't all agree on every point.

The book is about a friendship between two men, Neil Countryman and John William Barry. Neil is from an average, middle-class family and John William is a rich kid, with rich kid family problems and a mentally ill mother. The story starts when the boys are in high school in the 1970's and follows their friendship until John William's untimely death in the early 1980's. I say "untimely" death, but at that time John William had been living as a hermit in the Hoh Rain Forest on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state for seven years. He probably wouldn't have lived that long if it hadn't been for Neil's forays into the hermit camp with necessities from civilization. In the end Neil is left with a huge surprise from his friend twenty-one years after his death.