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?

Last Things by Jenny Offill

Mad mother with little girl

Anna, seven year old Grace’s mother, is exhilarating. She works at a bird sanctuary, weeping at the plight of the passenger pigeon. However, she also takes midnight swims with her daughter in the treacherous lake, afterwards driving naked through town. Grace’s father, Jonathan, a chemistry teacher rejecting fantasy and organized religion, is destined to become “Mr. Science”, a character on tv. As Grace becomes increasingly unhinged, bewitching the local16 year old babysitter/mold genius, she and Anna take a road trip (or flee) to New Orleans and beyond, until Anna secretly telephones her father for rescue. Grace, deeply hurt, then disappears for good.

As in Dept. of Speculation, the language and imagery are exquisitely beautiful. A mosaic of compelling snapshots gradually create a plot. The book is constructed of short chunks of scenes and off-kilter facts, such as can be found in an encyclopedia. The reader must draw conclusions, although the somewhat fey lyricisms started to wear a bit in the middle -- is this story going anywhere? Also, the end didn’t quite feel like an end – the little girl didn’t want it to be an end.

There are many delightful conceits here. The secret coded language of Annic. The Encyclopedia of the Unexplained. Grace’s detective kit. There’s an underlying thematic symbolic structured (yes perhaps coded) that would make rereading it worthwhile.

This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett

The collected essays of a practical woman

These essays, for the most part published in the glossy magazines, are about being a writer, being an “Author”, having an aversion to “settling down”; as well as, loyal dogs, loyal granddaughters, an indefatigable nun, and the impossible economics of opening a bookstore. In some way, they all ask: how should one behave?

They were easy to read, mostly because they were written by Ann Patchett, who writes in a clear direct compelling fashion. Since the essays are truly random, however, the energy or the emotion doesn’t build organically, and the main theme is Ann Patchett’s no nonsense yet appealing personality. She comes across as a wholly admirable person. However, these are the essays that appear in Oprah right before the recipes. There is not that frightening feeling of stripping bare the past, being totally exposed, the unblinking examination of the wound (the wound and the gift) inflicted on the child as there is in the great memoirs of Mary Karr and Mary Gordon. (Although Ann does swipe a puppy from a deaf child. As an adult.) It seems clear she had an awful childhood, but the essays don't really delve into it, maybe because that would involve an unsentimental view of Mom and Dad. Nothing wrong with that, only it takes the turbo out of the engine. 

The best essay is “The Wall” which does incorporate several themes, including that of pleasing her abandoned father. Ann engages in some duplicitous behavior when she applies to the LA police academy without any intention of joining, although her father, an honorable much decorated LA cop who was separated from her during her childhood, is eager to help, and indulges his fantasy that maybe she might actually become a cop. He’s sure she’d be a good one, and Ann starts to understand that she’d be good too. There’s another beautiful essay about a nun, “The Mercies”, about Sister Nena who confined 8 year old Ann to the classroom during playtime and forced her to learn how to read. Ann resented being thought of as stupid until she and the nun meet up decades later and she realizes that Sister Nena went to a tremendous amount of effort to help a little girl. It’s a story about how someone you considered a pest was actually your savior.

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

A hardboiled private detective is disgusted by the depraved activities of the rich

Philip Marlowe takes pity on Terry Lennox, a drunk needing a ride home. Knowing he should walk away, he doesn’t, and provides assistance a few months later when Lennox is on the lam for the murder of his cheating wife. Once Lennox “commits suicide” in Mexico, Marlowe is warned off the case by representatives of powerful Angelenos, but will not comply. Later, he is hired by a beautiful woman to be the caretaker of her alcoholic author husband. Both husband and wife have a connection to the murdered woman. More characters meet a violent end with Marlowe just happening to be in the vicinity. There’s also a twist at the conclusion.

There’s something of a classical structure to this tale, as Marlowe minds his own business, yet still is visited three times by people warning him off the case. He doesn’t listen, but makes his own way. Marlowe is a truth teller, a misanthrope, outraged at society’s injustices. He’s also practically a socialist. Some pages in this novel are devoted to police brutality and how the police and the district attorney are in the pockets of the rich who run the town.

There’s a hallucinogenic quality to some of the scenes, with surreal dialogue, an example being the crazy drinking of the vodka gimlets with Mrs. Loring. Marlowe describes himself as “The pearl onion on the banana split.” This book gets a lot of energy from observing the human comedy, such as the dopey Ronald Reaganesque sheriff. Sexism and racism are flamboyantly present. This book felt qualitatively more literary than The Big Sleep – guess Chandler was hitting his groove, although the end was confusing, silly and not at all plausible. But isn’t that the point?

Thirst by Ken Kalfus

Stories that work on several levels

These stories are about people in different worlds, ranging from an uptight Irish nanny in Paris, a New Yorker who seems to be living his dream (literally), a nuclear family in an endless snowstorm in Brooklyn, tand finally to Vietnamese peasants in a monsoon. The voice was authoritative, though slightly off-kilter. On one hand, these are smoothly controlled satirical narratives about American life, on the other, just beneath the surface was an unquenchable rage against injustice. The stories depict power relationships, but each time, the powerful one asks, who is really in charge?

I had read Kalfus’s story about Dominique Strauss Kahn (Coup de Foudre) in a recent edition of Harpers and knew I had to read more. That story was about an influential man and his sexual escapades, then it turned into an indictment, an indictment of the man and an indictment of the system that made him. And, oh yes, an indictment of men in general. The stakes were huge. The stories in Thirst are similar – sensual writing framed by an intellectual accusation. Did I mention they were also very funny?

The writing was consistently excellent, and personally I favored the more realistic stories, although I liked Night and Day You Are The One, about a young man who seems to be living two different lives – one on the East Side of Manhattan, the other on the West. A few minutes after he goes to bed he wakes up on the other side of town and needs to head off to a different job as well as a different woman. Which one is the dream? I also like The Joy and Melancholy Baseball Trivia Quiz, which took a turn into the surreal and was hilarious. I wasn’t that crazy about Cats in Space, about kids torturing kittens, but I loved Rope Bridge. This was the most realistic of the stories and cleanly and sensually written. The stakes at first seem to be low, a simple adultery story, but then it also turns into a story about losing your mind, doubting yourself and losing the family life you care about a lot.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 

 
A young Nigerian woman emigrates to the United States, then, after several years, returns home

Ifemelu, a good student, almost on a whim applies for a US visa and gets it, moving in with her vivacious Aunty Uju who scrambles to make a decent living. At first, life in the United States nearly overwhelms Ifemelu, then she thrives and starts penning a tart-tongued blog. Meanwhile, back in Nigeria, Ifemelu’s school days boyfriend, Obinze, who has always longed for a life in the States, is unable to get a US visa and smuggles himself to London where he takes menial jobs, leaving in fear and observing how his fellow countryman change for the worse after their arrival in the West. Obinze is deported, returning to Nigeria a failure. However, because of lucky contacts in the booming country, he becomes a wealthy man, with a submissive exquisitely beautiful wife. He and Ifemelu don’t keep in contact, but after her return to Lagos she watches with bemusement the newly prosperous society and reunites with Obinze.

At almost 600 pages, this novel made no bones about its ambition, attempting to say something about Nigerian society, American racism, romantic love and hairstyle choice. Where the novel really worked was illustrating both Ifemelu and Obinze’s despair at having to take humiliating jobs in order to eat, as well as their intelligent analyses at how the people around them behave when confronted with poverty and racial differences. What was particularly successful was the depiction of
Ifemelu's growing consciousness of the concept of “race.” She arrives in the US as an immigrant wondering why all the black Americans are obsessed by race and then begins getting obsessed by race herself because white people are unable to refrain from making every single social interaction about race.

This was a good book, consistently absorbing, though only in the last few pages did it fully commit to be a love story, and that love story’s fraught conclusion was squished into the end. I’m not sure I even fully bought the idea of crotchety Ifemelu paired with serene Obinze. But just as the conflict about his wife and child starts to come to a head, he ups and leaves his wife. It made me think a little worse of him.

Love Me Back by Merritt Tierce

Teen mom waitress degrades herself in order not to feel the pain

Marie, once headed to Yale, gets pregnant at sixteen, and, needing cash, enters the tough world of waiting tables, first at chains like Olive Garden and Chili’s, then at fancier establishments, until finally she lands a gig at the “Restaurant,” the competitive pinnacle for servers wanting to make lots of money.  To stay employed at the “Restaurant,” a waiter must be hardworking, a team player and have excellent people skills.  The payoff is a “good night.” Marie gets skilled at being a high-end waitress, better anyway than she is at being a wife, and probably at being a mother.  In addition to sucking up to customers and bosses (as well as despising them), Marie parties heavily, never declining a proposed sex act.  Days off are spent with her adored daughter and the secret cutting and burning of Marie’s flesh.  The two sensations, of adoration and degradation, are connected.

I grabbed this book before stepping onto the plane, not knowing a thing about it.  I settled in, started reading, then realized, Jackpot. The writing was amazing, the strength was the voice, fully alive, and the surety of the artist.  The sentences were gripping, and the reader is totally compelled to follow Marie’s tale of reestablishing her life after it gets blown up by an accidental pregnancy. 

Part if the narrative structure is Marie’s progression to better paying serving jobs and the ego crushing things she needs to do in order to keep the job.  There were lots of insights into how America really works, and how workers are actually treated and how workers are actually treated is not that pretty.  This book also reminded me of Kasischke's Suspicious River, that is, the plot is almost a pretext for gorgeously written scenes of female degradation.  And also like Kasischke, structure-wise, a little of this goes a long way.  The mystery is the motivation, why Marie keeps hooking up with these crummy losers.  Not for orgasms, not for money (not like this girl.)  I didn’t feel the oblivion nor the compulsion for oblivion supposedly Marie is seeking.