Girl Factory by Jim Krusoe

A nerd tries to rescue naked women held in suspended animation

My final conclusion is that this weird novel is subversive, though it started slowly with a boring chessplaying dog. The story got better once our very literal minded lonely hero Jonathan discovers the naked ladies suspended in giant tanks downstairs of the frozen yogurt shop where he clerks. Jonathan has had bad luck with women in the past – his two prior loves dropped him with zero explanation. And one of the tank ladies strongly resembles an old girlfriend. The plot then takes over and the story becomes gripping as Jonathan tries to figure out a way to revive the ladies. I don’t want to give away the surprise, but huge chunks consist of Jonathan dragging bodies to the Dumpster. And it is very funny, but you feel you shouldn’t laugh at dead women being tossed in the dumpster. That’s probably where the subversion comes in.

The story is set in the here and now except it’s really not. The world of Girl Factory is completely imagined but feels like a candy colored version of our own. I loved the dialogue, though overall I think this novel is not making a bold statement about American society, but a well crafted humorous statement about life extending machines in the basement of a suburban frozen yogurt shop.

My Hollywood by Mona Simpson

Nannies and mommies are wary of each other in affluent West LA

I enjoyed this absorbing old fashioned novel addressing two traditional subjects – love and money. Not the love of a man  – but the love of a Baby. The novel is about Claire, a composer in her late thirties who is overwhelmed by caring for her infant, as well as baffled by her husband, who suddenly wants to change careers and coasts to become a comedy writer with ungodly work hours. They decide to hire a nanny and luckily end up with Lola, a fiftyish down to earth Filipina. The novel switches between their narrative voices. Lola has the much more powerful and distinctive voice. Claire is passive and sometimes you feel like she’s whining about being rich – but that’s part of the satire, I think. All of the American mothers depicted here come off as shallow materialistic commodities.

The world of wives and nannies are shown with small cutting little scenes – the two worlds are completely different. One group drives BMW’s, one takes endless bus lines. The nannies’ world is harrowing and tragic – and yet the women, all recent immigrants, really strive together and protect each other from the various degrees of exploitation. The American women are competitive about their producer husbands, mansions, kids and pools. (Pools play an important thematic and plot point.)

The book’s not perfect. If I was complaining last week about Philip Roth’s characterization of women, then I must point out the tissue thin characterization of men. These sex avoiding women aren't in thrall to their men the way they are to their babies – Guys only contribute $ and an X or Y chromosome. And the ending of the novel is rather dubious.

But overall a really valuable look at LA.  America need more novels like this.

Everyman by Philip Roth

An outraged old man building a case that aging and death are cruel and suffering void of redemption


A short slight book but packed with many vivid scenes and characters. Earthy angry writing. Elegiac, I suppose. The main character, nameless, Everyman, reviews the events of his life, including the lusty adventures of his youth, the selfish inevitable family decisions he made in pursuit of this lust and the detailed almost hypochondriacally retelling of his many illnesses since. Sex is finished now, kaput, but what if you have based the meaning of your life on your prick? That means it’s time to die.

This didn’t hook me though as other Roth novels have. Perhaps I’m not old enough. Or perhaps the plot is too flimsy and familiar. There’s rage, but the rage lacks a platform. The egomania grew wearying, although I liked the bizarre formal interviews: the phone calls to the bereaved and deeply depressed and dying, the stagy earnest discussions with grave diggers, the memory of a devoted wife’s angry speech when throwing him out on his ass.

The women come in two flavors—self sacrificing saints and unkempt whores. I have known many women in my life, but am pretty sure I’ve never met any women like these. It’s a structural flaw, I think.

Is there regret here? Should there be regret here? The final beautiful paragraph turns us to the present moment and to life – linking childhood, the planet Earth and the unexpectedness of death.

Rescue by Anita Shreve

A poor sap keeps rescuing people, especially pretty young women

I am a huge Anita Shreve fan for two reasons – she’s a good story teller, an efficient scene constructer and an amazing prose stylist. Rescue has an engrossing story, but no prose styling, alas (maybe as beautiful prose requires sweating blood and producing a novel a year precludes that). Overall, as I half expected, this book was a disappointment. It’s about Webster, an uneducated ambulance driver who becomes responsible after having to raise an unplanned child, his alcoholic wife Sheila orgasming with guilt over drinking and abandoning their child. She disappears. Fourteen years later, when daughter Rowan suddenly starts drinking to oblivion, he goes to find Sheila. (This last part is really not motivated – not the daughter’s drinking, not Webster’s search.)

At a certain point I realized – this is popular fiction, not literary fiction. A tinny heart of sentimentality beats at its core. It made me wonder about the differences between literary and popular fiction, apart from the prose style, which was plain and beautiful and not clichéd. First of all, early on the characters became one note. There was no inner conflict. Secondly, there were way too many bald faced coincidences. Now I realize an EMT in a rural area is going to meet his family when they have accidents – but must his family have so many accidents? Price and Prejudice has lots of coincidences, but they are carefully woven into the story and are pretty much unnoticeable. Thirdly, there were too many death bed type hospital scenes. The drama and stakes felt forced. Finally, all the characters had a well of nobility that was frankly boring. Striving for nobility is interesting – being born noble is boring unless the nobility is tempted and these guys were never tempted. Nobody is selfish, like they are in real life.

The upshot is that I am less likely to read an Anita Shreve novel.

Persian Nights by Diane Johnson

An American ditz contemplates frivolous romances on the eve of the Iranian revolution

Why is not Diane Johnson acclaimed as one of our finest American novelists? Persian Nights is a skillful display of craft, containing numerous interesting characters, a concrete evocation of time and place, a complex plot and an engine powered by a deep down revulsion for American hypocrisy. Also, the novel is a good background primer on the modern politics of Iran. Finally, it’s very funny. Maybe I’m getting overexcited as I’ve only read three Diane Johnson novels. Friends have assured me she has in fact written some bad ones. But the three I’ve read have been very good.

Persian Nights is about Chloe Fowler, an American doctor’s wife who gets sent to Iran for a few months accidentally without her husband. The good news for Chloe is that her lover will be there. The bad news is that the repressive Iranian government is on the verge of being overthrown.  The Americans who prop up the hated Shah and the wealthy Iranians who host the Americans are in real danger of physical harm.

Iran is presented as a gracious cruel misogynistic society. Bad things happen in the middle of the night and it’s quite rude to bring it up the next day. The Americans, all associated with the hospital in Shiraz, are presented as well meaning oafs, appalled by the ignorance and the poverty, but their top priorities seem to be love affairs, drunkeness and caviar.

The structure is farce, especially the big scene at Persepolis. Are there deep feelings here? Yes, but glancingly and in the background. Horrible things happen – innocents and not so innocents die and their deaths seemingly make no dent in Chloe’s pretty little head. Near the end, the threads of the plot tie up a little too head spinningly, but they do in fact tie up, with a few surprises.

Where I Read

I haven’t finished this week’s book, so instead of a review I will set down some thoughts on where I read. Since where I’m reading, I’m discovering, has a bearing on my feelings about the book. My ideal place for reading would be a wingback chair, matching ottoman, roaring fire, my cat and a short glass of whiskey. A rainy dusk. Though I’m pretty sure that exact combination has never happened. Nor is it likely to.

Reading for me is pleasure. The idea of having to read for a living, to wake up and be forced to open a book, to be a professional book reviewer, makes reading lose its appeal for me. The act of reading would degrade into a job like any other. And I want to keep it special.

I am a worker, a mother, a wife. This means that in 2011, in America, every minute of my day is scheduled. I must schedule when I read and therefore I also schedule where I read. Three places, usually – the plane, the bed, the vacation.

The plane is my favorite, the best place – three or four or five hours of uninterrupted concentration. I have a monthly plane trip. The difficult books, the chewy ones, the Victorians, the modernists, the ones with any chance of boredom are saved for the plane. The only setback is my employer’s quite rational expectation that I do some work on the plane. (Since I am getting paid) So I lug around “The Spreadsheet”, reassuringly thick, highlighted and scribbled on. In case, my boss should peek on a stroll to the lavatory. Ah, MT with her spreadsheet, so diligent!


I also read daily, for thirty minutes after I get into bed. The major problem with this, as you can imagine, is that I grow sleepy. But I am consistent. Good writing makes me alert. But when I’m tired, the boring stuff gets so much more boring.

Vacation – Reluctantly I think I must give up reading books on vacation. Between the hora de feliz and the margaritas and keeping an eye on the children playing in the surf and the juicy juicy gossip of my friends, I can’t muster the concentration to follow a novel. Next time I’m bringing a suitcase of magazines.

I still holding out for that wingback chair – but that might be when I retire.

All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang

What is real poetry, the kind that speaks to the soul, and what are tinny slick word constructions a man can use to build an important career?

As soon as I read the first paragraph and realized this novel was about a writing workshop, I was like, Oh Jeez. Writers writing about writers? But then I was totally sucked into the very compelling story. It was hard to put the book down. Later my thought was, well, it really is ballsy for the director of the Iowa Writers Workshop to write a novel about a writer’s workshop. What are the chances of it succeeding? And yet it does.

Roman, the central consciousness, is a poet. Or is he? In order to write real poetry, in order to love, you must possess a soul. The characters, young poetry students in a workshop led by the terrifying Miranda, debate issues like these all day long. You can teach technique, but you can’t give someone a soul.  There are many indications that Roman lacks one. Brains, yes, beauty, yes. A soul – no – he’s too afraid to go there. He’s too afraid to make himself vulnerable. His core wound – the abandonment by his mother when he was a child. Miranda advises him to write about this – but can he make real poetry out of it?

The writing is very beautiful. The passage of time is delicately, skillfully done, as this short novel spans thirty years. Everything unnecessary is omitted.

Part of the plot derives from the Jorie Graham Foetry scandal, which stunk of a shabby con and damaged everyone involved’s reputation. However, Miranda is presented as a merciless Sphinx and the problem is if you have a merciless Sphinx as a major character and the emotional reaction of the Sphinx is a key plot point, there's a leap of faith that needs to be taken.