from NYT magazine: “Stephen King’s Family Business”

Posted on October 3, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to my mom for sharing this fun article by Susan Dominus, “Stephen King’s Family Business“, in which she sits down with the family – Stephen, Tabitha, their three children Naomi, Joe and Owen, and Owen’s wife Kelly. This crowd of six boasts five novelists, a hefty feat: Dominus calls them “as close to a first family of letters as America is likely to have,” and I think she makes a fair case.

It’s a pleasure to step inside the lives of Stephen King and his family. I am only a beginner-fan, having read, oh, 7 or so of his many many books; but I am a fan, and even at my beginner level, was aware that the King family talent extends beyond Stephen himself. The people portrayed in this article are down-to-earth and likeable, and come across as both a tight-knit family and as distinct individuals at the same time.

Go check it out. I, for one, was already watching my local library for NOS4A2 on audio, but have now requested Heart-Shaped Box as well. Who knows what you’ll find?

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Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler (audio)

Posted on October 2, 2013 by pagesofjulia

zThis is a fictionalization of the life of Zelda Fitzgerald, wife to F. Scott Fitzgerald. The main events of their lives are fairly well-known: married in 1920, Fitzgerald was a professional writer who never saw the success in his own lifetime that his friend Hemingway did; the couple lived back-and-forth in France and the US; Zelda was “the first flapper” according to Scott; they were famously wild partiers, alcoholics, and rather nut jobs; Zelda was eventually institutionalized, and died in a mental hospital. They had one daughter. These main events are followed in the novel, which is told first-person by Zelda herself.

It started well. I really did love Zelda’s voice – as written by Fowler, and as read by Jenna Lamia. She’s spunky and irreverent, and likeable. She reminded me of Scarlett O’Hara from the very beginning, which is both a compliment and a caution: is she entirely original? I enjoyed what Fowler created in her fictionalized Zelda Fitzgerald, but I worried that she was overly informed by hindsight. Scott talks like he writes; Zelda speaks as if aware of her audience, aware of the legacy she’ll leave behind – which she wouldn’t have been, regardless of her faith in her husband, because his fame as we know it today came largely after both their deaths.

Ernest Hemingway likewise speaks in a caricatured version of one of his own heroes. This is a common technique when writing Hemingway into fiction: I recognize it from Midnight in Paris. I’m comfortable with people criticizing, even despising Hemingway; he’s my hero, but I certainly see his flaws. But I wish they wouldn’t make him into a cartoon, because that, I think, he wasn’t. He could be ridiculous, and he definitely overdid the machismo, but he was a complex human being, troubled, tortured, insecure, boastful and antagonistic; wouldn’t it be more fun, and more satisfying for a novelist, to write him as a full person than as a cartoon version of his own fiction? Ah well.

Expand this concept to apply to Scott Fitzgerald, too. I’m less qualified to speak about his life, having read much less about him than I have about Hemingway. However, I feel confident that neither Scott nor Zelda could have been as black-and-white as Fowler’s fictional characters are here. Scott Fitzgerald is a monster in this novel! Despicable, horrendous, a nightmare. I suspect that in life, he was, like Hemingway, capable of monstrosities, but also a full human being, with likeable bits alongside the flaws. Such a well-loved and artistically accomplished alcoholic would seem to have to be conflicted, ambiguous, and – importantly – multi-facted. Fowler’s characters lack facets. Similarly, though I have read still less about Zelda, my general understanding of her was that her dissipated party-girl period lasted well out of her early 20’s. The fictional Zelda we meet here becomes rather saintly after giving birth to her daughter. She is the squeaky-clean foil to Scott’s ogre; and I suspect that the one is as realistic as the other.

In contrast to this novel, I am simultaneously reading the yet-to-be-published The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking by Olivia Laing. Z suffers by comparison; Laing’s (nonfiction) work is very well researched, beautifully written (although I’ll try not to turn this into a review of her book!), and, to my point here, respects the dueling forces for good and evil in her subjects, including F. Scott Fitzgerald. (And Hemingway.) Possibly I would have appreciated Z more if it were presented not as historical fiction but as alternate history, since I am increasingly concerned that it’s not true to the history of the Fitzgeralds as we know it. Even then, however, fully developed characters should have complexity rather than read as saints and devils, so my concern remains.

The net effect of having read this book in the end is that I feel the need to go read up on Zelda a little more thoroughly; I’ll be looking for a biography next. She always struck me peripherally as a colorful, conflicted character: just the kind I like, that is. I’m always most interested in those individuals who offer both sympathetic and distasteful qualities in the same package; they’re so engrossing that way. One of Fowler’s major flaws, then, would be in having omitted my favorite character feature: ambiguity.

I began by enjoying this book, and Zelda’s voice and personality. Much of the middle troubled me, as the black-and-whiteness of the characters emerged. Scott was such a terrible husband that I was just frustrated and angry with him; and while these can be useful emotions to evoke in your reader, Fowler didn’t take me anywhere interesting or cathartic or instructive with them. Zelda briefly considers leaving Scott (because she is, after all, a saint and a martyr) and then realizes she can’t afford to support herself as a single woman, so she decides to stay. Very cut and dried, you see. Towards the end, when the couple is separated by Zelda’s incarceration in various mental institutions, I liked it a little better again; maybe removing the hateful Scott cheered me. But then it was disappointing to end with Scott’s death – Zelda lived another 8 years! but those years are handled only in an epilogue. Why couldn’t she have continued to speak in her own voice until she died? Perhaps this novel should have been called Z: A Novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald told through the eyes of Zelda. Hmph.

In closing, clearly, my concerns were many. I credit Fowler for entertaining me (at least early and late) with a likeable Zelda in a spunky Southern drawl, well read by narrator Lamia. But I was dissatisfied with many aspects of the art of the novel as executed here. Subjects like the Fitzgeralds offered so much opportunity for nuance, and catharsis, and analysis, that was not undertaken. Complex characters were flattened into single dimensions. And my limited knowledge of their lives makes me hesitant, but I worry about the historical accuracy, and I wish more information were given to indicate where the fiction begins. Several letters from Zelda to Scott and other friends are quoted; are these real letters? I don’t know; and I’d like to know. Credit Fowler with inspiring some further reading; but this experience in itself was less than satisfying. I can’t recommend that you spend your time on this book. There are lots of books written about the Fitzgeralds; start elsewhere. Me, I’m considering Tennessee Williams’s play, Clothes for a Summer Hotel.

Rating: 4 fingers.

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a few short pieces

Posted on October 1, 2013 by pagesofjulia
“A Shirt Full of Bees” by Bill McKibben

My father sent me a copy of this essay, but it’s not shareable under copyright restrictions; and I couldn’t find a publicly accessible version I was happy with. I’m sorry. If you can track down this issue of Utne Reader, through your local library for example, you can read the article yourself.

How strange the way things come together. I’ve just recently been enjoying Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; and my favorite parts of that book are her in-depth, lengthy examinations of parts of nature. One of those subjects she gets good and lost in is newts. And here is Bill McKibben, opening “A Shirt Full of Bees” with an episode starring Terry Tempest Williams (When Women Were Birds; I also loved her Pieces of White Shell) and a newt. Williams crouched on her haunches for half an hour examining the newt, “lost in the world of the newt” in McKibben’s words, and he found himself bored, restless, ready to keep walking, to reach the summit – something we do constantly, of course. And then, on another day, he steps on a yellow jacket nest, and as he erupts in hives and dashes down-mountain for medical aid – “My dog was the best dog I’ve ever had, but I doubted she was up to surgery” – McKibben sees more clearly the beauty around him. That’s the larger point in this short essay: we are always pushing for the summit, and too busy to examine the newts on our path. As I observed in Oil and Honey (the only one of his books I’ve read; but my father is rather an expert), McKibben is a gifted writer. He pulls together two anecdotes – his walk in the the woods with Williams and the newt; his walk in the woods with his dog and the yellow jackets – in a lovely, poignant, meaningful, beautifully written and well-structured essay of three pages. This is the goods, right here.

“Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist” by Paul Kingsnorth

Pops reminds us that Kingsnorth was the author of “Dark Ecology” that I discussed back in January. This latest is available here.

Kingsnorth opens charmingly with recollections from his youth, ages 12, 19, and 22, in natural settings. These are the experiences that taught him to love “the other-than-human world.” He became an “environmentalist,” that radical thing. And now he laments what “environmentalism” has been bastardized into: a quest for zero-carbon emissions, for alternative energy sources, for sustainability – all good things, doubtless, except that “sustainability,” he argues, is code for finding a different way to do the same things we do now. In other words, we need to release less carbon, so we need to find another energy source so that I can still have my lights and electricity and drive my car and buy my cheaply made clothing at the mall. He points out that we seek a way to sustain our lifestyle – not to sustain the earth, which is sort of what we claim to be seeking. And of course there is the central, painful irony, that “the farmers are being edged out by south-country refugees like me, trying to escape but bringing with us the things we flee from.” He even addresses the touchy subject of “industrial wind power stations (which are usually referred to, in a nice Orwellian touch, as wind ‘farms’)” which McKibben has also struggled with. Are “wind farms” environmentalist?? There is an argument.

Kingsnorth is clever in his criticisms: “these days I tend to consider the entire bird with a kind of frustrated detachment” (that is, the oft-cited bird that has a left wing and a right wing), with which I certainly sympathize; “the colonization of the greens by the reds” characterizes all those myriad left-wingers (“disillusioned socialists, Trots, Marxists, and a ragbag of fellow travelers who could no longer believe in communism or the Labour Party or even George Galloway…”) who’ve taken over his movement. But don’t let his wittiness distract you from the fact that he is right. Again ironically, the problem seems to lie in the success of the “green movement”: save-the-planet is now a perfectly respectable, mainstream concept that you can now find on 3 out of 4 cereal boxes, and that bringing of Kingsnorth’s environmentalism into centrist politics has weakened it, watered it down, naturally, as centrism does.

Like the earlier Kingsnorth piece I read, this one gives quite a dark view in examining “environmentalism.” But like that other pessimistic-or-realistic writer, Derrick Jensen, I see his points, and I’m rather more inclined to follow him than I am to follow McKibben’s optimism.

“A Tough Flower Girl” by Phillip Connors

I am not yet done following Phil Connors. This is not a new piece, but one I’ve had to reread now that I am an affirmed follower of Norman Maclean. Connors’ article is available here.

Another fine piece of writing: Connors explores what we find so moving, timeless, and important in Maclean, but he also creates a piece of art in its own right. This short article is an excellent introduction to Maclean, in his best-known A River Runs Through It (and the two accompanying stories), in Young Men and Fire (better-loved, I think, by both Connors and myself), and in The Norman Maclean Reader (imperative for those of us left wanting more by the first two). It is an incisive piece of literary criticism and appreciation; but it also includes a personal story, as Connors opens by pointing out his biographical similarities to the great Maclean. If it is indeed “uncool to admit an enthusiasm based in part on biography”, call me uncool. Not that I share biographical parallels with my literary idols (ha), but I certainly consider their biographies integral to my appreciation. Funnily, I have just finished searching for a good Maclean biography, and am disappointed by the lack. Somebody please write this book. Phil?

Read this article because it says true things about an amazing writer, but also because it is in itself a sparkling, crystalline beauty.

“Smoke” by Phillip Connors

A new piece from Connors, available here.

I am reminded of how much I love Connors’ voice, that he isn’t afraid to have one, first of all, and that he is both intellectual and casual in it. He acknowledges that “self-quotation is a dishonorable habit, but it sounds a little smug to say I saw it coming and leave it at that,” and so he self-quotes from Fire Season, that book I loved so much, in which he predicts that “the big one” is coming. “If you live on a peak in fire-prone country, as I do every summer in the Black Range of New Mexico’s Gila National Forest, the big one will eventually come for you.” This very short piece is the story of that fire beginning, and beginning to be fought, and its victory: it burned over two hundred square miles, just this past summer of 2013. There is always a conflict in considering these events. Fire is nature, a natural part of a forest’s life cycle, healthy. But we the human influence have thrown that cycle off until the fires we finally earn and reap are less healthy for the world we’ve come to love, and that’s part of the tragedy that Connors has to share. He ends this piece, appropriately, on a conflicted, hopeful, tragic note. At least he has those memories.

I’m looking forward to the next book that he is reportedly working on now.

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Oil and Honey by Bill McKibben

Posted on September 30, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Highly literate and expert musings on climate change, from home to the global theatre.

oil
Oil and Honey centers partly on climate change, a subject on which Bill McKibben (The End of Nature; Eaarth; founder of 350.org) is expert; but it is also personal in nature, a dualism reflected by the title. McKibben is concerned simultaneously with oil–representing fossil fuel industry practices and climate change–and honey. Having entered into a land-share agreement with his friend, beekeeper Kirk Webster, McKibben finds his home and Webster’s apiaries exerting a gravitational pull just as his political activism draws him far and wide. These two sides of his life–personal and political, local and global, analog and digital–are the focus of this combination memoir and call to action.

The subtitle refers to his journey from writer to activist, by way of 350.org and the Keystone Pipeline–a trip he did not intend but found obligatory. Activist though he may be, McKibben remains a fine writer, evocative, articulate, clever and humble in examining his mistakes. In piercing prose, McKibben unites his longstanding authority on climate change with his novice stature in the world of beekeeping. He muses on the small-scale and private implications of our changing world, which incline him to work with his family and Kirk’s bees in his beloved local community in Vermont; and likewise on the necessity for global action to combat the continuing quest for fossil fuels. Oil and Honey travels the world but always cycles back, like the seasons, to McKibben’s Vermont home, likening global systems to beehives in a manner both profound and lyrical–and important.

This review originally ran in the – issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 8 degrees.

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Weeds: A Farm Daughter’s Lament by Evelyn Funda

Posted on September 26, 2013 by pagesofjulia

A memoir about the loss of the family farm, and everything it means to the child of immigrant farmers–and to us all.
weeds
Evelyn Funda’s mother escaped Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in a wine barrel, eventually landing in the United States. Her father was the son of Czech immigrants, early homesteaders who sought to make farmland of the Idaho desert. The family farm never felt like it would be Evelyn’s: this “farm daughter,” unwelcome among the tractors and irrigation pipes, would leave to become a college professor. Her musing memoir opens in the fall of 2001 with a triple tragedy: the sale of the family farm; her father’s cancer diagnosis; and her mother’s death, closely followed by her father’s.

Weeds is an elegy, an academic’s personal tale of research and disillusionment, and Evelyn’s own story–with hints of a botanist’s or social historian’s study. (The chapters are named for weeds, beginning with dodder, which she long misheard as “daughter,” when her father cursed the unwelcome growth.) The pursuit of her mother’s joyful youth in a series of cities and countries, of the truth of her grandfather’s apocryphal tales, of her parents’ romance and of the history of her own hometown takes Evelyn to dusty library stacks and to small Czech villages, where she meets dozens of cousins and examines old bones.

Meditative and lyrical, Weeds smoothly braids weeds with family. Funda is sometimes frustrated along the way, but finally satisfied with the personal history she builds for herself–and the conclusion that, even in exile, one can find a sense of place and of belonging.

This review originally ran in the September 6, 2013 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 7 kolaches.

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The Last Winter of Dani Lancing by P.D. Viner

Posted on September 25, 2013 by pagesofjulia

lancingThe Last Winter of Dani Lancing involves three individuals dealing with loss: Jim and Patty are the parents, now separated, of the titular Dani, who disappeared during her first year of college and later turned up dead; Tom was her high school sweetheart. Each has dealt differently with Dani’s death: Jim withdraws into himself, immersed in memory, and lives with her ghost for a full time companion. Patty, formerly an investigative journalist, is obsessed with the case in all its gruesome details, and still seeks revenge on the unknown killer(s). Tom became a police detective hoping to solve crimes like the one that took Dani. When the book opens, over 20 years have passed, and events have broken open the coping mechanisms of all three living characters. They are brought back into contact, and the case comes back to life.

As a thriller, Dani Lancing hums and thrums for a good 70% of the book, with questions buzzing about who really felt and did what while Dani was alive. Told in flashbacks, memories, and jumps in time, the reader learns about her life and final months in bits and pieces and out of chronological order. Dani’s relationships with Jim, Patty, and Tom are likewise doled out in false starts, and ambiguities abound. This is a strong structure.

And then at about page 270, things fall apart. There arises a strong resemblance to Go Ask Alice. Unlikely coincidences and uncharacteristic corruptions appear; repeated confessions to the same crime shift blame so many times and so quickly that the reader’s head spins. Little old ladies overpower strong young men, and criminal kingpins do cops favors out of the goodness of their hearts. The implausible is paramount, and this in a world I had bought into. Before that point, I believed in Jim, Patty, and Tom; I believed in Dani; they felt real. But the absurd and the far-fetched abruptly become the standard, and I reeled in disgust.

I’m assuming Viner wanted to give us a *big reveal* there at the end, a big surprise; but I felt that he upended the world he’d built and drawn me into. I think he confused surprise with disjointedness. You can disturb and terrify your reader, and demolish everything she thought she knew, without resetting the rules of the world of your own creation; just look at Koren Zailckas. In other words, Viner had already established this as a world of realism, with fully developed characters, and to then reestablish it as fantasy did not work for me

This was a terribly disappointing experience for me, and I’m sorry I wasted my reading time on it. Such a promising beginning and middle, too; such a building of suspense, that I had to finish it out. Turns out that the finish wasn’t worthy of the first 250+ pages, though. On to the next one.

Rating: 3 fixed stares.

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Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, part the second

Posted on September 18, 2013 by pagesofjulia

pilgrimattinkercreekI’m afraid I am continuing with my mixed feelings here, as in my first review. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, for me, comes in sections, or in three parts. As I wrote, the early bits were difficult for me, a little too metaphysical and spiritual. And then, remember how I said that chapter 7 blew me away? Well, chapter 8 is even better.

Chapter 8 is entitled “Intricacy,” and addresses the amazing, extraordinary intricacy, complexity, tiny detail and huge scale and huge scale of tininess in the natural world. Dillard relates statistics that are mind-boggling: “the average size of all living animals, including man, is almost that of a housefly.” “There are… two hundred twenty-eight separate and distinct muscles in the head of an ordinary caterpillar.” “Six million leaves on a big elm.” She writes about the Henle’s loop in the human kidney, the lower lip of the dragonfly nymph. Tiny, infinitely complex things that make our world so strange. She uses this phenomenon to explore the idea of a creator – and here Dillard and I will disagree a little, but that’s okay. “Look… at practically anything… and see that not only did the creator create everything, but that he is apt to create anything. He’ll stop at nothing.” She takes the strange and prolific nature of our world to be proof of a creator – “no claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe” – and I don’t. It’s all right, though; this book is plenty safe for atheists; she’s not preaching. She’s just exploring. And I love the science, all that tiny tiny trivia, the explanations of the human kidney and the aquatic horsehair worm.

Next is chapter 9, “Flood,” and here I am going chapter by chapter – that’s how good this book is. “Flood” addresses Hurricane Agnes, and hurricanes are something we’re increasingly familiar with, not only in Houston but in New York City these days as well. (Which leads me to point out that Dillard is blissfully unaware of climate change and ecological collapse; happy her in 1974.) There is more of what I love in Dillard: detail, observation, science, and a glorious, joyful celebration of the world.

And then it falls off again, descending (or ascending, depending on your feelings) into the spiritual once again. My level of detail falls off here, too, because what can I say? I paid less attention when she zoomed back out into the mistiness. The last few pages of this book were an effort, and I didn’t retain anything I can tell you about now.

Verdict? Rather a difficult one. Liz said, great, I’ll just read those middle chapters! But of course that’s no way to go unless you know your tastes are mine.

I am glad I read this book; it yielded some inspirational moments and great quotations (as you will see). But those came overwhelmingly from the middle portion of the book. Others, I have no doubt, will swoon over the “patting the puppy” and the tree with the lights in it. Discover for yourself; but I do think it’s worth the effort, in the end. If I were to do it again, I would just read the middle parts. Rather like Walden, then, in my final conclusions – just as I thought at the beginning.

Rating: in an attempt to be fair, 6 mushrooms.

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The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell (audio)

Posted on September 17, 2013 by pagesofjulia

typistThis book reminds me very much of Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, with similarities extending to the audio narration, as well. And considering how much I loved that book, and narration, this is a high compliment. They share a setting in New York City early in the 20th century (in this case, Prohibition era), a concentration on class differences, a slinky sensual tone, and an appreciation for the finer things in life. The final shared characteristic is a major plot twist late in the book, here subtly foreshadowed from early on. And that is where I struggle a little with this review: I don’t want to spoil the surprise for you, because it makes the book. Read on safely; I’ll be careful.

Meet Rose Baker, our narrator. She was raised in a Catholic orphanage and now works as a typist in a precinct office of the New York Police Department. The book opens with a discussion of the controversy surrounding young women working as typists at all, let alone in the “rough” environs Rose inhabits: she frequently witnesses and transcribes the confessions of murderers and rapists (gasp). That opening passage helps establish the setting, along with a following reference to the Volstead Act (which prohibited alcohol in the United States).

And now, meet Odalie Lazare, the “other typist.” There were already two typists besides Rose at the precinct, but Odalie is a different sort. Glamorous, seductive, and strangely well-off for someone who would work as a police department typist, Rose is bewitched from the first. The two become “bosom friends,” and Rose becomes… devoted? obsessed? It all depends upon your definitions, of course.

Suzanne Rindell’s construction and development of Rose Baker as an unreliable narrator is delicious. We know Rose for a great many pages as a sober, morally upright young lady and professional; she describes Odalie’s entrance into her life with a sense of foreboding, but with no clue as to what has happened between them. And then there is the first, very brief, reference to Rose’s doctor. Later, there is another flashing reference to the “incident.” Thus, our sober and reliable narrator is undermined, but just so swiftly and for just a moment – did we even see it at all? And I’m left, as the reader, wondering about this incident and why Rose needs a doctor; and then I’m back in Rose’s story, seeing her as the responsible character again. It is a masterful building of tension and questions; I ate it up.

One of the many strengths of this story is in its strong sense of time and place. Prohibition New York is colorful; one can hear and smell and taste its flavors. I will have to leave it to another, older reader to speak to its authenticity, but I am certainly convinced. The writing style, and Gretchen Mol’s reading style, contribute to the feel of an earlier time; sentences are a little long and formal, in a way that just creates more atmosphere.

Rindell’s fine sense of pacing, the doling out of detail and prolepsis, is adept. It is not everyday that I am this drawn in and enchanted by a story; I couldn’t wait to hear what would happen next; I was guessing and second-guessing. As a thriller, The Other Typist evoked some of Tana French’s best work (as here).

Although I was captivated by the swirling mists of speakeasies and Odalie’s wily ways as the femme fatale, I think my favorite part of this experience was the buildup to the big reveal, and the mystery left therein. The Other Typist was a pleasurable rush and romp, and has left me wanting more of Suzanne Rindell’s magic. Reader Gretchen Mol was perfect and not to be missed: do find this one on audio if you can.

Rating: 8 champagne cocktails.

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Holy Orders by Benjamin Black

Posted on September 13, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Black’s series, set in 1950s Dublin, continues with a gloomy mystery that offers occasional bright points of light.

holyorders

Melancholy Dublin pathologist Quirke returns in Holy Orders, the sixth novel in a series of mystery novels by Benjamin Black (the pen name for Man Booker Prize winner John Banville). Fans of the series will easily slip into the larger plot arc, in which Quirke’s daughter, Phoebe, gradually grows closer to him and outwards into her world, despite the tragedy at the center of this story: the body that turns up on Quirke’s autopsy table in the opening pages is that of Phoebe’s red-headed friend Jimmy Minor.

Quirke teams up with Inspector Hackett to follow the clues from the newspaper where Minor worked, to the priest he was bent on interviewing, to a tinkers’ camp outside town. As Quirke continues to combat his alcoholism and possible hallucinations, a previously unknown relative of Jimmy’s surfaces and Phoebe will make a surprising discovery about herself. Within the darkness of this tale of murder, she finds dazzling possibility.

The strengths of Black’s methodically paced mystery series echo Quirke’s own personality traits. The 1950s Dublin setting is murky and depressed; the Catholic Church is over-powerful and corrupt. Quirke wrestles most of all with a feeling of detachment from the living players in his life. He worries that childhood trauma–also at the hands of the church–and his medical career working exclusively with dead clients make him inaccessible to family, friends, and lovers. Phoebe’s personal growth threatens to steal the stage in Holy Orders, which will leave Black’s readers eager for the next installment in Quirke’s sad but engaging story.

This review originally ran in the August 27, 2013 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 5 confessions.

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Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

Posted on September 11, 2013 by pagesofjulia

bonesI bought this pocket-sized book on the recommendation of one of Haven Kimmel’s fictional characters, if you believe it. That’s the most common cover at left; mine is pleasingly worn and small (see below), and I appreciated that about it. I carried it around off and on for about six weeks before I finished it, including on an overnight backpack in Colorado. It is an instructive work on writing, with chapters just a few pages long, so one doesn’t feel that she has to read it cover to cover or as one piece. I will be referring back to it. photo

Natalie Goldberg is foremost a poet, it seems to me, although she has written one novel and other how-to-write books as well; she teaches writing in various formats. She is also a Buddhist, and her meditation practice and study with a Zen master (I hope I’m saying that right) are quite central to her message here; she is big on letting go of the self, of self-criticisms, and letting the writing flow out of oneself; writing is, for her, a form of meditation. She is very serious about a writing “practice,” which I interpret in several ways: it is a practice like meditation or yoga is a practice; also one has to practice it in the way one practices anything to improve at it. She counsels a regular writing schedule, even just ten minutes a day – keep the hand moving for ten minutes, don’t cross anything out, don’t edit.

Her advice seems to be most aimed at creative writers, perhaps most of all at poets, but I think (and I think she thinks) it is also useful for any kind of writer. Partway through my reading, I recommended this book to a friend’s nephew who wants to be a sports journalist. On the face of it, sports journalism is pretty far from poetry, but I think Goldberg’s advice (immersion in the form; daily practice; exercises on set topics) would still serve.

One of the greatest gifts I feel that I’ve taken away from reading this little book is the message that I am a writer, already, and should own that and move forward in it. I’m not waiting to be a writer when I can do it full-time, or when I’m published, or anything silly like that. (Although those milestones will/would be nice!) I’m a writer, now; I just need to do more of it.

The message I take with greatest caution, on the other hand, is her exhortation to write by hand. She talks about the usefulness of a computer (or typewriter), but feels strongly about handwriting. She writes about what kind of pen, paper, notebook a person might should use. I wonder if her advice would be any different today – this book was originally published in 1986 – but I suspect not much. My problem is that I have done the bulk of my writing on a keyboard and am much, much faster at that than at handwriting! I’m of the generation that had a computer fairly young. For me, handwriting means slowing down, and it means cramps. On the other hand, I could write a book on a keyboard without much stress. If she’s preaching a fast, obstacle-free flow of words out of my head and onto the page (screen), shouldn’t I type? But then, perhaps the more mechanical relationship to those words is something that should be cultivated. (What about the cramps??)

Either way, I found this book inspirational and full of thought-provoking little tips, not to mention a few writing prompts I will need to follow. I am pleased. Not dated in the least (with the possible exception of the handwriting issue!), I find Writing Down the Bones to be a fine assistant to the aspiring writer.

Rating: 8 minutes.

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