The Old Romantic by Louise Dean

I often complain about books where I dislike all the characters. Sometimes I can’t even finish them. When I first met the characters in The Old Romantic I hated them all, but I pushed on and I am very glad that I did so. Dean gives us a family whose members are, at first impression, prickly, ill mannered, self-absorbed, shallow, bitter, hostile, and rude, and she makes us love them! What skill! And it’s a lot of fun to read, once you get going.

Ken, the patriarch and head curmudgeon of this family, has decided that his demise is near and desires to reconcile with his estranged children and ex-wife before his death. His first attempts are not terribly auspicious; after 20 years of no contact he takes to calling his son Nick and screaming abuse at him over the telephone. Nick has carved out an upscale life as a solicitor and wants nothing to do with his brutish working class father, but Nick’s brother Dave (the people-pleasing younger sibling) manages to arrange a luncheon that brings everyone together and starts the reunion ball rolling. We soon discover that underneath his crotchety exterior Ken is just a lonely old man who needs to know that his life was not a failure. He is, of course, the old romantic of the title. His sweetness shines through, despite his best efforts to prevent that. Over time Dave, Nick, and their mother Pearl eventually reconnect, let down their guard, and make their peace with Ken and with one another. Secondary characters such as Nick’s girlfriend Astrid, and Dave’s teenage children are as well-defined as the main characters. Dean can generate a reader’s distaste or sympathy with a few choice words.

 This is a very English book, saturated with dark sardonic English humor. Class differences are a recurring theme—much of the family’s initial stress stemmed from Nick’s ascent to Oxford, Dave’s failure to follow him, and Ken’s disgust with Nick’s aspirations. I am certain I missed some of the more subtle class allusions, and readers who aren’t familiar with contemporary British culture might miss more. On the other hand, the theme of an old man facing death is pretty universal, no?

(Book 7, 2012)

The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay by Beverly Jensen

Beverly Jensen wrote this novel in the 1990s, but died of cancer before she could publish it. In fact it’s not entirely clear whether she meant for it to be published, though she had been working with a writing group and taking writing classes. Jensen’s husband (who oversaw the eventual publication) has given us a gift—this is a wonderful book, reminiscent of Alice Munro and Jane Urquhart in its subject matter and pace, and with its sharp observations about the lives of working class rural women.

 Avis and Idella Hillock are scrappy girls who endure the early death of their mother and a turbulent upbringing by their alcoholic father on a remote farm in New Brunswick, Canada. Each girl escapes that brutal environment using whatever tools she can muster, and their lives span much of the 20th century. We see them over the course of more than 70 years as they grow up, work, love, marry, divorce, have children, and eventually pass away. Their stories are at times heartbreaking, funny, inspiring, and familiar. Both women inhabit the page completely; I can hear their voices and will remember them for a long time.

Some reviewers have described this book as a collection of short stories instead of a novel. I can see why some might say that. The chapters (stories) are all self-contained, and are often separated by many years in time. Also, some are more fully realized than others. The first chapter, where Avis and Idella are approximately 5 and 8 years old, and witness their mother’s death in childbirth, is extremely powerful, while other chapters are shorter and read more like sketches. Even those, however, are absorbing and well written, but they do serve as sad reminders that Jensen might not have been finished writing about these remarkable women.

(Book 6, 2012)

Technology Fail

I do fine with computers but audio devices flummox me. I can never find the cord I need to sync and charge my iPod and so it spends most of its life with a dead battery in the bottom of my purse. I’ve tried checking out audiobooks from the library to put onto my iPod but you have to install that Overdrive software and who can be bothered to fiddle around with all that? I just want something that will work right away, not something I have to build from the ground up. Hence my love of Playaways, those self-contained MP3 gadgets you get from the library with the audiobook already installed. Just stick in a battery, plug in your headphones and go.

Well yes, until you get a defective one like I have now. I’m part way through The Lacuna and the Playaway has croaked. I’ve ordered up the CDs from the library, but that brings me to the other problem with the Playaways – navigation. Where the heck am I in this book? All I have is a tiny screen that says 3-8 on it (and I don’t even have that any more now that the device is dead). What does that mean? What page is that? I feel disoriented not knowing how far I’ve read. How am I going to figure out which disc I should start with?

I know I could buy this audiobook from iTunes or rent it from Audible.com but both those routes involve money and hardware. I could download it to my Kindle (also $$), which has so far been a more reliable and accessible device than my iPod. But what I think I am going to do is just get the damn hardback book from the library. Nothing to set up. No cords to wrangle. No batteries to run down. Figuring out where I am should be a cinch. How about that?

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Is it just me? Why do I dislike books that so many other people love? This is going to turn into one of those deals where everyone asks me if I liked such-and-such a book, and I have to say “nooooo…. ” and then justify my response to their astonished looks. Like Atonement. Like The Corrections. And now, The Marriage Plot.

I suppose I should describe the plot: Mitchell, Madeleine, and Lawrence graduate from Brown University. Mitchell loves Madeleine, Madeleine loves Lawrence, and Lawrence has bipolar disorder. Madeleine and Lawrence set up housekeeping together over the summer while Mitchell wanders around Europe and India. Madeleine is directionless (and boring), Mitchell is lonely (also boring), and Lawrence is hospitalized. That about sums it all up.

English majors might like this book because it will make them feel good about all the useless stuff they know. I don’t frequently come across references to Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar in my day-to-day reading, and I enjoyed those aha moments. There’s also a lot of showing off about semiotics and Roland Barthes. What is the point of this in popular fiction (or, to use Barthes’ own words “readerly text”)? Many readers (most readers?) won’t get these allusions. Is it meta? Or is it ironic? Who cares? It’s just boring.

(Book 5, 2012)

The Frozen Rabbi by Steve Stern

Rabbi Eliezer, a great sage, is accidentally frozen in a block of ice in Russia in 1889. He remains thusly preserved for over a hundred years until he is inadvertently thawed out and reanimated during a power surge in Memphis, Tennessee in 1999. His unwitting rescuer is Bernie Karp, an overweight socially awkward Jewish teenager who has found the frozen rabbi in his parents’ basement chest freezer. How Rabbi Eliezer came to be stored in that freezer, and what happens (to him and to Bernie) after he is defrosted is the plot of this book.

This book joins a list of my favorites of this genre (Jewish magical realism?), including The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, The World to Come by Dara Horn, and A Blessing on the Moon by Joseph Skibell. It combines fantasy, humor, mysticism, history, tragedy, and adventure all in one pot. But this recipe also has some negatives: as sometimes happens in books like this, Stern gets carried away and tries to cram in too much. At times the book staggers under its own weight.

We talked about The Frozen Rabbi at my book club this week. Most everyone agreed that it was too long and too messy but we disagreed about what parts or characters we would cut. Most of us admitted to skimming sections but again, not the same sections. And we were all baffled by the ending which was just plain weird. We decided that this book is greater than the sum of its parts; individual sections are overly long or disturbing, but they add up to something really good.

(Book 4, 2012)