The Skinny: How to Fit into Your Little Black Dress Forever by Melissa Clark and Robin Aronson

Observant blog readers will notice that I occasionally read diet and fashion books (but not very often, and now I remember why). This one caught my eye though – the reviews on Amazon proclaimed it “sensible” and I think that’s what attracted me. One of the authors (can’t remember which one) is a food writer, and I thought, well, that has to be a challenge, to be a slim food writer, so maybe she’s got some good advice.

She does (and her co-author, too) – there is good sensible information in this book about portion control, about making good food choices, about avoiding fad diets. There are also some appealing recipes. The problem is I have heard it all before. The other problem is the pink cover with the cartoony black dress, and what it represents. I am not 13 and probably neither are most of this book’s readers; why must the cover look like it was designed to appeal to a middle-schooler? And to take the whole thing to another level of criticism, there is the girlfriendy tone, and the anecdotes about how we’ve all been tempted to spend the rent money on those fabulous boots that would change our lives. Well, I have never been tempted to spend the rent money on boots. I spend the rent money on rent. And I never for a moment have thought that owning a certain pair of boots would change my life. Even if the message here is that it’s smarter to resist, I can’t help but feel that the book insults my intelligence with assumptions like these.

Am I overreacting? Should I have expected this? I don’t watch Sex and the City. I don’t read fashion magazines. I should just not even try reading books with bright pink covers.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin

I have read a few times the comment that J. K. Rowling owes a larger debt to Ursula LeGuin than she acknowledges. While I can’t comment on whether Rowling has paid that debt, I do now see what some people are talking about. Here is the original school for wizards on the island of Roke, in Earthsea, and here is the young wizard Ged who trains there. Here we also find the kindly powerful Archmage who leads the school, and Jasper, the young wizard’s high-born rival.

But there I stopped. Why? Want a list?

a) No women anywhere: no women teachers, no girl students. Why did LeGuin do this? Was it not possible in pre-feminist 1968 for a woman to write fantasy that included powerful women and girl characters? Maybe not. Without Hermione (and Tonks, Ginny, Professor McGonagall, etc.) it was really slow going.

b) No humor. This is a Serious Book. Not. One. Funny. Thing. Happens. Ever.

b) Way too much adolescent bad judgment. I stopped reading at the point where Ged does something enormously ill-advised as part of a confrontation with Jasper to prove who is the better wizard, with devastating consequences. Maybe it’s because I am the mother of two teenage boys, but I was just not in the mood for this. It made me want to take away their iPods and give them a stern lecture about how actions have consequences, and I do enough of that already, thank you.

I have no doubt that this is a good book. LeGuin’s writing is beautiful. But is it too dated for a contemporary reader? Will the lack of interesting female characters and the sober tone be stumbling blocks for other modern readers as well? I wonder.

Skimming Rather Than Reading

I don't usually skim books. I either read them or abandon them. But in the past few days I've skimmed two books; interestingly, the books were about the same thing, British women in World War II. One was fiction, a Persephone book, and the other was non-fiction. Maybe my lack of success with these books is a sign that I am done with this era.

A House in the Country by Jocelyn Playfair is a novel written in 1944 and re-released by Persephone. Playfair's writing style is one that I don't enjoy; she provide lots of detail about trivialities, and the serious stuff is dealt with in brief passing references. Thus we read (or skim!) many pages where the heroine extols the joys of eating in the kitchen (the servants have all been called up). Then we get about five sentences on the death of her husband. This style, which I've encountered before in some British fiction, always makes me feel like I'm looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Is it a stiff-upper-lip kind of thing? Talk about the weather instead of the atrocities? I skimmed the book, rather than abandoning it, thinking that I might get used to the style and learn to like it, but it was futile. That was Sunday's reading.

On Monday I started Debs at War. This is non-fiction, written by Anne de Courcy, who wrote the excellent biography of Diana Mosley that I read earlier this year. It chronicles the extreme changes that occurred in upper class women's lives as they transitioned from sheltered debutantes into nurses, pilots, farm workers, and factory workers at the outbreak of WWII. De Courcy makes the point that few generations have gone through the kinds of changes that this group saw: beginning life in luxury, raised by servants, not knowing how to cook, wash dishes or even how to clean their own clothes, and then moving to a life without servants, working for a living, managing money, meeting people outside their social class, etc. This is a scholarly work, and would make good background reading for someone writing a novel about the time. Rather than focusing on one woman throughout the book, de Courcy includes the memories of about 75 women, and has arranged her chapters by subject rather than time period. Thus there is no real story here, just a collection of memories about different topics. It kept me occupied for about an hour, reading a bit from each chapter, then I had had enough.

I noticed that both of these books used the pronoun "one" where a more modern (or maybe an American?) writer or speaker would use "you." I couldn't stop noticing it, and feeling annoyed by it. It made the novel feel very dated, and the women in Debs at War sound stuffy. No contemporary U.S. writer uses this pronoun any more, and I rarely encounter it in contemporary British fiction, unless it's to make a character sound a certain way.

American Genius, A Comedy by Lynne Tillman

Lynne Tillman wrote one of the stories in the collection This is Not Chick Lit, which I reviewed in October, and liked. As a result of that review, her publisher sent me a review copy of American Genius, her novel. This is the first time this has happened to me, that someone I don't know has asked me to read a book and review it on this site. I admit to a bit of trepidation about this; I am an extremely picky reader, and don't like to read books just because I promised someone that I would. Nevertheless, I thought there was a good chance that I might like this book, having liked her short story, so I said yes. I was also intrigued by the idea of reading something from a small press, something that I might not come across in the very mainstream reading world that I inhabit.

My reaction to the book is mixed. I didn't care for the style – it's first person, stream of consciousness, with almost no dialogue, told from the point of view of a woman in some kind of institution – mental hospital? Nursing home? It was never clear to me. I think it must be a mental hospital because of the circular nature of the narrator's thoughts. She keeps returning and returning to the same obsessive themes and memories. Interspersed with these repeated themes are little digressions about things that seem totally unrelated to anything else (architecture, for example). I found it difficult to read because of this. I felt like nothing was connected to anything else, there wasn't enough forward motion, almost no plot, and too much repetition. Yet the writing was tight and interesting; it was kind of like watching a figure skater go round and round in the same precise circles, occasionally adding a new shape, but mostly repeating the same movements. You can admire the skill it takes to perform the drill, but how long can you really stand to watch it?

I was reminded a little bit of Nicholson Baker's books in the way that Tillman digresses into obscure subject areas (alopecia, the history of denim). I spent some time just flipping through the pages, finding these little gems and reading them. Yet she returns again and again to her dead pets, her skin conditions, her difficult mother. It's like picking a scab.

Did I fail to understand the book because I failed to finish it? I think so. Maybe this book is like a crop circle, whose coherent whole is indistinguishable from ground level, but is beautiful from the air. I think if I had finished it I would have gotten it.

So I guess it was just me. I have no patience for the experimental or the overly tricky. While I enjoy the occasional bit of creativity with language, it must come wrapped in a package that meets my other criteria (must be mostly linear, with strong plot and well developed characters). Kate Atkinson is an example of a writer whose whimsy is at the outer edge of what I can tolerate. But some people like this kind of thing. That Jonathan Safran Foer book that I trashed recently has many many fans. Who can tell what will appeal to a reader? I just know what appeals to me.

I can't assign a letter grade to this book because I didn't finish it. Thanks to Richard from Soft Skull Press for sending this to me. I'm such a good girl that I can't seem to dislike it without apologizing just a bit.

Regeneration by Pat Barker

I know I said in this post that I would read this book, and the one that follows. I have now tried, and here is what I have found: these people are all still depressed. Or rather, some different people are depressed, and some of the same people (who I know will end up dead) are getting depressed. Depressed depressed depressed. Can't do it.

The Lighthouse by P.D. James

I’m going to blame my failure to finish this book on the fact that I was listening to the audiobook during a particularly busy period at home and at work. My breaks between listening sessions were too long, so long that I forgot the names of the characters, and couldn’t follow the action. I also missed some organizational clues. In the beginning, a murder has already happened; that’s what summons Dalgliesh and his team to Combe Island. But then the action moves to Combe Island, and it’s clear that no one is dead yet. I was so confused! Obviously, there must have been some kind indication of the shift backwards in time in the print copy of the book, but it wasn’t adequately signaled in the audiobook, and it took me ages to figure out what was going on. The problem with an audiobook, of course, is that it’s very difficult to go back and re-read. So you just soldier on, thinking that it will clear up, but in this case it took too long.

And I also have to say (dare I say it?) I’m a tiny bit sick of Kate Miskin, and that chip on her shoulder. No one in these books has even the slightest hint of a sense of humor, they are just so serious serious serious. It was all too much darkness and confusion for me. But James is the Queen of Crime Fiction, and her skills are intact. So I can’t give this a bad grade, I can just say that it wasn’t the right book for me at this moment.

Here is a link to the Guardian review. The reviewers at Amazon give the book very high marks, and the first review on the Amazon page, by M. L. Fletcher, now makes me want to go back and try reading the print version. I’ll let you know if I do.