How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu

This was mindbending. It didn’t help that in the same weekend that I read this, I also watched the movie Inception and several episodes of Season 5 of Lost. I was lucky I could find my own kitchen, given all the time travel/dream-within-a-dream/bright flashes of light that were going on in my own personal entertainment universe.

How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is the story of a travelling time machine repairman. Did you try to use your time machine to change the past? Uh oh. You broke it. Charles Yu to the rescue. But Charles (yes, the protagonist’s name is the same as the author’s) also uses his own time machine to avoid living in any particular year or place and instead (against the rules) hovers in a kind of no-time space where his only friends are his virtual dog Ed, and TAMMY, his management software with an inferiority complex. Only when he is forced to return to real time when his own time machine breaks down do actual things start to happen.

I wanted to like this, and I did, in some ways. It has a sweet father-son relationship story buried inside the layers of overly clever science fictional technojargon. Even some aspects of the science fictional world-building were funny and original, but mostly it was over the top. Yu can be an interesting writer and reminds me a little of Nicholson Baker, but Yu (like some other alternate reality writers) can get so caught up in his own details that he forgets that he is telling a story, that someone else is trying to follow what he is saying, that he has to work to maintain the reader’s interest. About half way through I started skimming, resulting in no loss of comprehension (because I was only getting about 60% of it anyway).

(Book 55, 2010)

The Other Mother by Gwendolen Gross

I loved how honest this book was. It reminded me a lot of Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk, though those mothers are less sympathetic. The two mothers in this book (each narrates alternating chapters, thus each is the “other mother”) are more likable than Cusk’s women. They live on either side of a high fence, both literally and figuratively. They are neighbors in New Jersey and sometimes they are friends. One stays home full time with her three children (ages 13 and under) and the other goes to work as an editor at a New York publishing firm, leaving her infant daughter with a series of caregivers. Each envies the other’s life but believes her own choice is the best one (usually).

Gross is a lovely writer and, like Cusk, captures the minutiae of suburban life with young children in all its sticky wonder. But it's a dangerous topic for a writer who wants to be taken seriously. Just yesterday in the New York Times Book Review I read this review of My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses by Claire Dederer, which is a memoir of motherhood and family life. The reviewer, Dani Shapiro, feels compelled to remark that “it is heartening to see a serious female writer take such a risky step into territory where writers of literary ambition fear to tread, lest they be dismissed as trivial.” Shapiro goes to great lengths in her review to justify why she actually liked a book about motherhood and child rearing. Must I make similar excuses for myself? Well I’m not going to. This was an interesting book: well written, observant, and moving.

(Book 54, 2010)

The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander

I abandoned this book after page 7 because I didn’t like the narrator. In some books a narrator’s voice is imperceptible, but other times the voice is more present, inserting itself into the reader’s consciousness, shading the reader’s interpretations, leading the reader astray, even, or in the case of this book, just irritating the reader.

On the top of page 7 this book’s narrator describes a woman named Lila Finkel as having "a cunt of pure gold." Wow, that’s pretty extreme. We are only on page 7. I barely know this narrator; this is our first conversation, and the first I’ve heard of Lila. If I met a guy at a party who described his friend Lila that way, I’d get away from him as fast as I could, and think “what a creep.”

Now if that description of Lila had emerged from a character’s mouth instead of from the narrator my reaction would have been entirely different. I would have sailed right over it, and internalized the intended message “the person speaking is crude and uninterested in whether or not he offends.” But it came from the narrator’s voice and it said to me that this narrator doesn’t care if he offends me, and in fact, he probably isn’t even talking to me. He is probably picturing his reader as a man, his frat brother, his drinking buddy, someone with whom he can casually toss around a word like that with no thought of giving offense. Or maybe I am being too nice, maybe he pictures his reader as a woman too, and he wants to offend her, he wants her to be shocked. What’s going on with that?

Either way, I’m not going to listen. Yes, I am offended (what of Lila’s lips, her voice, her attention to detail, her excellent golf swing?). And really I just want to get away from this weirdo who describes women using crude names for their sexual parts. I’m not going to keep talking to him just to be polite, and I’m not going to keep reading this book just because someone else thinks it’s good. Maybe this narrator is an okay guy, and can tell an interesting story, but his utter disregard for my sensibilities (or his deliberate attempt to shock me) just put me off completely.

This was my book club’s December selection, and I complained about it in this post. I skipped the meeting for reasons unrelated to my dislike of the book. But what did the book club think, you might wonder. When I asked Elana how the meeting went, she replied that she thought it went well, though they “spent a lot of time talking about whether there was any redemption or if the book was just utter darkness. “ Whoa, utter darkness AND creepy weirdos. Get me out of there.

Frances Hodgson Burnett, Revisited

As I was writing my post about The Making of a Marchioness I found myself wondering if young girls still read books by Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden, A Little Princess). My friend Nora answered that question when she told me that her girls (approx. ages 14 and 16) love both of these books, so that was reassuring. My boys were not terribly keen on vintage books. One loved the Little Eddie stories by Carolyn Haywood, which first appeared in the 1940’s, and the other was briefly a fan of the Narnia books, but otherwise, not so much.

Just the other day, on the radio, I heard this story about what publishers are calling multi-platform books for adolescent readers. These are books that appear in print but which also have some kind of interactive online component to draw readers in. It made me think, how can books like those by Hodgson Burnett possibly compete? Filled with arcane references to life in India, they assume an understanding of British empire class distinctions, and are sprinkled with obscure dialect (does anyone remember trying to decipher Dickon’s language?). I remember being baffled by some aspects of the stories when I first read them in the 1970’s (what was an ayah?); it must be even harder now. It seems like these books would be hard going for a girl who could instead choose to read The 39 Clues.

I am not bemoaning the popularity of multi-platform books; they sound like a lot of fun. I’m just wondering, and am encouraged that there are girls who do still want to read the older stories.

The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Is there a lifelong (female) reader who doesn’t love The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett? It’s one of my favorites and I’ve read it several times. Hodgson Burnett wrote for adults as well as children, and Persephone Books has published two of her titles. I just finished The Making of a Marchioness, originally published in 1901, and republished by Persephone in 2001.

Persephone’s version of this book is actually two novels in one: the first book, The Making of a Marchioness, followed by its sequel, The Methods of Lady Walderhurst. The first volume is a Cinderella-type story of Emily Fox-Seton, impoverished gentlewoman, who ekes out a living running errands for her wealthy acquaintances. While Hodgson Burnett occasionally provides glimpses of the dark side of Emily’s tenuous existence, mostly she dwells on her unflagging good spirits and continued optimism in the face of impending spinsterhood. And like any good Cinderella story, Emily’s prince eventually emerges in the form of the Marquis of Walderhurst, a dull self-centered man who chooses to marry Emily because her practical nature appeals to him. Thus Emily lives happily ever after as the Marchioness of Walderhurst.

Or does she? The Methods of Lady Walderhurst could hardly be a more different book than its predecessor. Lord Walderhurst must travel to India to oversee his business interests. On her own at home, Emily is beset by the evil Alec Osborn, Walderhurst’s dissolute heir presumptive, who views Emily’s existence (and that of her potential offspring) as a direct threat to him. We move rapidly from a story so sweet that it hurts your teeth, to one so dark that it keeps you up at night. Is Osborn going to murder Emily? How involved in any potential plot is Osborn’s wife Hester, whom Emily befriends? And what exactly is going on with the Indian servant Ameerah?

Like most Persephone books, issues pertaining to feminism and class are just under the surface of these stories. Why must Emily be so accommodating all the time? Because it is her nature, or her only guarantee of survival? How does Hester’s Anglo-Indian heritage make her an ambiguous figure? Is Walderhurst's remoteness a feature of his personality or his culture? Persephone titles like this one make me think a lot. Maybe that's why they take me so long to read.

(Book 53, 2010)

The Dreaded Curse of the Book Club

It’s happening already. I am procrastinating reading my book club selection because I hate it. Hate it hate it hate hate hate hate it, as I wrote in a message to Elana, our fearless leader. What should I do? Elana says I should come to the meeting anyway and talk about why I hate it. That would certainly be what a grown-up member of a book club would do. But right now I just want to blow raspberries and drum my heels into the floor chanting HATE IT HATE IT HATE IT HATE IT HATE IT, like my kids did when I tried to make them eat something yucky.

What Have I Been Doing All Year? (and other lists)

Here is a link to the 100 Notable Books of 2010, from the New York Times? How does it happen that I have only read three of these titles (Angelology, The Privileges, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks)? A few of them have been on my list for a while (How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu, and Room, by Emma Donaghue) but others have completely escaped my notice, especially the non-fiction choices.

And here's a list of comfort reads, compiled by India Knight on her blog. I normally avoid lists like this, but this one spoke to me with its interesting combination of long-time personal favorites (Frenchman's Creek, Ballet Shoes, The Cazalet Chronicles, The Secret Garden) and books I've never heard of (The Towers of Trebizond, Riders and Rivals, Hens Dancing). Cool. I might try to get to some of these.

Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro

I have been struggling to capture the subtleties of this book. Leah Hager Cohen, writing in the New York Times, does a better job than I can. These are typical Munro short stories; they appear simple at first reading, but then hit you like a rocket attack once you get going.

Sometimes these stories aren’t really about what they seem to be about, if you know what I mean. Even when they seem to be about “big” issues (such as domestic violence, for example), their power comes from something else, from something small that happens in the last few seconds, something that you can almost overlook, like the tiny murder that is going on in the corner of the painting.

Alice Munro won the 2009 Man Booker International Prize, which honors “one writer's overall contribution to fiction on the world stage” (Man Booker Prize archive website: http://www.themanbookerprize.com/prize/mbi-archive/43). She has written a lot of books, but I’ve only read a handful. It takes me a long time to get through one of her volumes because I have to read a story, and then rest for a while. Then I can do another one. That’s how powerful they are.

(Book 52, 2010)