Winter's Bone ***1/2

By Daniel Woodrell.
Published by Bay Back Books - Little, Brown and Company.
Copyright 2006, 2007.
193 pages.

Lets start off  by saying that I am a big fan of Woodrell.  I was introduced to him by the movie of the same name as this book.  I loved the movie.  It had all the elements that I like - It is gritty, violent, profound and beautiful.  (Don't worry, I'll get back to that - I won't take the lazy way out by simply listing a bunch of superlatives).  I went out and looked for his books and read a bunch of them that can be found on this very blog and I can say that all his work, to a greater or lesser degree, has the above mentioned characteristics.  I stayed away from this one even though I had just seen the movie because I was too familiar with the story and I wanted some time to pass and because it was simply unavailable at the library.  The movie had made this book a popular requested selection.

All of Woodrell's books take place in the Ozarks where the people are poor and desperate.  It's not the sweet, apple pie American country we are talking about.  It is the dark underbelly of a depraved and desperate society.  A theme that is gritty and appeals to me immensely.

A young girl of 16, Ree Dolly, is forced to take care of her two younger brothers and her mentally  handicapped mother because the father is out running about and simply not around.  She's on her own and struggling to put food on the table.  The law visits her one day and informs her that her father, a crack cocaine cooker by occupation, has not shown up for court and that the house she lives in and as well as many generations of Dolly's before her, will be confiscated since he signed the house over for his bail and has not shown up for court.  Ree has to find her father. It's a dangerous task since the father was most certainly caught up with drugs and violence and she will need to enter that world to find him.  And the rest of the book is about her search for him.

The most important part of that search thematically is the idea of the community and family that is so important to the people of the Ozarks.  That closed-knit community that always claims to take care of their own and keep the law out is also a very dangerous community to be in the midst of.  In other words, the family that watches out for her also watches her to be sure that she doesn't meddle in their affairs.

One interesting passage that was not in the movie was that there is a discussion of an ancient religion.  This ancient religion is based on the bloodlines of the families of the Ozarks. I don't really know if it exists or if it was something that the ancestors of these people brought with them from Europe or if it was simply made up for the sake of advancing the following the author's ideas. but there seems to be some some spiritual belief or customs that link this community.  For example, all of the boys seem to have a regular name but also an ancient family name that Ree thinks is the reason the boys are doomed to their fate. Woodrell tries to put forth the thesis that the people are doomed to behave in the depraved and savage ways because it is their inheritance culturally as well as spiritually.  The book is already profound in its portrayal of poverty and depravity, but I believe this excerpt adds even more levity to the themes of the book.

This book has almost no flagging portions and is a very fast and easy read.  I think that the reason I hesitate to give it the full 4 stars is because of some previous biases I have.  I so fell in love with the movie that the book didn't really surpass the film for me. Usually the book is always better then the film. In this case both are brilliant, but I am not sure that the book is that much better than the movie.  That does say something for the film makers and their adaptation.  It is a very faithful and well done adaptation of masterpiece book.





It looks like I never reviewed the film so I won't be duplicating this trailer. And Dickon Hinchcliffe of Tindersticks fame does the sound track - Amazing!

South of Broad **

By Pat Conroy.
Published 2009 by Nan A. Nalese a division of Random House.
512 pages.

This books has one of those covers I try to avoid.  You've seen them.  Their the ones you see on best selling hard cover books; shiny cover, realistic non-ironic illustration, author's name in large type almost as big as the title (I guess the name of the author sells in these types of books).  They have a certain look to them that says "commercial" that I generally pass over when I'm browsing books.  One of the author's previous works is The Prince of Tides, from which I believe a movie was made.  So I believe that the publishers are marketing it as a commercial, mainstream book.  A definite red flag. But the book does have it's charms.

The story starts out with a description of the main character -  Charleston, South Carolina.  The other main character, Leo, has to work out all the issues he has that stems from  his dysfunctional family traumatized by  a  horrific event he witnessed when he was a child. He's supposedly a loner and unattractive (though he's a little too charming to be believable as this type of character).  He befriends an assortment of oddball characters (two orphans from the mountains, an African American with a chip on his shoulder, a beauty queen and her twin gay brother whose father is an abusive homicidal maniac, and two socialites that were busted for drug use).  Through the sheer will of this "awkward" young man, these disparate characters put their prejudices behind them and become the greatest group of friends who have ever lived.

In the next section, the group has grown into adulthood and they embark on a variety of adventures. Meanwhile the book toggles back and forth between the present (of that section) and the past which was skipped over. At this point the quality of the book rises and falls.

At times the story is silly and overblown.  And at times it is tender and sweet.  The opening section of the book where Leo has his coming of age moments is one of those sweet, tender parts.  The beautiful Sheeba takes the virginity of the lonely and hideous Leo - every lonely boy's fantasy is fulfilled here - but it is well done. There's a particularly nice scene when there is an opening of the hearts of the characters while they are floating down a river.  You feel as though the characters have grown. 

This first section takes a dip at the end when Leo has his party and is able to smooth the unruffled feathers of the prejudice the characters show one another when encountered with various exotic backgrounds.  The rich kids don't like the orphans or the African American kids.  Leo, the lonely, unattractive and awkward boy, supposedly has the persuasive powers to knock away centuries of racial and class hatred and make every one friends.  I didn't buy it.  Perhaps kids from the south are so charming that even the pariahs of their society are charming and witty.

And then the book fast forwards to a later version of these friends and here is where the bulk of the story takes place.  I also think it is the least interesting part except for when the story flashbacks to show what happens in the intervening years.  The gay brother is missing in San Francisco during the height of the AIDS epidemic.  The beauty, Sheeba, who is now an Oscar winning actor, gets the group together to help find him.  The group flies off San Francisco and embarks on an adventure.  I think the silliest part of this section is how they resolve the problem. The actual problem its self is silly too.  Trevor, the gay man, is being held hostage by some thug collects checks that come from the family of the suffering AIDS victims.  Instead of calling the police, the group decides on rescuing Trevor and breaking him out.  Exciting perhaps, but not very realistic and really pointless and devoid of meaning.  What could the author possibly be trying to say with this excerpt except to say perhaops, "you see what good friensd they are and what lengths they will go to help each other?"


The story does toggle back to the group's last year in high school.  And I am supposed to believe that the  awkward and homely Leo is one of the stars of the team that goes all the way to the championship.  If that were the case, he should have not been lonely anymore.  Leo's way too charming and talented to be the "Toad" that every one says he is.

I suppose it is naivete, but one of the messages of this book that I liked perhaps is that Leo was so (relatively) successful in his life  because he was such a nice guy.  He might have been awkward (I don't believe it for a second - he was practically the leader of the group - leaders are not awkward) but he was soooooo nice.  I have to admit, I bought into it a little.  After reading this book, my personal philosophy has changed or at least been reinforced. I believe people should be nice - That simple!

Why can't we all be a little nicer?  This is a world where everyone has to be the best, or hyper manly or super cool (gosh, life feels like high school)  Why can't we just be nice?  There is so much meanness and pettiness these days.  You can watch two grown men on TV beat the crap out of each other on Ultimate Fighting matches. Role models for toughness and manliness but where are the role models of civility?     These people should be put in jail for assault, not revered as gods.  Thugs and brutality are celebrated today.  Maybe simply being nice is a way to avoid conflict and create some happiness in the world.  I think the world needs to know that and Leo might be able to teach us that.

The book ends nicely in a tender and charming way, though all the pieces do fall together a little too neatly.  The sacrifices he makes and his good will  earns him his just rewards. Predictable but nice.

 Here are some comments by the writer himself.

The Remains of the Day ***1/2

By Kazuo Ishiguro.
Copyright 1988 by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Published by Vintage International Books, a division of Random House, 1993.
Originally published Faber and Faber Ltd., London  and Alfred A Knopf in U.S. 1989.
245 pages.

This book won the Man Booker award, I assume in 1988 or 1989.  I'm a fan of the Man Booker award because I think their choices are a little more edgier than the book awards given in the U.S., so I am always excited to be reading one.  I had heard of this book for a while and finally got around to it.

Ishiguro came from Japan to England when he was 6 years old.  I believe most of his books are about life in England, as opposed to life in Japan where he is originally from.  This book certainly does NOT have an Asian "feel" to it, or does it?

The main character is a traditional English Butler to one of the great households of English history.  The book starts off with his new American employer sending him off on a short vacation, since there is a lull in the work to be done at the house, and encourages him to make a short country drive in the rural parts of England in the owner's own car.  The butler, Stevens, is hesitant but decides to go ahead because they are a little short staffed at the house and decides to go to speak to a former employee, Ms Kenton, who happens to live out in the country to see if she wants to come back.  This is the basic plot line.  There are several themes that weave in and out of the narrative as the book continues.

A large part of the time, Stevens is contemplating, and musing on past events that he has lived through as a butler.  This activity probably takes up about 70% - 80 % of the book.  He starts off by musing about the "great Butlers" of the day.  It should be said that this story takes place in post WWII times so his ruminations tend to be nostalgic and take place in pre WWII times.  This train of thought leads him to believe that a great butler must have dignity and must belong to house of great gentleman.  In other words that he must have a great master.  A master who is noble and cares about the affairs of the day.  He believes his previous employer, Sir Darlington, was one of those people.  He believes that his master was engaging himself in events of world importance.  It was after all., before WW II and there was much international intrigue to get involved with.  He spends much time retelling the events that transpired at the behest of his master's concern and influence.  Great people of important stature visited the house to discuss important things.  Remember, this is England with a a strong tradition of nobility.  The nobility believed that they were to be the helmsmen of world affairs because of their great knowledge and education.  For the most part they were not believers in the ideals of democracy since they felt the masses to be simple and uneducated, so the responsibility fell to them.  That's why Stevens believed that the greatest butlers were attached to the greatest houses.  And when I say greatest houses, I mean the greatest masters or noblemen.  And Steven believes that his master Darlington was one of the great nobles of the day.

Meanwhile, Stevens is traveling through the country side and meeting a great many of these simpler people, and why he likes them, there is a distance that he puts between them and him.  In fact, because of his behavior and the car he drives (the owner's) people frequently mistake him for a nobleman and not a butler.  There are also some fine descriptions of the country side as travels through it.

Finally he arrives at the town where Ms. Kenton lives.  Stevens had assumed that Ms. Kenton might want to return since her letters to him tended to wax nostalgic and that she often complained about her marriage.  But she never really said that she wanted to come back.  Much of the contemplation he was doing was looking back at his working relationship between him and her.  She was in charge of all the maids and female servants while he was in charge of the whole household.  They were often at odds with each other.  She was prone to having a temper and speaking her mind, which really annoyed him since he was always striving for that "dignity" mentioned above.  He always had a professional attitude towards her.  He came off as rather cold, though we, the readers, had privy to his inner thoughts, and his background, and could understand why he was the way he was.

So at the end we get Ms. Kenton's story.  She had left Darlington Hall to get married, but the marriage was more about the doubt in her mind about whether she wanted to continue in the profession than about really being in love,  hence the marriage problems she was having.  After all the years in passing, she had learned to love her husband.  She would not be going back with Stevens.  This was a bigger disappointment to Stevens than he thought it would be.  He knew she never had said that she wanted to come back, but still I think he was hoping.  Perhaps there was love, perhaps he longed for the olden days.  But he was disappointed.  He was certainly saddened by the seemingly unhappy life Ms. Kenton had acquired.

Darlington's life had become riddled with controversy and scandal.  He may or may not have been involved with the enemies of England, though Stevens insisted that Darlington didn't realize what he was doing and acted out of sincerity and that he was an innocent.  So perhaps that's the saddest part of the book.  Everything Stevens had believed about being a butler and his employer, his identification, was thrown into doubt. Sad but not traumatic like the blurb suggests.

The themes and the material might seem kind of dry, and maybe because I'm a better reader or maybe because of the way the book was written, I had no difficulty reading the book.  I was able to understand the ideas and description and concepts very easily.  I read the book in less than 3 days.  Usually with material like this, I struggle and it takes longer to read.  I did not find this the case, and though I am not very good at speaking about the writing and language an author uses, this ease I had with the material speaks to the quality of his writing.

A trailer of the movie.

High Fidelity **1/2

By Nick Hornby.

Copyright 1995 by Nick Hornby.
Published by the Penguin Group.
323 pages.

This is one heck of a funny book and I enjoyed it immensely.  It does drag on a little in the middle though.  The main character, Rob gets a little too whiny, he even admits it at one point, and tiresome.

This book is about a guy Rob, who has just broken up with this girlfriend.  He's the owner of a record store and feels stuck where he is because he's 39 and he feels like he hasn't grown since his college days.  He restless and cranky.

The book starts out with a list  and a description of his 5 worst break - ups. His last break-up, which is the focus of this story is not included in his list.  Though he claims it's not one of the top five, he seems to take it pretty hard, because all he does is wring his hands with regret and indecision.  He goes to work everyday at his records store called Empire Records.  There  he encounters much banter and tom foolery with his two store clerks who are record snob geeks/ perpetual bachelors.  Much of the humor comes from these conversations.

I could really relate to this book as I myself am somewhat of a record snob (surprising in know but it's true).  One of the concepts that the book discusses is how these people tend to push their opinions on other people, especially girlfriends. Lord knows I've been there, but in defense of this practice, don't I, a confessed music geek, have to put up with what I consider a lot of garbage?  I think it is only fair that I get my 2 cents and get to hear some of my preferred and obscurer music?  Where ever one goes, you can hear the strains of some (sorry) really horrible music.  I think if I am forced to listen to that, people should have to put up with what I like once in a while.  One of my favorite quotes from the book: "I want him to show the rest of us that it is possible to maintain a relationship and have a large record collection."  That really struck a chord with me.  Discussions like these are the parts I really enjoyed about the book.  I could really relate.

The Death of Sweet Mister ***

By Daniel Woodrell.
Copyright 2001 by Daniel Woodrell.
Published G.P. Putnam' Sons, Penguin Putnam
Pages 196.

Woodrell is one of my favorite authors so I have read several of his books already.  This is fairly typical of his work, and I like his work, so of course I liked it!  He specializes in stories about the Appalachian Mountains and the people who live there.  His books are full of violence, drug abuse, poverty and a bit of black humor.  My kind of book! 

Here's the story.  It's about a dysfunctional nuclear family of three who live somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains.There's a mom, Glenda, her brutal husband/boyfriend, Red and a young 13 year-old chubby boy called Shug, who is also called by his mother the tile character - Sweet Mister.  That's the nickname that his mom gives him.  So the mom is very submissive towards the brutal husband and pretty much lets him have his way in every way - especially sexually.  She has a strong affection for her son, which kind of leads to a teasing, flirty behavior.  Red abuses the two and has the young boy steal drugs from the homes of doctors and very sick patients.  Eventually a guy in a Green T-bird comes along , Jimmy Vin, and sweeps her off her feet so to speak.  This leads to the fact that Glenda now has two lovers. Shug witnesses this all, but he hates Red enough that he doesn't care except for the jealousy of the attention that his mother is getting.  It all predictably comes down to a violent ending in which we are the witness to the aftermath.  He doesn't actually describe the scene in the book.  Jimmy plans to take Glenda away from it all as he has found a new job, but Shug can't come along because his job is on a cruise ship.  Jimmy is a cook, and there is no room.  So that's the plan, but Jimmy never shows up for reasons discussed below.

Lots of spoilers already not spoiled above to follow.

So as I was reading this and when I figured out who Sweet Mister was, I was very concerned for the boy since he seemed, relatively, a nice gentle should caught in the wrong place.  By the title, I thought he would die, but he doesn't.  It's his innocence that dies.  I think the message is that this type of life style is circular. Even though Shug is a good kid, it seems reasonable that he will turn out the same as Red- criminal, abusive, misogynist and addicted to drugs, though there is a bit of hope for him maybe because of his sensitivity, he might, more or less, escape all that.  The ending would seem to prove that that probably WON'T be the case.

After all the sensual teasing from his mother and all the out and out sexual behavior he witnessed from the adults, the husband Red took minimal efforts to hide those exploits, Shug seemed ti think he deserved some of what his mother had been giving out.  Yes it seems cliche, but were talking about mother and son, hence the end/death of his innocence.  She tells him no when he begins to make a move, but Shug insists, and whines about not getting what everyone else does.  Glenda is able to fend off Shug's advances at first, but when she realizes that Jimmy is not coming  to pick her she resignedly gives in to her boy's wishes - She has given up hope.

So that's the death of his innocence, but there are more examples of how his innocence has been murdered.  When Shug learns that he wont be going with his mother he is the one that puts everything in play.  It's that Glenda and Jimmy have to leave because they  murdered Red.  Shug knows it, but keeps their secret to protect his mother.  But when he finds out he's not going, he goes and tells Red's best friend who makes it happen that Jimmy is NOT capable of running off with Glenda. So Glenda, in her "not very motherly shorts", allows Shugs hands to move higher and higher on the very last page.  Life as they knew for Shug and Glenda was over.

Warm Bodies **1/2

By Isaac Marion.
Copy right 2011 by Isaac Marion.
Published by Atria Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, New York.

239 pages.

I'm not normally a reader of Science Fiction or Post Apocalyptic literature, and I am certainly not a reader of Zombie books.  Though I am a sucker for these genres in film, if the film makers do a half way decent job and and the movie's not too stupid.  I chose to read this  because it was an interesting title on Barnes & Noble Discovery Book series where I discovered it.

So yes, this is a book about Zombies.  But there is a twist.  it's from the point of view of one of the lesser deteriorated zombies.  I don't think this idea has ever been done before.  And it's funny because the lead zombie character has a particularly weird out look on life, such as you might call it.  It is a really funny book.  Apparently zombies have a fairly sceptical, fatalistic view on life. I would recommend this book on that basis alone. Simply that's it's really funny and a very quick read.

So I've already introduced our romantic lead, and yes it does have a romantic element.  His name is R ( he can't remember the rest of his name - just the initial sound - but that's more than most of his zombie comrades can do).  So he is intellectually superior to the majority of other zombies in his community at the deserted airport. 

One day, on a hunt, he kills and eats the brains of a boyfriend of a girl who later becomes his love interest.  Instead of killing her too, he saves her from another zombie for some reason, perhaps some glimmer of humanity that still exists inside of him.  He takes her back to his zombie bachelor pad (a deserted airplane)and convinces her in a series of one syllable words, gestures and grunts (he can think at a fairly high level but can't communicate very well - he IS a zombie after all!) that he won't hurt her and a strange sort of friendship begins.  He learns about her through his dreams and visions that he has as a result of eating her boyfriends brains and reliving the boyfriend's memories of his girl.  Apparently when a zombie eats the brains, they get visions of their victims memories and life.  His friend Zombie, M, likes to eat the brains of young women and states that it is like porno.  This is a little too disturbing even for our more sensitive, flesh-eating hero. He slowly starts to have actual feelings of empathy and sympathy.  He is starting to have human feelings.  Maybe he can change!  You think!?!?!?

The beginning of the book is probably the best part and most original part of the book.  Of course it's rather silly, which makes it the perfect beach read (did I just say that !?!?!)  And it does get hokey and into some rather unoriginal ideas as the story continues.  But it still good clean fun.  For example there are these "boneys" who seem to run the zombie community.  It's hinted that their evil is of a more ancient and sinister evil than that of the zombies who ignorantly stumble through their pseudo lives.  These boneys must be the reason for the "curse" that caused or is symptomatic of the Apocalypse.  There's a battle at the end against these boneys because the zombie , R, and his girl, Julie, are a symbol of hope to society of hopefully curing this disease or plague which has overcome earth.  It's a symbol of the change that the future could bring.  Of course there is the overdone, paint-by-numbers theme of the sins humanity has causing this mess in the first place.   But in my opinion those lofty philosophies about mankind are all throw away elements that should give way to the funny, original and silly narrative.

Here's a trailer for the book. They do them for books now!



And someone elses opinions and descriptions. Carefull - some language here.

Parrot & Olivier in America ***

By Peter Carey.
copy right 2009 by Peter Carey.
Published 2011 by Vintage International.  In New York.  A first edition.

Originally published 2009 in Australia by Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Group.
381 pages.

I have heard much about the reputation of John Carey.  About 10 years ago I read his Booker Prize Winner The True Story of the Kelly Gang.  It was historical fiction as is this one here and the subject matter (of both books) is something that interests me strongly.  But I struggled with it.  The cause was partly the language of the characters (they were Australian rough necks form the late 19th century) and his elliptical manner of writing in which he spells out very little for the reader and the reader has to work out what exactly it is that is happening.  This difficullty prevented me from tackling his other books until now, though I really did enjoy the Kelly Gang in spite of the difficulties.

This book is similiar.  It's language is thick and dense.  But for some reason I was able to follow it better.  Perhaps after all these years I'm simply a better reader.

Parrot and Olivier in America is historical fiction based loosely on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville. That character is Olivier.  Olivier is a French Aristocrat in the early to mid 19th century - during the time of the French Revolution, which of course is not a good time to be a French aristocrat.

Parrot is a poor Englishman who becomes the servant of a roguish yet aristocratic soldier - the Marquis.  The Marquis saves Parrot as a boy when he is found wandering the roads and they end up sailing to an Australian penal colony where the boy is left until he is an adult. For some reason the Marquis comes back and takes him to France.  It should be also said that Parrot has a talent for mimicking people, hence the name Parrot, and for drawing.

The over protective mother, who is friends with the Marquis, wants to send Olivier, fearing for his life, away from France.  The Marquis offers his servant Parrot as a companion/servant.  Being from completely different stratas of society, the two do not get along, yet Parrot sticks around as he is honor bound, plus he is being paid.   Eventually the two come to an understanding and a sort of weird friendship.  It's an odd couple story.

I really admired the gritty descriptions of the infant U.S.A.  It was not romanticized and touched on all sorts of debauchery and corruption.  It's not a very romantic description but probably closer to the reality of the situation.

It is also a funny book.  Parrot made much fun of Olivier's snobby attitude with some pretty bawdy language.

And finally, I liked some of the ideas presented about just what is America.  Olivier discourses on much of this of in his monologues about the nature of America.   Surprisingly, some of it still rings true today.  He believed that America was crass and concerned only with commercailism.  He didn't believe true art and fine culture could flourish in the country with out a noble class that has the time to appreciate and study art.  If one compares this to our modern society, one can see the similarities. Our culture and art is driven by tastes of the uneducated and undereducated common man.  There are a few lone wolves out there trying to make a difference but its a steep upward road. Though Parrot argues with him over this idea.  After all Parrot and his wife were artists and Parrot believed that it was possible to have great art in America.  Though his argument loses strength when his group of artists have to sell their art though theatric and circus like tricks.  This and the commercialism of America is a major theme of the book.

Carey's books are not easy reading, so I would not choose to read him when I need a quick read between obligatory reads, but if I have time, he's definitely worth returning to.

Here's a pretty succinct interview about the boook with Carey. I'm glad to see that I'm not that far off for once.



And some more thoughts...



And something a little silly...



And one longer interview for good measure...

Elizabeth Costello **

By J.M. Coetzee.
Published 2003 by Viking a Penguin Group,
New York.
230 pages.

Coetzee is one of my favorite authors.  His book Disgrace is one of my favorite books and won the Booker Prize deservedly so I think. While his books always have multiple layers and things to think about, a reader could always count on a riveting narrative.  So I am always recommending his books.  In fact i recommended this book to someone before I had ever read it.  They said they didn't like it.  I was astonished!

So finally this Spring I started to read it.  I immediately started to see the reason my friend did not like the book. Basically its a book of essays.  The book is a novel, but the narrative is basically that of an elderly woman writer who gives 8 speeches.  Each speech is a chapter and supposedly reveals something of the narrative.  And there is a narrative string but it is a really a loose one.  For the most part it is a book of essays with bits of narrative to tie together the essays in a thematic way.  If I had read this as a book of essays my opinion of the book might be different.  The essays/speeches can be very intellectually demanding, yet I was able to comprehend and stay with the strands of thought being presented.  If this book were presented as a book of essays, perhaps the rating would be much higher.

I also see that Coetzee has several books of essays so he might be someone to check out deeper for those who like to read essays.  I guess an interesting idea to pursue here is why he chose to make these essays into a narrative.  He already has published books of essays and some of these "chapters"/ essays had been published in different forms in various magazines.  I'm guessing there was less narrative in those published pieces and those narrative pieces were added when he decided to turn it into a narrative.  Maybe it was an experiment.  Maybe it was a chance for him to try some different ideas for his essays and therefore enable him to distance him self from some of these ideas since the ideas are not really his, but the ideas of his characters.  Maybe it allows him to try on different ideas that normally he wouldn't call his own and that perhaps he disagrees with.  Maybe he's playing devil's advocate here.  Some of the ideas the character has are controversial with in the context of the book and she gets into discussions with people who disagree with her about her speeches.  Maybe its a chance for the author to show both sides of an argument.

The last chapter is interesting and might be the closest to a narrative that there is in this book.  In this chapter, the author is in purgatory and she can't get into heaven because she refuses to commit herself to a "belief".  So she spends her time in Purgatory, a small,  cliched, early 20th century European town, trying to edit her statement about her beliefs.

I enjoyed this book, but i would refrain from recommending it to most people unless I knew that this person really likes to read intellectual and philosophical texts.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay ***

By Michael Chabon.
Published 2000, by Picador.

636 pages.

I had been waiting to read this book for a longtime, and for the most part I was not disappointed.  I think the ending may have been, albeit slight, a letdown.  After all the epic adventures and events in the book, the ending seemed a little too domestic, though I suppose that ending is the natural order of life.  People become domesticated as they become older.  And this is a story of people's lives through the year.

Though at the start, I was totally intrigued.  Here's the story.  A young boy comes from New York from Prague to escape the Nazis in the 1930's.   The book provides some background into his previous life in Prague, and this is one of many parts that had me intrigued.  He (Joesph Kavalier) is trained as an escape artist a la Harry Houdini.  I liked the feeling of 1930's Europe and the description of his Jewish family and brother as well as the lessons he was learning in the striving for actualization of his desire to be an escape artist.

However the story takes place mostly in New York City with his cousin, Sam Clay.  Sam Clay is a native, 1st generation Jewish American, who has an interest in comics, and has attempted some amateurish attempts at cartooning.  Meanwhile, his cousin from Prague, has training in the fine arts but knows nothing of comics until he meets his American cousin.  Sam works for a novelty company and brings his talented cousin along to convince his employer to start a line of comic books.  They argue that they could give him another Superman type book which was very popular and lucrative at the time.  Sammy's boss reluctantly accepts their idea and signs them on and gives them a contract (which we later find out leaves them out of a lot of the money they could have earned by not giving them full ownership or credit for their characters).  And a career is born and the book then spends the next 20 years chronicling their rags to riches story.

Some of the more interesting events was Joe's hatred of the Nazis and his wish to bring his family to the states.  That leads him to later join the army.  He meets his girlfriend Rosa Sax, a character I really liked.  She was a bohemian, free thinker, and pushed him to push his comic art.  However in his anger over the sinking of a ship that was bringing his younger brother to the states, he angrily left his beautiful , loving girlfriend to go fight Nazis.  He ended up in the Antarctic, doing a whole lot of nothing, though he did get to kill one Nazi, an accident that not only was enjoyable (he was itchin' to kill some Nazis) but was in the end regrettable and sad. And so here's the thing, that doesn't quite sit right with me.  After 4 years in the god forsaken Antarctica, you'd think he would have been eager to get back to his own life.  His brother was long dead and he killed his Nazi, so what was left for him to do? And he wasn't blaming his girlfriend any more ( he was angry at first because she had softened him and took his will to fight the Nazis - even in New York, he was constantly looking for trouble in the German parts of town and picking fights because of his guilt about leaving his family behind.)  I suppose that returning to his old life would not have been much of a story, but I really liked his girlfriend and wanted the two to be together.  He ended up staying away from her and his son for the next 10 or 12 years.

Meanwhile Sammy was discovering his homosexual feelings and that this lifestyle was wholly unacceptable to mainstream society.  So he chose to stay in the closet, like most people did in the 1940's.  This is important though because when it was discovered that Rosa was pregnant with Joe's baby, Sammy decided to marry Rosa and be the father of the boy, Tommy.  So because Joe went off and didn't return, their careers had taken a decline.  Joe was in self imposed exile and Sammy, was doing a variety of odd jobs to support the family.

And then one day, Joe meets his son...Apparently, in his isolation, Joe had been working on his masterpiece and when they were reunited, Sammy saw it and decided it was brilliant and wanted to do something, so now the future looks rosy once again.

That was a rather long summary, but it was a long book.  I suppose that topic of conversation should be about the fact that this award winning novel is about comic books.  The surprise or question being how could a book about a subject as "banal" as comic books be a work of art.  And here we have to entertain the argument of form vs substance.  It's a topic argued in the book itself.

Even in this book, at least these characters were concerned about the "Art" of comics.  Joe was a trained artist and he was concerned about how to make comics an art after a while.  Their book, The Escapist, was supposed to be mainstream and Joe was told to simplify his art.  I would suppose that most comics of this era were pretty stupid, though the way Sammy described his ideas in the book, they sounded pretty cool.  I would argue though that a written description of a scene can be much more detailed than the final comic story.  And they generally were more detailed than the titles of the books they made sounded. ie

So with every form of art that is considered a poorer sister of the fine arts, there are attempts to use that art form for more prestigious and profound concepts.  There is a ton of bad pop music, but being a pop/rock music aficionado, I could point out tons of stuff that to me has artistic integrity.  Just as today, there are some quality, literate comic books out there, most of us know that already, including the tight wearing all powerful super hero (Daredevil is one of my favorites for it's gritty and expressionistic stories) as well as the alternative and adult comics that one would expect to be more literate.

Even this book proves it's case.  It really is a book of pulp fiction.  Joe's escape from Prague with the Golem and his several encounters with life endangering situations in which he becomes the hero because of his escape training. Yet the book has a serious, artistic side.  It speaks on several themes such as the rags to riches story, racism, homosexuality in that period, the art scene as well as the comics business and history.  Some of the language is difficult and yet poetic.  There are some parts which were difficult for me to get through.  True pulp fiction is never"difficult".

So, it's not the form of expression that makes art, it's how that form is being used to express one's art.

Hmmm.... Normally I would attach some videos but there are nothing but amateur book trailers and hour long discussions.

Death With Interruptions ***1/2

By Jose Saramago.
Published 2009 by First Mariner Books.
Copyright , Lisbon 2005.
Translation by Margaret Jull Costa 2008.
238 pages

What I liked about this book foremost is that's it's funny.  A dark humor if you will - gallows humor.  In comparison to the other Saramago book I read, Blindness, I don't remember that one being very humorous.  I could be mistaken - it has been a while.  In fact I am sure that there was some humor in Blindness but I believe it was less frequent and the subject was so grim, that the the humor of the book was not so forthright.  An example (paraphrased) is when Saramago describes death as "working her fingers to the bone".

As usual, Saramago writes in his usual dense and difficult style.  There are long paragraphs, no quotation marks and conversations that  happen in the middle of the paragraphs.  There are run on sentences and punctuation in bizarre places.  This makes it a difficult read.  At one point, Saramago self satirizes himself when the narrator of the book complains about a writer or a poet who writes in the exact same style. 

The plot is sketchy, skeletal if you will, in which Saramago hangs the meat of his philosophising and his musing.  There's very little character development.  It's all allegorical.  The plot is a device in which the author can expound his ideas and theories.  These ideas, theories and musings are all related to what happens in the plot which is about death and consequently about life.  In fact, as much as a it is a book about death, it is also quite life affirming - especially the second half of the book. 

So this is the plot, which may or may not have a spoiler in it.  In some unnamed, but obviously European (sounds like Portugal, logically) country, people suddenly stop dying, which seems great at first but obviously has it's downside.  Saramago spends time discussing governments and communities and institutions by discussing their responses to the situation.  In this part there are not really any lead character.

After several months, when most issues have been resolved by the leaders and the people of this country death changes her mind and decides to allow everyone to die again.  But this time, in fairness to everyone, they get one weeks' notice so as to get their business in order, which also leads to more social problems which the various institutions have to struggle with.  Death gives notice to the these poor souls by delivering a letter on violet colored stationary.  And this is where the first half of the book ends.  The second half starts when one of her (death) letters is returned stamped "Return to Sender".

This letter that keeps being returned to her has death perplexed.  She's never been denied her will before.  She goes to investigate to find that the person who was supposed to die is completely unawares, and is ignorantly getting on with his life.  She spends some time with this man out of curiosity and invisibly to him. She begins to form an affection for him.  Something you don't want to do if you are the cold hearted killer that death is.  Trying to figure out a way to kill this man that defies her letter, she investigates further more and develops a plan, because her job is rife with ritual and tradition, this new incident has her groping for a solution.  The ending of the book is actually sweet and lovely and hopeful.  We are kind of routing for death to escape her destiny.

There are two ways to read a Jose Saramago novel.  You can read it rather quickly and get through the plot devices, which are quite enjoyable, since his plots are very clever and inventive, and glean some of what messages he has to say.  This is how I read the book, stopping several times to backtrack over his philosophising.  I did not try to read and understand every single detail he wrote.

The other way to read the book, is to actually do that.  Sit down and read every passage closely and get a complete understanding.  I would recommend the first way at first.  Then upon a second reading, I would delve into dense and complicated ideas that he proposes.  There's definitely things to discover and rediscover with each reading.  And there's no denying the genius of the man and his ideas.

That said, I would cautiously recommend this book, because it is a difficult read.  I know enough about Saramago, that if I saw a book of his on the shelf, it would not be the first book i would pull, simply because I know how difficult it would be and I would have to be in certain mind set.  That said, the two times I have read him was because i had to and it was some of the best and enjoyable obligatory reading I have done.

Unaccostomed Earth ***1/2

By Jhumpa Lahiri.
A Borzai Book Published in 2008  by Alfred A. Knopf.
333 pages.

I'm trying to keep these entries short, but something tells me that this one will be difficult to keep short.  First of all, this is Lahiri's second book of short stories.  A comparison to her first book would be vital to the discussion, though it's been a while since I read that book. Second of all, I'll probably have to delve into detail on a couple of the stories.  So I'll be looking at deatils of the stories and overall impressions, themes and trends.

Her first book of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies,  was also her first book and a Pulitzer prize winner.  It's truly a fabulous book and one of my all time favorites.  So how does this second newer one rate?

It's a very fine book.  She continues writing with much emotional detail.  She paints her characters with fine detailed strokes.  The characters are likable and the reader feels empathy.  Really, it's a close call of which book I like better, but perhaps Interpreter of Maladies is the better of the two books - slightly.  It's been a while since I read that book, but the feeling that remains in me about that book is that it was more dynamic, adventurous (in her style of writing - not thin the narratives) and fresh.  The stories are shorter so events have to happen quickly.  Being Lahiri's debut book, like many authors' debuts, narratives tend to be punchier and quirkier.  Not that Interpreters is a quirky book, just perhaps a little more than this one here - Unaccustomed Earth.

On the other hand, this newer book seems more mature and nuanced,  (though even her first book had characters that were nuanced - she's a great writer when it comes to character).

In Interpreters, her stories were set in The United States, Britain (if memory serves me right) and her native land of India.  It showed an author (or to extrapolate) or a people who struggle with self-identity.  Especially the stories that took place in The West.

In the newer book, all the stories take place in the U.S.  None take place in India except for perhaps references to trips back to the homeland.  Again, the author is dealing with issues of self-identification.  But I also think she has more interest in interracial relationships.  Almost all the stories touch on this subject.  Even in the stories that have Indian to Indian relationships, there are past experiences of the characters of dating/marrying non-Indians. 

So what can I conclude is her opinion of these relationships?  In the first book, I remember at least one story where it was an Indian to Indian relationship.  That was a troubled relation.  Who gets the blame for the failure of these mixed marriages.  Well, she certainly doesn't throw the blame at the westerners.  Most of the fault lays with the Indians,.  Why?  maybe, like many cultures that are trying to adapt to new ways, they are struggling with their identities.  They're not sure how to go about things and are confused.  They are not sure of which is the best way to act and behave.  The blame might lay at the feet of the Indian-American (or is it Bengali - Americans), but the author certainly has empathy and understanding of what these characters are going through and might even hint at what the issues are for these confused characters.

Perhaps that's a good way to discuss the stories individually.  By using the theme of inter-racial relationships as a string that holds the stories together,I will discuss each story.

Unaccustomed Earth is the first story as well as the title story and the longest story.  It focuses on an Indian wife and her visiting widowed father.  She is married to an "American" guy and he is shown in a pretty good light except for maybe that he's not around a lot because of business, and doesn't always understand his wife's concerns.  But this story is one of the few that is less concerned with the marriage and more concerned with the father and daughter and even the grandson.

Hell-Heaven is the story of a Bengali man that became very close to a Bengali family.  When he eventually dates and marries a white woman, the family, especially the mother, who became very close and had a crush on him was very upset.  Everyone said how the relationship was wrong and that she would treat him badly.  Well the reverse happened.  The marriage ended but because of the husband's philandering ways.

A Choice of Accommodations is a story about a married couple, White wife and Bengali man who go away to a wedding in hopes of rekindling some of the old romance.  Things don't turn out the way they had hoped, but there is a sweet ending.  I liked this story a lot because both characters were shown to have flaws, yet it was hopeful at the end.  It's difficult to lay the blame at any one's feet.

Only Goodness is a story of a sister who tries to help her brother who eventually becomes an alcoholic.  She eventually marries a rich English guy and starts a family with him.  When her brother comes back in the picture, it strains the relationship.  The man seems  a bit cold to her, but he's also correct about her brother and his problems, which the rest of his family has trouble accepting. So this is about a teenage boy trying to adapt to American ways and the blinders the parent wore in respect to him until it was too late.

Nobody's Business is one of the few stories where the main couple is Bengali, but the point of view is that of the American room mate.  The girl in the relationship lives with two Americans, but she has a boyfriend.  She's very beautiful and the guy roommate has a little crush on her but is respectful and never acts on it.  The relationship between the couple is poor.  They Bengali guy is not a nice person, and his Bengali girlfriend seems to have blinders on (just like the family in the above story). 

The second half of the book is actually 3 short stories that are linked together by two characters who meet when they are adolescents.  It is called Hema and Kaushik.  The stories track their lives, and there are relationships with Americans for both characters.  n the last story they do hook up, but things don't seem to work out even though the initial part of the relationship is great.

I have enjoyed immensely every book that Lahiri has written and she will continue to be one of my favorite authors.  I guess I like it so much because of the way she treats her characters.  I really emphasize with them and what they go through in their relationships and marriages.  In some ways, I see my self in these characters because I had an interracial marriage and I could understand what the characters are going through.

Here's a reading and discussion of the book.

Give Us A Kiss - A Country Noir ***

By Daniel Woodrell.
Published in 1996 by Henry Holt & Company, New York.
237 Pages.

I first heard of this author when I saw a movie Winter Bones based on one of his books by the same title.  I was deeply impressed, so comparisons will be made despite the fact that the books are different (but same author remember).

The author was born and raised in the Ozark hills and a certain amount of love is shown to the culture and especially the land.  The culture you say?  What kind of culture is there in the Ozark Mountains?  Why hillbilly culture of course.  This book is a celebration of that culture and land.

When I saw the film Winter Bones, it was the seriousness of it that impressed me.  It showed the poverty, drug addiction, rebelliousness against the law and the misogyny of the people who lived in the Ozarks.  It was a serious film - violent and intense.  Give Us a Kiss has all this, but it also has some humor.  The author makes fun of the characters' white trash roots.  He also gives the reader a sexy romance in which the protagonist hooks up with a an Elly May character right out of Beverly Hillbillies.  He even references that actress who plays her.  So funny, sexy violent  and add to that some good writing and what's not to like?  Well, it does have a lighter tone than the film Winter Bones so it was harder to take seriously.  But all in all a quick satisfying read which I read in the course of two days.

The story goes that a struggling author (Doyle Redman) who writes a series of crime novels based on his life in the Ozarks, returns to his roots and family to encourage his older brother (Smoke) to give him self up to the authorities to save the parents from the daily harassment that they are receiving from those same authorities.  He half-heartedly tries talking to his brother about it and then ends up joining his brother, the brother's girlfriend (Big Annie, named for her big boobs) and the girlfriend's 19 year old daughter (said hottie - Niagara) in a money making scheme involving the growing and selling of some marijuana.  But there is another tribe or family that is even more dangerous and despicable than our heroes' family, and of course they get involved and old and new feuds are lit up.  It ends in violent gunfight to the end.

I will be investigating more of this author's books.  I like gritty realism and you get plenty of that in his books.

Here's a trailer from the movie Winter Bones. I have halted my reviews of films since I keep finding my self terribly behind, so I never got around to blogging about this one. I couldn't find anything specifically about Give Us Kiss, this trailer does give a a taste of what the book/s are about.

The Master Butcher's Singing Club ***1/2

By Louise Erdrich.
Published by Harper Perennial.
Originally published in Hardcover  in 2003 by Harper Collins Publishers.
This edition published 2005.
388 pages.

This is one of those books that are very popular with book clubs.  I usually try to stay away from those books, but I had to read this for a book club.  It's not that the typical book read for book clubs is bad.  Usually they are quite good. To have a good book discussion, a book that has some depth is necessary. And this is certainly an example of a typical book club book.  It is very good with lots of things to discuss.  It's just that when I talk to people about books, the same books keep coming up in conversation.  It seems to me that people don't take chances or look for anything different that might be out there, so I avoid those books.  Probably because of my desire to be cooler than thou. I want to be able to say, "Oh yeah, Everyone has read that! I haven't, but  you should really check out this alternative and different book instead."  (I don't mean alternative in the most recent sense of the word (ie. alternative music).  So sure, perhaps I am arrogant and elitist, but I also have the soul of a teacher and I want people to wake up and realize there are options out there.  That you don't have to read what everyone else reads.

Luckily, I am forced to read certain books that I would not necessarily read on my own through the book clubs.  And many book club selections are excellent, so I am able to keep relatively current with what's popular.  And this is one of those excellent books.

In fact it's a near masterpiece.  The characters are well developed, the narrative is excellent and organized in an interesting manner (It keeps shifting from one character to another right when the reader is eager to find out what will happened next). The prose is poetic and descriptive and beautiful.

Perhaps there are personal reasons that I liked it so much too, or better said, perhaps my personal tastes have a lot to do with why I liked is so much.  It's dark!  Very, very dark!  Yet there is always hope.  The characters seem almost superhuman in their ability to survive their hard scrabbled lives. They are heroic and inspiring.   It is set in the time period between the two great wars, so that makes this book historical fiction - one of my favorite genres.  It takes place in small town North Dakota.  A place that has unbearable heat in the summer and vicious cold in the winter with nothing to protect the citizen because of the flat treeless land.  So it's a gritty book, another characteristic that appeals to me.

I have some issues with this book but I am not necessarily sure that they are really issues or if they add actually add to the feel and tone of the book.   At almost 400 pages, it seemed at time that the plot moved a bit on the slow side.  Masterful as the authors descriptions were, I  at times had the feeling of wanting to get on with it.  And I am a patient reader.  It took forever for the butchers wife to die, for the butcher to finally declare his intentions for the heroin, fir the characters to clean out the filthy house that the town drunk lived in etc.  But this might be appropriate since small town living in the first half of the 20th century must have been very slow paced.  And it's our fast paced lives that make us impatient.

Also, I felt that Erdrich developed the woman characters better than the men characters.  It's not surprising seeing as Erdrich is a woman author and knows more about women which would make her more invested in the woman characters. The men are outside drinking beer or participating in the singing club,.  The women are inside cleaning and caring and taking care of the house.  The butcher is dark, silent and kind of mysterious.   The main character, Delphine becomes close friends with the wife.  We seem to learn much more about the female characters - even the minor ones. It's a pattern I see in much historical fiction.  In many cultures and in the past, women and men led very separate lives.  The men were outside and the woman remained inside.  Modern times have changed this dynamic quite a bit (for the better I believe).  So maybe these less developed characters are appropriate for the time and place considering the story is mostly from the point of view of a female.

I usually get to the plot way before now.  The two main characters, the butcher, Fidelis, and the traveling vaudeville girl, Delphine, start out in separate places.  Fidelis is from Germany and immigrates to the U.S. after the 1st Great War with nothing more than his butchering tools and a case full of German sausages which he sells to make money to cross the country until he arrives in Argus, North Dakota.  Meanwhile, Delphine is out traveling doing a Vaudeville show with a sexually confused acrobat who loves her, but more like a sister.  They come back to Delphine's hometown where they meet her drunken father, who lives in a filthy house and may have accidentally left a family in the cellar to die while he was out on a drunken binge.  Delphine gets a job with the butcher and meets and befriends his wife.  The rest of the story is pretty much the story of the two families and all that has happened to them up to and after the Second World War.e money

The author happens to be part native American, French and German.  She apparently writes quite frequently about Native American, particularly the Ojibwa tribe, which is where her roots are from.  I had always been on the look out for writers that write about the Native American Experience.  I think I might have found one and I hope to pursue more of his books.

Rocket Man***

By William Elliott Hazelgrove.
Published by Pantonne Press Inc.  Chicago Illinois.
copyright 2009.
377 pages.

If this isn't one of the best books I have ever read, I certainly enjoyed my self while reading it,.  It is laugh out loud funny.  Because that is what I did when I read it - i actually laughed out loud..  I read it for a book club, and I think that most of the older group didn't care for it.  It is certainly not a subtle book.  The author pretty much hits the reader over the head with the ideas.  But they are some interesting ideas.  My book groups also complained about the editing.  Something I didn't notice until it was mentioned, or perhaps most of the problems come at the second half of the book. ( I was only half way through when we talked about it).  It is a small press so perhaps that is the reason for the poor proof reading.  It is supposed to be rereleased in a hardcover edition.by a large corporate press and those problems should be taken care of.

So what are some of the ideas the book discusses? It discusses, suburban life and the conformity that comes with that kind of life.  It discusses the concept of happiness.  Are those conformists suburbanites as happy or even happier than the misplaced behemian artist?  In other words, what is happiness and how does that happiness differ for different people.  Those are the two main ideas.  Some other subconcepts are some discussions of how people live beyond their means - a subject that is surely current in this post housing boom failure era.  And the character is frustrated.  Is it his surroundings that stunt his creativity or is he just creatively spent?.  The book also talks about the difficulties of keeping up with the responsibilities of keeping up with modern life and families.

So, the story goes that our protagonist, Dale Hammer (Alias Rocket Man) is a transplant from the city to the distant suburbs of Chicago.  That's right, the story takes place in Chiacgao, though the names of the towns are thinly disguised.  He's a writer and is accustomed to the multicultural, liberal environment of Oakland (alias Oak Park).  But becasue of crime and schools, he and his wife decide to move out to the richer suburbs, though seemingly they are now living in a house they can't afford even though they made money on the sale of their old house. 

Well, Dale just doesn't fit in and between his own incompetence, his refusal to conform and the Fascist like (in his opinion - they are painted that way anyway) community members like gym teachers and scout leaders.  His life is falling apart and it is hilarious to watch/read about. 

But he has a goal.  To make up for the miserable parenting he has performed for his son, he promises his son that he will perform his duties as Rocket Man.  This is a once a year event in which all the scouts blast off their rockets in an open field.  It is turning into something more than he bargained for, but he perseveres for the sake of his son, who is also struggling in his new environment.  The ending is a beautiful, chaotic dance of joy and rebelliousness that brings the close to the happy ending novel.

In fact that was something that the book group had a problem.  The ending was too easy.  It seemed forced they said.  I thought it was perfect and glorious. It was all leading to this point anyway, so why not a happy ending.

By the way, the author is a writer in residence at the Hemmingway House and wrote this book from Hemmingway's attic.  Here is a reading of his book by the author from Hemmingway's attic.

Family Matters ***

By Rohinton Mistry.
Published 2002 by Borzoi Books/ Alfred A. Knopf a Division of Random House.
Originally Published in Canada by McClelland and Stewart.
434 pages.

I like novels by Indian authors.  They tend to be really sad.  Two books in particular are so sad that they reach into your chest and pull your heart out and then jump on top of it to smash it to pieces.  They are incredibly powerful and sad.  One is (forgive me the full names - they are Indian and I don't remember very well) Roy's God of Small Things about an illicit love affair between disparate castes and the horrific consequences.  The other is A Fine Balance by this same author as the book I am reviewing now in which two characters from the Untouchable class also have horrific consequences for their behavior and actions.

This book, Family Matters does have it's tragic moments but it is a decidedly lighter book in feeling, though not necessarily in content.

My son has been teasing me about how I like sad or dark books as of late "Why do you always read those kinds of books" he said to me while I was reading this one.  I said, "hey, this isn't so dark it's all about a faimily who are just trying to survive and even hopefully thrive".I have heard this comment before about books being to sad or dark.  When I facilitated a book club for teachers, one of the comments was why we couldn't  ever read anything fun or happy.  One person, I think a co facilitator, said that great literature is not usually light and whimsical.  That may be true, but I would also add the explanation I gave to my son.  Part of the structure of all stories is that they all have problems that need to be resolved.  From these problems come the darkness.  We all have darkness in our hearts becasue we all have problems, even the perkiest person in the world, and all books have a darkness that results from the problem that is trying to be resolved.  True some are darker than others. That would depend on how the author decides to end the stroy.  Will it be resolved with a happy ending or will the ending be less obvious, hence darker?  I ramble I know but those are the thoughts that this book has inspired in me.

So this story goes that an old man, Nariman, is living with his step children, Coomy and Jal, who are unmarried.  When he seriously gets hurt and winds up bed ridden, the selfish siblings, especailly Coomy, foist him off on their half sister (and daughter of Nariman) Roxy becasue he is too difficult to care for.  Roxy has a complete nuclear family but she loves her father and takes him in their much smaller apartment.  Nariman is well loved, and well cared for but his presence causes problems and the family struggles with lack of space and less income.  While there are some tragic events, funnily enough, the book ends with your tradtional happy ending.  Everything is resolved.  But the author adds a very intriguing epilogue.

It's five years later, and Nariman has passed away, but the family seems to be embroiled in trouble once again.  The son of Roxy is continously battling with is father (Roxy's husband) over a girl that is from a different religion.  The signifiicance of this is that much of Nariman's tragic troubles started in the same way. He when he was younger he also had a love with a girl that was not of his caste and he and his family suffer for it greatly.  This ending seems to say several things to me.  Life is cyclical in that problems get resolved and then new ones arise.  So happy ending and all life continues and new crap comes up.  Of course it also says something to the idea of religious intolerance anf the fact that the family hadn't learned from ther grandfather's troubles.

My only real criticism is that I didn't care for the parts where Roxy's husband started to become religious.  It had described the scene and rituals of the religion, which I know should be interesting because I know nothing about Zarathustra religion, but I found all the details a bit of a chore to read.  Of course this conversion of the father was necessary for the important ending, but I wonder if the point could have been made in a shorter way (damned American attention span I got).  Other wise, this seems to me an almost flawless book.

Ludmila's Broken Accent ***

By DBC Pierre.
Published by W.W. Norton and Company in 2007.
336 pages.

The book has two seperate stories that come together into one finale.  One story is much better than the other one.

That's the story about Ludmila, a peasant girl in the Caucuses who knows a pinch of English (hence the broken accent).  This is the better part because it is hilarious.  The family have this way of daily conversation that is all East European.  They constantly curse each other out in the most outlandish, wildly humilaiting ways.  It's a veritable reference book on how to curse someone out.  The story is fairly simple (which I prefer to convoluted twisted narratives).  Ludmila kills her grandfather when he tries to rape her, but his pension is the family's only money source. She is forced to go to town to sell the family tractor and get a job at the local family or whorehouse - which ever.

The second story , which is weaker, is about two conjoined twins who, at the age of 33, finally become separated.  They had been institutionalized their whole life and are having issues when they finally get into the real world.  Inexplicably, they are invited to a party, get a job and discover some sort of potion that gives you confidence and vigor.  They are sent Eastern Europe where they collide with Ludmila.  Notice how the last sequence of events just kind of tumble off the page.  There is no rhyme or reason, that can be deciphered in any way.  What's the deal with the potion?  Why did they get a job?  Who is this mysterious government man that brings them to the party?  Why do they got to go to the party?  All these questions and their answers are sort of glossed over or are poorly presented as to make sense to the reader.

Overall, it's an enjoyable read becasue it is so damn funny, but it is a very flawed book.

Heart Shaped Box **

By Joe Hill.
Published by Harper Paperbacks  2009.
400 pages.

This is a fun, but silly little book.  I guess it's a best seller, though I generally don't read mass media best sellers.  This is a horror book.  Specifically, it is a ghost story.  Since I generally don't read this genre, I have no point of reference of how it compares to other books of its ilk.  This was nothing special.  I wonder how less well received books are.  Maybe they are just plain silly.  This at least was well paced and the characters were well drawn.

An aging death metal rock star, who had a hobby of collecting morbid artifacts found himself in possession of a suit of a recently dead man, who was now a ghost.  The ghost had started to haunt him.  Some of these scenes were pretty creepy.  Being a rock star, he has a goth girlfriend.  She's one of many, but since she's around when the haunting and terror starts, she becomes very close to him and him to her.  Apparently the ghost is haunting him because our hero had an old girlfriend who was mentally unstable and killed herself after the break up.  The ghost is the stepfather of the dead girl and is out to revenge his stepdaughter's death.  There are the requisite twists and the journey into other, after life worlds (an especially silly part), but it turns out the rock star hero isn't so bad at all.  He wasn't the cause of the suicide etc, and the ghost tried to kill him for fear of our hero interfering in the sordid lifestyle he had had previously with his stepdaughters.

I think one interesting idea is the presentation of the metal rock life style.    In real life, most mainstream people tend to fear people who dress in leather and all that other paraphernalia that rockers wear. This book does show these people as real feeling and sensitive people.  It shows the home life and consequent problems that they often have endured.  The thesis here is that most metal heads/ punk rockers are the way they are because of their dysfunctional family life in which they grew up.  A thesis I don't necessarily agree with.

Here's an interview with the author, who by the way is the son of Stephen King.

The Woman in the Dunes ***1/2

By Kobo Abe.
Published 1964 by Alfred A. Knopf.
264(est) pages

This is a book with a big idea.  It's full of metaphors and symbolism.  It about philosophy as opposed to the minutiae of a day.  The narrative could never happen in real life, so everything has to be thought of as an allegory, to understand the book properly.  If your looking for realism, one needs to look elsewhere.

So the story goes that a man, an everyman - a teacher, decides to take a retreat to pursue his favorite amateur hobby - entomology.  He hopes to find a rare insect so that it can be named after him in the field guides and be immortalized  in the world of entomology.  This insect lives in the sand, so off to the dunes he goes.  Meanwhile he has left no clue of his whereabouts back at home so as to not be bothered on the trip, or to escape or whatever reason.

The villagers of  the sand dunes invite him to stay over night and he sleeps in the home of a  woman who lives in a hole in the sand. So he climbs down, never to climb up again.  The villagers have imprisoned him, so that the young woman, a widow, would have help in her chores and so that she might have a family.  The man of course is outraged and tries to escape, but he can't.

There are many, many themes in the book to discuss, but it has been about a month since I read it and details are shaky, though I will try to tackle a few of the ideas.

The first symbol or theme is the sand.  The book starts out with a discussion of the properties of sand - how it's like water because it flows, but then it's a solid.  It marvels at the physics of the material.  Then, the sand becomes a trap for the man.  It is everywhere.  The characters are continuously covered in sand and protecting their food, possessions and selves from the sand.  It reminded me of a car ride coming home after a day at the beach.  One can never make that sand go away.  And it's always flowing into the widow's and man's living place.  They are constantly working to clean out the sand.  In fact their role in the community is to clear out and gather the sand.  (The villagers sell it in the black market - it's illegal because it doesn't have the proper composition to use for building materials).  This is a signal to how morally bankrupt the village is, as if keeping an innocent man prisoner, wasn't enough to signify that.

To me, this imprisonment is a symbol of how society tries to suppress man's free-will for the sake of the society.  When asked why the woman stayed in such a horrible situation, she replies (the gist anyway, I don't remember the exact words) that this is home and one stays where the home is.  Man(kind) is made to work in mind numbing and physically exhausting work, seemingly never ending and inconsequential as the couple's job of removing sand.  Wht is it that enslaves man to this lifestyle?  Home, family and the few trinkets that they can buy with the money.  The woman says herself that she is saving for a mirror or a radio.  These material items is what keeps her working harder.

Eventually after several attempts to escape, one of them particularly humiliating, the man resigns to his situation.  Now the people in the book club thought this was  positive ending, showing that man (kind) can tolerate and survive anything.  I beg to differ.  I think it is a demonstration on how easy it is for man (kind) to lose their free will and independent spirit.  How easy it is to conform to society with out thinking for one's self.  When the woman become pregnant, and is taken away because the baby's and mother's life are in jeopardy, he has a chance to escape.  The ladder has been left in the hole.  He chooses not to.  Perhaps he feels a responsibility to his home and family.  One might say that is a good thing, but one must remember, he was innocently ensnared into this trap and gradually had the will sucked right out of him.  Coincidentally, the radio arrives here at the conclusion of the book.

It Feels So Good When I Stop ***

By Joe Pernice.
Published in 2009 by Penguin Books.

I'm so far behind in this blog. I read this book about a month ago and the library wouldn't even let me renew it because I had renewed it too frequently. So I have forgotten names and details. But it's Thanksgiving weekend and I'll have a little time so maybe I can catch with some short and sweet entries.

Joe Pernice (the author) is part of the musical group The Pernice Brothers, who were before that called The Scud Mountain Boys. I should say a few words about what I know about these groups. My impression was that these groups were Americana or alternative country music. When I bought my first Pernice Brothers' CD, I was disappointed. It was too smooth and poppy for me. I was expecting something grittier. Their earlier incarnation, The Scud Mountain Boys was only slightly better.

So I wasn't sure what to expect from this author, but I was happy to read this book.

It's the story of an everyday man / slacker and his romantic life. At the beginning of the book, he had just broken up with his wife of 3 days, and simultaneously, his sister was divorcing her husband who our hero was still friends with. In fact he helps the ex-husband take care of his nephew (the ex's son) though he had never had any responsibility of any kind previous to this.

So our slacker man ( I do remember he was never named in this book so as to give him a feel of everyday man) tells his tale of two times. He tells both what happens to him AFTER the break up and the events that transpire BEFORE the break up. A nice structure, though it was confusing at first.

He describes how he and his future wife get together and then details their life together. Nothing traumatic happens that point to the future break-up but there are signs that there is trouble. His girlfriend seems to circulate in more sophisticated circles than him. She works for a fashion magazine. Though when she is with him, she seems to be pretty down to earth. The narrative eventually leads to the day they break up, but it's not clear why, though we do find out that it was his idea. Was it nerves? A feeling of inadequacy? (they were in Paris - a fancy place for an everyday man). The ending only hints at these possibilities.

Then there is the narrative that follows the break up. He starts to look after his nephew and he meets a woman who has had a tragic event happen. She lost her son (I think he drowned). She wants to make a documentary honoring her lost son. Our hero decides to help her (he is conveniently unemployed - a slacker). During the course of making the video, they learn about themselves and each other. And even though romance does happen, it is certainly doomed from the start, though I think both characters came out better for it. And I think the characters would agree that though doomed, the relationship was worth their time and effort.

So over all the book has a positive, hopeful feeling, which I liked also. I might have to go back to the Cd's and at last listen to the lyrics, even if I didn't care for the music. He clearly knows how to tell a narrative. I be this songs have good narratives too.

Here's an excerpt from the book.



And here's a song that may or may not be a soundtrack for the book.

The Motel Life **1/2

By Willy Vlautin.
Published by Harper Perrenial 2006.
First UK Paperback published 1999 by Faber and Faber Lmtd.
206 pages.

This is Vlautin's first novel. I had already discussed his later book, "Northline", several weeks ago. It is similar in many ways to that novel, though I think "Northline" is a better book. The problem with this one is that it tends to plod along after a while. Not that "Northline" doesn't have it's plodding moments - it's episodic in nature, but "The Motel Life" seems to be more so.

But "The Hotel Life" still has those aspects that I liked so much about "Northline". The characters are gritty and desperate. Yet there's a pervading humaneness and kindness that they display under their gruff exterior. It a portrait of the working and not so working poor. The reader becomes empathetic with these characters.

The story takes place in and around Reno, Nevada. The main character, Frank, is visited in the middle of a cold, snowy night by his older brother Jerry Lee. Jerry Lee is very upset. He had a hit and run accident in which a young boy had been killed. He states that he is not to blame since the kid just appeared out of nowhere on his bicycle in the middle of a snow storm, but he was drunk and he thinks that the police won't see it his way.

So they go on the lam. But they don't make it to their destination. Jerry Lee is wracked with guilt and he deserts his brother in the woods and shoots himself in the leg. Frank is forced to return home and brings him to the hospital.

Back home Frank does some thinking, especially about his ex-girlfriend who he still loves. Jerry Lee is not doing well, because his leg was in very bad shape previously to the shooting. The two brothers decide to go on the lam again, and go to a motel.

This book is compared to "Of Mice and Men" because the one brother seems to take care of the other, though Jerry Lee is not mentally challenged. At the motel the resolution of the story is very different for these men - tragic for one and hopeful for the other.

A trailer for the book. The end says it's going to be a movie!?!?!? Really?



A reading by the author...