The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Who is the savage?

Marlowe, a young Englishman seeking his fortune, accepts a position as riverboat captain for a Belgian ivory exporting concern. His journey to the interior of the African continent is arduous, lengthy, surrounded by all encompassing growth of the jungle. The natives he encounters have filed teeth and scarifications, content with cheap beads for salary. The whites cling to their starched linens and dream of riches. Along the way Marlowe hears admiring tales of the company’s most effective station master, Kurtz, who brings in more ivory than all the others combined. On the way to Kurtz’s compound, the ship is attacked by arrows. Soon Marlowe discerns that those are not fenceposts surrounding Kurtz’s house – those are severed heads. Kurtz has made himself into a god. The river boat returns the dying Kurtz to civilization. Marlowe makes a special trip to visiting Kurtz’s fiancé, lying to her about the final words on Kurtz’s lips.

The set up reminded me of the set up of The Turn of the Screw: a story inside of a story – like the Decameron. A group of people gathered together, one of them with a spooky yarn. I admire the structure, skillfully beginning with the image of the lonely Roman soldier in the wilderness, the savage Celts hiding in the grasses. A lot of this story takes place in the dark. Delaying the entrance of Kurtz nearly to the very end is also effective. And the descriptions of the river and its banks (both in England and Africa) are simply beautiful. Finally, as in James, some of the scenes are truly scary – the fog surrounding the boat – the natives screaming on the shore.

The only “normal” sensibility here is the world of the white man. White women are deluded, living in their sentimental bubble. Marlowe starts with the starry eyed maiden aunt and ends with the completely deluded “My Intended.” Marlowe realizes what he truly encounters is folly. The Europeans have great plans that come to naught when faced with the remoteness, the heat, the completely different orientation. The silliness of the French gunboat firing into the foliage. The ineffectiveness of the European guns, of the European consciousness in making a dent in the mysterious fecundity which is Africa.

John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead

Using an old song to look at modern America

J., a thirty-something journalist, a hack, keeps his head down and survives by scavenging the buffet tables at press junkets, reliably turning out puff pieces at the gilded requests of public relations executives. Almost accidentally he starts trying for the record – a junket a day as long as his body and mind can hold out. He is called from Manhattan to West Virginia to report on the unveiling of new postage stamp commemorating American folk hero, John Henry, who foolishly challenged a steam drill to a duel, won, then promptly died. The stories of other characters are interwoven here – the ghost-seeing mistress of a motel, an upper class African-American girl forbidden to play blues music, an obsessive collector of John Henry memorabilia and his resentful daughter, a stamp collector relegated to the basement of his home, and many more.

This was a real American novel, a tour de force. I admired its ambition, the use of the different voices. Among the many themes were trading your talent for a nickel, turning away from true love and connection, navigating your way through white-centric America, and the multifaceted origins of myth. The technique, that of the several vignettes, the several voices, reminded me of The Blind Assassin. At some level, the book is about nerds, obsessive compulsives feeling more at ease with their wonky collections than with other human beings. The author also skewers something that really needs to be skewered -- junket journalism which has conquered almost all sections of the trade. (Although I think the days of the free spending expense accounts are over.) I loved the Altamont vignette -- sheer genius. The story was also well plotted, skillfully placing the nuggets of information, the little mysteries that keep the reader reading.

However, as the novel progressed, it began to remind me of that Annie Proulx novel about the accordion. Which I hated. I mean, it was too cold.  This is most definitely a satire and perhaps a satire is a little too sour and cynical to be loved. To be great? Also I felt beaten over the head. Got it, journalists are craven. Yet there also seems to be an aversion of passion. The one true hero in the book, John Henry, is kind of a dunce. As J. asks as a child, “If he died, did he win?” The system is rigged. John Henry is presented as sort of an emptiness around which the legends and songs coalesce. Despite these misgivings, there are some beautiful emotionally clear scenes in here, especially the digging of the grave. In the end, however, I felt that the balance of the book was too unfeeling.

The Bradshaw Variations by Rachel Cusk

A year in the life of the Bradshaw family

Tonie, stay at home mom to the lovely Alexa, and Thomas, hardworking businessman, switch places. Tonie accepts an executive position at her university and Thomas quits his job to stay home, make dinner, dress and comfort eight year old Alexa. He also wants to deepen his knowledge of music, specifically the piano. Meanwhile, the alternating stories of Thomas’s brothers, one successful, one not, and his angry parents provide bittersweet comic relief until one day, a dramatic event causes the couple to return to their former stations.

These were linked micro stories, storylets really, about the extended Bradshaw family. The writing is traditional, but exquisite, highly technically proficient. The novel is written in the present tense (with one very short play). Although something cold is at the heart of this, a cold thoughtfulness, almost too insightful of others weaknesses, their vulnerabilities. The metaphors are amazing, especially the musical metaphors, making it so that the reader must read slowly both for simple pleasure and also to figure out exactly what is going on. The many characters are uniquely developed, all with their little arcs and neuroses. There are great sex scenes, great marital discussion scenes and great scenes of bureaucratic infighting, all done without describing too much, or even “much.”

The story opens with the question, What is art, and ends with the song of a bird. Thomas immerses himself in art, perhaps to the neglect of his family. Tonie is fascinated by work, perhaps to the neglect of her family. That story is framed by the dynamics of the extended Bradshaw family- the long festering hatreds, and yet a huge chunk of the scenes depict the family choosing to spend time together experiencing the loonieness inherent in human interaction. There’s a very grim view of families, and yet all the brothers seem to have great marriages and mentally healthy children.

If she needed a weekend job, Cusk could write sitcoms, because five or six times I laughed out loud at the crazy juxtapositions. The ending, surprisingly, is very conventional. The guilty are punished and the world’s balance restored.

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante

Does one woman having it all, mean another must lose it all?

In this final installment, at the peak of their successes, Elena and Lila are reunited in Naples as mature mothers. This time Lila bails Elena out, helping with childcare to allow her friend the time to organize her life as a famous writer and social critic. But then vicissitude follows vicissitude, as the pair struggle against the unfaithful nature of men, drug addiction, the Mafia, inertia and just plain evil. Eventually, as older women, suspicious of betrayal, the pair is bitterly separated. Elena, in the waning years of her life, possesses the trappings of worldly achievement and three confident successful daughters, with Lila just another crazy old crone wandering the wrong side of the stradone.

It’s a shame this work of art had to be marketed as four separate books when it is truly one integrated volume. The only way to understand the ending is to reread the opening of the first book. And don’t even try reading this installment without reading the others. You won’t get it. The first part of The Story of the Lost Child was a little confusing, although soon I was sucked into the game between Lila and Elena, the old fashioned plotting, the hooks and the threats at the end of each chapter. At times it felt slightly ridiculous, one operatic event after another, reminding me of the fotoromanzi I used to inherit from my Italian cousins. The first three books of this series handled the girls from age six to thirty – the last book zips through thirty-five years, concluding the Odyssey they are on (I use that term deliberately). The good girl gets rewarded and the bad girl gets punished. There is one critical scene in the book, the scene that changes everything, and the interpretation of that scene can be very different. Lila and Elena certainly have different views of it. Things conclude pretty bleakly - when you are old time runs out. There is no hope. Best to have money and a Labrador you can amuse yourself with.

Throughout, the unreliable narrator Elena is afraid of being found out that she is not such an intellectual after all, not such a great writer. Elena fears Lila is writing a book about Naples, a great book about Naples, one that will outshine whatever Elena has written. Did Elena wrote the book of Lila or did Lila write the book of Elena? And yet, this entire world has been summoned into being by Elena. Right? The end makes you wonder if these determinedly realistic books even took place in the plane of reality.

The book is not just about the relationship between the two friends. That is the frame in which Ferrante discusses modernity, the status of women, and recent Italian history. She makes it a point to show that Elena’s sex life at fifteen and her daughter’s sex life at fifteen are totally different. Supposedly liberated, Elena falls into becoming some jackoff’s mistress. At other times, some culturally Italian things don’t translate well – the whole cuckoldry thing, the Mafia guy falling in love with the gay guy.

Lila’s fear is taking the tunnel leading out of the stradone. Elena is spurred on to conquer that fear, to escape. A key question is: who is the lost little girl? (La bambina perduta) It’s Lila, I think her potential crushed by an overbearing culture that crushes women and the poor and the uneducated.  Maybe her potential crushed by something inside - something inside that Elena rejects.  The story is about two dolls, two little girls, two women, two new little girls. And at the end, back to the two little dolls. 

The people seemed so real to me, their travails affected me and I thought about them in the middle of the night, almost have to forcibly remind myself – you don’t need to worry about them, they are made up.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Love triumphs in a time of chaos

For years, Dr. Manette was unjustly imprisoned in the Bastille, his sanity broken and happy life with his wife and child irretrievably destroyed. His malefactors are evil French noblemen twins, whose impunity from their many violent crimes is embedded in the unfair social structure of France. Once the doctor has been released to the care of loyal manservant Defarge, Manette’s lovely daughter Lucy nurses him back to mental health in democratic England. There Lucy entertains two suitors, the mysterious Charles Darnay, emigrant teacher of French, and hard drinking wisecracking tip top lawyer Sydney Carton. Strangely enough, both men bear a remarkable resemblance to each other. Meanwhile, Carton doesn’t have a chance with Lucy, though after her wedding to Darnay he takes his place as trusted family friend. Finally, the intolerably repressed peasants of France revolt and seek a terrible revenge against their well-bred oppressors. The Manette family is soon trapped by the competing claims of justice and mercy. Who will restore their simple happy life?

I have never really taken Dickens seriously, because I thought, despite those amazing sentences, his books lack real people and are populated by oversize variably colored papier-mâché heads. And the women—really! But A Tale of Two Cities left me entranced, touched by these frankly sentimental characters. The sweep of the story was cinematic, as was to be expected in the days before cinema. Also, I loved the excitement at the end when the narration slipped into intense second person to describe the coach carrying the escaping Manette family to freedom. Finally, I blubbered at the climax.

The technical storytelling skills are excellent, and the minor characters take on a life of their own. Mr. Lorry, the businessman, is the most sentimental of the bunch, and Lucy Manette, who I always thought of as a vapid blonde, is actually a pretty tough customer. Sydney Carton is a jolt of iconoclastic energy. The ultimate end of revolutionary psychology is depicted and the symptoms of the doctor’s post traumatic stress are carefully detailed. Even Madame Defarge gets sympathy during her murderous final walk, when her past as a little girl walking on the sand of the beach is evoked.

The symbolism and imagery was deep and resonant. One character obsessively makes shoes to forget, and one character obsessively drinks to forget, and one character obsessively knits in order to remember. There are two set of twins. And what is the meaning of the phrase, Recalled to Life? The story makes good use of the powerful emotional release ignited by the second chance. The resurrection.

Mr. Dickens, I stand corrected. This was a wonderful book.

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante

The good girl is tired of being good; the bad girl pulls herself together.

In this installment, scholarly Elena marries a superior scholar, accidentally gets knocked up twice, thinks herself better than the neighborhood that made her, writes a shitty novel and gets bored out of her mind. Lila endures her horrific job, accidentally unionizes the sausage factory and her midnight studying of flowcharts pays off big. The book is also a portrayal of the 1960s in Italy, and a study of what happens to society and the economy when women are released from their bonds.

I haven’t had such an intense, purely pleasurable, reading experience for several years. The end of each chapter is propulsive -- the reader wants to know what happens next. Like a Jane Austen novel, or a soap opera, one event keeps happening after the other, and, just like a murder mystery, this book commences with a dead body. There is a meticulous attention to plotting, really coming into view in Volume Three in which no character introduced in Volume One is wasted, but used to illustrate a point. The question is: how does Ferrante suck you in, what narrative techniques does she use to make the reader identify with the characters, get annoyed when they waste their lives? The ending of each book is powerful and moving, each books concluding with an unforgettable very powerful image.

Elena finally gets what she thinks she always wanted, the literary fame, the wonderful apartment, the sophisticated in-laws, though almost with her realizing it, her success is slowly swamped by the suck of domestic life, the babies and the dinner needs of an absent-minded professor. Elena also comes to the realization that her loyal husband loves her, but views her as kind of a charity case dolt. Meanwhile, little by little, Lila starts to crawl out of the mess she made of her life. This volume reminded me of The Golden Notebook. All the men are shits except for Elena’s cheerfully corrupt dad. One of the themes is that Italian men (all men?) are clueless about how to give a woman an orgasm. The only one who understands is the disgusting old scuzzbag Nino Sarratore’s dad who took Elena’s virginity. In these books, pregnancy is a disaster.

The shadow of the corrupting Mafia hangs over everything, including Lila, of course, who never left Naples, but also, much to her annoyed surprise, Dottoressa Elena. Virtually everyone in society is in their debt, vulnerable to their terrible violence.   Nothing happens without the Solaras' say so.

The story is also about how people's minds differ. Elena’s is plodding but with good judgment. Lila's is brilliant but crazy. Elena’s husband is loyal and boring. Nino Sarratore is exciting and untrustworthy. Nobody here, however, has a sense of humor.

The translation is wonderful, seamlessly switching between the high scholarly language of the university, the technical language of Marxist revolution and the vulgar shit filled language of the streets. Lila’s phone call at the end when she rips Elena a new one is just so satisfying – she says exactly what the reader is thinking.

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante

Beginning their lives as women, two friends compete

In Part Two of the Neapolitan novels, beautiful brilliant unstable Lila is now queen of the old neighborhood, with an affluent handsome husband, and successful grocery and shoe store she only makes more successful with her charm and intelligence. Elena, chubby with thick glasses and bad skin, trudges along with her studies and her hopeless crush on dashing Nino Sarratorre. Little by little, however, as Elena starts to excel in the alien educated world outside the claustrophobic violence of the neighborhood she takes charge of her own destiny, avoiding entanglements with men while Lila finds herself trapped inside a social and sexual prison. By the end of this book, their roles are reversed, Lila on the run, suffering at the most menial of jobs, and Elena a celebrated young novelist.

This was so good! Full of life and longing. Although there’s a little bit of false marketing going on, as this is not really Book Two of a series of linked novels, but rather this is the second section of a much longer, much more ambitious novel, like War and Peace or Middlemarch – an epic that not only examines the petty vicissitudes of the two main characters’ love life, but also takes on the modern history of Italy, the education of the masses, feminism and the rise of technology.

Now that the elaborate setup of Book One is out of the way, the personal story, that is, the story of the two women’s friendship, can really get going. In the first book, the plotting was harder to discern but in this volume the magnificent architecture comes into view. The many many supporting characters also serve as plot devices, that is, they are always bringing some gossipy tidbit or party invitation to Elena in order to move the story along. The book is about how two women struggle with their relationship, also about how they wake up to the consciousness of how men oppress them. And what is the meaning of the epigraph from Faust at the beginning of the first book? Which one, Lila or Elena, is the devil here? And also what is the meaning of the prologue to the first book, when Elena sits down to the computer, saying, you’re not going to win this time. What are these books about? Revenge?

Elena literally is learning a new language – Italian versus the dialect, and on her journey, she is helped by women and hindered (is that the right word) by men – or definitely not helped by men. At every critical juncture older women help her, the most critical help given by an anonymous professor who tells her about the scholarship to the free university in Pisa. The book is female-centric. The men are merely appurtenances or the bars of the cage.

The writing (including the translation) is consistently excellent. I went back and reread the opening of book one which was from the point of view of a four year old child. Excellently done. On one hand, the writing is highly realistic, on the other, I loved the effective use of imagery - Elena dropping of Lila’s box of letters in the Arno to open this book; Lila the burning of her Blue Fairy story to close the book. I love that the two girls love Little Women.

Round One: Lila with the wedding feast; Round Two: Elena with the book deal. Although the final scene of this book, where Elena has “won,” and Lila stands there stinking of offal in the refrigerator of the horrific sausage making factory, and then says, there’s this new kind of calculator and a flow chart, made me think that Elena has a kind of a Wile E. Coyote thing going on with Lila.

Sacred Games By Vikram Chandra

Cop chases robber through Mumbai; the backdrop the history of the modern state of India.

Sartaj Singh, the only Sikh on the Mumbai police force, gets the telephone call of a lifetime. Want Ganesh Gaitonde, a voice asks. Gaitonde is the top Hindu gangster in Mumbai, his nefarious reach only threatened by Suleiman Isa, the top Muslim gangster in Mumbai. Sartaj journeys to a neighborhood where Gaitonde is holed up in a class A bomb shelter. But why? By the time Sartaj gets the bulldozer handy, Gaitonde has shot himself. Also discovered in the shelter is the body of a woman, a procurer of beautiful young actresses. But why? Alternately narrated primarily by Sartaj’s third person POV and the posthumous Gaitonde’s first person story of how he started off poor and came to be a kingpin, this book takes the reader on a journey through India and India’s tragic (and very lively) modern history. 

This book was nearly a thousand pages long. A thousand pages! I was definitely planning to bail if it got too onerous. But I loved the book and thought the time commitment was worth it – the story works on so many levels. As a mystery, as a history, as a love story. As a Hindi swearing guide. The book is fast moving. The scenes are discursive, because the many many characters, especially Gaitonde, like to talk. So as a result the actual prose is not that poetic. The structure is the story of the Sikh policeman trying to piece together the story of the Hindu Mafioso, how he ended up in the bunker with the dead Christian prostitute.

The reader gets to the last page and there’s an extensive glossary of Hindu terms. Luckily I didn’t know about the glossary because it worked better to have the reader try to piece out the meaning. And the bloody birth of the Partition underlays the modern motivations – people didn’t just kill. They raped and killed. The hatred is just under the surface.

The scenes at the end of the book did not contribute to a feeling of the book wrapping up, but were, however, very moving.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Two “ghosts” send a woman over the edge

The nameless narrator nanny is dispatched by her manly employer to a remote country house where she has been hired to care for two beautiful (and beautifully polite) siblings, but it’s not very long before she senses the uncanny presence of first a man, decidedly not a gentleman, and next a woman, certainly a lady (though a tragic one). They stare. She understands that these two are after the children, and she also understands, after a while, that these two also are dead. She confirms her suppositions with the stolid illiterate housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. Next the governess comes to realize the beautiful children, rather than being haunted or frightened by the recently dead pair, miss them and want to be with them.  She takes it upon herself to prevent that.

I couldn’t sleep after reading the first half. Whatever else this is (and I think I spent some time wrestling with the question,what the heck is going on), this book is a demonstration of how much can be achieved with a well detonated image. First a man on a parapet, then a man looking through a window, then a lady at nighttime sitting on the stairs. The story is completely frightening and eerie. The narrator gets increasingly hysterical, increasingly elliptical, as the story progresses. The charitable view is that she is trying to save the children from Evil; the uncharitable view is that she’s nuts. In addition, the story also seems to be about the nature of storytelling – opening with a narrator narrating a narrator narrating.

The ghosts have wonderful names – Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. The hard and the soft, although there is not much to them besides their names, their static very striking “hauntings” and their backstory, sexually permeated and tragic. Their longing for the children, and the children longing for them, is buried and ethereal. The children, Miles and Flora, put on, the governess is convinced, a cheery show to fool her.

 Even though the Victorians were not explicit, the latent sex in here is clearly communicated, shockingly – the forbidden adultery between the valet and the nanny and the deep strange erotic (?) attachment between the valet and the child. What’s that about?

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Smart little girls grow up and grow apart

Two tots play with their dollies in the courtyard of their apartment building, then later attend school together. Shy Elena is intimidated by proud confident Lila, though they quickly fall into a passionate friendship. Both girls are bright, but the teacher’s pressure on the uneducated parents to continue the girls’ education only works on Elena’s family. Nonetheless, Elena is always conscious of her parents’ financial sacrifice and doesn’t want to let them down. At first, Lila tries to keep up with Elena's schooling, by reading all the books in the library, learning Greek and writing eloquent letters. Later, her creativity and passion turns to the art of shoemaking, but then Lila loses interest in learning, placing all her aspirations on a marriage.

For this one, maybe my expectations were too high. The novel felt overly long, like I was being beaten over the head. Got it. Lila is brilliant. Brilliant and screwed. In the background a bunch of working class napoletani, almost indistinguishable from each other, beat each other up. Or throw children from windows. But then the book began to sneak up on me like Sebald or Middlemarch or Gina Frangello, books in which unrelated repetitive mildly boring scenes turn out to be the backdrop for a magnificent architecture.  And then, I understood. This book is about realizing some things are irrevocable. Like education. The stakes I thought were small but the stakes are actually huge.

Lila is presented by Elena as sort of a monster, icy cold and ruthless, but if you were to analyze her actual interactions with Elena, she seems to be a very nice young woman, politely deferring to her friend on many occasions. The story is equally about Elena and her escape from the ignorant neighborhood as much as it is about Lila. Elena, quite aware her wall eyed mother doesn’t like her,  but again and again, when she is about to quit school, she is encouraged by the mother. The reader needs to parse Elena’s narration.

Lila is headed, you can tell, for unhappiness and Elena is headed for something greater. But will the neighborhood hold her back? So I am eager to read the rest. I’m afraid Elena’s going to join the Red Brigades or something.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

An old woman acerbically ponders her tragic life

This novel is about the life of Iris Chase Griffen, told in bits and pieces, narrative chunks.  The story begins with a fusillade of three deaths, proceeding in alternating sections to tell the tale of Iris’s early life as a sheltered rich girl in Port Ticonderoga (the other Ticonderoga thank you), fragments from a strange fantastical tale a man tells a woman during their Toronto assignations, and scenes from Iris’s elderly life as she views her garden through the changing Canadian seasons.

This book was difficult to read quickly because I wanted to savor each sentence.  Though this was the third time I had read this novel, the prose seemed more beautiful than ever.  The rhythms of the short sentences are amazing. The humor comes from the fancy pants high lyrical voice contrasted with the deadpan rhythm of the deflating commonplace phrases. I loved the right hand/left hand imagery.

The insights into human nature aren’t that spectacular, but the narrative tricks sort of are. This is a Romance with a capital R.  The plot is intricate, and can support a lot, but sags a little with the energetic yet cartoonish villainy of the brother and sister, Richard and Winifred.   The last fifth is both baggy and rushed.  Iris’s motivations are a little hard to figure out. She's very passive.  Laura, Iris’s sister, seems more Aspergery than tragic, but that’s probably the point.  Perhaps ultimately love stories have small stakes.

The Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow

An ex cop, a surfer, is haunted by an abducted child he couldn't save.

Each morning, Boone Daniels, carefree beach bum and flat broke private detective, surfs off the San Diego coast with five eccentric buddies. One morning is different -- a colossal set of waves will arrive soon, and the old friends are filled with anticipation. Ambitious attorney Petra Hall, however, waits at Boone’s office, needing him to take on an insurance fraud case. All he has to do is ensure that beautiful stripper Tammy makes it alive and in one piece to serve as a witness in court. Someone, however, is trying to kill Tammy.

Ok, I finally found a half decent genre novel. Besides this one. “The Dawn Patrol” was well plotted, at times gripping though the trope was the damsel in distress. The prose was serviceable, and the action was semi-believable, even though there weren't any real characters per se.  Part of the difference between a literary novel and a genre novel is that a literary novel is assumed to have well rounded interesting characters and a genre novel isn’t. A genre novel is all about the plot, therefore, instead of characters, you get three or four traits wrapped around a motivation. There were lots of “characters” here, the main ones (packed into beautiful highly sexualized bodies) and the sidekicks, distinguished by freaky cartoony tags, like tattoos or nicknames or weird hairstyles.

At times the dialogue and some description got cutesy which seemed odd in an environment where murders are happening right and left. The casualness of death is another genre novel element I have trouble accepting.  Also I find it hard to believe that hundreds of 8 year old girls would be sexually trafficked through San Diego without anyone saying a word. One or two girls perhaps but not boatloads. Or maybe I am naïve.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Two smart people try to correct mistakes made at the outset of their relationship

Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters will have no inheritance.  They must land rich husbands, else -- well, the consequences are never quite spelled out, although the dreadful Lady Catherine de Bourgh has a sideline in placing desperate young women as subservient governesses. In Elizabeth’s entertaining search for a plausible mate, she keeps encountering the obnoxiously haughty (if not worse) Mr. Darcy, who is visibly annoyed by the loud vulgar Bennets. On the other hand, wealthy Mr. Darcy seems to find Elizabeth amusing, although once she surmises he was the one who ruined her beloved sister’s engagement to the kind Mr. Bingley, her heart fills with hatred. Unfortunately, about thirty minutes after this realization, Mr. Darcy arrives to condescendingly and insultingly ask for her hand in marriage. Just as insultingly she declines, though later, when Elizabeth is presented with epistolary evidence that perhaps Mr. Darcy is not so evil as presented, she starts to rethink the situation. When the Bennets have a family crisis, and Mr. Darcy comes to the rescue, secretly protecting the marriage prospects of all the Bennet girls, Elizabeth feels esteem, gratitude and love. A double wedding ensues.

As always, I deeply admired the perfect plotting, the pellucid prose, the concise and lively characterization of every single person, the dialogue which does double, triple duty, even though this time the novel felt the tiniest bit cold and mechanical. Austen is skilled at establishing Elizabeth’s emotional state so that what happens next doesn’t require excess explanation. Darcy’s first insult to her, right off the bat, resonates for the entire book, sets her against him from the get go. His first marriage proposal, in the exact middle of the book, is perfectly detonated. The key to plotting is the minor characters, and this book relies on them, especially the very busy Mr. Collins, who in addition to being the linchpin to several subplots, is also one of English literature's classic comic creations. Austen’s strength is the witty delineation of every minor character with just a few brush strokes. 

Darcy and Elizabeth are the smartest people in the room, bored perhaps. They’ve never encountered anyone like themselves and perhaps have not imagined that such a person could exist.  Most of the characters are universal -- I could see almost any one of them in the modern age, Wickham especially. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet certainly. Lydia, of course, and even Mr. Collins. But not Mr. Darcy. The gentleman of leisure does not exist and could not exist in our society. Much of the story is taken up with long walks, and coach rides and month long visits. This novel would make no sense after the invention of the motorcar. Elizabeth would just pop over for lunch and wouldn’t be forced to play the piano and make endless after dinner conversation. Therefore, no book.

I don’t want to say that it seems the end dragged on, but it seemed the book had a very long coda, after the sturm und drang of the middle. One motivation, which I hadn’t seen before, is Elizabeth’s desperation to get the hell out of Longbourn and the influence of her mother.

The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald

Yearning for the American Dream, a man remakes himself

During the Roaring Twenties, Nick Carraway, affluent child of the Midwest, attempting to become a bond broker in New York, rents a modest beach house next to shady millionaire Jay Gatsby’s mansion whose nightly summer parties draw thousands of the glitterati. Gatsby takes an keen interest in Nick, an interest Nick soon realizes is because of his beautiful cousin Daisy, trophy wife to the rich knuckle dragger but Establishment stalwart Tom Buchanan. Meanwhile, Nick falls a little in love with Daisy’s golf pro friend Jordan Baker. When upstart Gatsby tries to claim long lost love Daisy as his own, the situation cannot remain stable.

Everything and I mean everything is set up in the first chapter. The story is economically and beautifully written, with tiny sharp memorable physical descriptions of people. Character creation in a few swipes. Every location, every person, every prop does triple duty in service of the plot, character development and underlying imagery. The book is constructed of a series of spectacular set pieces perfectly written.  The party at the apartment, Gatsby's decadent party, Nick's awkward tea party, the hot room at the Plaza. Driving metaphors abound. For the first time I realized that the car accident is ambiguous-- Daisy has to choose between hitting the other car (killing herself?) or hitting the woman who ran into the street.

There’s sort of a Madame Bovary condemnation of society going on and, as in Madame Bovary, society doesn’t come off well. Tom is a rich racist jackass much like the rich racist jackasses of today. Daisy is thinking about Daisy. In her scenes, Jordan Baker is entertaining as well as a key plot device. She introduces Nick and Gatsby, she's the initial connection between Daisy and Gatsby and she causes Myrtle to believe she's Tom’s wife. Plotting has a lot to do with characters with connections to other characters.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

 A family comes under intense pressures in the days before Hurricane Katrina

Fourteen year old Esch lives in the backwoods of coastal Mississippi with her family, which consists of a drunken widowed father, and three brothers: basketball playing Randall, pit bull loving Skeetah and seven year old Junior. The story begins with dad haphazardly urging the kids to prepare for the hurricane by having them fill jars with water and stock up on extra boxes of Ramen noodles. All the children except for Junior have their own high-stakes problems. First of all, classically educated Esch is coming to the understanding that she is pregnant. She’s had many sexual partners among her brothers’ friends although she is certain the father is Manny, a boy she loves who cares nothing for her. Meanwhile, Skeetah’s beloved dog, China, just birthed a litter of puppies. Skeetah desperately tries to keep the small blind puppies alive, and ward off the fatal infection parvo. But one by one, the dogs sicken and Skeetah gets desperate for pricey medicine. Randall dreams of entry to an exclusive basketball camp, dependent upon his good behavior and more to the point, the good behavior of his family. Their dreams are jeopardized by their own choices, and finally by the impending chaos of Katrina. The storm comes, the floods roll in and the desperate family escapes to the roof of their house.

Wow, what great writing. This book really succeeds at world creation. I was completely sucked into the narrative, the stakes for each character rising each humid day before the storm.  Ward plunges the reader into Esch’s intense bloodily violent world and never lets up. The Michael Vick situation became a lot clearer – pit bull fights deep in the woods gives the boys' circumscribed lives meaning. The plotting is clever – each family member’s desires and motivations are depicted in painful snatches, just enough to carry the action along.

Although I have no idea what the title means – the bones coming out of the flooded graveyard? And, every so often, Esch likens her love situation to Medea’s, which jarred a little as the insertions didn’t feel seamless. There were also an awful lot of boys, between Esch’s brothers and her sex partners -- I started to get them mixed up. There’s a great flood scene at the end, which reminded me of other great flood scenes from Their Eyes Were Watching God and Jayne Anne Phillips's Lark and Termite. There’s nothing like a good flood scene to get everything out on the table.

Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson

Effie and her mother tell stories.

In 1972, Effie and her eccentric red-headed “mother”, holed up on a remote Scottish island, tell each other competing stories. Effie’s is of her comical travails among her fellow students in the University of Dundee’s creative writing program. Her mother’s is the fantastical story of Effie’s parentage. Inserted between their narratives are pages of Effie’s try at a murder mystery, another student’s endless fantasy trilogy, and their professor’s extremely pretentious novel. All is revealed at the end, though by that time the reader may not care that much about rather acerbic Effie. The point of this book is the voice.

This was amazing and very funny writing, supported by the comic tension between the lively narrative consciousnesses of Effie and her mother and the plodding rhythms of Effie’s terrible detective novel. Characters are skewered, especially on the college campus, although there were too many characters to keep straight. In many ways this book was a puzzle – why so many Dr. Who references? And the reader would get more out of the book if she were familiar with Scotland. The story is full of academic joking. Is Kate Atkinson considered to be a serious writer? If not, is it because she is a woman?

Dept. Of Speculation by Jenny Offill

An affair threatens a marriage and much more

Somewhere in Brooklyn, an acerbic writer whose motivation sputters because of money pressures, a new baby and a bedbug infestation, realizes her loyal Midwestern husband might have fallen in love with another woman. The realization shocks her, threatening her comfortably bohemian lifestyle, the happiness of her child, and even her sanity. The author takes a hackneyed low stakes theme – adultery among the hipster classes, and uses highly lyrical paragraphs, pithy chunks of philosophy, a humorous perspective and a structure encompassing courtship, baby, affair, and reconciliation to build a surprisingly gripping novel.

This is an exquisite jewel of a book in which questions about ambition, love, family life and existence are explored. There is much wisdom, as well as a lot of very effective plotting and character development in 177 pages (tiny pages too with lots of white space). The novel is very funny and feels packed with interior jokes and themes that bounce off each other. The most impressive thing about this book is the lyrical prose, which begs rereading. The typical plot scaffolding is missing – the actual facts of the adultery are implied. Although I didn’t really emotionally understand the wife’s jealousy, I understood both parents' desire to keep their child free of pain. The husband, however, seemed like sort of a drip and I'm not sure I bought the happy "ending." 

A Person of Interest by Susan Choi

 

An Asian immigrant is demonized after a terrorist bombing,

Dr. Lee, an elderly eccentric immigrant math professor at a mediocre school, witnesses a mail bombing that takes the life of a young hotshot teacher. Meanwhile, Dr. Lee receives a cryptic letter referring to the bombing as well as to the painful circumstances surrounding his first marriage. The only person who would know those things are his wife’s first husband who went on the run after their divorce. Guilty memories make Dr. Lee lie about the letter to the FBI. Lee is also tormented by thoughts of his disappeared daughter; his first wife, divorced then dead; and his second wife, who was apparently only interested in a green card and cash. When Dr. Lee becomes a “person of interest” in the FBI investigation, his public life is turned upside down as well.

I admire the ambition to write in a beautiful manner about a topical subject, like Mona Simpson’s My Hollywood. The plot of A Person of Interest relies upon a combination of the Dr. Wen Ho Lee Chinese hysteria espionage case as well the Unabomber story, and considers, among other things, how quickly and gleefully America and the media demonize the Other. In this book, the topical plot is wound together with an affecting family drama. The mystery of who mailed the bomb, apparently a backwoods egomaniacal genius, is entwined with the mystery of why Dr. Lee bombed his family life. Why is he so unhappy? Why does he drink so much? Of course this family plot is the true story, the one where the emotions are buried. Dr. Lee doesn’t understand America and doesn’t really want to understand America. He doesn’t care to understand either of his wives.

In general, the prose is consistently at a high level of excellence. There is an extended sequence about an old lawn mower and fatherhood that is just wonderful. However, the story dragged in spots and could have borne some cutting. Once you have a heavily plotted book, the plots need to be wrapped up, and as we got close to the end there was a big plot twist, after which the story started moving at warp speed.  However, because the plot points were anchored so skillfully earlier in the novel, the believability of the story didn’t disintegrate. 

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

A hanger-on develops murderous habits

The book opens with Tom Ripley, sensitive down-on-his-luck orphan, skittish of the law, being chased down a Manhattan street by wealthy Mr. Greenleaf, who can’t understand why his son Dickie won’t leave the beautiful Italian coast and return to New York to work in Dad’s boating business. Mr. Greenleaf has a proposition for Tom – he’ll pay Tom’s way to Europe if Tom tries to persuade Dickie to come home. Tom can’t believe his luck. He arrives in Italy, encountering the initially annoyed Dickie, along with Dickie’s bosom friend Marge. Dickie seems to have the perfect lifestyle of beachy luxury and creativity. Quickly Tom charms his way into Dickie's digs but when Dickie’s friendliness cools, Tom isn’t quite ready to say goodbye.

The unique thing about this book was the way Highsmith made you feel sympathetic towards Tom Ripley, who is a cold utterly unsympathetic character. Everyone who meets him (except for the somewhat dense Mr. Greenleaf) chalks him up as a loser, an outsider, a potential “sissy.” His insecurity makes you feel sorry for him. You start to root for him. The character study entwines itself with the murder mystery. I admired the way the homosexual undercurrent is a key part of the plotting and of the character development of both Dickie and Tom, yet homosexuality is never addressed or referred to head on. I guess that was part of the cultural constraints of the time.

And really what is the difference between Tom Ripley and Dickie Greenleaf – they’re both parasites. Only Dickie is comfortable being Dickie and Tom is definitely not comfortable being Tom. Tom wants things. His improvised fabrications are helped along by the dopey cops. The story got more boring for me when it turned into a cat and mouse game.  Skillful but cold.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

What is happiness? What is life?

Dee Moray, beautiful bit player on the world’s most extravagant movie, Cleopatra, is sequestered in a tiny pensione on the Mediterrean Coast, the Hotel Adequate View, believing she is dying of cancer. Pasquale, the inn's owner, a young man with grandiose expansionary plans, falls in love. The two are separated, but fifty years later, Pasquale visits the United States to discover Dee's fate. In the meantime, the reader learns the stories of numerous other characters related to Dee and Pasquale.

The heart of this novel is not so much this simple plot, but rather all the various clever (and delightful) ways the story is told, through differing POVs and differing narrative styles.  We read excerpts from the memoir of a slimy Hollywood producer, a treatment of a ridiculous film (Donner!), and the sad sack tale of a American screwup at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It only occurs to me now that perhaps this is a collection of linked short stories.  Though it couldn't be - the central mystery of what  happened to Dee Moray is ingeniously parceled out and threaded through the other narratives.

At first I found the novel a little too irritatingly cutesy, but the more I read, the more I admired the twisting together of the plotlines.  In many ways the novel is about Hollywood and fame, and what exactly does it mean to settle for real life if you can’t get fame. The most famous character in the book also seems the saddest.

Although I wouldn't say I was gripped by Beautiful Ruins. I read my allotted fifty pages per day and at the end of the fifty pages felt no urge to keep reading. If I had truly loved it, I would have finished it in one sitting. Maybe I didn’t love it because there was no compelling central character only an assortment of eccentrics. Also everyone, even the slimy producer, was annoyingly noble.