Teaser Tuesdays: The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell

Posted on September 3, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. And try not to include spoilers!

typist

I have discovered an awesome new book on audio that I want you to know about. Set in 1920’s New York City, The Other Typist‘s first-person narrator is Rose Baker, an orphan employed as (yes) a typist at a precinct police department. She is entranced by a new hire named Odalie, who exerts a magnetic pull on everyone, it seems, but most especially Rose herself. Here’s your teaser:

She was never once rebuffed, and the man – I say man here generically, because there were several – invariably introduced himself and reached into his pocket to fish out a lighter and a replacement cigarette, while Odalie puffed on her pilfered prize and regarded the gentleman with a sly, delighted expression, as if to suggest nothing he could pull out of his pocket could sufficiently replace the unique and spectacular treasure she had just stolen.

I just love this line, read masterfully by Gretchen Mol, with its subtly suggestive reference to what a generic man might pull out of his pocket to impress Odalie. She, the other typist, is a classic, manipulative femme fatale; but then again, there are some unanswered questions to ask about our narrator Rose, too. And that’s the kind of set-up I like. Stay tuned…

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Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods by Christine Byl

Posted on August 22, 2013 by pagesofjulia

dirt workChristine Byl opens her memoir with the pleasant scene of herself and three fellow crew members, crusty and dirty, having a post-hitch beer at a small-town Montana bar. A young woman approaches and asks how she keeps up with the boys, one of whom volunteers that it’s all they can do to keep up with her.

She then backs up and tells the story of how she got there. Like many young women in our culture, Christine was expected and expecting to go to college, to do cerebral work and keep her hands (literally) clean; but a summer gig held her, and she reveled in physical challenges, in learning new things, in the mechanical world. Eventually she reveled in her hardening muscles and her expertise, in surprising men with her ax-work and in mentoring other young women coming up in the “matriarchy” of trail work (still predominately male) within Glacier National Park.

After six seasons in Glacier, alongside boyfriend and eventual husband Gabe (a delightful character: mostly off screen, but clearly a capable young man in his own right, and clearly happy to stay lovingly out of Christine’s way), she does return to graduate school, in Alaska. But during the summers she still works on building and maintaining trails, this time in Denali. Christine and Gabe come to love Alaska – yes, even the winters: there is a delightful passage arguing that the light summers are in some ways harder than the dark winters, and I made both my parents (recently moved from the Mexican to the Canadian border) read it. They settle a few miles outside the borders of Denali National Park, and Christine finds a balance between the cerebral – she gets an MFA in fiction, and writes this beautiful book; and the physical – she and Gabe now run their own independent trail-building company.

So many things to love in this book; where to begin? As a sometimes volunteer trailworker myself, I don’t pretend to know 2% of what Christine does; but I might know just enough to appreciate what she loves about it, and what a challenge it can be. I still haven’t mastered the efficient, all-day ax swing myself, but I’d like to. Also, I have a friend named Susan who I’ve written about before, who has a great deal in common with this author. (I briefly wondered if “Christine Byl” was a pseudonym.) Susan, like Christine and apparently like many trail workers, has an advanced degree but chooses to labor for a living; she’s a woman in what is clearly a man’s world, and is half of an independent trailbuilding company. I get the impression that while it’s hard work, Susan and her husband Ryan wouldn’t do anything different.

Christine writes beautifully about the phenomenon of choosing to do physical work when she could be keeping her hands soft. She writes about the well-intentioned questions her family asked, about when she was going to get a “real job”: she says that they have confused happiness with orthodoxy. (I can only imagine how many of us can sympathize with that concept!) She writes about the “sorority” of men in trailwork, and the way that pulls women together; she writes about the pride she feels when upending male expectations of her blonde head and small frame. As a writer, and clearly a gifted one, she structures this book as solidly as she would a bridge or retaining wall. Each of 6 chapters is represented by a tool (axe, rock bar, chainsaw, boat, skid steer, shovel), a location (North Fork, Sperry, Middle Fork, Cordova, Denali twice) and a locale (river, alpine, forest, coast, park, home). Within those chapters she roves and rambles, musing on natural phenomena, social relations, her own body and personality, strengths and shortcomings, and then returns to tool and place to ground herself. The structure of this book, then, is both well-anchored and floating, and I found that it worked very well.

I was charmed by Christine Byl’s honesty; her love of place; her range of experiences and understanding of two worlds, that of universities and that of woods; and of course her lovely writing. She’s hard as nails, with two hernia surgeries and a preference for outhouse over indoor plumbing. She’s brash and can tend towards a loud and dirty mouth (that makes two of us), but she’s got a soft core. I like her; I’d like to be her friend, and of course I’d really love to learn from her.

Rating: 10 pulaskis (my personal favorite trailwork tool).

I fear I’m getting out of control with the perfect-10 ratings, friends, but what can I say: it’s been a great year for reading. I will take a little of the credit, in that I think I’m getting better at picking what I’ll like, and not wasting time on what I won’t. But mostly, wow, there are some amazing books out there!

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The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland

Posted on August 14, 2013 by pagesofjulia

forestloverWhat a lovely book. I recently read and enjoyed Scott Elliot’s Temple Grove enough that I attended to his “Note on Sources,” and requested several from my local library. This was one of those – aided by my enjoyment of Vreeland’s Girl in Hyacinth Blue and Clara and Mr. Tiffany.

Like those two of her books, this is historical fiction dealing with a female artist. [Also think of Tracy Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring.] The three historical periods, geographic locations, and women in question are quite diverse, but there is a very clear thread connecting them all as female, artists, and historical; I appreciate that showing of diversity in her subjects and also of a singleminded interest. I am safely a Vreeland fan now. Fairly naturally, considering that they deal with female artists of earlier times, her books also address women’s struggle for independence.

Emily Carr, like the subject of Clara and Mr. Tiffany, is a real-life historical figure about whom we don’t know everything; this is a fictionalization of her life. She was born in British Columbia in 1871 to British parents. She showed an inclination for sketching and painting early on, which hobby was encouraged by her father at first, but he expected her to grow out of it in favor of more womanly pursuits (like marriage), and she didn’t. We meet Emily or “Millie” when she’s struggling to make ends meet and trying not to depend too much on the trust fund she shares with 4 sisters, teaching art for a living and befriending local Native Canadian Indians. The sisters mostly do not approve this association. Her favorite subjects are natural scenery and native people and their lifestyles; she travels to islands and outposts for these subjects; again, this is not appreciated by her family. She does enjoy some good female companionship, though: Sophie is an Indian woman and fellow artist (a basketmaker) who befriends her in broken English; Jessica is a less adept painter but rather saucy lady friend; Alice is her “good” and friendly sister; and after Emily musters the courage to travel to Paris to study the “new” art (see below), she meets fellow painter Fanny, a New Zealander and kindred soul.

To give you an idea of the Paris of Emily’s experience, as a moment in time, I share these lines.

“Van Gogh’s been in his grave for twenty years, Cezanne for four, yet art collectors still don’t buy them, and despise what’s new now.”

“What is new now?”

“Their offspring. Léger, Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Modigliani, Derain, Rouault. Many directions.”

Momentous times, then!

Back in Canada, Emily ages as we watch her struggle with art and life. She wants desperately to represent the native people’s lives and art, and the powerful forest surrounding her. Or, as she comes to learn, she wants to more than represent or copy: she wants to communicate what these things make her feel. Her study in Paris under various teachers advances her practice, but still doesn’t get her there. We follow Emily through a series of lifestyles and decisions that form a crooked path but ultimately continue to move her toward a higher form of the art and communication she desires.

There is one man who begins to be a love interest for Emily; but as the title implies, she finds herself unable (for various reasons) to participate in physical, person-to-person, romantic or sexual love with this man. She is not the forest’s lover in a carnal sense – this book is not that weird. And Emily does continue to relate to people. Jessica and her sisters, and most importantly Sophie, retain a hold on her heart; and she forms a new (platonic) relationship with a damaged white man who understands Indians better than whites. But in a very real way, her relationship with the natural world is the most magnetic in her life.

I often observe that I like an author’s earlier (or lesser known) work better than the later. (I hope this is not just me being contrary. I don’t think I do it on purpose.) In this case, though, I think my favorite of her books is still her most recent, Clara and Mr. Tiffany. The earlier two I’ve read are both wonderful; but I sometimes felt this showed its earlier origins. It is occasionally less graceful. While she is mostly “on,” there are some awkward phrases, too. Observe these two single sentences, on two facing pages. I find one smoothly appealing, and the other a bit effortful.

Emily felt as if smelly white scum had eked out her pores.

versus

A breeze shifted the ends of foliage, like the tips of fingers moving.

Do you make the same observation I do? (Which one is which?)

Criticisms aside, though, this novel is far more graceful than not; and while I could pick apart lines like the one above, the sum of its parts is glorious. Vreeland’s greatest strengths are those I recognize from her other books. She understands art, and the artist’s struggle to get it just right. She addresses women’s issues compassionately as a natural part of the story of one woman in history. And unique to this work, the natural world and its beauty, value, power, importance, and scale play a deservingly large role.

Another success for Susan Vreeland.

Rating: 8 smears of viridian.

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Teaser Tuesdays: Dirt Work by Christine Byl

Posted on August 13, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. And try not to include spoilers!

dirt work

I am very much excited about this relatively new memoir by a female trailbuilder with experience working for the Parks and Forest Services in Montana and Alaska. It looks to have a good combination of nature writing, memoir, and women’s issues. I have already found several noteworthy passages; but I had to choose…

[If you want a clue about a person’s work]… look at her hands. I trust dirty fingernails. I am drawn to people with that half moon, the sliver of filth that indicates kinetic expertise. Perhaps they do fieldwork – ratty truck, weathered tools. Are they teachers, the ones who kneel next to kids examining earthworms in mud? Potters, naturalists, firefighters, farmers: dirt is a secret code, dusty knuckles the special knock of a fraternal order. I trust this small sign because it implies a tangible relationship. To get dirt under your fingernails, you have to touch the world.

So, yes, lovely writing to boot. Stay tuned for my glowing review.

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book beginnings on Friday: Weeds: A Farm Daughter’s Lament by Evelyn Funda

Posted on August 2, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

weeds

I’m taking the liberty of sharing two beginnings with you today. Preface:

In late 2001 my small family suffered what I think of as a triple tragedy. On October 1, 2001, my father, Lumir Funda, age seventy-nine, was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer that, by the time of the diagnosis, had metastasized to his brain, liver, spleen, spine, and bones.

(I’ll leave the other two tragedies for your own reading.)

And chapter 1:

Highway 16, the main route into my rural hometown of Emmett, Idaho, winds through a high desert country of sand and sagebrush before the road narrows and suddenly descends into the valley through a steep grade known as Freezeout Hill. Gouging straight through the terrain, the road drops more than five hundred feet in elevation within the span of a mile.

I think these set Funda’s tone, which is contemplative, quiet, and often melancholy; this seems to be in many ways a memoir of loss, so that’s not inappropriate. It’s early yet, but I’m enjoying it.

These quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.

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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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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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Teaser Tuesdays: The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel

Posted on July 9, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. And try not to include spoilers!

astronaut

I am pleased with this newly-released work of nonfiction focusing on the wives of the first astronauts (and their immediate successors). A developing reading niche of mine is what I am calling “biographies of little-known women in history,” and this qualifies. To set the tone:

The wives pored over their fifteen-page “Seven Brave Women Behind the Astronauts” spread. Through touching up and editorial tinkering, Life had transformed seven very different, complicated women into perfect cookie-cutter American housewives. There was not a whiff of domestic turbulence.

What is written boldly between these lines is that there was domestic turbulence, right? Nothing horrendous (that I’ve encountered so far, at least), but the point is that the program that employed the astronauts in question began in 1959, and thus the all-American, 1950’s, dimples-and-apple-pie version of family life was paramount. These women were expected to exemplify that image, for the sake of their husbands and their country. And that’s really something: a daunting challenge, I think.

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She Got Up Off the Couch by Haven Kimmel

Posted on June 17, 2013 by pagesofjulia

couchHavel Kimmel aka Henrietta Krinkle, you are still my favorite.

This book follows A Girl Named Zippy, and I adore Kimmel’s explanation in her Preface: that she would definitely never write a sequel to Zippy, but that people kept on asking her if her mother ever got up off the couch; and here we are. This is an extension of that first memoir, then, with the focus being not on the girl called Zippy (Haven Kimmel herself) but on her mother, who in that first volume was a somewhat shapeless woman who mostly inhabited the couch and read a lot, talked on the phone, watched television, and didn’t worry too much about her children. This is told not unlovingly, but as fact. Zippy’s childhood is on balance awfully joyful and fun, and although a critical adult’s eye might point out lots of points of minor neglect, she clearly loves her family very much. This tone is continued in She Got Up Off the Couch. The family and each of its members is still, realistically, flawed, but lovable and well-loved. Kimmel’s brother is now mostly absent, with a family of his own; her sister marries and has two babies; her father finds work as a sheriff’s deputy (or similar job title); but her mother’s is the great change of this second memoir. This was, what, the late 1970’s I suppose, in a tiny Indiana town of a few hundred people. Zippy’s dad, Bob Jarvis, holds the keys: her mother Delonda doesn’t know how to drive. This will work as a fine metaphor (and indeed is part of the literal action), as Delonda calls a phone number on a television commercial to look into going to college. She wrangles a ride into the next town over for an entrance exam, which places her out of fully 40 hours of college credits. Under Bob’s clear disapproval – he says of the woman who takes Delonda to her test, “time was, a woman wouldn’t have gotten in a man’s marriage that way” – she persists in attending classes, studying, reading, talking to new people, and in 23 months, graduates summa cum laude – and continues on to graduate school. Eventually she earns a Master’s degree in English and becomes a high school teacher. This is all a stunning change. Along the way, to get to school and back, she learns how to drive and purchases a vehicle that is, in itself, a good joke.

She Got Up Off the Couch also follows the format of A Girl Named Zippy: chapters jump around, more as connected anecdotes than as clear narrative. Each chapter stands alone admirably as a hilarious or heartfelt – usually both – nugget of tears, joy, preadolescent confusion, and filial love. [In fact, as soon as I finish writing this review I’m off to read my favorite chapter out loud to Husband, if he’ll let me, while he smokes a brisket in the backyard. If you’re curious, it’s called “Treasure,” and is about a hippie college student hiking cross-country who camps out in the Jarvis backyard for a few days. It’s hilarious and heart-wrenching.] It’s a great structure, this anecdotal style. If I ever write my own mother’s biography, which I keep dreaming about, I have something similar in mind. Yes, there are odd characters that the reader of just one chapter would wrinkle her forehead at; but this is true of the whole book, too. Zippy has had an odd and happy life, and that’s exactly why we enjoy reading about it.

Zippy herself, naturally, also grows and changes in this book. Delonda is our star and makes the most life-changing journey. Kimmel writes in her preface, “I will never do anything half so grand or important,” and I know exactly what she means: the decision of Delonda and other women of her time who broke out of where they were told they belonged have done something for the women of my generation that we are now saved from having to do, if that makes any sense. It is something I’ve long felt about my own mother. But I was saying that Zippy continues to grow up: we see more of her engaging and eccentric friends, Rose and Julie Ann, and we meet a new friend, Jeanne Ann. And when she gets a nephew and then a niece, Zippy becomes hopelessly devoted. The blizzard that sweeps through when her niece is long overdue and panics the family is, again, funny and riveting at the same time.

I’ve now read everything that Haven Kimmel has written except for every single one of her blog posts, and that one children’s book. I hope she is getting to work right now on another book – fiction or non, more Haven Kimmel, stat.

I love it. Funny, true, humble, real.

Rating: 9 cherry-red polyester suits.

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Defiant Brides: The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary-Era Women and the Radical Men They Married by Nancy Rubin Stuart

Posted on April 25, 2013 by pagesofjulia

Parallel profiles of two wives on opposite sides of the American Revolution.

defiant

Margaret “Peggy” Shippen Arnold and Lucy Flucker Knox have traditionally been treated as historical footnotes in relation to their more famous husbands, Benedict Arnold and Henry Knox. Nancy Rubin Stuart (The Muse of the Revolution) remedies this neglect in Defiant Brides, a double biography that examines these two women as individuals as well as influential players in the American Revolution.

Peggy was a beautiful blonde belle of Philadelphia society, from a family that favored the British. Lucy was from a well-to-do, firmly Loyalist Boston family. The Shippens reluctantly admitted the political expediency of Peggy’s marriage to military hero Benedict Arnold; the Fluckers disowned Lucy for the sin of matrimony with patriot Henry Knox. Lucy supported her husband’s military and political careers in relative poverty and socialized with George and Martha Washington, even as she fretted over Knox’s long absences and missed the opulence of her youth. Peggy staunchly championed her husband through his treason and banishment and their subsequent financial difficulties in England and Canada; her part in Arnold’s betrayal at West Point, and her own possible role as a spy, remain controversial.

Stuart’s thoughtful research and consideration brings each woman forward into her own spotlight, reflecting on the flaws and strengths that Peggy and Lucy brought to their marriages and to the events of their time. Defiant Brides is an effortless read and a fresh perspective on the American Revolution, featuring two women who defied their parents to marry into a conflict that shaped a nation.

This review originally ran as a *starred review* in the April 23, 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 degrees of loyalty.

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