Children's: What supernatural estate introduces young Jared, Mallory and Simon to brownies and fairies, in books by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzido?
Classics: What did the press dub the document officially called United States Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967?
Non-Fiction: What Ms magazine co-founder wrote Deborah, Golda and Me to reconcile her Judaism with her feminism?
Book Club: What "magical realist" set several of his books in the mythical Latin American city of Macondo?
Authors: What author committed suicide shortly after finding himself unable to compose a few sentences for JFK's inauguration?
Book Bag: What famed Ray Bradbury collection was released in Britain as The Silver Locusts?
Friday, October 29, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Interview with the author of Hold Me Closer, Necromancer
When I was offered the opportunity to interview Lish McBride, the author of a YA novel I recently raved about, Hold Me Closer, Necromancer--a person who says she was "raised by wolves" and "does not, contrary to popular belief, own any garden gnomes...yet"--how could I resist?
Of course, the line I always think of when given the opportunity to speak directly to an author I've enjoyed is Holden Caulfield's, from The Catcher In the Rye: "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it." These are the questions I got to call Lish up and ask (well, actually, I emailed), and her answers.
Non-Necromancer: How did you pick necromancy as Sam's supernatural "gift"? Did the story come to you as one about an evil necromancer and the good necromancer who ends his evil reign? Did you hear the lyrics to the Elton John song, make a mental substitution, and grow the story from there? Or did you just think it was about time to add necromancy to the growing list of supernatural abilities in YA fiction?
Lish McBride: Sam started off in a short story many, many years ago, and he was just plain old human. The story kind of sucked, but when I was in college in a creative writing program I decided to revisit it because, well, I couldn't think of anything new for a short story. (A good example of why you shouldn't throw stories away, even if they are terrible.) In the new short, Sam was still plain human but we gained Ramon, Frank and Brooke, though Frank and Brooke were still flat characters and weren't friends with Ramon and Sam yet. Also now there was a zombie attack. Zombies came first. The story was still crap, so I put it away for a while, though I never stopped thinking about it. When I started to imagine it as a larger story, I wondered how the zombies got there. Enter Douglas. I'm not quite sure when I decided Sam should be a necromancer too, to be honest with you, but it was sometimes before I actually started writing the novel while I was in a graduate writing program in New Orleans. So no, it wasn't based on an Elton John song, nor did I really consider it a story of good necromancer versus evil necromancer. It was always more a story of a basically good--through somewhat lost--kid who got in over his head.
Necromancy isn't actually that new, even in YA. Necromancy basically means the use of spirits or the dead for the purposes of divination (though most have dropped the divination thing lately). So any story where someone can talk to ghosts is basically a story of a necromancer. I know Kelley Armstrong has necromancer characters in her YA as well as her adult stuff (and I highly recommend them). But when you come right down to it, necromancy is about as old school as you can get. Odysseus did it, people in the Bible did it, and they pop up occasionally in literature (NN: see the list of "Books in which Necromancy Never Pays" on the sidebar). Hell, even Jennifer Love Hewitt's character in The Ghost Whisperer qualifies. Not that I watch that show, but you get the point.
NN: Were you listening to music as you wrote the novel, or did the song lyrics/chapter titles come to you some other way?
LM: Sometimes I listen to music while I write, but I realized that I block out most noise anyway, so I don't actually hear the songs. I'd put albums on only to realize that at some point they'd ended and I hadn't noticed. So no, that's not how I get my chapter titles. But I do love music, all kinds of music, and when I wrote that original story, it was called Zombie Burger, a play off of the Vandals song "Anarchy Burger." Then I named the first few chapters, which included Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String and Hold Me Closer, Necromancer. So when we were searching for a better title, we obviously took it from one of the chapter titles. That being said, I usually pick songs I do like or can at least support in some way. If it's a song I hate, I won't use it. Well, not unless it's really funny as a chapter title (I have no shame).
NN: Do you personally have any experience working in fast food? If not, how did you do your research?
LM: Sadly, I did work fast food. It was terrible. I grew up in a small town and there was a tiny locally owned burger place that all my friends worked at, so I talked someone into getting me a job. The job had two perks--my friends, and it was next door to a skate shop where many of my other friends worked. The rest of the job sucked. The grease sticks to you and the place wasn't that clean. The owner was crazy. When I started, I didn't eat beef, but by the time I left I was fully vegetarian. So I know first hand what a grease trap smells like and we played the game "guess what I put in the fryer" on several occasions. (NN: the characters play this, among other games, at the burger place in the novel.)
NN: What are some of your favorite movies? I see you have a film agent; does that mean that Hold Me Closer, Necromancer will become a movie?
LM: I love movies and I grew up in a house sort of obsessed with film. We used to have entire conversations at the dinner table in movie quotes until my mom finally had to tell us to cut it out. So it's really hard to pick favorites. It's a long list. I love anything by Edgar Wright, and Better Off Dead is a childhood favorite. Anything really silly and I probably love it. Airplane! Black Sheep (the weresheep one, not the Chris Farley one), So I Married An Axe Murderer, Big Trouble in Little China, The Princess Bride, Labyrinth, and anything with muppets in it.
They've been shopping the book out for movies and TV for a while now. There's been some interest, but nothing definitive yet. So many factors have to come into play before something makes it to the screen (whether it be the big or little one). So, we'll see.
NN: What would you do with garden gnomes, if you owned any?
LM: They would get into many a shenanigan. We already have these black skeleton flamingoes in my yard that move around and get into things. I shudder to think what the gnomes would get into.
NN: What book has most affected you or changed your life the most?
LM: I started reading really early--around the age of three, I think. I loved Garfield, so I used to pick out the words I understood and either look up the other words or guess them from the pictures. I also had older brothers who taught me, and my mom and step mom both read to us a lot. Like movies, many books have made huge impacts in my life, but I think for most people the books that were read to you have the most influence. My mom loves the Chronicles of Narnia, so she read those to us over and over. I also have a very strong memory of my step mom reading the Bunnicula books. I love all those. I started reading Stephen King really early, too, until I realized he was depressing me and killing off characters in the order of how much I liked them, so I had to take a break from his stuff even though I think he's a great writer. I also used to love reading traditional fantasy stuff. I used to read David Edding's books over and over (I still do) and I was convinced I was going to write that kind of stuff, which hasn't really happened.
NN: What else would you like readers to know about you, your reading tastes, and what all went into the making of your first novel? (Are you a Firefly fan? Did you read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? What kind of pajamas do you wear?)
LM: I read a lot. Seriously. What I read kind of depends on what's going on. I love funny stuff, like Christopher Moore and Terry Pratchett. I love Neil Gaiman and Kelley Armstrong, Kim Harrison, Jim Butcher, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Rick Riordan. I've been loving the Black London books by Kitteridge and the Parasol Protectorate books by Carriger. If I'm really stressed I've been digging on cozy style mystery books. I find Agatha Christie to be very soothing for some reason and I love the Amelia Peabody series by Peters. I'm also reading the Fables comic series right now--I love a good comic, for sure, and I read the online comic Questionable Content religiously. I did love Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but I think I like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters a little more. And I loved Firefly and pretty much anything by Whedon. Oddly enough, I'm writing this in a Firefly-themed coffee shop in Seattle called Wayward. And I was desperately sad when Pushing Daisies was canceled. That show was excellent. (NN: the hero of Pushing Daisies is a necromancer.)
I don't really know what anyone would want to know about me. I hate the sound of people brushing their teeth. I don't like mushrooms, and I'm afraid of clowns. And I'm fond of pajama pants. My man-friend and I share ours, which, oddly enough, doesn't really affect my choices in them. I'm as likely to wear the Marvel ones we have and I'm pretty sure I bought the pair with the Black Knight from Monty Python on them, but he steals those all the time. I need to start hiding them.
NN: I've read that this novel is part of a two-book deal--do you have ideas for the title of the sequel? Do you think Ramon might get his own supernatural love interest? Will necromancy ever pay?
LM: I do, but I'm not sharing. Mu ah ha ha ha! Ramon is pretty smooth with the ladies, and unless he says otherwise (my characters can get really bossy) I do have a love interest planned for him. So far, he approves.
And contrary to popular belief, necromancy does usually pay, and quite handsomely.
NN: While you can evidently come into a handsome estate on account of a talent for necromancy (as Sam does), raising the dead because you miss someone does not pay (evidence Sam's treatment of Brooke).
LM: Hm, yes, material rewards do seem to happen. Emotional, not so much. It didn't seem to work out very well for Orpheus. Though torn apart by hot, crazy maidens is a good way to die.
Of course, the line I always think of when given the opportunity to speak directly to an author I've enjoyed is Holden Caulfield's, from The Catcher In the Rye: "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it." These are the questions I got to call Lish up and ask (well, actually, I emailed), and her answers.
Non-Necromancer: How did you pick necromancy as Sam's supernatural "gift"? Did the story come to you as one about an evil necromancer and the good necromancer who ends his evil reign? Did you hear the lyrics to the Elton John song, make a mental substitution, and grow the story from there? Or did you just think it was about time to add necromancy to the growing list of supernatural abilities in YA fiction?
Lish McBride: Sam started off in a short story many, many years ago, and he was just plain old human. The story kind of sucked, but when I was in college in a creative writing program I decided to revisit it because, well, I couldn't think of anything new for a short story. (A good example of why you shouldn't throw stories away, even if they are terrible.) In the new short, Sam was still plain human but we gained Ramon, Frank and Brooke, though Frank and Brooke were still flat characters and weren't friends with Ramon and Sam yet. Also now there was a zombie attack. Zombies came first. The story was still crap, so I put it away for a while, though I never stopped thinking about it. When I started to imagine it as a larger story, I wondered how the zombies got there. Enter Douglas. I'm not quite sure when I decided Sam should be a necromancer too, to be honest with you, but it was sometimes before I actually started writing the novel while I was in a graduate writing program in New Orleans. So no, it wasn't based on an Elton John song, nor did I really consider it a story of good necromancer versus evil necromancer. It was always more a story of a basically good--through somewhat lost--kid who got in over his head.
Necromancy isn't actually that new, even in YA. Necromancy basically means the use of spirits or the dead for the purposes of divination (though most have dropped the divination thing lately). So any story where someone can talk to ghosts is basically a story of a necromancer. I know Kelley Armstrong has necromancer characters in her YA as well as her adult stuff (and I highly recommend them). But when you come right down to it, necromancy is about as old school as you can get. Odysseus did it, people in the Bible did it, and they pop up occasionally in literature (NN: see the list of "Books in which Necromancy Never Pays" on the sidebar). Hell, even Jennifer Love Hewitt's character in The Ghost Whisperer qualifies. Not that I watch that show, but you get the point.
NN: Were you listening to music as you wrote the novel, or did the song lyrics/chapter titles come to you some other way?
LM: Sometimes I listen to music while I write, but I realized that I block out most noise anyway, so I don't actually hear the songs. I'd put albums on only to realize that at some point they'd ended and I hadn't noticed. So no, that's not how I get my chapter titles. But I do love music, all kinds of music, and when I wrote that original story, it was called Zombie Burger, a play off of the Vandals song "Anarchy Burger." Then I named the first few chapters, which included Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String and Hold Me Closer, Necromancer. So when we were searching for a better title, we obviously took it from one of the chapter titles. That being said, I usually pick songs I do like or can at least support in some way. If it's a song I hate, I won't use it. Well, not unless it's really funny as a chapter title (I have no shame).
NN: Do you personally have any experience working in fast food? If not, how did you do your research?
LM: Sadly, I did work fast food. It was terrible. I grew up in a small town and there was a tiny locally owned burger place that all my friends worked at, so I talked someone into getting me a job. The job had two perks--my friends, and it was next door to a skate shop where many of my other friends worked. The rest of the job sucked. The grease sticks to you and the place wasn't that clean. The owner was crazy. When I started, I didn't eat beef, but by the time I left I was fully vegetarian. So I know first hand what a grease trap smells like and we played the game "guess what I put in the fryer" on several occasions. (NN: the characters play this, among other games, at the burger place in the novel.)
NN: What are some of your favorite movies? I see you have a film agent; does that mean that Hold Me Closer, Necromancer will become a movie?
LM: I love movies and I grew up in a house sort of obsessed with film. We used to have entire conversations at the dinner table in movie quotes until my mom finally had to tell us to cut it out. So it's really hard to pick favorites. It's a long list. I love anything by Edgar Wright, and Better Off Dead is a childhood favorite. Anything really silly and I probably love it. Airplane! Black Sheep (the weresheep one, not the Chris Farley one), So I Married An Axe Murderer, Big Trouble in Little China, The Princess Bride, Labyrinth, and anything with muppets in it.
They've been shopping the book out for movies and TV for a while now. There's been some interest, but nothing definitive yet. So many factors have to come into play before something makes it to the screen (whether it be the big or little one). So, we'll see.
NN: What would you do with garden gnomes, if you owned any?
LM: They would get into many a shenanigan. We already have these black skeleton flamingoes in my yard that move around and get into things. I shudder to think what the gnomes would get into.
NN: What book has most affected you or changed your life the most?
LM: I started reading really early--around the age of three, I think. I loved Garfield, so I used to pick out the words I understood and either look up the other words or guess them from the pictures. I also had older brothers who taught me, and my mom and step mom both read to us a lot. Like movies, many books have made huge impacts in my life, but I think for most people the books that were read to you have the most influence. My mom loves the Chronicles of Narnia, so she read those to us over and over. I also have a very strong memory of my step mom reading the Bunnicula books. I love all those. I started reading Stephen King really early, too, until I realized he was depressing me and killing off characters in the order of how much I liked them, so I had to take a break from his stuff even though I think he's a great writer. I also used to love reading traditional fantasy stuff. I used to read David Edding's books over and over (I still do) and I was convinced I was going to write that kind of stuff, which hasn't really happened.
NN: What else would you like readers to know about you, your reading tastes, and what all went into the making of your first novel? (Are you a Firefly fan? Did you read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? What kind of pajamas do you wear?)
LM: I read a lot. Seriously. What I read kind of depends on what's going on. I love funny stuff, like Christopher Moore and Terry Pratchett. I love Neil Gaiman and Kelley Armstrong, Kim Harrison, Jim Butcher, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Rick Riordan. I've been loving the Black London books by Kitteridge and the Parasol Protectorate books by Carriger. If I'm really stressed I've been digging on cozy style mystery books. I find Agatha Christie to be very soothing for some reason and I love the Amelia Peabody series by Peters. I'm also reading the Fables comic series right now--I love a good comic, for sure, and I read the online comic Questionable Content religiously. I did love Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but I think I like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters a little more. And I loved Firefly and pretty much anything by Whedon. Oddly enough, I'm writing this in a Firefly-themed coffee shop in Seattle called Wayward. And I was desperately sad when Pushing Daisies was canceled. That show was excellent. (NN: the hero of Pushing Daisies is a necromancer.)
I don't really know what anyone would want to know about me. I hate the sound of people brushing their teeth. I don't like mushrooms, and I'm afraid of clowns. And I'm fond of pajama pants. My man-friend and I share ours, which, oddly enough, doesn't really affect my choices in them. I'm as likely to wear the Marvel ones we have and I'm pretty sure I bought the pair with the Black Knight from Monty Python on them, but he steals those all the time. I need to start hiding them.
NN: I've read that this novel is part of a two-book deal--do you have ideas for the title of the sequel? Do you think Ramon might get his own supernatural love interest? Will necromancy ever pay?
LM: I do, but I'm not sharing. Mu ah ha ha ha! Ramon is pretty smooth with the ladies, and unless he says otherwise (my characters can get really bossy) I do have a love interest planned for him. So far, he approves.
And contrary to popular belief, necromancy does usually pay, and quite handsomely.
NN: While you can evidently come into a handsome estate on account of a talent for necromancy (as Sam does), raising the dead because you miss someone does not pay (evidence Sam's treatment of Brooke).
LM: Hm, yes, material rewards do seem to happen. Emotional, not so much. It didn't seem to work out very well for Orpheus. Though torn apart by hot, crazy maidens is a good way to die.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Behold the Lillies of the Field
I've been reading a lot about books that are up for some kind of award, and while that's occasionally an indication of quality, just as often I don't think it's much worth my notice. The really good books will sort themselves out in the next hundred years, and I think it's a peculiar kind of hurry and hubris to try to sort them out in our lifetime.
So last night I was sitting in the Writing Center reading poems--having just met a famous science fiction editor at the house of an author friend of mine--and waiting for students to come in to ask for help on what they're writing, and I found this poem by David Donnell, Behold the Lillies of the Field:
Seamus Heaney not
exactly
the greatest Irish writer I've ever read
got
the Nobel Award last year for his general achievement
in such books as Signals.
He's a pleasant mild-mannered
Irishman
born in the north, I believe, in Belfast
called Ulster by the Protestants
& of course there are 2 wildly different lobbies
one says a true Irishman is good-natured & a hell of a drunk
& by the Lord Jesus he has to be a Catholic
but of course he never goes to Church
they only go to Church in the pubs--publican publican can you be
hoisting or toasting me another pint of the common plain over here?
The other lobby is obviously smaller
since it's entirely in the north but it would include people
like Brian Friel who is one hell of a playwright for suuuure.
Awards are getting commoner & commoner.
Everybody wants to jump into the act & wave their fist around.
It's getting just a little teensy weensy bit ridiculous.
Did James Joyce ever win the Nobel Award?
No, no he didn't. Did Henry Miller ever win the Nobel?
You've got to be joking, Harry. Did D.H. Lawrence ever win the Booker?
Let's say for a gorgeous book like Women in Love.
O well, different time period, different customs.
But in general I don't think literary critics can afford to
get involved in discussing every award winner that turns up.
Renata Adler, for example, didn't she win a National Book Award?
Whereas Wm. Gaddis & John Barth, I don't think they've ever won an
award for any of their novels. They're not couch potato writers.
Or, on the other hand, how do you know they're any good?
Oh David Donnell, I'm pretty sure you're trying to remind me of the hippie style of a poet like Gregory Corso, especially with that lame ending. I don't believe you actually care to know who's "any good"; I think you're implicitly arguing that each of us should make up her own mind. At least that's the way I read you, looking for someone who agrees with me.
So last night I was sitting in the Writing Center reading poems--having just met a famous science fiction editor at the house of an author friend of mine--and waiting for students to come in to ask for help on what they're writing, and I found this poem by David Donnell, Behold the Lillies of the Field:
Seamus Heaney not
exactly
the greatest Irish writer I've ever read
got
the Nobel Award last year for his general achievement
in such books as Signals.
He's a pleasant mild-mannered
Irishman
born in the north, I believe, in Belfast
called Ulster by the Protestants
& of course there are 2 wildly different lobbies
one says a true Irishman is good-natured & a hell of a drunk
& by the Lord Jesus he has to be a Catholic
but of course he never goes to Church
they only go to Church in the pubs--publican publican can you be
hoisting or toasting me another pint of the common plain over here?
The other lobby is obviously smaller
since it's entirely in the north but it would include people
like Brian Friel who is one hell of a playwright for suuuure.
Awards are getting commoner & commoner.
Everybody wants to jump into the act & wave their fist around.
It's getting just a little teensy weensy bit ridiculous.
Did James Joyce ever win the Nobel Award?
No, no he didn't. Did Henry Miller ever win the Nobel?
You've got to be joking, Harry. Did D.H. Lawrence ever win the Booker?
Let's say for a gorgeous book like Women in Love.
O well, different time period, different customs.
But in general I don't think literary critics can afford to
get involved in discussing every award winner that turns up.
Renata Adler, for example, didn't she win a National Book Award?
Whereas Wm. Gaddis & John Barth, I don't think they've ever won an
award for any of their novels. They're not couch potato writers.
Or, on the other hand, how do you know they're any good?
Oh David Donnell, I'm pretty sure you're trying to remind me of the hippie style of a poet like Gregory Corso, especially with that lame ending. I don't believe you actually care to know who's "any good"; I think you're implicitly arguing that each of us should make up her own mind. At least that's the way I read you, looking for someone who agrees with me.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Family Happiness
Ok, it's true that I can be something of a moralist; witness the blog title. But when I set out to find something by Laurie Colwin, who I've heard so many good things about from so many different people I can't keep track of them all, I thought I could enjoy one of her most-recommended novels, Family Happiness, without getting too stuck on how the main character, Polly, is unfaithful to her husband.
I was wrong, though. I found the whole experience of reading Family Happiness unpleasant because of how approvingly Colwin presents Polly's adulterous affair with a single man.
Maybe part of what disturbs me about Polly is how much any female reader is likely to identify with her--she thinks she needs to be "less needy and less angry" when it's clear that she needs to express more of both emotions.
Maybe what really got to me is how the characterization of her husband, a successful man who sometimes pays too much attention to his work and too little to his wife, reminded me of someone (I passed the novel over to Ron and asked him to read a page, but I don't think he saw himself there as much as I did).
For whatever reasons, I hate the choices Polly makes and I end up hating her. Even extraneous things about her--like the way she likes to lounge around with her family on a bed for the evening--irritate me (the "horizontal evenings" they spend remind me of a line from one of my favorite scenes in Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy, when Harriet looks in on an old lady who stays in bed all the time and thinks what a terrible life that would be, saying about bed "in and out, that's my motto." It's always been mine, too).
Family Happiness is, of course, an ironic title. Polly doesn't get along well with her parents or siblings, although an outsider would probably see them as close, since they see each other a lot. The moral of the novel seems to be that "it's nice to know that other people who you think have perfect lives have trouble, too."
I don't find the element of schadenfreude very satisfying, though, and really don't like any of Polly's ideas about how to cope with troubles.
I do, however, like this xkcd comic, about constructive commenting (and don't miss the mouse-over).
I was wrong, though. I found the whole experience of reading Family Happiness unpleasant because of how approvingly Colwin presents Polly's adulterous affair with a single man.
Maybe part of what disturbs me about Polly is how much any female reader is likely to identify with her--she thinks she needs to be "less needy and less angry" when it's clear that she needs to express more of both emotions.
Maybe what really got to me is how the characterization of her husband, a successful man who sometimes pays too much attention to his work and too little to his wife, reminded me of someone (I passed the novel over to Ron and asked him to read a page, but I don't think he saw himself there as much as I did).
For whatever reasons, I hate the choices Polly makes and I end up hating her. Even extraneous things about her--like the way she likes to lounge around with her family on a bed for the evening--irritate me (the "horizontal evenings" they spend remind me of a line from one of my favorite scenes in Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy, when Harriet looks in on an old lady who stays in bed all the time and thinks what a terrible life that would be, saying about bed "in and out, that's my motto." It's always been mine, too).
Family Happiness is, of course, an ironic title. Polly doesn't get along well with her parents or siblings, although an outsider would probably see them as close, since they see each other a lot. The moral of the novel seems to be that "it's nice to know that other people who you think have perfect lives have trouble, too."
I don't find the element of schadenfreude very satisfying, though, and really don't like any of Polly's ideas about how to cope with troubles.
I do, however, like this xkcd comic, about constructive commenting (and don't miss the mouse-over).
Monday, October 25, 2010
Choices
Feeling the urge to read something by Mary Lee Settle, recommended at Pages Turned, I found Choices: A Novel at the library, so decided to start with it. I found it mildly absorbing even though it's largely character-driven and the main character, Melinda, is not someone I identify with much--she's a young turn-of-the-last-century idealist--but the way it's written is quite compelling.
One of the main ideas of the novel is heard early on, in the words of a character who is only briefly introduced: "when you wake up at three o'clock in the mornin a thing is wrong or it's right and you take to drink or do somethin about it one." Melinda always does something about it.
She gets her start as a Red Cross volunteer during a mine strike in Kentucky, where she gives the striking families all the clothing her rich Virginia family will send:
"...she felt as if she were driving through her whole life. There was her coming-out dress, already coal-streaked but whirling around on a fourteen-year-old girl with long wild hair.
An old man sat on the steps of the closed company store in her father's best suit which he had worn to funerals and to church....The man beside him wore the canvas coat from Abercrombie's with the red corduroy collar that her father had always taken to shoot grouse with Uncle Brandon, and the boy beside them wore the pink hunting coat he had been so proud of...."
Next she trains as a mechanic so she can go to Spain with the communists and help out in a hospital while keeping as many of the vehicles running as possible. There she meets her husband Tye, another idealist scarred by the realities of war. He tells a story to illustrate the kind of mistakes the American Communist Party is making in Spain, towards the end of the war:
"Those of you who are disturbing elements will be sent home if your morale does not improve," Browder had yelled into the icy air. Tye told Melinda that the men had all cheered and catcalled, and some of them had shouted, "Get some in, civvy," and others, "Please sir, can I be a disturbing element?"
Maria and Tye get to England where they live with a Spanish war orphan who has attached herself to Melinda, Maria. They come to consider her their own and soothe her nightmares of the war along with each others'. At one point Maria tells Melinda:
"I'm thirteen years old...whatever you haven't taught me, it's already too late." Then she burst into tears and sobbed, "Can't you just be there? Be there and shut up." She flung herself out of the kitchen. It took Melinda several angry minutes to realize that she had been given some excellent advice on how to be the mother of an adolescent.
Any mother of an adolescent will enjoy how genuine that little scene is, especially the "several angry minutes"!
Eventually Tye dies and Melinda moves back to the U.S. where she gets involved in the 60s civil rights movement and adopts a teenage African-American boy who needs her help to get through college.
By the end of the novel, Melinda is living on an island off the coast of Italy, in a villa left to her by a distant relative who admired the way she lived. She grows old there, and her two adopted children come to visit. The novel actually begins with Melinda on the island, remembering her adventures, which I found a bit off-putting until I'd read part of the way through her story and then looked back at the box of "bits" she's kept and realized that no one will ever know the story of these things but her, and many of them are souvenirs of some kind of bravery, photographs of those who have died and will never be remembered.
Except, of course, if you read Melinda's story, which is fiction but no doubt true to the memory of all sorts of things that must have really happened and been forgotten. This is a fiction of witness--not of anything that happened, but of how it must have felt to those who were there.
One of the main ideas of the novel is heard early on, in the words of a character who is only briefly introduced: "when you wake up at three o'clock in the mornin a thing is wrong or it's right and you take to drink or do somethin about it one." Melinda always does something about it.
She gets her start as a Red Cross volunteer during a mine strike in Kentucky, where she gives the striking families all the clothing her rich Virginia family will send:
"...she felt as if she were driving through her whole life. There was her coming-out dress, already coal-streaked but whirling around on a fourteen-year-old girl with long wild hair.
An old man sat on the steps of the closed company store in her father's best suit which he had worn to funerals and to church....The man beside him wore the canvas coat from Abercrombie's with the red corduroy collar that her father had always taken to shoot grouse with Uncle Brandon, and the boy beside them wore the pink hunting coat he had been so proud of...."
Next she trains as a mechanic so she can go to Spain with the communists and help out in a hospital while keeping as many of the vehicles running as possible. There she meets her husband Tye, another idealist scarred by the realities of war. He tells a story to illustrate the kind of mistakes the American Communist Party is making in Spain, towards the end of the war:
"Those of you who are disturbing elements will be sent home if your morale does not improve," Browder had yelled into the icy air. Tye told Melinda that the men had all cheered and catcalled, and some of them had shouted, "Get some in, civvy," and others, "Please sir, can I be a disturbing element?"
Maria and Tye get to England where they live with a Spanish war orphan who has attached herself to Melinda, Maria. They come to consider her their own and soothe her nightmares of the war along with each others'. At one point Maria tells Melinda:
"I'm thirteen years old...whatever you haven't taught me, it's already too late." Then she burst into tears and sobbed, "Can't you just be there? Be there and shut up." She flung herself out of the kitchen. It took Melinda several angry minutes to realize that she had been given some excellent advice on how to be the mother of an adolescent.
Any mother of an adolescent will enjoy how genuine that little scene is, especially the "several angry minutes"!
Eventually Tye dies and Melinda moves back to the U.S. where she gets involved in the 60s civil rights movement and adopts a teenage African-American boy who needs her help to get through college.
By the end of the novel, Melinda is living on an island off the coast of Italy, in a villa left to her by a distant relative who admired the way she lived. She grows old there, and her two adopted children come to visit. The novel actually begins with Melinda on the island, remembering her adventures, which I found a bit off-putting until I'd read part of the way through her story and then looked back at the box of "bits" she's kept and realized that no one will ever know the story of these things but her, and many of them are souvenirs of some kind of bravery, photographs of those who have died and will never be remembered.
Except, of course, if you read Melinda's story, which is fiction but no doubt true to the memory of all sorts of things that must have really happened and been forgotten. This is a fiction of witness--not of anything that happened, but of how it must have felt to those who were there.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Trivial Pursuit for Book-Lovers
Children's: What four-letter word did Diane Swanson pick for the title of her book about food and its digestion?
Classics: What George Eliot opus introduced the idealistic Dorothea Brooke, stuck in a disastrous marriage to an aging scholar named Casaubon?
Non-Fiction: What Dan Zevin tale of adult "firsts" is subtitled Confessions of a Reluctant Grown-Up?
Book Club: What 1996 book opens ominously: "My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born"?
Authors: What Italian-American author described himself as "olive-skinned in a freckle-faced town," in 1992's Unto the Sons?
Book Bag: What group kept the Foundation on the straight and narrow, in Isaac Asimov's classic sci-fi series?
Classics: What George Eliot opus introduced the idealistic Dorothea Brooke, stuck in a disastrous marriage to an aging scholar named Casaubon?
Non-Fiction: What Dan Zevin tale of adult "firsts" is subtitled Confessions of a Reluctant Grown-Up?
Book Club: What 1996 book opens ominously: "My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born"?
Authors: What Italian-American author described himself as "olive-skinned in a freckle-faced town," in 1992's Unto the Sons?
Book Bag: What group kept the Foundation on the straight and narrow, in Isaac Asimov's classic sci-fi series?
The Irresistible Henry House
Lisa Grunwald's The Irresistible Henry House has gotten some good reviews around the blogophere lately, so I was glad to find the book at the library. Unfortunately, I found him quite resistible.
Part of that is not his fault; his story is set in the 1960's, and I was BORN tired of hearing about the sixties and what an exciting decade it was for those who were adults in it.
Another part of it is that his story revolves around the premise that home economics teachers who learned their business before the sixties, while well-intentioned, were unnecessarily rigid about feeding schedules and the fear of "spoiling" a child, and caused lasting emotional damage to infants in their care. So any mother who has children still at home and decides to read this novel, especially the mother of a "spirited child," will be aghast at the child-raising "techniques" that are being taught.
The plot is based on an imagined story to explain a photo the author found while researching the history of Home Economics. The photo is of a "practice baby," an orphan that students took turns learning how to mother. There were evidently "practice baby" programs all over the U.S. until the practice began to die out in the sixties, around the time Dr. Spock's Baby and Childcare was published.
The Home Economics Teacher in the novel is named Martha, and she tells her students that "taking care of a baby...is the only important job that most of you will ever have," indicating (among other things) that she believes that mothering can be reduced to a science in order to give it legitimacy. Every time she insists that none of her students pick up the crying baby before it's the right time on her schedule, it makes me cringe.
What happens to Henry after his first two years with Martha and her students is that he can't form attachments to any one person, spends his high school years unable to speak, and learns how to make himself "universally irresistible" to adult women. He can't forgive Martha, who ends up raising him, for lying about his parents in an attempt to keep him for herself. He continually mistakes love for neediness. In short, I found him a thoroughly disagreeable character, and it didn't help that most of his story took place in front of the backdrop of the sixties.
There are already too many novels set in that decade; let's pick a new one to obsess about now, okay?
Part of that is not his fault; his story is set in the 1960's, and I was BORN tired of hearing about the sixties and what an exciting decade it was for those who were adults in it.
Another part of it is that his story revolves around the premise that home economics teachers who learned their business before the sixties, while well-intentioned, were unnecessarily rigid about feeding schedules and the fear of "spoiling" a child, and caused lasting emotional damage to infants in their care. So any mother who has children still at home and decides to read this novel, especially the mother of a "spirited child," will be aghast at the child-raising "techniques" that are being taught.
The plot is based on an imagined story to explain a photo the author found while researching the history of Home Economics. The photo is of a "practice baby," an orphan that students took turns learning how to mother. There were evidently "practice baby" programs all over the U.S. until the practice began to die out in the sixties, around the time Dr. Spock's Baby and Childcare was published.
The Home Economics Teacher in the novel is named Martha, and she tells her students that "taking care of a baby...is the only important job that most of you will ever have," indicating (among other things) that she believes that mothering can be reduced to a science in order to give it legitimacy. Every time she insists that none of her students pick up the crying baby before it's the right time on her schedule, it makes me cringe.
What happens to Henry after his first two years with Martha and her students is that he can't form attachments to any one person, spends his high school years unable to speak, and learns how to make himself "universally irresistible" to adult women. He can't forgive Martha, who ends up raising him, for lying about his parents in an attempt to keep him for herself. He continually mistakes love for neediness. In short, I found him a thoroughly disagreeable character, and it didn't help that most of his story took place in front of the backdrop of the sixties.
There are already too many novels set in that decade; let's pick a new one to obsess about now, okay?
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