Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman

Alexandra Jacobs, who reviewed Red Hook Road in the New York Times, described it as “Victorian in tone” and I agree. In fact, the book that I was most reminded of when reading this was Morningside Heights, by Cheryl Mendelsohn, which I described as a Victorian novel when I wrote about it in this post. The two books have other similarities as well: both are about a certain kind of educated Jewish New Yorker, rich in culture if not in dollars, sure that their way is the best way. 

Becca (from Manhattan) spends every summer at her family’s vacation home in Maine. There she meets and falls in love with John, native Mainer, ship builder, whose mother cleans Becca’s family’s house. But alas, on the way to their wedding reception, Becca and John are killed in a freak car accident. We are left with Iris and Jane, the respective mothers, who circle each other warily across the vast lake of their class differences. The car accident happens right at the beginning of the book; most of the novel concerns the efforts of Iris and Jane (and their other children and spouses) to heal, to connect, to move on from this tragedy.

I didn’t like either Iris or Jane. Iris is smugly superior, manipulative, and a really bad listener. Jane is cold, repressed, and closed-minded. The rest of the characters run the gamut from unique to predictable – the same goes for the action that shores up the remainder of the story.

A lot of people don’t like Ayelet Waldman, though she must sell a lot of books to get a nice hardcover treatment and a review in the Times. I would try another book by her; this was sufficiently entertaining and well-written to keep me occupied, despite my complaints. 

(Book 18, 2011)

Ape House by Sara Gruen

A lot of people liked Sara Gruen’s last book, Water for Elephants, but I didn’t have much success with it. I did better with Ape House and enjoyed it for the most part, though I do have a few quibbles.

Gruen knows how to move a story along at a nice pace but she’s not a great writer. This story, of a family of bonobos and their researcher/caretaker Isabel, held my interest and kept me entertained, but only because I like bonobos. I didn’t like Isabel nearly as much, or really any of the human characters. They were predictable types from central casting – give me one serious female scientist who doesn’t know how beautiful she is, give me an intrepid male journalist in pursuit of a story, give me an evil corporate villain who will stop at nothing to make a buck, etc. etc. I also didn’t think much of the plot which was part bonobo documentary, part animal rights terrorist thriller, part romance, and part sitcom. Gruen just tries to do way too much with only mixed success.

But the bonobos! Gruen does seem to get this part right, at least as far as I can tell. She has clearly done a lot of research and her portrayal of the individual bonobos is measured and nuanced. I loved reading about their language development and their relationships with Isabel and among each other.

I would call this a good beach read, not a category I usually give much credence to. (Any good book is a good beach read, no?) But if you want something to keep you entertained and you aren’t feeling very picky, this might be just the thing.

(Book 17, 2011)

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

How do you make a familiar story fresh? How do you shine a new light on a familiar landscape? Do what Dave Eggers has done – tell a story that most of us know, but tell it from a totally unexpected point of view.

Most U.S. residents know the stories of Hurricane Katrina. If we didn’t live through it ourselves, we watched in horror on TV. We felt awful. We sent money to the Red Cross. We try to remember that even now people are still suffering the after-effects.

But I didn’t know anything at all about the life of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a New Orleans housepainter, a Syrian immigrant, a man with a wife and four children and strong connections to his New Orleans neighborhood. Eggers embeds Zeitoun’s story within the larger story of Katrina, giving us a more personal and unique way to experience it.

Zeitoun’s family flees New Orleans ahead of the storm, but Zeitoun stays behind to watch over his house, his rental properties, and his warehouse, sure that he is safe in his neighborhood far from the ocean and the levees. Of course we all know what happens – Zeitoun’s house rapidly fills with water and he spends a week paddling around New Orleans in his canoe feeding abandoned dogs with the contents of his freezer and rescuing old people. But here is where the twist comes. As a Muslim man Zeitoun becomes the target of a ragtag band of unsupervised law enforcement agents who decide (without any apparent cause) that he must be an Al Qaeda operative sent to stir up trouble. Zeitoun is arrested and imprisoned without charge for a month before his wife and a lawyer manage to secure his release.

Eggers presents Zeitoun so well, and so sympathetically, that rooting for him is like rooting for the city of New Orleans itself. He’s a good metaphor for a diverse complicated city. Profits from the book go to the Zeitoun Foundation which has contributed over $200,000 toward the rebuilding of New Orleans and towards promoting interfaith dialog.

(Book 16, 2011)

Room by Emma Donoghue

Inspired by real-life events, Room is the story of a mother and son who are imprisoned in a garden shed by the mother’s rapist. It’s also the story of their rescue and reintegration into society. The narrator is the son Jack, who was born in the shed, and is 5 years old when the story begins.

Sounds disturbing, no? Everyone I know thinks so, and is avoiding this book. I was too. But a friend pushed it on me, and assured me that it was safe to read, and she was right! Don’t be put off by the alarming subject matter and the nontraditional narrator. It’s really really good.

I loved how Donoghue captures mothering at its most elemental level. The relationship between mother and son sustains them both, and the small daily pleasures (bath time, cuddle time, even TV time) are intense and life-affirming. Jack is a delightful child and his mother instinctively responds to him in the best possible way. Jack’s humor, and after their rescue, his wonder at the wider world, are the best parts of the book. The author has said that she thought it would be too disturbing to have the mother narrate the story and I think she is right. By placing Jack (happy, loving, and curious) at the center, she keeps the mother’s terror at arm’s length, letting us view it from a safe distance.

A few people have commented that they were shocked that Jack’s mother still nursed him at age 5. That reaction really disturbed me. This is a book about kidnapping and repeated rape. That’s not shocking, but the breastfeeding is? How very sad. I guess, if you are the kind of person who is scared to read about breastfeeding, maybe this isn’t a book for you.

(Book 15, 2011)