An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken

This slim little book is about loss, specifically the loss of a baby. Too depressing, you might say? Maybe for some, but it’s also about hope and about recovery. And it’s quite funny and upbeat in places, if you can believe that. McCracken’s first child (a boy) was born dead in 2006 while she was living in France. Her second child (also a boy) was born healthy barely a year later, and is doing fine. The two events are so closely linked that it’s difficult to separate them; they are like two sides of the same coin. McCracken’s book doesn’t take a chronological path through these events but still manages to be a coherent and moving portrait of what happened and how she and her husband dealt with it. And her writing is beautiful: witty, matter-of-fact, and searing, all at once.

I went through a phase where I couldn’t read stories about dead children. I think there still might be some books like this that I won’t ever read (A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton, for one). But something about McCracken’s approach drew me in, and I had read such good reviews! Interestingly, even though I thought it wasn’t getting to me, I ended up having a weird dream where I kept mixing up McCracken’s dead baby with my own firstborn son. My son, who is very much alive, left last week to take a summer job far from home and then is going away to college. So I am facing my own loss, which is nothing like McCracken’s but which nevertheless is obviously bothering me on some subconscious level. And I thought I was fine. Hmmmm. It’s obvious that writing this book was therapeutic for McCracken, but it’s also therapeutic to read it; in my case it’s bringing up issues I didn’t know I had.

(Book 24, 2009)

Dumbfounded by Matt Rothschild

You know how sometimes a movie trailer can make a movie look funny and unique, but then you go see it at the theater and you realize that all the best bits were in the trailer and the rest of the movie is a big disappointment? This book is like that. I read several reviews (like this one) that made the book sound great, but it turns out that in between the funny events described in the review are just long boring parts where nothing happens.

Dumbfounded is Matt Rothschild’s memoir of his offbeat adolescence in Manhatten in the 1980’s. It’s a fish out of water story: a Jewish kid in a WASP enclave, a gay kid surrounded by macho private school jocks, a young lonely boy raised by elderly eccentric grandparents. But Rothschild can’t sustain the momentum necessary to make it all work as a book, and he has to resort to filler. He also includes episodes of pathos (an unpleasant reunion with his flighty socialite mother) that try too hard to evoke a certain response from the reader. “Oh, now we are supposed to feel sorry for him.” I felt a little manipulated.

Some of his stuff isn’t bad, though; I think Rothschild’s story would have made a funny article for the New Yorker (or a good movie trailer).

(Book 23, 2009)

Lulu in Marrakech by Diane Johnson

I loved Diane Johnson’s three earlier books about American expatriates in France: Le Divorce, Le Mariage, and L’Affaire. All three were funny, original, compelling, and delivered laser-like critiques of both French and American culture. Johnson writes with a distinctive breezy style that belies her sharp observations and subtle characterizations.

I was really excited to discover that Johnson had a new book, Lulu in Marrakech. Oooo, I thought, let’s see what she does with the French expatriate community in Morocco. Alas, this one did not measure up to the previous three.

Johnson’s portrait of the French, British, and American expat society in Marrakech is as good as anything she’s written, and most of her characters don’t disappoint. Unfortunately, the problem lies with Lulu. At the center of each of Johnson’s three previous novels is a woman who lives in both worlds. In Le Divorce this woman is Isabel, an American who is staying with her sister in Paris, as the sister divorces a Frenchman; in Le Mariage it’s Anne-Sophie, a young Frenchwoman who is marrying an American journalist; and in L’Affaire it’s Amy, an American business woman who becomes entangled with a complicated French family and the even more complicated French system of inheritance.

Lulu, the live-in girlfriend of a British businessman in Marrakech has this role in the new book, but for some reason that wasn’t enough for Johnson and she had to go and make Lulu an undercover CIA agent as well. It just feels wrong. It feels forced and artificial, and to top it off, Lulu is a terrible spy. She makes all kinds of mistakes and hardly accomplishes anything. I just didn’t think it worked, having Lulu bounce back and forth between providing piquant social commentary and participating in botched rendition assignments. The New York Times didn’t think it worked, either.

(Book 22, 2009)

In Love With Jerzy Kosinski by Agate Nesaule

In the book In Love With Jerzy Kosinski we go inside Agate Nesaule’s head because that is where all the action is. Or rather, we go inside the head of Anna, Nesaule’s fictional alter ego, a woman who has a lot in common with her creator. Both are English professors, both endured World War II as young children in Latvia, became refugees, and immigrated to the United States in their teens. And both (according to the author’s note) are obsessed with the late Polish writer Jerzy Kosinski.

Hardly anything happens in this book. Anna learns to drive and leaves her husband with little fanfare. She gets a job and a boyfriend, and she thinks about Jerzy Kosinski. She reads, she gardens, she cooks. But Anna’s past is never more than a millimeter below the surface, and her memories are triggered by the smallest event. The sight of a traffic cop paralyzes her because he reminds her of the Russian soldiers who took away her father. A warehouse fire convinces her that a war has begun in the city where she's living. Anna’s horrific childhood in Latvia colors nearly every moment of her life but on the surface she is calm, measured. One secret of survival, it seems, is to never let anyone know how much you are struggling.

It is the contrast between Anna’s serene exterior and her roiling interior that makes this book so interesting. Nesaule plays up this contrast by juxtaposing Anna’s controlled existence in the present with the chaos of her memories. No drama in Anna’s adult life can begin to match the drama she has already lived through. No man is as needy as her father was after the Russians were through with him. Is this why Anna is so drawn to Jerzy Kosinski, a man who made his professional reputation recounting the drama of his own life in the clutches of the Nazis in Poland? Anna must remain in control, but Jerzy Kosinski can reveal everything at the top of his lungs; indeed can embellish and even falsify the real story to achieve the greatest possible effect.

Agate Nesaule is also the author of A Woman in Amber, a memoir of her life in Latvia. Might someone ask whether In Love With Jerzy Kosoinski is just a fictionalized retelling of that same story? I don’t think it’s that simple. Just as Anna’s everyday reality is colored by the events from her past, so is Nesaule’s. I don’t believe that Nesaule could write anything that wasn’t influenced by her earlier life. No, let me rephrase that. Nesaule is an extremely talented writer who could write anything she wanted; I just can’t imagine anything that would be as powerful and heartbreaking as the truth.

(Book 21, 2009)

Hearts and Minds by Rosy Thornton

Academic fiction is a sub-genre of literary fiction. Academic fiction set at a women‘s college must then be a sub-sub-genre. The small number of books that fit the bill may explain why Rosy Thornton’s publishers have packaged this book as chick lit or romance; they didn’t know what to do with it. It’s a shame because I could have passed this by—the cover art is cartoony and features hearts and flowers and a pink bicycle. But inside is a clever, sophisticated tale about life at a women’s college in Cambridge, England.

Thornton has created a fictional college, St. Radegund’s, which has just hired a man to replace the revered Dame Emily as Head of House. James Rycarte’s struggle to lead the faculty, students, and alumnae of St. Rad’s makes a great story. Rycarte is an outsider and a realist with a clear understanding of what the college needs to stay relevant in the 21st century. He is a perfect foil for the ivory tower dwellers among the faculty and the spoiled rich girls who are the students. Only Martha Pearce, the Senior Tutor, can help Rycarte save St. Rad’s from itself. But Martha has problems of her own, including a depressed daughter, an aging mother, and a husband with a mid-life crisis.

Thornton’s writing is lively and intelligent and her characters are well drawn. I especially loved the minutiae of life at Cambridge. I didn’t always understand the roles and relationships (what is a Senior Tutor? A Head Porter?) but it didn’t matter. Thornton moves her story forward at a good pace while at the same time providing just the perfect amount of engaging details. Anyone who has worked at, or even attended a university will recognize the archetypes and will get the jokes. (It helps that Thornton is an actual professor at the actual Cambridge University.)

Rosy Thornton doesn’t seem to have a U.S. publisher but her books are available from Amazon.com and from Powells. She’s written two other titles that also sound good and she’s got a cheerful little Web site at www.rosythornton.com. Fun fun fun.

(Book 20, 2009)

The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art by Matthew Hart

I like to read about art theft. There’s something so Robin Hood-ish about stealing paintings from rich folks. Of course I do know it’s wrong to steal. Art in museums belongs to everyone; I don’t want anyone to steal MY stuff, whether that stuff is in my living room or in the Smithsonian. But the crimes at the center of this book are really something: not one, not two, not three, but four separate thefts of important paintings (a Vermeer, a Gainsborough, a Rubens) from Russborough House, an isolated manor house in the Republic of Ireland. Some of the attempts were more successful than others. One thief (who was also an underworld crime figure of some repute) held the paintings for 3 years. Other attempts were botched, such as the one in 2001 where the thieves drove a truck through the house’s front door and were caught within two days.

This book has a little of everything: art crime, organized crime, the IRA, and the ways in which stolen art is used as collateral by bad guys in big drug deals. In addition to the thefts at Russborough House, Hart tells the story of several other famous art heists (including the infamous robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston) and how they may or may not be connected to one another. The book is a little hard to follow sometimes (too many characters, especially too many guys with Irish names) and it kind of meanders off somewhere about two thirds of the way through. It also would have benefitted from more photos of the paintings in question. But still, it was pretty good, if you like this kind of thing, which obviously I do.

(Book 19, 2009)

Who Do You Think You Are? by Alyse Myers

Who Do You Think You Are? by Alyse Myers is a sad and depressing book. Alyse Myers tells the story of her unhappy childhood in Queens in the 1960’s, her turbulent relationship with her mother, and her struggle to be a better mother to her own daughter. Myers doesn’t cover a lot of new ground in this book and I found her writing to be claustrophobic and at times annoying as she repeatedly revisits her pain and her anxieties. However, I think the portrait of Myers’ mother was really interesting, and I think some readers (especially women of a certain generation) will recognize aspects of their own mothers and grandmothers in this character.

Myers’ ne’er-do-well father died when she was 11, leaving her mother (who remains nameless throughout the story) to raise Alyse and her two younger sisters alone on very little money. Her mother’s limited skills and education meant that her options were few—she got by on low wage office work. Never loving or affectionate with her children, she turned abusive after her husband’s death, focusing most of her rage on Alyse. Alyse used education as her ticket out and escaped from her mother at the earliest opportunity. Only after Alyse was happily married and a mother herself did she fully reconcile with her mother.

Why was Alyse’s mother so abusive? Why did she direct her anger at Alyse and not at her younger sisters? And why were they finally able to reconnect, toward the end of the mother’s life? Myers never explicitly spells out her interpretation but I have a theory. Her mother’s life was difficult and disappointing. She was an extreme example of the consequences of limited options and poor choices. Alyse, on the other hand, was a smart girl who was aiming high. This was threatening to her mother, but even more, her mother saw it as dangerous. What if Alyse ended up as disappointed in life as her mother was? Better to rein Alyse in, push her back down, than to see her dreams crushed like her mother’s were. Alyse’s younger sisters were not as challenging to their mother, not as obviously destined for success. It wasn’t necessary to send the same message. The two women could only reconcile when it was clear that Alyse’s life was happy and complete; the abuse was no longer necessary.

I think it was common for girls raised in the 1960’s and earlier to hear the question “Who do you think you are?” The subtext of that question is “don’t get above yourself, don’t think you are anyone special.” It’s a way of diminishing expectations, of protecting against future disappointments. No one will treat you like a princess when you are grown, so don’t expect it now. Of course Alyse’s mother carried this to extremes, but I don’t think her motivations were so unusual, or even necessarily evil.

(Book 18, 2009)