#8: A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash

Small North Carolina town.

Religion with fire, snakes, and poison.

Faith healing.

Helpless and desperate mother begging for a miracle.

Shyster preacher?  Of course.

The story is told in three voices: Adelaide, eighty-one years old and the town’s midwife; Clem, the town’s sheriff with a heartbreaking story of his own; and Jess, a nine year old boy with a mute eleven year old brother.

Adelaide is terrified of the church with its snakes and members speaking in tongues.  She’s seen what can happen behind the closed doors and blacked out windows.  She’s watched the men of the church keep its secrets while members sip poison and let fire brush their faces to prove that God will protect them.  That they have been Chosen.

Ten years ago she and Pastor Chambliss came to a dangerous truce that allowed her to pull the children from inside the church to teach them outside while their parents danced in feverish abandonment.  Pastor Chambliss has never trusted her for leaving and waits for her to make the tiniest mistake so he can turn the town against her and bring the children close to him again.  She also waits, knowing that something horrible will eventually happen inside, knowing she is powerless to stop it and hating herself because she’s weak.

Clem is also an outsider.  He has no interest in the church, other than making sure the faithful keep to themselves and don’t cause problems in town.  He’s distrustful of the Pastor but has no reason to poke around.

Until Stump dies.

Jess has protected his brother for as long as he can remember.  Stump has been forever silent and sometimes slips into a world of his own.  Jess isn’t sure if he understands what happens each day, but is happy to sit beside him for hours, watching dragonflies and searching for perfect rocks.  He loves his brother and knows that he’ll always be there for him.

But Stump saw something, and Chambliss has to make sure no one knows.

Jess watches helplessly when Stump is called inside the church.  God has spoken to Pastor, letting him know that He is ready to heal the boy.  The church will lay hands on him and he will be saved.  Innocently and horrifically, Jess drives the nails into Stump’s casket.

Using the three voices and jumping from past to present, stories about the families are spread out.  While there are hints of what has happened to Clem, it takes a while for his story to be fully told, and I liked that.  Jess’ own father and grandfather are part of the tale and while Jess doesn’t know this, he’s pulled into their history.

Adelaide moves between wanting to protect the children to being desperate to save herself.  She’s constantly watched by the church elders and she knows if she slips up anywhere, she will quietly be silenced and no one will suspect a thing.  She is also angrily aware that she can protect the children by looking the other way and letting the Pastor lead his adult flock.

The book is heartbreaking.  Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, they did.  The past keep crashing onto the characters, blinding them to what was happening and filling them with rage.  Jess watches it all in confusion and panic, not knowing who is there to protect him and where lines are drawn.

The one thing I didn’t like was Jess’ voice.  There were too many times when I thought “Yeah, there is no way a nine year old would say that.  Or notice that.  Or reflect on something with that tone.”  However, I did like the innocent lens he brought.  I immediately knew what was going on and it was heartbreaking to see that he was unable to process it because of his age.

Clem’s story also works because he is an outsider to the church and yet can probably destroy it.  But is he working out of his dedication to serve and protect, or does he want revenge for his own loss?

I really enjoyed this a lot, especially because it showed the madness of Pentecostal ceremony.  The scenes inside the church are both terrifying and fascinating.  Watching the group whipped into madness, it’s easy to see how someone could desperately want to be part of it because it means God is there to protect them as an individual and it gives them a community that dictates every moment.

#5: Clown Girl by Monica Drake

I finished this book way back in January and it’s been sitting next to the computer, mocking me and racking up library fines.  Every time I sit down to write this review, I’m immediately stuck and have no clue what to say.  I have a compulsion to write my reviews in the order I read the books, so there is a stack of six books waiting and I’m about to finish two more.  It’s time to get this out of the way.

Here’s the description from Goodreads:

Clown Girl lives in Baloneytown, a seedy neighborhood where drugs, balloon animals, and even rubber chickens contribute to the local currency. Against a backdrop of petty crime, she struggles to live her dreams, calling on cultural masters Charlie Chaplin, Kafka, and da Vinci for inspiration. In an effort to support herself and her layabout performance-artist boyfriend, Clown Girl finds herself unwittingly transformed into a “corporate clown,” trapping herself in a cycle of meaningless, high-paid gigs that veer dangerously close to prostitution. Monica Drake has created a novel that riffs on the high comedy of early film stars — most notably Chaplin and W. C. Fields — to raise questions of class, gender, economics, and prejudice. Resisting easy classification, this debut novel blends the bizarre, the humorous, and the gritty with stunning skill.

I don’t know how this book got on to my radar and made it to my TBR list.  Maybe I was interested in it because it sounded so bizarre.  I like weird things, and a combination of rubber chickens. clown prostitution and a place called Baloneytown seemed a good indicator of weird.

But man, I do not know what in the hell I read.

Either I wasn’t smart enough for this book or I wasn’t the right reader.  It was weird, but not in a good way.

Clown Girl, aka Sniffles, lives her life by the Clown Code.  She isn’t a clown.  She is a Clown.  Her entire being is to bring meaning to life through the seriousness of Clowning.  She wants to create and make herself more than what she is through Clowning tradition and showing the audience what the truth of life is.

I think.

Along the way, everything falls apart.  She meets and falls blindly in love with Rex, the clown who teaches her about Clowning.  He leaves to join Clown College and she does everything she can to earn enough to move there and be with him.  She doesn’t hear from him for days.  Then weeks.  It’s longer and longer and she knows he is becoming famous, maybe, and she knows he will come back for her.

In the meantime, she tries to figure out her next Performance.  She gets arrested and is both curious and terrified of the cop that keeps rescuing her.  She stays in character, even in her own mind.  She becomes more and more desperate as she realizes that she might be the only Clown.  Everyone else seems to use clowning as a way to make money and who cares about the rest?

The more I read, the more confused I got.  At first I though this was a quest where Sniffles would climb to the top, become a true Clown and raise the audience to a better place of awareness.  Or something.

Then I thought she might be crazy because no one else seemed to speak the same truth that she did.  Rex made Clowning clear to her, but now he’s gone and she’s the only one who isn’t in it for the money.

A whole bunch of weird things happen and then I finished the book.

One thing I really did like was how Drake created the world.  Baloneytown and clowning and Clowning was matter of fact, so that wasn’t the absurd part.  Right away I was in and figured “OK, so this is how this world works.”  If I had gotten stuck on the social creation of Sniffles’ world, I wouldn’t have made it very far.

So, yeah.  I didn’t hate it.  I didn’t like it.  The reviews seem to be all over the place with people hating HATING it and other people swearing by their five star review.  I give this one an “eh”.

#54: Arcadia by Lauren Groff

My final book of 2012!

There are some sort-of-spoilers ahead, but if you know the plot of the book, you can probably guess what will happen.  I don’t give away anything major, but talking about the timeline will give strong hints at what happens in the book.

Arcadia was a great read because I liked it a lot right away, then felt uneasy as things fell apart, then was depressed by the end, but still a little hopeful.  The book takes a predestined path, but I still had hope that there would be change.  I immediately wanted things to work out and end well.  While predestined, it was in no way boring or clichéd.

The book starts as a group of hippies settle down to create a utopia where everything works because everyone works.  Little Bit is born as the caravan is heading to Arcadia to set up home.  There are older children, and more to be born, but Bit is the first commune baby and his tiny body (the littlest bit of a hippie ever made) marks the birth of their beginning.

Flash forward five years.  The commune is thriving under the guidance of Handy, the group’s leader, although “leader” isn’t a term any of them would use.  However, he guides the people into groups, organizes the work and everyone looks to him for instructions and approval.  Bit’s father, Abe, is also well thought of, but it is Handy who rules the roost.  The people adore him and crave his attention and love.  He uses this to make everyone better and stronger.  Groff uses this to make me immediately wary.  Anyone with that much power over people is going to be able to use it for personal gain.  Worst is when they think they’re doing the right thing and working for the greater good. But his people love him, and I miss his presence when the bus pulls away with most of the group with it.

As the story continues, the commune grows and what Bit sees and experiences is as close to perfect as anything can be.  His parents love him, the community adores him and he delights in how everything fits together.  Perhaps it is because this is the only world he’s ever know, but he can see that it is right.  People do what they are best at and everyone works as one group so that no individual is lacking.  They live off the land, they worship drugs and nature, they drop acid and plant gardens, and it is wonderful.

And like many wonderful things, it eventually all goes to shit.

I love the idea of a commune.  My lefty liberal self wants everyone working together and doing what they love and what they are best at so that everyone has what they need.  I like the idea of a small community where everyone knows everyone and you can rely on any neighbor in times of trouble, and also to celebrate goodness.

My realist self understands that this doesn’t work.  Human nature doesn’t fit in this shape for long, no matter how many people want it to.  As soon as there is one tiny crack in the foundation, everything begins to break.  At first it’s a bit of seepage and the few people who notice it try to plug it up, but it turns into a crack and more water trickles out.  Eventually it’s a hole and water begins to pour until finally it shatters and thunderous rivers wash away almost everything that was left.

Arcadia doesn’t stand a chance.

The hardest thing for Bit is that his parents believe in the common good so Bit believes in what Arcadia has the potential and power to be.  But human nature and the outside world push against this until it’s wrecked.  People begin to define what Arcadia means to them as an individual and don’t understand that it is a community.  Some people work  hard, others stretch out and enjoy the rewards.  I wasn’t sure if Handy saw what was happening.  If he did, did he care?  He’s almost always drugged and seeing visions and continues to gather the people around him so he will be loved and adored and praised.

As years go by, Bit is forced to come to terms with what was and how to incorporate it into where he is now.  If everything changes, can you hold on to the ideals that you believe in?  What happens when other people remember the same events with anger or sadness or horror?  How is it that his version of Arcadia is so different than his friends’ and is it best to let things go when you know that no matter how much you love it, you can’t have it?

The character of Bit makes this story.  I wanted to stay with him and I wish he was in other books, even if he’s only in the background.  He’s not perfect and he often steps back from what is happening, but it is fascinating to see someone who was lucky enough to be raised in an environment that was as close to perfect as it could have been for him.  He becomes Arcadia and lives on with the ideals and hope and longing for goodness.

#53: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

I picked this one up because it was on the Barnes and Noble “Buy Two, Get One Free” table and I needed a third.  I thought I had read Amy and Isabelle and liked it, so I figured I’d test Strout out again.

Olive Kitteridge has a very interesting structure.  Everything takes place in a fairly small town in Maine and each chapter is told from a different resident’s point of view with Olive connecting the stories and characters together.  Olive herself gets more than one chapter of her own, but she always passes through the other chapters.  Sometimes it might be one sentence, other times she is a major character, and in other stories she’s there long enough for the person telling the story to reflect on.  I found myself looking forward to spotting her, especially when I saw that she wasn’t going to play a major role in the story.

Another thing that I looked forward to was seeing what version of Olive would appear.  Just as in real life, she’s a different person depending on who is thinking of her.  Some people saw her as a horror.  Others depend on her for help.  Some think she’s a saint.  Others want her to feel miserable.  And of course Olive herself has her own version of who she is.

Each story adds a different layer and as I finished the book I wanted to piece everything together to try and define a solid personality for her.  One of the things that made this work and interested me was Olive’s own chapters.  She sees herself in a very specific way (as we all do for ourselves), and holding up her version with the other townsfolk was something I enjoyed.  The first chapter is her husband’s and I did not like her at all.  I was worried I wasn’t going to like the book because she was so difficult.  But then in other chapters I saw her as an extremely capable person who knew without any qualms what to do and who should do it.  In her own chapters there were moments of insight and glimpses at her regrets.  I liked how putting everything together didn’t make a perfect and finished puzzle.  Some people snapped into place easily while others were like jamming two pieces together that were not meant to fit.

I really enjoyed the final chapters because Olive is in her seventies and we’ve seen snapshots of her at different ages.  She’s still steadfast in who she is and irritated by the social norms that people insist on following, but she has moments that make her pause and wonder if she really was right all of the time.  She’s never apologized for anything in her life, but now that her journey is coming to an end, she has to wonder if she did right by people.  This is not some explosive moment that sends her out into the world to make amends.  She remains stoic and continues to be irritated by niceties and platitudes, but she does have small moments of reflection.  I was very pleased that Strout didn’t make her into a softer version and change her personality.  Olive is not one to change, or even really reflect.  When she does remain in these moments (and they aren’t always quiet ones) she’s able to analyze and judge just as she always has, but she’s also able to let the idea that other people might disagree with her be a valid option.

I enjoyed the book and found myself wondering which version of Olive I would have known.  I think I would not have liked her, but I wonder if I would have flat out hated her.

The most difficult thing about this book was that I started it and then switched to The Casual Vacancy and I’ve gotten the two incredibly confused.  I’ve forgotten which story is in which book since The Casual Vacancy is also told from different points of view.  As I wrote this review I often had to flip back through the book to confirm that yes, this did happen in this Maine town and not somewhere in Britain.

#52: Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer

Ladies and gentlemen… NUMBER FIFTY-TWO!!!

It might not look like it, but Gruden did support my goal.

After missing my goal last year, I am very pleased to have finished a few weeks ahead of time this year.  (I still have a few reviews to write and will finish with more than fifty-two!)

And now… Shine Shine Shine.

I liked this book very quickly and realized it was going to be hard to review.  Trying to describe the plot is either going to simplify it and not do it justice or will cause people to make a confused face and back away slowly.

It is so good!

Instead of plot, I’m going to talk about characters.  And a little bit of plot.

Sunny was born bald.  And stayed bald.  No eyebrows, no eyelashes, no hair on her arms or legs.  She seemed to be just a big head that needed to be protected from the sun.  She had a mother who did protect her from the sun and from people in life who would be cruel.

Maxon was born into the wrong family.  An Appalachian family, poor and abusive.  They couldn’t comprehend his intelligence, his inability to take orders or follow directions  and why he doesn’t want to spend time in a run down house where sheep live in rusted out cars and where fists and belts make pleasant conversation.

Maxon and Sunny met when they were children.  Sunny’s mother quickly saw that Maxon was different and needed guidance.  Perhaps she knew what Asperger’s was or she just saw that he needed an understanding mother figure.  She began to teach him social skills – how to react to people’s voices and body language.  What phrases to memorize so he could respond to people in an acceptable way.  Sunny helps with this, letting him know when he’s doing things right.

As they grow older, Maxon falls in love.  It is logical and complete and he waits for Sunny to come to him.  He deals in absolutes and when they are both still young he recognizes that she is his mate.  His logic also recognizes that she will do other things but eventually will return to him, simply because they are supposed to be together.

It’s mathematical, logical, quantifiable and beautiful.

Years later Maxon takes his assigned place as Sunny’s husband and Sunny decides it’s time to take on the role of Perfect Wife, Perfect Neighbor, and Perfect Mother.  A wig appears.  False eyelashes.  Glued on eyebrows.  She has assigned herself this task and applies herself to it just as Maxon applies himself to his job at NASA.  He is confused by Sunny’s role, but she continues to train him in what she needs and how he should react.  He is in love and happy, but confused at the new formulas that are introduced.

And everything changes when a rock hits a rocket and a car hits a car.

This book works because of how carefully and thoroughly Netzer created Sunny and Maxon.  Again, trying to explain the plot feels impossible because it’s both complex logic and pure love.  Emotion and logic don’t often mix well, but here it is perfect.  Netzer created something amazing and her formulas throughout the book applying human emotion and reactions into math for Maxon to access are brilliant and way above my basic grasp of math.

I wanted everything to work.  The story is told with many flashbacks and even though I knew they were married, I still worried and wanted to be sure the pieces all fit.  When things began to change in present time, I worried that it was too late to fix misunderstandings and anger.  There is so much happening in this book that it could have easily fallen apart.  With Sunny on Earth dealing with her own crisis and loss of self and Maxon in space with a crisis of mechanics and possible destruction, I had to stay up way past my bedtime on a work night to find out how it all ends.

I love when a book is so satisfying.  Netzer really nailed it.  The plot, the characters, the love, the logic, the emotions… It’s beautiful and wonderful and I have no clue how she made it work.

#51: Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart by Joyce Carol Oates

How many times will I use the word “love” in this review?

I was introduced to Joyce Carol Oates in high school by a favorite teacher.  We read some of her short stories and I was in love with how dark and fucked up they were.  Some of my friends have told me that Oates was ruined for them in high school, and this is sad because her writing is amazing.

I’ve read several of her short story collections and novels and love how her mind works and the beauty of her writing.  Even her “lighter” fiction is still dark.  (I just looked up her bibliography.  I think I’ve read 1% of her work.  I knew she had written a lot, but I didn’t know how much!)  I love how her main characters are often older girls and young women who experience and do horrible things.  She is incredibly gifted at capturing how girls this age can completely shut down and let things happen to them.  Or, when they fight back, they fight hard and things are taken care of.

When I heard that she was writing children’s fiction, I imagined that it was going to be about a  sweet little kitten who burns down a forest.  When she got into YA, I was extremely happy because I knew it she would be a favorite, especially for students who liked Laurie Halse Anderson.  These weren’t going to be fluffy books – they were going to be realistic moments of pure fucked-upped-ness.  Big Mouth & Ugly Girl did not disappoint.  Freaky Green Eyes?  Holy shit.  Small Avalanches and Other Stories had some previously published works and I hope a new generation of high school readers loved them as much as I did when I first read them.

And now to step back from this love fest to talk about Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart.

The book starts in the late 50s in a broken industrial city in upstate New York.  Blacks and whites are clearly separated, even though the children go to school together and in some places the men work together.  There is clearly a black side of town and the kids know that they should not intermingle.  This is especially true for the black boys and white girls.

The book opens with the death of Little Red — a sixteen year old white trash white teen.  His body is found in the river with his skull crushed.  Iris Courtney hesitantly approaches one of the police officers to whisper that she heard he had caused trouble with some bikers in the area.

And then we skip back in time to learn more about Iris.

Iris’ parents are violently in love.  Persia, her mother, is beautiful to the point of pain and loves the attention she gets from men.  At times this attention is what she seems to allow her to even exist.  Iris is used as an accessory is picked up and put aside as needed.  As her parents become more and more abusive to each other and ignore her more and more, she retreats into her own world.  She begins to lose her emotions and finds herself distantly watching things that happen and wonders how she should feel.  She studies everything, trying to learn how people act, respond, cope, and live.

Meanwhile, on the black side of town, Jinx Fairchild is playing basketball beautifully and is beginning to be  scouted by colleges, even though he’s only sixteen.  When he’s on the court, everyone adores him.  Off the court, he’s just another black boy.  Like Iris, he tries to disappear in good behavior.  He doesn’t want to be noticed or to be an excuse or target for any of the whites in town.  He’ll be out of here in a few years and he needs to dominate on the basketball court while hiding everywhere else.

And then Little Red brings Iris and Jinx together.

For the rest of the book, Iris and Jinx live mirrored lives, only it’s a bent and twisted mirror and the reflections don’t quite match.  Iris begins to actually feel emotions, but only when she thinks of Jinx.  She tries to bring their lives together somehow.  She sees that they are forever linked and wants to keep this bond and let it grow and strengthen.  Jinx, on the other hand, is horrified by what happened and hates that the only other person who was there was this younger white girl.  He needs to stay away from her so he can stay away from his own mind.

As they get older, their lives continue to reflect each other.  Iris becomes what she thinks a young white woman should be.  Jinx becomes what he thinks whites want a black man to be, and painfully, what his black community wants him to be.  As Iris takes on the role of successful adult, Jinx finds himself more and more trapped by a world he willingly stepped into.  When Iris escapes she continues to study emotions and practice how she should act and respond.  Persia was all fire and drink and the only way Iris can think to escape this is to have no feelings at all.  Jinx feels too much.  He knows everything has changed and he hates how his life was decided when he was still in high school.

By the end of the book they have both made decisions that will define who they are until they die.  They each do what they think they are supposed to do, not necessarily what they want.  One has to wonder if they even know what they want.  They seem to stop making decisions and simply let things happen.

Their mothers also reflect each other.  Both start out as strong women and as they grow older and doors begin to close, they find themselves trapped by their own expectations of what they should or should not be.  Respect is lost and it breaks them both.

It’s a brilliant book.  Oates’ writing is simply stunning.  Sometimes her words twirl and spin slowly like honey being drizzled into hot tea.  Descriptions and moments spill silkily across the pages.  It is especially breathtaking when she does this during the darkest moments of the book.  Her descriptions of ugliness, pain and fear follow staccato beats, pulsing into your mind.  It’s poetry in prose form and as I read I had to pause from time to time to simply enjoy the rhythm of the book and reread the art of her writing.  I have a feeling I’m going to gloriously devour more of her books over the next few months.

#49: Queen Bee of Mimosa Branch by Haywood Smith

I am not the target audience for this book, but I still liked it.

Main character:

Linwood Breedlove Scott.  Lin.  Lin Breedlove.  No longer Lin Scott.

Fifty-something years old.

Southern.  So very Southern.  Get your hair and lipstick straight because someone might see you at any moment.  Don’t you dare go out on the porch at night without checking your face in the mirror.

Divorced.  Badly divorced.  No-good husband got himself engaged to a stripper.  Thirty years of marriage and she finds out he’s spent every single penny on this girl, running Lin deep into debt.  When she tries to explain that he can’t be married to her while engaged to a stripper, she finally realizes the marriage is over.

Hot flashes.

Plot:

Heading back to Georgia.

Her family is fucking crazy.  Southern crazy, which might be the best kind of crazy because you have to be proper even if your uncle is running around the front yard mostly naked because someone is trying to steal his shoes.  That someone is his wife, but he doesn’t recognize her all the time.  Still, this is not the time to forget your manners.  You better be polite when hauling his elderly body back up the front steps and into the house.

Penniless and with almost no work history, she’s forced to move back home with her controlling eighty-something year old mother, her sometimes lucid but always angry father, and the aforementioned aunt and uncle.  She’s also got a brother, but things fell apart between the two of them years ago and it seems like they can’t breathe the same air without getting into a fight.

So here she is, back home, feeling helpless and hopeless.  Pissed off at the world.  Stuck in a room under her parents’ roof, seething and miserable.

My reactions:

There was a lot about this book that I liked.  The friendships between Lin and her friends are wonderful to see.  They are also very Southern.  If they don’t like someone, they are beautifully polite as they imply that perhaps this lady should go fuck herself.  But of course none of them even know the phrase “go fuck herself” so it comes out as poetry and sweetness.  I learned that you can get a Ph.D. in Southern Bitch.  My Yankee self approves of this and while they might see me as coarse and rude, I am in awe of how prettily they can slit a girl’s throat.

The story is Lin coming to terms with who she is now that she’s fifty-something, divorced and living at home.  She needs to redefine herself in a town where everyone already knows where she is.

There’s a nice story line about dirty politics and how the world works when good people want change to happen in a town where people are terrified to ask even the simplest of questions.

And then there are the men in Lin’s world and Smith’s writing.

Wow.

These guys suck.

I don’t know if Smith has an axe to grind or if it’s simply Lin, but the men in her world are terrible and I felt bad for how they were represented.  All of them are terrible and only after one thing, although it might not even be THAT one thing.  Lin is able to see her father and uncle in a different light through her mother and uncle, but even those moments are hazed over by how much she hates men.  Maybe not hates, but she definitely sees them all as pigs and dogs.

She has an interesting relationship with the guy next door.  She can’t decide if she hates him or loves him, but in either case, she wants to do him.  Hard.  Lots of doin’ it.

I could not figure out his character at all.  There are moments where Lin completely loses her shit on him and I couldn’t find what he had done to make her respond this way.  There is one giant scene where I was on Lin’s side, but then she went into this tirade and I was all “WTF is happening here?”  It defined the relationship from that point forward and I had no clue what happened.  It was obviously important because her girlfriends supported her and backed her up, but I do not know what happened.  Maybe I wasn’t paying attention when I was reading it, or maybe it was too Southern subtle for a damn Yankee to understand.

Still, even though this is a world I do not live in, it did make for an interesting visit.  Things ended nicely, the way you expect a Southern party to end.

#47: On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Ooof, how to review this?  I need to talk about the book before I can talk about what happens in the book.  Get comfortable because this is going to be long.

The previous knowledge I had of this book wasn’t actually about the book – it was about people’s reactions to the book.  When you pick this up, you’re also picking up the reputation of the book, and for me, it made for incredibly difficult reading.

I’ve heard many people refer to this book as their bible and that they’ve read it until it fell apart, marking up pages with their reactions or because a certain word or sentence or paragraph struck them with beauty or longing.  This concerned me because I was worried I wouldn’t get it.  I want to be in with the Kerouac lovers and their secret ways, but what if I hated it?  What if this was a club that I wanted to join, but the truth of the book went over my head?

I’ve also heard many people say they loved it when they were younger but when they went back and read it years later they didn’t like it.  This makes me suspicious because people say the same thing about Catcher in the Rye.  I love that book, but many people say you only like Holden when you’re young and when you go back and read it later you realize the book isn’t that great.  It also feels snobby.  ”Oh yes… that book.  I read it when I didn’t know a thing about life and thought it was great, but now that I’m older and mature and have had real life experiences, I realize how silly and naive it is.”

And this brings me to my next obstacle before I even opened the book: hating something because it’s popular.  I get it.  I understand that there are times when something is so THE BEST THING EVER!!! that you don’t want to have anything to do with it.  I felt this way about the movie Titanic.  Everyone was talking about how it changed their lives and I was all “Yeah, no.”  (I did catch it on HBO or something years later, and yes, it is a good movie.)  My sister feels this way about Facebook.  She is determined to be the last person on Earth who doesn’t have an account.  People feel this way about a lot of authors because it’s cool to not like the mainstream.  Looking at reviews and general conversation about On The Road, there’s a lot of “Ugh.  I have no interest in reading that book.  What’s the point?”  This made me want to like it, because fuck that logic, and it also made me ready to hate it, because fuck Kerouac.  Win win!

With these thoughts, I settled in and began to read.

And stopped.  And started again.  And stopped.  And flipped back a few pages.  And read the wikipedia entry.  And started again.  And was frustrated with it.

I have a confession: I didn’t realize this was a novel until a good way in when people kept referring to the main character as Sal.  Sal?  How is that a nickname?  When I got to the wiki page I was all “Oh.  I feel dumb.”  Of course he changed it into a novel because then he could tell the truth while not having to get the facts perfect.  I approve of this.

I immediately lost track of which character was which.  Because they were based on real people I kept trying to remember who was Allen Ginsberg and forgetting who the characters were.  I felt like I should make a chart of everyone and how they knew each other.

Of course I was able to remember Dean.  Oh, Dean.  We’ll get to you later.

The language threw me for quite awhile.  I tend to like books that have their own rhythm and slang and language and dialect.  It takes me a few pages to get into it, but then I’m good to go.  But I kept getting hung up and getting frustrated and thinking about how people carry around tattered copies with notes frantically scribbled in the margins.  Were the words that I was failing to comprehend someone else’s mantra?

And then I got angry with the entire thing.  I decided that Sal was an elitist white boy who was slumming for fun.  Sure, there were times when he ran out of food and had to suck on cough drops to keep going, but he was able to wire his aunt to get money if he needed it.  I never got the sense that he was going to get abandoned somewhere.  He always had the option to go home.  This made me even angrier when he would wax poetic about how wonderful it must have been to be a slave and only have one purpose in life.  How wonderful it must have been to feel the sun on your back while you worked.  How wonderful it must have been to see a job completed when you returned home from a day of work.  Later he meets up and falls in love with a beautiful Mexican girl.  He gets a job picking cotton and loves the work because he can rest on the warm soil and enjoy the feeling of his body as he moves through the field.  He quickly realizes he’s not cut out for the work and when his Mexican love and her boy come to help, he is heartbroken that their bodies have been designed for this kind of work and his has not.  Happily, he can pick up and leave anytime he wants because he can.  All those other folks who have to do this so they can get paid and just barely get by? How lovely it must be to only have that one purpose in life.

Are you fucking kidding me?

At this point I had a long back and forth email conversation with a friend who proudly subscribes to On The Road as a bible.  She has a tattered copy.  She loved it in high school, in college, and now.  She was really depressed that I wasn’t getting it and I felt like I was letting her down.  She pointed out that Sal is sad that his body is useless when it comes to real work and that the only thing he can do is sit and write.  He is jealous of those who can create with their bodies, either through physical work or through jazz.  The black jazz players have experienced things that Sal never can and he is in awe of their music and what it does to him.

I get it, but I was still really aggravated at the romanticized notion of what life must be like if you’re not while.  For a lot of people, it really sucked.

However, this email exchange did get me motivated to get back to the book and just read it without judgement and to put aside its reputation.  This kicked me into a different mindset and I really enjoyed Sal’s last trip.

And now we get to Dean.

Dean exhausted me, and not in a good way.  If you’ve never experienced someone in full on mania, you are very lucky.  Kerouac does an amazing job capturing the nonstop motion of Dean and while I did not enjoy these parts, I do realize that it’s incredibly good writing.  My problem was that Dean frustrated me because he is so out of control and everyone loves it, or at least accepts it.  They let him lead them, they get swept up in his mania, they make excuses for him, and they love him.  It drove me crazy.  At times I actually got physically uncomfortable because I wanted someone to walk away from him and be done or at least try to take control over the relationship or realize how he was not a good friend.  (More on that last part in a bit.)  I hated that he was the energy behind everyone because he’s so destructive.

I don’t know if this was an intentional metaphor or if it came from reality, but Dean’s relationships are just like his cars.  He gets a new one, mostly by stealing it, fills it with friends and plans, and then runs it until it is unfixable.  Several times Sal calculates how long it takes Dean to drive a long distance and it is ridiculous.  He doesn’t need sleep when he’s manic and he pushes the car as hard as he can.  As soon as it won’t run, he grabs another and away he goes.  His friends are the same way.  If someone is useful to him, he latches on.  His energy either willingly sweeps them along or overpowers their hesitance and off they go.  When something happens where a friend slows him down or somehow judges him or angers him, the friend is cast aside.  And when it comes to his women, they are sometimes as wrecked as the cars.

Again, while these passages made me twitchy, I was really impressed by the writing.  I felt out of control.  But I also felt incredibly irritated that no one else seemed to see this as a problem.  Well, not Sal or other main characters.  There were a few stops where Dean was told he couldn’t stay long and it would be a good idea if he didn’t come back.

I’m skipping Dean and his women entirely.  I know people are not going to like this because they see his relationships as a driving and important force in the book, but I can’t do it.  The way women are portrayed in this book would double this review and it’s already exhausting.

We get to Sal’s final trip and I really liked it.  Part of it was because of the emails with my friend, but a bigger part was that Sal was going solo.  His latest book had been published, he had some money in the bank and he realized he could just pick up and go.  This, of course, it was draws many people to this book – the longing to just pick up and go.

And Sal does go.  He decides he wants to visit friends and see parts of the country that he misses.

And then Dean decides he needs to be part of this and Kerouac writes my favorite passage of the entire book:

Suddenly I had a vision of Dean, a burning shuddering frightful Angel, palpitating toward me across the road, approaching like a cloud, with enormous speed, pursuing me like the Shrouded Traveler on the plain, bearing down on me.  I saw his huge face over the plains with the mad, bony purpose and the gleaming eyes; I saw his wings; I saw his old jalopy chariot with thousands of sparking flames shooting out from it; I saw the path it burned over the road; it even made its own road and went over the corn, through cities, destroying bridges, drying rivers.  It came like wrath to the west.  I knew Dean had gone mad again.

My stomach sank at this.  I wanted Sal to be his own man.  I also paused because, holy shit, that is fantastic writing.

And this brings me to my final frustration and the end of this review: Sal’s realization of Dean.  (Spoiler alert!)  Dean, Sal and Stan head to Mexico and full on debauchery.  They want to squeeze every drop out of life in this moment.  They breathe in freedom.  I understand again why people revere this book.

And then Sal gets sick.

He becomes a useless car and Dean must abandon him.

In this moment, Sal realizes who Dean is and that while people want this madness, at some point it will burn.  You can’t expect him to be faithful to his friends.  Everyone in his life shrugs his madness off and excuses him as just being Dean.  The few people who do cut him loose still make excuses for  him, knowing he’ll never change and why would you want him to?

I was really looking forward to this moment.  The entire book was a love letter to Dean, and now that Sal realizes that he too can be set aside, there was going to be a flowing chapter about realization and despair and longing and abandonment.

One sentence.

Forty-five words.

And in the middle of this, he forgives him.  He at least knows Dean’s life is a mess and understands that Dean had to leave him behind in order to get back to it.  But still…  This entire madness leads up to forty-five words.

But this isn’t my story.  This isn’t me wanting to express my anger and irritation at Dean.  This is Sal’s story and his Dean and his understanding of who the man is.

I understand why this book is worshiped.  I understand why people clutch it to their hearts and want to be on the road.  I understand how and why people love it so much.

I didn’t, but I’m OK with that.  It wasn’t my language and it wasn’t my journey.

For those of you who have had to replace your copy because the spine finally gave up and pages fell out, I get it.

#43: The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

I managed to avoid all spoilers about this book.  I refused to read any interviews, book reviews, or any other posts about what people thought.  I didn’t look at any ratings, other than to note that it’s averaging 3.4 out of 5 on Goodreads.

The main reason (maybe the only reason) I read this was because J.K. Rowling wrote it.  Unless it showed up on a ton of OMFG YOU GUYS HAVE TO READ THIS BOOK!!! lists, it wouldn’t have appeared on my radar.  I don’t know how to categorize this type of book.  I guess it’s realistic fiction, and maybe I don’t read much of that.  Looking at this year’s CBR, the only two fiction books like this I see are The English Major by Jim Harrison and  Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler.  Everything else has a twinge of faerie or fantasy or alternate reality, or historical fiction with the author’s own bias.   But this book was written by Rowling, so here we are.

One way a casual vacancy happens is when a current council member dies. The seat must be filled by special election, unless the remaining council members are able to appoint someone through majority.  Our story starts with Barry Fairbrother dying from an aneurysm and creating a casual vacancy.

All the joys of small town politics pour over the pages, heavily laced with small town gossip.  It quickly becomes apparent that there’s going to be a fight and an election will have to be held.  But that’s not what this book is about.

And it’s delightful when you realize this.

Like in many small towns, there is a group of politicians that feel they are always in the right.  They understand what the town needs, where it came from and where it must go.  They often want to preserve the integrity of the town and you get the sense that they are worried about…well… other people.  Outsiders.  They absolutely belong to the NIMBYs.  Things need to be done, of course, but it’s important to take care of those who make a difference.  Why use resources on something that won’t give back?  They will gladly spend money to plant flowers in the middle of town, but to put up a bus stop shelter in a lower income area?  Why, that would be wasteful!  It would be vandalized within a week, so why waste time and money?  Besides, they and their families have lived in this town for generations and there’s never been a bus stop shelter before, so why do these interlopers deserve one?

These people are happy with their power and surround themselves with like-minded thinkers and admirers.  The know how to work the system and do everything they can to make sure people know that they are the important ones in town.  They throw perfect parties.  They intimidate the hell out of other people, and they know it.  And they get a thrill every time it happens.

On the other hand, you have people who also care about the town, but they care about all parts of it.  They recognize that many people don’t fit in to this upper tier.  Perhaps they came out of a lower socioeconomic status themselves.  They believe in investing in people and that money spent on services will help everyone.  Why plant flowers when you can offer scholarships for the poor kids?    Why spend money on people who can spend it on themselves?  Perhaps they are idealistic, but with the right personality, they can fight as hard as the other group.

Add some bad blood to the town’s history, and welcome to Pagford.

Again, you might think that this is a book about politics and power and elections, but it’s really not.  It is about power, and lack of power, but it’s also about secrets and the lives we live behind closed doors.  All it takes is for one little tremor to knock things over.  Barry Fairbrother’s death is far more than a little tremor.

Barry  is solidly in the second group and believes that you give back to where you came from and help up the next generation.  If you found success, it is your responsibility to reach back and teach someone else how to succeed.  When everyone takes a step forward, everyone wins.

The problem is the people who need to take a step forward aren’t very pretty.  Or educated.  Or polite.  They don’t speak properly.  They don’t have the right accents or clothes.  They’re poor.  And frankly, many in town feel that they should be left where they are, or, even better, handed over to the adjoining town.

This is what the election circles around.  Which camp will win and will social services be cut or will the methadone clinic stay open.

But, again, that’s not really what’s going on.

The true story is who people really are and what happens when secrets come out.

Each chapter is told by a different community member, so we get to see all different sides of the town.  From the powerful politicians to the powerless teenagers, everyone is either hiding something or bursting to tell their story.

No one is safe and when messages from The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother start appearing on the council’s webpage, things get ugly.  Publicly ugly.  Gossip is gleefully passed, especially among the upper echelon.  Of course this changes when they realize they are also targets.

The election gets closer and closer, but we don’t see campaigning or back room deals or speeches.  Instead we see the very deepest secrets of town members and what happens when truth is forced out.  Sometimes it happens over a kitchen table and sometimes it happens in public, but truths are revealed and nothing can be the same.

It took me a while to get into this book because town politics both bore and frustrate me.  With the Presidential election happening, I’m about ready to crack.  I didn’t want to get involved with a fictional election, but then I realized what this book was really about.  Once stories started being told, I was in.  I especially enjoyed seeing the same events from different points of view, and I liked that some characters didn’t get a voice at all.  I think Rowling very pointedly did not write from Barry’s widow’s point of view.  Although the story starts with her husband’s death and events happen around her and because of her, this is not her story.  Hers is a tale of mourning, of reconstructing, of building a life for four children and no husband.  We know that tale.  That’s not the one Rowling wanted to write about.

Another thing I liked about the multi-POVs were the different voices.  We have sullen teenagers, exhausted blue collar workers, business owners, social workers, and more. They each have a different view of Pagford and their role in it and I enjoyed seeing the town through the eyes of so many people.

There are times when I think authors use death simply as a plot device to get to the next thing.  Two characters need to reconcile or split up forever, so someone dies.  I hate it.  It’s a cheap trick.  Here however, Rowling uses death to prove a point.  Things do change when people die, but not always in the way you think.  Of course Barry’s widow will be forever changed, but what happens to the people who never even knew him?  How do we view death and why is one person’s passing more important than another’s?  Why is it OK to make some people a hero after they die while others are distasteful and their passing a dirty inevitability?

Truth and death.  Secrets and gossip.  Love, friendship, sex, anger.

Reality is all over these pages and I love how Rowling used a simple political moment to capture the layers of this imaginary town.

#34: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

This is another book I absolutely raced through and felt breathless when I was done because it is that good.  I have no clue why it’s taken me so long to write this review.

It’s post 9/11 and Homeland Security is the norm.  17 year old Marcus lives in San Francisco and spends his time in the world of computers and figuring out how to outsmart the near constant surveillance of his school and city.  His real life friends and online crew bristle against the pressure being put on them on both sides of the computer, but Marcus has no clue what reality is until he’s temporarily removed from it.

While skipping school to search for the next clue for an intense online game, the Bay Bridge is blown up and Marcus and his friends are taken in for questioning.  It doesn’t matter that he knows his rights; he hasn’t been arrested, and he’s not talking to the police.  Homeland Security has him and all they want him to do is prove that he’s not guilty.  After being tortured and humiliated he finds himself willing to say or do anything they want if it means they will let him go.  At the mercy of their sadistic methods, he signs for his life and is dumped on the sidewalk, “free”.  Too bad one friend is still missing.

Terrified and angry, he can’t tell his parents what happened.  Even if he did, he’s not sure if they’d believe him.  His dad is in full Rah-Rah-America mode, celebrating the surveillance and security measures that are now in place.  Getting pulled over for questioning makes him proud to be an American and do his civic duty, and he’s angry at the thought that Marcus would dare speak out against what’s best for the country, their city, and their home.

As anger grows bigger than fear, Marcus decides to fight back.  No one can speak the truth and no one really knows what the truth is.  Using his knowledge of computers and pulling from his friends, he creates an online network that appears to be safe.  They begin frantically sharing data and stories and trying to jam Homeland’s systems.  Some of it is laughingly easy to disable and Marcus is saddened by the impotence of what was created to make people feel safe.  Was it even put in place to work or do people just want to see cameras on the streets?

Marcus knows he doesn’t have much time.  As he’s pushed closer to having to go public and needing more support, he knows he’s being watched and can be grabbed at any moment.  How much information can he get out before he disappears into a trailer again?

This book was exciting, depressing, hopeful, and wonderful.  On a happy coincidence, I’d recently read Finding George Orwell in Burma [my review is here] and then 1984 [my review is here] and this made an incredible third partner.  Doctorow read 1984 for the first time when he was twelve and in the bibliography he explains how it affected  him.  A lot of what is happening with Homeland Security is foreshadowed by Orwell and it’s terrifying to know that this is reality.  It’s easy to ignore it.  It’s easy to agree with Marcus’ dad and feel that if you’re not doing anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about.  Only “those people” get caught, so why is this my problem?

The parts that take place in Marcus’ school are especially suffocating and frustrating.  High school can suck without any help, but what happens when your classmates are rewarded for reporting terrorist-like conversations and your favorite teacher suddenly can’t be found after facilitating a powerful and educational debate on the Bill of Rights?  What do you do when motion detecting sensors are placed in the hallways and classes are recorded to keep kids safe?  How do you fight back when every word you chose can be used against you?  It’s a double lock of having no power as a minor and having no power as a public high school student.  It’s enough to kick the reader into an anxiety attack because all of this can happen and it is happening.  Oh, and on top of all of this?  He’s got his first girlfriend and is dizzy with hormones and bliss.

Although the paranoia can feel overwhelming, this book is hopeful and there are fantastic references at the end.  I hope it encourages readers of all ages (this is tagged as YA) to learn more about how computers are being used, and how they can use computers.

The second book, Homeland, will be published in 2013.  I’m really looking forward to seeing what comes next.