Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe

Posted on August 12, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Available as 11 pages in quite small type here.

I am 98% sure that I was led to this story by a mention in Judith Flanders’s The Invention of Murder. I’m always up for some Poe; he’s batting 1000 with me. I have a complete works volume on my shelves somewhere; maybe one of these days…

I’m pretty sure the reason I came to this story from the above book is that it is cited as one of the earliest mystery stories in literature, that is, in which a detective (in this case an amateur) puzzles through the clues to come to a conclusion of whodunit. It begins with a fairly lengthy (several long paragraphs) discussion of analytical powers, in which our narrator argues that whist or draughts are both more challenging intellectual games than chess. [I am not familiar with whist or draughts so can’t comment on that.] The point of all this rather cerebral discussion finally becomes clear: the narrator’s roommate, a Frenchman named Dupin, is an analytical genius. He can tell what the narrator is thinking. And he will solve… The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

by Daniel Urrabieta y Vierge [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons (click to enlarge)

illustration by Daniel Urrabieta y Vierge, via Wikimedia Commons (click to enlarge)

In a tone and a climate I recognize from The Invention of Murder, we learn that a mother and daughter have been brutally killed in their home on the Rue Morgue. All the doors are locked from within, and a very large amount of cash has been left behind, spilled on the floor. The Parisian police are stumped. Dupin, however, reasons through what clues he finds – having been allowed special access to the crime scene, naturally – and comes to a very strange and improbable, but correct, conclusion. Occam’s Razor aside.

The strengths of this short story, as always with Poe, lie in its atmosphere: brooding, dark, melancholy, cerebral. The character of Dupin is not well-rounded or human, but that’s okay. He plays a role. Our narrator is there, Watson-style, to provide a foil for Dupin’s analysis. The solution to the mystery is most strange and enjoyable for its strangeness. Realism this is not.

An enjoyable quick read and a good early example of a genre I love. Well worth a few minutes.

Rating: 8 thick tresses of grey human hair.

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The Norman Maclean Reader

Posted on August 5, 2013 by pagesofjulia

macleanAh, Norman Maclean. This is the last of his published work that I’ve found, following A River Runs Through It, and other stories and Young Men and Fire. I am very sorry to have reached this end. Maybe I’ll still find more. Also, I’m seeking a decent and well-regarded biography of him and have found none, so if you have it, speak up.

This is a collection of Maclean’s work, including excerpts from the longer books I’ve read already, a few previously published articles, and several previously unpublished pieces, including chapters from his book on Custer that Maclean worked on for years and finally gave up (prior to beginning either of his published works). Also included are letters he sent to a few friends and mentees; these might be my favorite part, although that’s a tough competition. The introduction, by editor O. Alan Weltzien, is a little on the academic side, referencing Maclean’s teaching career and his work with Aristotle, Shakespeare, Shelley and Wordsworth, and the concept of tragedy and its place in life and art; but if it required me to slow down and pay special attention, it was worth it.

Maclean too can be quite cerebral and academic – he was an academic by profession, after all – as in his discussion of Freudian philosophy (which “will not run with sex alone”) in the last chapter of the Custer book, called “Shrine to Defeat.” I enjoyed the Custer chapters very much, which are like Young Men and Fire in being contemplative, personal, philosophic studies of historical events. But I think my favorite sections are the more autobiographical, memoir-ish stories: if you can find a copy of the story called Retrievers Good and Bad (originally published in Esquire 88 in October 1977), you’re in for a treat. This is an early attempt to communicate some of Maclean’s feelings about his brother Paul’s death, and the abruptness of it – through dogs. What else could we ask for?

Following the Custer chapters and a selection of shorter works (and excerpts from his published books) come letters from Maclean to:

  • Robert Utley, much younger Custer scholar, to whom Maclean offers advice and mentorship while asking for tidbits on Custer; their relationship evolves until Maclean (still never having published a book), the teacher, poignantly requests help from the student who has now published several. a charming friendship.
  • Marie Borroff, former student of Maclean’s (formally, that is; Utley was correspondent and friend and only informally a “student”) who becomes a highly regarded scholar, poet, teacher herself. this relationship in letters is even more affectionate.
  • Nick Lyons, younger teacher, writer, fisherman, publisher whom Maclean befriends after Lyons wrote a favorable review of A River Runs Through It.
  • Lois Jansson, widow of Bob Jansson, USFS ranger whose work on and after the Mann Gulch fire Maclean highly regarded and treated with respect in Young Men and Fire.

As I said earlier, these letters might have been my favorite part of this book. Of course they reveal, far more than his published writings, an unedited, raw, personal Maclean. I enjoyed that man, who shares the humor, cleverness, playfulness, and philosophies of the edited and published one, but with the added charm of vulnerability, fears, and requests for help from his loved ones. He also shares his personal losses – chiefly that of his beloved wife – in these letters more than anywhere else. I deeply appreciated having access to this new side of an author I’ve come to love recently.

A few more thoughts – on Hemingway – you know I had to go there:

A blurb by Alfred Kazin on the back of this book calls A River Runs Through It “as beautiful as anything in Thoreau or Hemingway.” Now, I confess I am in danger of seeing Hemingway everywhere. I love him; I’ve read a lot of him, repeatedly, as well as several biographies. Maybe it’s a flaw of mine. But I saw Hemingway in these writings, too.

The joke has many variants, some of them dirty and all of them grim, but essentially it is one joke and underneath the many variants is a kindly undertone, as if some joke had been played upon the bluffs of the Little Bighorn for which there should be universal forbearance, on the chance that the joke played there is played some time on all of us. Clearly, our dead are delivered from oblivion when they become a joke on us.

Bear with me; I know that first one is a longish sentence and Hemingway is known for short ones, but you’d be surprised. He knew how to carry on, and in just this fashion: the repetition of that short, simple, but aurally striking word “joke”; the subject matter of death and war handled with a wry, cynical lightness. Likewise the cadence of this section-ending line:

They thought it over and after some of the weariness was gone, Little Wolf and all the young men enlisted and went back to their old job of fighting in the country that had been their home.

More great stuff from Maclean. Recommended, as usual.

Rating: 10 selected letters.

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The Fame Thief by Timothy Hallinan

Posted on August 1, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Timothy Hallinan’s quirky thief/detective (last seen in Little Elvises) is forced to delve into long-past Hollywood scandals by a nonagenarian crime boss.

famethief
The Fame Thief is Timothy Hallinan’s third novel starring Junior Bender, a professional burglar with a second calling as a crook’s detective–because bad guys need their mysteries solved, too. Irwin Dressler, no less powerful a crime boss for his 93 years of age, hires Junior against his will for a strange 60-year-old case, the theft of a Hollywood actress’s most valuable asset: her fame.

Dolores La Marr was a kid from Scranton, scarcely beginning to make it big in 1940s Tinseltown, when her association with that era’s fashionable gangsters landed her in a nasty, full-color scandal. Strangely, no one but Dolly took the fall, and all these decades later, Dressler still wants to find out who set her up. Junior quickly learns that this mystery is not as dead as it seems, and that some dangers only increase with age.

The refreshingly unassuming Junior is a fun riff on the typical private investigator: his specialty–committing crimes, rather than solving them–brings him an unusual perspective. The elderly Dressler is a fabulous, deadpan wiseguy in “eye-agonizing” golf pants, backed up by two unusually domestic versions of the standard muscled goon. And Junior’s own domestic concerns–a teenage daughter, her jokester boyfriend, an ex-wife and a randy new girlfriend–fill out the eccentric, likable cast. Fast-paced action and a building body count pair nicely with humor in this series, bound to keep the reader coming back for more.

This review originally ran in the July 12, 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: 6 slow-speed car chases.

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Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (audio)

Posted on July 31, 2013 by pagesofjulia

flightAnother beautiful, thought-provoking book from Kingsolver; and another outstanding narration by the author herself. Like The Lacuna, which I called one of the best books I read in 2012, this will be a standout. I fear this will be one of those longer reviews, as I have so much to say…

We open with a young mother of two in a less-than-thrilling marriage, named Dellarobia Turnbow, hiking up a mountain to meet a man for adulterous purposes. On her way there, she’s distracted by an amazing sight. The hills appear to be aflame, but there is no sound and no heat. She is amazed, and disturbed, and stands up her would-be lover and goes back home; it’s something like a religious experience, although she’s not particularly religious. She does, however, attend church – one of many compromises for the sake of her mother-in-law, who terrifies her.

Dellarobia lives on her in-laws’ sheep farm in Tennessee and rarely gets to leave the property. Her husband is kind but dull. She is frustrated. The strange thing happening up on the mountain, however, will expand her world: it has implications for climate change, and is variously interpreted as an event of an environmental as well as a religious nature.

The cool orange flame on the mountaintop is a mass migration of Monarch butterflies, pushed out of their normal overwintering site in Mexico by a mudslide that killed a village, caused in turn by clearcutting and climate change. Dellarobia doesn’t have the context to begin to comprehend such happenings, so she has to learn slowly; aiding her in this process is the amazing Dr. Ovid Byron, an entomologist who has written the book (many of them) on Monarchs who shows up to park his camper on the Turnbow farm and study their special mountain. Ovid is a striking figure – physically, as a black man, he is of such a minority in the rural mountains of Tennessee as to be exotic to Dellarobia; audibly, his accent (similar to Jamaican) is mellifluous and musical; and intellectually, he boggles Dellarobia’s mind and pushes her to new ways of thinking. This is a young woman who would have gone to college if she hadn’t gotten pregnant, and her thwarted ambitions are sparked by Ovid’s presence.

Meanwhile, the local religious community becomes convinced that Dellarobia prophesied the Monarchs’ arrival, that she had a vision; she is tentatively treated as a hero or religious figure, which doesn’t sit well with her feared mother-in-law, Hester. The media – local, and then national – blows things out of proportion, highlights the sensational, and alternately threatens to turn her into a sex symbol or accuses her of suicidal tendencies. Her marriage – which we learned in the opening scene was not strong or happy – is predictably strained by all the activity and attention. And perhaps most poignantly, her small son Preston is told by Ovid that he is a scientist, and begins a new way of thinking, himself.

As a family story or the story of one woman, alone, this would be an extraordinary masterpiece. Dellarobia is a remarkable woman, and I think she is probably representative of many young women who have greater abilities than they end up exploring, trapped (in Dellarobia’s case) in rural and familial circumstances that limit her. Just as in The Lacuna, one of Flight Behavior‘s greatest strengths is Dellarobia’s realness: her quirks, her frustrations, her fantansies, her day-to-day life and thoughts. We get to experience this story inside her head, and the inside of Dellarobia’s head, all by itself, would be a glorious gift for Kingsolver to bestow upon us. The other characters too, all of them, are fully realized, more real than the people I know in the real world; they’re complex, and even the initially unlikeable ones (I’m looking at you, Hester) are multi-faceted and deserving of our sympathy in the end.

But! That’s not all! There’s more to this story than Dellarobia and her family of wonderfully real, odd people. The Monarch butterflies, climate change, the complexities of farming in a changing world, the environmental movement, 350.org, and academia are all explored and examined in a wonderfully nuanced way. Idealistic young – and old – environmentalists show up on the scene as well, and there’s a lovely scene in which one of them quizzes Dellarobia on her commitment to leave a smaller carbon footprint. As it turns out, being rural and poor puts her in a pretty good place footprint-wise already, a fact which humbles (not to say embarrasses) her interlocutor.

Dellarobia turns out to be the perfect vehicle for teaching us all the science of Monarchs, of migration, of weather patterns and geography, of climate change, and of relationships among people and cultures. She’s ignorant, but not unintelligent, and once she learns how to open her mind, she is an inquisitive student; and Ovid Byron is a wonderful teacher, and let me add, his dreamy accent, so well performed in this audio edition, is to die for. [I do recommend listening rather than reading, upon which more in a moment.] However, this is never a polemic, and Dellarobia is far, far more than a vehicle; you remember I was terribly bothered by that issue in Sophie’s World, and a little bothered by it in Ishmael, but there is no trace of it here. As I wrote above, Dellarobia is very, very real. Instead, this is a moving, complex story, starring sympathetic, believable characters, that also handles some large, important questions: like, what are we doing with our world?

I have a quick note to make on the ending, mostly for my father. Pops has noted that where Derrick Jensen is brutally honest about our future, Bill McKibben tends to draw intelligent conclusions and then inexplicably end on what feels like an unrealistically optimistic note. Well, in the same vein, Kingsolver may end things a trifle more hopefully than is realistic – it feels good, you understand, but it’s a McKibben ending rather than a Jensen one, if you follow. And then she thanks McKibben in her Author’s Note, so that’s fitting.

The Author’s Note also includes a brief discussion of what in this story is true to life (and how she found it out), and what is fiction. This is a well-researched book, and I appreciate her delineating the boundary between fact and fiction, as I always do.

The audio narration by Kingsolver herself could not be improved upon. Dellarobia has an Appalachian twang and darling figures of speech. Her BFF Dovey is even cuter and mouthier; she collects jokey church billboard sayings, some of which Dellarobia is sure she makes up (“Moses was a basket case”). Dellarobia’s in-laws have their own audible personalities; her husband Cub is nothing in life if not sloooow in all respects including speech. And Ovid Byron! Oh, the accent. Swoon. Kingsolver does all these beautifully. If you have to read this book rather than listen to the author read it, then fine, but I pity you. Get the audiobook!! Do it!

Rating: without question a perfect 10 newborn lambs.

This book is so wonderful – particularly in Kingsolver’s masterful narration – that I wonder if I should go back and try some of her earlier work again. I remember being decidedly nonplussed by The Poisonwood Bible, and I know I’ve read The Bean Trees but have no impression of it (which is not a good sign); I can’t decide if I’ve read The Prodigal Summer or Animal Dreams or not (also not a good sign). But The Lacuna and this one are both so grand, I feel I should delve more deeply. Also, while I’m pondering past readings, I wonder why I keep getting Kingsolver crossed with Margaret Atwood in my mind? I wanted to attribute The Robber Bride (which I enjoyed) to Kingsolver. Maybe it’s that I’ve found them both a little hit-or-miss; I was less impressed with The Year of the Flood and ambivalent about Oryx and Crake and The Blind Assassin; have no impression from Surfacing; but loved The Penelopiad, and found The Edible Woman mindblowing.

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Temple Grove by Scott Elliot

Posted on July 29, 2013 by pagesofjulia

A subtle, brooding novel of environmentalism and human complexities set in the Pacific Northwest.

templegrove

In Temple Grove, Scott Elliot (Coiled in the Heart) considers the Olympic Peninsula and its human and nonhuman inhabitants with nuance. A young Native American woman, ambivalent toward her two-month-old son, hikes along a lovely river. Eighteen years later, that son, Paul, hikes back into the woods to engage in what will be called eco-terrorism: spiking trees to discourage their being logged. Simultaneously, a man named Bill returns from a lengthy exile in Alaska, grateful to find work logging in the woods of his homeland. Parallel to these two men–who, like magnets, attract and repel one another–Paul’s mother, Trace, ruminates on her disconnection from her husband and her son.

Paul roams the Olympic forests with his mentor, an aging environmental activist, not entirely aware of why his connection to this place is so strong. Upon his homecoming, Bill remembers (and is disturbed by) past mistakes. The only flaw in this profound and sensitive novel is a potentially upsetting and controversial resolution to one of the plot’s surprises.

Human concerns are embedded within the rhythms of nature, and the traditions of Trace’s Makah tribe resonate within her and her son as in Elliot’s writing. Contemplative, secretive, a novel of the earth, its people and filial relationships, Temple Grove presents a surprisingly broad cast of ordinary men and women representing all walks of life, all sharing the fact of inner conflict.

This review originally ran in the July 9, 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 ambivalences.

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The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Posted on July 26, 2013 by pagesofjulia

I heard about this short story through the National Library of Medicine’s Traveling Exhibition Program (we will be hosting several exhibitions at the hospital library where I work). I hadn’t heard of it before, although clearly I should have! If you want to read it, too – and I recommend it – I found my copy online here.

It is a very quick read at 9 pages, during which our narrator keeps a secret diary. She suffers from nervous depression, or neurasthenia, or the usual woman-sickness as diagnosed in the 1890’s when this story was written; and her physician husband has prescribed bed rest. So she’s shut up in the top floor of a decaying old mansion, in what used to be a children’s nursery (she thinks) because it has bars on the windows; and it has terribly ugly yellow wallpaper. Now, she’s forbidden even the exertion of writing, but because she disobeys, we get to follow her descent into madness, by way of that wallpaper.

It is a chilling story, and let me tell you that I read it while camping alone in a remote valley in Colorado, in a tent with a yellow rain fly on it (in the rain) – but never fear, I’ve made it back with all the marbles I began with, I’m reasonably sure. No one has tried to make me stay in bed yet, at any rate.

It turns out that this is Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s own story, to some extent: she was diagnosed similarly and given a similar “treatment”, but feeling herself slide downhill, disobeyed doctor’s orders, shook herself off, and got to work – writing, and living her own life. This turned out to be the healthier option for her, and it seems she lived a reasonably happy life thereafter. My copy (link above) came with a less-than-one-page piece called “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper,” in which she states that “it was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy.”

I learned more by going back to the NLM’s exhibition entitled The Literature of Prescription: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, which I recommend and which also won’t take you but a few minutes.

Finally, I couldn’t resist sharing with you this related piece of art that I found while trolling the interwebs…


Lovely work, and of the images I found online that try to illustrate this story, it was my favorite.

Not only is the plot chilling, and the purpose behind the story important and sympathetic, but it is a well-crafted story too. I enjoyed it very much and am moved by the story behind the story. I’m lucky people like Charlotte Perkins Gilman were speaking up over 100 years ago, or I would never have been allowed to go camping alone in a valley in Colorado, yellow rain fly or no.

Rating: 9 disruptions of the pattern.

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From Alaska to Tierra del Fuego: Across the Americas in Two Years by Michael Boyny

Posted on July 24, 2013 by pagesofjulia

fromalaskaAnother gift from Fil, and another winner!

This is a coffee table book that is part travel narrative and part photography or art book. Author Michael Boyny tells us that he and his partner, Sabine, are travel junkies. They conceived of this road trip from tip to tip of the Americas and planned it well in advance, buying a 1985 Ford F250 with motorhome cab in their native Germany, fitting it out and test-running it on a trip through Scandinavia before shipping it to New York and setting off across Canada. Chapters each detail a segment of the trip and run, oh, 4-8 pages each: quick descriptions of places that struck them in terms of natural beauty, culture, physical activity, or other item of interest (good and bad). Whole states may be covered quickly or require more time, depending on how they struck Boyny. Two years of travel are covered in under 200 pages, and a number of those pages are devoted to photographs (on which more in a minute), so the text is necessarily a little cursory here and there; but no matter. It is less an in-depth study of anyplace in particular and more a travel journal: just the highlights. I took my time reading this book in bursts of just a few pages or chapters at a sitting – at my coffee table, in fact. And it was very enjoyable.

Boyny’s English is perfectly fine, but sometimes a little odd; he is very fond of adjectives. Perhaps someone told him that an adjective for every noun was a good method of descriptive writing? At least that was my impression in the opening pages; either he settled down or I stopped noticing. Call it a nuance that I noted, but didn’t get in the way too much. Another funny item I noticed was the exhaustive translation of kilometers to miles (centimeters to inches, etc.), which I appreciate very much in theory but which sometimes turned downright amusing in practice:

240 becomes 230, like magic!

240 becomes 230, like magic!

Michael and Sabine see Alaska; Canada; the Western United States; Mexico; Central and western South America. They are outdoorsy types (perhaps this goes without saying: they’re living in a truck for two years!) and often camp outside, sometimes rent rooms or hotel rooms, even occasionally a more permanent dwelling (seven weeks in a rented house in San Miguel de Allende taking Spanish lessons). They also do quite a bit of hiking (overnight backpacking included), and outings (again sometimes overnight) in the canoe they carry on top of the truck; a scooter racked behind allows for easy short trips as well. The physical activities they undertake set them well apart from your average (American) RV dweller. They compile a fine list of places they could live, across both continents, and are kind in their sparse criticisms; the coast of Peru gets a poor rating but the highlands of that same country become a highlight just pages later.

But oh, the photographs. Don’t get me wrong: Boyny’s narrative of two years spent traversing 15 countries was well worth reading, an interesting education in snippets, even within my own country or places I’ve visited, because he enjoys his own unique perspective. But the photographs alone make this book a special find. Boyny is a passionate amateur photographer (maybe I shouldn’t say amateur; it’s how he makes his living when he stays in one place) and his photos share roughly equal space with text, including a good number of amazing two-page spreads. These photographs include portraits of the inhabitants of various places, wildlife (toucan! quetzal!) and scenes of commerce and lifestyles; but the strongest, unsurprisingly, are landscapes. The largest spreads include views of the Yukon; Monument Valley; the Grand Canyon (naturally); Bryce Canyon; the Mayan ruins at Tulum (Husband and I have been there!); the Galapagos; Machu Picchu; and Patagonian lakes. I can’t say enough about his captures of some of the most extraordinary views on the planet – they alone make this trip worth it, both for Michael and Sabine, and for his readers.

A major hit for photos alone; an an interesting travel story to boot. Thanks, Fil!

Rating: 8 muddy tracks.

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The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel

Posted on July 18, 2013 by pagesofjulia

astronautThe US space program began in 1958, with an original group of seven astronauts. Their seven wives were expected to be the classic 1950’s perfect housewives; and that blissful domestic harmony was considered as important a job qualification for the men as was their athleticism and stamina. (Later rounds of astronauts would be highly educated engineers and technologists; the early ones emphasized physical attributes a little more.) The Astronaut Wives Club studies those original seven wives, and later additions which swelled the group toward 50. Lily Koppel examines the lives of these women and their husbands: marital dramas, difficulties with the press, lifestyles, tragedies, and lives after NASA was done with them. She interviewed the available surviving women. It comes across as a truthful depiction of them: women whom, unlike their husbands, we have surprisingly never thought to study until now.

The first space program was based out of Cape Canaveral in Florida, moving to Houston (my hometown and current place of residence) in 1962. It was fun to read about the early suburbs of Clear Lake and Friendswood, which I’m familiar with in slightly different forms today. A guide at the front of the book to “the astronaut wives” groups them by wave: the original seven (Mercury), the new nine (Gemini), the fourteen (more Gemini and Apollo), and the nineteen that came in 1966. The original seven are those we get to know the best, and their influence would remain on those that followed, but even the later waves of wives receive good personal treatment. From 1950’s stereotyped domesticity to the hesitant beginnings of women’s lib (which, unsurprisingly, came later to Space City wives than to certain segments of the population), these women tended to stick together, presenting a united front against the intrusive media and comforting each other in times of tragedy. But there was also competition: just as their husbands competed for the honors of “firsts” (outer space, moon orbit, moon walk), their wives had to compete to present the proper image on husband’s behalf. And as later waves of wives rolled in, the earlier ones were, perhaps predictably, a little distrustful of newcomers; they had worked hard to establish a tight-knit, protective club that still had its own internal issues to boot.

Koppel treats these women with sensitivity and respect. Their stories, and their collective story, is moving, poignant, and brought to life. On the night I finished this book, I dreamed about the astronaut wives. I can’t tell you much about my dream, because it faded so quickly, but I had been planning a trip, and I think I was consulting with the wives about some of my plans. I don’t dream about many books I read (at least not that I can recall), so this should be taken, probably, as a vote of confidence in the reality and staying power of what I’d read.

The Astronaut Wives Club is a well-deserved first look at a particular and unique group of women in history. As a bonus, it’s a fun glimpse into Americana of the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s. There is almost no science involved, so if you’re looking for the specifics of space technologies, look away; this is the homebound perspective on the man on the moon. While they suffered widowhood, divorce, and even suicide, this group of women is charming, funny, likeable, and amusing. I found it fascinating to consider this period through its unsung background heroes.

Rating: 7 Valium.

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Maximum Shelf: Mother, Mother by Koren Zailckas

Posted on July 15, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Maximum Shelf is the weekly Shelf Awareness feature focusing on an upcoming title we love and believe will be a great handselling opportunity for booksellers everywhere. The features are written by our editors and reviewers and the publisher has helped support the issue.

This review was published by Shelf Awareness on June 26, 2013.

mother mother
Mother, Mother opens on a quiet Saturday morning in a small town north of New York City. A young boy wakes up with his mother standing over him, waiting to start their day. He is a little odd–we soon learn he’s been recently diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and epilepsy–and his mother seems to be wound a little tight, but she’s also concerned and loving. Next, the perspective shifts to that of his older sister, a rebellious teen who has just been placed in a local mental hospital. The father is cheating. The eldest daughter ran away with a boyfriend several years ago.

These are the perceptions presented in the first few pages of Koren Zailckas’s startling debut novel. Do you believe everything you’ve just read?

As the story of the Hurst family unfolds, the reader will learn to question every “fact” exhibited. The youngest child, Will, and the middle daughter, Violet, continue to trade off the first-person relating of their family drama. One is on the autism spectrum and the other is drug-addled; thus the reader has to parse not one unreliable narrator but two. Will both loves his mother and fears her, and is constantly struggling to determine what exactly it is she wants so that he can please her. He is home-schooled, because of the Asperger’s: Is this the cause or the effect of their unusually close relationship? Josephine, the titular mother, starts off coldly Stepford-like and quickly takes a turn toward chilling. Violet, who has been observing Sallekhana (a form of Jainist ritual starvation), recently took psychedelic morning glory seeds and came home to her family out of her mind, hallucinating and violent. Now Josephine is adamantly opposed to Violet coming home from the hospital, ostensibly because of the threat she poses to her little brother. The absent eldest daughter, Rose, remains ghostlike and disembodied for most of the book. Her past is enigmatic and her current location unknown–but unexpectedly, she writes to Violet in the hospital, after years of silence. And while their father, Douglas, is physically present, he has problems of his own that make him self-centered and ineffectual.

Much of Mother, Mother‘s mystery revolves around the night when Violet, in a haze induced by near starvation coupled with the psychedelic seeds, brandished a knife at her family, harming Will. A drunken Douglas drove her to the psych ward. But as it turns out, neither Will nor Violet has a clear memory of what happened on that night. Then Child Protective Services enters the scene, in the form of a case worker surprisingly sympathetic to Violet. This engages Josephine’s protective instincts, and the reader must struggle alongside CPS to discern the truth about where–or from whom–Will suffered his injuries. From the start, the reader is kept off-balance by Will and Violet’s constantly shifting, conflicting, inconsistent narratives. Josephine’s contributions, which come in dialogue form through Will or Violet’s observations, only serve to muddy the waters. From the start, the reader senses that something is amiss, but will have to puzzle for a time over which of these troubled characters to trust.

As the action unfolds, Violet remains institutionalized, but the details of the night in question begin to reveal themselves. Will and Violet both begin to regain their memories, but they continue to interpret those recollections in very different ways. Even as the source of the true evil begins to become clear, the reader is kept guessing as to everyone’s final fates until the closing pages, and the surprises keep coming until the very end.

Koren Zailckas is the bestselling author of two memoirs, Smashed and Fury. Her first attempt at fiction will not disappoint her fans, as she continues to exhibit a nuanced understanding of psychological drama, combined with a wry tone that brings surprising humor to such an unnerving story. Zailckas reveals and conceals fact and rumor in this complex tale with deliciously deceitful cleverness: readers should beware the seemingly straightforward narrative as told by Will and Violet. Take, for example, Will’s placement on the autistic spectrum. In some ways, it is very apt: his obsession with obscure, little-known vocabulary words will of course charm the booklover; but on the other hand, he is awfully good at reading emotions.

Mother, Mother is unsettling, even frightening, and perhaps what makes its atmosphere so successfully compelling is that it is so very domestic and ordinary. The Hursts not only appear outwardly normal, they may be our role models–the perfect family next door. What Zailckas has accomplished is most disturbing because it is so close to home.

Rating: 7 not-so-loving looks.

Come back tomorrow for my interview with Zailckas!

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Ring for Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

Posted on July 10, 2013 by pagesofjulia

ringforjeevesI would like to begin this review-of-sorts by noting the front-cover blurb by Christopher Hitchens:

P.G. Wodehouse is the gold standard of English wit.

Next, note the back-cover blurb by Stephen Fry:

You don’t analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour.

And thirdly, my A.Word.A.Day email the other day included the following “thought for the day,” by Susan Sontag:

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.

The collected wisdom of these three statements is that P.G. Wodehouse is awesome and hilarious; and to further beleaguer the point or try to parse it would be a waste of time, possibly a disservice. In that spirit, and because I’ve reviewed several Wodehouses already, I’m not going to say much more.

Wodehouse is still light-heartedly hilarious and well worth a lazy afternoon. This is, if anything, one of the better ones I’ve read.

If you care for a plot synopsis, I’ll continue to be brief: Bertie Wooster is not present in this story; Jeeves is on loan to a similarly foolish young man. There is confusion about which dame he’s most devoted to. A decrepit English manor is on sale. A bumbling “white hunter” from Africa lusts after a wealthy American widow. Hilarity ensues and all ends well. There are no aunts in this story. The end.

Rating: 7 damp spots.

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