Restoration by Rose Tremain

Robert Merivel grows up

Robert Merivel, a mediocre medical student, accidentally cures King Charles’ beloved dog, and endears himself to the King with his goofball “Foolish” behavior. Merivel's friendship with the monarch comes in handy when the King's primary mistress becomes jealous of his secondary mistress, young Celia, so he has need of an amiable cuckold to make it appear Celia is out of his hands. Ah, Merivel. The king gives Merivel a beautiful estate in the country, which Merivel then redecorates in gaudy colors, spending money with abandon, and beginning an affair with the noble wife across the way. Then a complication. Celia has been too demanding of the King, making ultimatums, forgetting the hierarchy, and she is punished by an exile to her “husband.” Merivel is delighted, but makes a key mistake. He falls in love/lust with her, attempting to kiss her. The king becomes enraged, Merivel is kicked out of his estate, exiled from London, and must do penance as a doctor at his friend Pearce’s insane asylum, while plague is raging outside the walls. Once again, at the asylum, even after many months of good behavior, Merivel makes a lustful misjudgment, knocking up a comely madwoman. This time the penance is to marry her. Merivel and his wife return to London where he witnesses the Great Fire of London.

As usual with Rose Tremain’s books, this was an excellent novel that worked on many levels – a morality tale, a historical fiction, a story of self awareness. Each character, even the numerous minor ones, are quirkily and completely imagined, their motivations entirely believable. The King, a thoughtful monarch and libertine, is motivated by divine order (lucky for him). Merivel is motivated by lust. Pearce is motivated by Jesus. Celia is motivated by love of the King.  

It reminded me very much of Samuel Pepys' diary, that is, the story of a curious lustful young man, who just happens to witness the great events of his day, the return of Charles the Second, the Plague, the Great Fire of London. Yet given equal weight in the entries are his constant interest in screwing chambermaids and his deep love for his devout little French wife. Merivel’s joy in living is what gets the reader involved, rooting for him, because he’s something of a careless dope. I wasn’t quite sure what happened at the end – it seems that Merivel is restored to the beautiful estate after his wandering penance and taking responsibility for his red headed child.

Familiar by J. Robert Lennon

 

A woman starts living a new life, familiar but not quite

Elisa/Lisa is driving home from a visit to her son’s grave when suddenly her car is a different model, she’s gained weight, and there's gum in her mouth when there wasn't before. What just happened? She takes the transformation in stride (pretty much), rummaging through her familiar purse for clues to her new unfamiliar life. She becomes a detective at that point and much of the story momentum comes her figuring out her new job, her new/old husband who seems to be much more sexually in love with her, and the new marital therapist fond of culty aphorisms. Most importantly, Elisa must come to terms with the fact that, in this universe, her dead son is alive, but estranged from her. Her mildly unhappy life has been traded for another mildly unhappy life – same Elisa, same town, same family, but the configuration of elements is different. Secretly she begins investigating what might have happened – a wormhole to a parallel universe perhaps. Meanwhile, her therapist reveals that the Elisa in the parallel universe is also an Elisa prone to psychotic breaks. (Is that what happened then?) Her search brings her into the company of unconventional conspiracy sci-fi types, oddballs. After a while, she realizes she may not want to go back.

The novel was very gripping for the first three fourths or so, hard to put down. The prose style was plain, but evocative and powerful. No literary metaphors, no imagery. But the for the most part realistic story raised a number of important questions, about identity, about marriage, about family. About reality.  The tension in the plot reminded me of Ben Marcus, although there is a smidgen more humor here, especially in the descriptions of the nerds and geeks. A video game plays a prominent role in the novel, and many times, the novel feels like a video game. Things can be rebooted. Who are you? It makes you think – that could be me.

The story is unsettling here, perhaps too unsettling. Only near the end did I start to feel a hint of pretentiousness – when it felt that an entertaining Twilight Zone episode was being forcibly bent to have a much deeper sociological meaning.

Post Office by Charles Bukowski

A drunk bucks the system for as long as he can stand

This book was hilarious. Henry Chinaski is a heroic parasite, a real man who won't take any bullshit and lives life the way he wants. Chinaski’s ethics are entirely self serving but honest and the book is a giant fuck you to middle class values, as well as to the entire capitalist system. On the other hand, a steady paycheck comes in handy, especially because Chinaski likes drinking so much.  Therefore he takes the postal service test, and is not at all surprised when he is the one of one hundred who survives the difficult address memorization portion. Chinaski gets the steady paycheck, but the tougher challenge is submitting to the massive soul crushing bureaucracy.  The rebel manages to outfox them for several years before finally surrendering. Was this is the first literary example of “going postal”?  

Our hero Chinaski rejects every value that made America great and has zero intention of bettering himself. What he does when he’s not sorting mail is to drink to a stupor and gamble on horseraces. There are two moments of tenderness in the entire (short) novel; the first when he attends the deathbed and funeral of a former lover who dies of alcoholism, and the other when he gaze on his very unlikely daughter.  But there's something admirable in his uncompromising path, however degrading it is.

Like other LA novels, torrential downpours play a part, as delivering rain in the mail is a lot harder than in the sunshine. The book is also a romance to getting drunk – although how much of a derelict can one be while holding a civil service job?  Eventually, his misbehaviors and disrespectful attitude catches up with him and he is hounded into quitting. In order to write a novel. But is Post Office even a novel? After only a little research it sounds like it was practically a memoir.

Inside by Alix Ohlin

Running away

Inside tells the story of four characters – or perhaps more accurately, it tells four stories of four characters. Grace the therapist, Annie the actress, earnest Mitch, also a therapist, and the haunted Tug. The locations are Montreal, New York, Los Angeles, Nunavut, and Rwanda. The four characters are somewhat connected, though not their stories really are not - perhaps this is actually a book of linked novellas. For the most part, the story arcs are about the unintended consequences of trying to help. In some cases, the results are negative. In other, neutral or maybe slightly positive.  I was impressed that the author didn’t feel the need to have a “happy” ending with everything neatly tied up.

I’m not sure if this was my cup of tea. The prose was tastefully smooth and the numerous characters were well delineated and deep, but for me the story was too bland. There was no passion and I like passion. There’s not even that much quirk. Reading the book felt a little like watching a Barbie and a Ken be propelled through a doll house. The motivations felt suspect. Would anybody, let alone a therapist, enter into a romantic relationship with a person they just cut down from a suicide attempt? And would a wary hard young woman invite a pregnant homeless teenager into her one bedroom apartment and start sleeping on the sofa? I just didn’t buy it, though I bought it enough to finish the book.

NW by Zadie Smith

A glimpse at modern day London 

NW presents the interior lives of three characters in their mid-30's: Leah, Keisha/Natalie and Felix, the success stories of Caldwell, a London housing project. A fourth character, drug addict Nathan, drifts in and out of the plot like lightening. The writing was stupendous, imaginative and entertaining, although the book didn’t quite feel like a fully integrated novel, but more like three and a third novellas.  The individual stories never seemed to merge and the book fell apart at the end with implausible midnight hysterics.  However, a failed novel of Zadie Smith is many times more interesting than a perfect novel by someone else.

One of the themes is betrayal. The novel even starts with a con. The women betray their husbands, and Felix is betrayed by the neighborhood, or Fate, or his hopes of escaping.  The motivations for the two women’s actions are embedded in their characters, but are not supported strongly enough to justify the really unforgiveable betrayals each inflict on their husband. Yes, Leah likes being childless, and Keisha/Natalie likes orgasms but these likes don’t seem powerful enough to derail Leah's inherent kindness and Natalie’s inherent caution. Out of all the sections, Felix’s is written the most traditionally, it actually gets a little dull, then gets very interesting.  The reader begins to care about him and his struggles, then whomp. Betrayal. (Of the reader?)

Another theme is class and race, about striving to get ahead, about trying to become someone different, an affluent stranger.  Can it actually be done?  Or have you only succeeded in being an imposter in both worlds?  Each section devoted to a particular character is written in a particular style. The Keisha/Natalie section (an intellectual/sexual history) is made up of numbered paragraphs and is really funny. (Though full of references which in coming years will need to be footnoted.) The number 37 has a magical meaning in this book I couldn’t figure out. In the numbered section it’s missing. But there are many thoughtful observations on the way we live now. I definitely plan to reread.

Their Dogs Came With Them by Helena Maria Viramontes

Four teenage girls come of age in 1960’s East LA.

I like reading about teenage girls, the 1960’s and LA, so for the most part, I was absorbed by this strange incantatory book. The novel tells the stories of four strong young women: Turtle, the tall girl disguised as a boy, disgusted by her femininity; Ana, the protector of a schizophrenic brother; Ermila the orphan tempted by lust; and Tranquilina, the holy girl who helps her family feed the homeless. Sadness permeates the pages. I hesitate to call this a novel, as a novel implies a journey between point A and point B, and these girls never really meet, except for a page or two at the end. Rather, the structure here is Point A, Point A, Point A... About a fifth of the way through, I thought, when is all this stuff coming together? About halfway through, I realized, it’s not. The narrative sequence was tragic slice of life after tragic slice of life, and the “chapters” don’t even function as short stories. It would have been better if the characters had a problem to solve apart from Fate crushing their hopes. But still I cared about these girls and kept reading.

I would also describe this book as a lyrical history of East LA, and I was consistently entertained by the descriptive though somewhat “writerly” writing. There’s a hallucinatory feel to the endeavor – like what is the Quarantine Authority, these police-like figures keeping the inhabitants trapped in East LA – did that actually happen? Were the police controlling for the spread of rabies – so why then when Ermila gets bitten by a dog, is she so matter of fact about it? Was the reader supposed to be concerned about her? The ending is frankly incoherent and lacks the emotional resonance it was probably supposed to carry.

The Gathering by Anne Enright

The suicide of a brother forces an affluent woman to confront family secrets

On the surface, Dublin’s Hegarty family, with Mammy, Daddy, the twelve kids, is the classic devout Irish Catholic family. However, the chaotic reality of their upbringing was significantly more hellish. Veronica, a middle child, claws her way free and constructs a more tranquil family life, but is unable to save Liam, her closest sibling, who is a drunk and a fuckup. When Liam drowns himself in England, Veronica returns to the family home to oversee the funeral. Once there, she remembers (and also imagines) family secrets, secrets that could be the root of Liam’s pain. Because one summer, long ago, Mammy became overwhelmed, and Veronica and Liam are sent to stay with their Grandmother Ada. Something happened there (or did it?).  The novel is about Veronica beginning to remember.

The story is beautifully, evocatively written, and technically skillful.  The numerous siblings are memorable, delineated in quick crazy observations. The plot is submerged, but surfaces periodically to move the story along when needed. Much of the book consists of Veronica's voice: thinking about the past, taking field trips to visit the past, mourning the inevitable death of her brother. Veronica hates her middle class life – the life she struggled so hard to build as a contrast, a rebuke, to the emotionally neglectful way she was raised. Extended passages are set in the distant past and concern the life of her grandmother, and Ada’s choice between two suitors: Charlie, her good-timey husband, and the very careful very creepy Lambert Nugent.

I wasn’t quite sure what happened at the end – events surged to produce a happy ending. Or at least an ending that wasn’t boxed in with despair. Overall, a wonderful book.