sensible shoes: a liberal librarian's blog

Book Review: Away by Amy Bloom

nobody@vox.com(sensible shoes) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:11:23 -0400

Lillian survives a Russian pogrom that kills her parents, husband and presumably her child. She flees to America

where she finds work as a seamstress for a Yiddish theater. Then one day a cousin arrives at her door and tells her that her daughter may still be alive, secreted away to Siberia by a neighbor. Lillian decides she must travel to Siberia to find her. This sounds impossibly grim, and I haven't begun to describe every hardship that Lillian endure. In fact, the book is oddly upbeat, leavened with a survivor's optimism, initiative and sense of humor.

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Book Review: Three Junes by Julia Glass

nobody@vox.com(sensible shoes) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:09:52 -0400

I spent a couple of years thinking this book was about three women named June! In fact, it's about three distinct summers in the lives of a Scottish family and the people they love (or don't). The first section is about the family patriarch, Paul McLeod, who is vacationing in Greece upon the death of his wife, and reflecting on his imperfect marriage. The second section, the emotional heart of the book, concerns Paul's son Fenno, a reserved, even stodgy

Three Junes

gay man who has emigrated to New York where he befriends a music critic dying of AIDS. The final section is about Fern (we also meet her in part one) who is coping with the ambiguous death of her husband and the discovery that she is pregnant with her new lover's child.

Glass has created likeable, flawed, sometimes infuriating characters. I especially enjoyed her depiction of the McLeod family dynamics. I seem to read about a lot of women, and it was interesting reading about brothers.

Oh, I didn't actually read this book; I listened to the unabridged audiobook narrated by John Keating. I'm not usually fussy about narrators, but Keating was hard to listen to. His American accents were just plain bad. He made all the American men sound like whiny queens. OK, a lot of the American characters are gay, but I hope we all know that not all gay men sound like whiny queens! Also, he seemed to slow down when "talking American," as if he needed all his concentration to pull it off. But how many New Yorkers are agonizingly slow talkers? I didn't much care for the third section of the book, but I wonder how much was because this section was full of Americans with their slow whiny accents.

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Book Review: While They Slept by Kathryn Harrison

nobody@vox.com(sensible shoes) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:54:49 -0400

Harrison's analysis of a boy's murder of his abusive parents and innocent younger sister got a huge write-up in the

While They Slept: An Inquiry into the Murder of a Family

Sunday NYT Book Review, and all I can say is Harrison must have a hell of a publicist. The book held my attention, and I read it quickly thanks to being temporarily couch-bound with a physical ailment, but it felt about a quarter-inch deep to me. Maybe I expected something different, because I do enjoy the occasional true-crime book with an emphasis on forensics and law. This one is much more psychological in its focus, but it's pop psychology at best - speculative and not very interesting, in my estimation. Harrison was herself a victim of abuse, which was the subject of The Kiss. That work got stellar reviews from trustworthy sources, but judging from this work, Harrison is in a mode of shaping her pain into some kind of psychoanalytical narrative, and I am just not interested in that.

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Book Review: When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

nobody@vox.com(sensible shoes) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:27:54 -0400

I love David. His humor is biting and dark but not mean or unfair, usually. Sometimes his self-deprecation goes over

When You Are Engulfed in Flames

the top, as if he's begging to be reassured, but I fall for it; I think it's cute. This latest collection is close in tone to the last one, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments mixed in with some wistful, bittersweet ones. Everyone's talking about the essay in which he quits smoking, but for sheer silliness, I like the one where he learns misunderstands a French nurses's directions and ends up inappropriately dressed.

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Book Review: His Illegal Self by Peter Carey

nobody@vox.com(sensible shoes) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:26:33 -0400

This is my first stab at one of Carey's novels. Maybe I started with the wrong one. The premise is intriguing - a

His Illegal Self

Weather Underground-type radical kidnaps a young boy from his wealthy grandmother and spirits him away to the Australian bush. How could this possibly be dull? It probably isn't dull at all, perhaps I'm dull. But I couldn't connect with this book.

What is the aesthetic theory behind the current practice of omitting quotation marks in written dialog? I know what the effect is. It usually distances me from the characters and focuses my attention on the craftsman behind the words. The quotation marks signal my brain that people are talking, and it's time to jump in and play with my imaginary friends. It may be that writers of modern literary fiction do not want readers to make imaginary friends with their characters. I wonder why.

Oddly, the lack of quotation marks in The Road bothered me not at all.

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Book Review: Arthur and George by Julian Barnes

nobody@vox.com(sensible shoes) — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:22:14 -0400

Arthur and George

The blurb on the back of my copy calls this “a cracking good yarn,” and indeed it is. Shortlisted for the Booker, this novel is about George Edalji, a country lawyer accused of a series of terrible crimes. Justice is in short supply in the rural England of the early 1900s, but George gains an influential friend when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle takes up his case. The plot is intriguing – and it’s based on a true story – but it’s the two protagonists that carry the day. Each is finely drawn, and deeply sympathetic despite their many human flaws.

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Book Review: Marley & Me by John Grogan

nobody@vox.com(sensible shoes) — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:18:34 -0400

Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog

This is a good airplane book: short, slight, diverting. The subtitle “Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog” is overstating the case; Marley, a slobbery, tail-wagging, galumphing yellow lab, is really just a run-of-the-mill bad boy. If you like dogs, you’ll be amused, but really Grogan has nothing original to say about dogs, life or love.

ETA: On reflection, I think I was too easy on this book, and I think the Grograns were lousy dog owners.

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Book Review: Lisey's Story by Stephen King

nobody@vox.com(sensible shoes) — Sat, 03 May 2008 08:09:58 -0400

I read and loved most of Stephen King's early novels and then got sidetracked. This one is quintessential King, encompassing all that I enjoy about his books and also all that I find annoying.

Lisey's Story: A Novel

Lisey is the widow of a renowned novelist, Scott Landon, who in trying to clean out her husband's studio dredges up suppressed memories of his stories of extreme child abuse and his experience in a parallel universe. The other world is a metaphor for the artistic imagination and also for the place, both safe and dangerous, that abused kids construct for themselves internally. The episodes that take in that other world are the most vivid and interesting in the book.

The story is extremely inventive and suspenseful (oh, I forgot, Lisey is being stalked by a homicidal maniac), and the characters are interesting. What still and I suppose forever turns me off about King's writing is the stilted dialog and the cutesy, look-at-me prose in general. Here, the effect is magnified by King's use of the invented slang used by Scott and Lisey. It got on my smucking nerves.

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Book Review: Black Girl/White Girl by Joyce Carol Oates

nobody@vox.com(sensible shoes) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:57:44 -0400

Genna Meade is the well-meaning daughter of well-to-do, radical hippie parents. Her college roommate Minette, the daughter of an African American minister, is reserved, prickly, eccentric and unpopular. Genna is almost desperate to win Minette's friendship, but a series of racist incidents in their dorm complicates their relationship and sets the stage

Black Girl/White Girl: A Novel (P.S.)

for a tragedy.

As always, Oates presents finely drawn characters and an engrossing story. My only criticism is that Genna seems too naive, politically and socially, considering her home environment. The college, too, seemed quaint and genteel, and I doubt even a Main Line women's college was genteel in the 1970s.

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Book Review: Girls Like Us by Sheila Weller

nobody@vox.com(sensible shoes) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:37:36 -0400

The subtitle is Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation, so you can guess why I

Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation

bought it. I cheated and only read the Joni chapters so far. The author managed to talk to a lot of people, and uncovered stories that as far as I can tell have never been told before. It's certainly interesting stuff, and for the most part the author is fair. But the overwhelming emphasis is on Joni's romantic relationships, and that was disappointing. The woman is an incredibly ambitious artist. I would have liked to read more about her artistic vision and her struggles as a woman in the music business.

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