book beginnings on Friday: Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

Posted on December 7, 2012 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.

strangers

I’ve been waiting for some time to get around to this one, and I love the mood and foreboding atmosphere established in the opening pages.

The train tore along with an angry, irregular rhythm. It was having to stop at smaller and more frequent stations, where it would wait impatiently for a moment, then attack the prairie again. But progress was imperceptible.

The personification of the train is very effective. Angry, impatient, attacking. Good stuff!

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did not finish: Gold by Chris Cleave (audio)

Posted on September 24, 2012 by pagesofjulia

You might recognize Chris Cleave’s name from the significant success of his 2009 bestseller, Little Bee. I did not read that one. But his new book, Gold, appealed to me: for starters and most obviously, it stars two female Olympic track cyclists. This is a rather obscure sport (particularly in the US) that I have competed in. Also it came recommended to me personally. Of course I was going to give it a go.

Hm. I wanted to like this book, for its subject matter if for nothing else. But there are two flaws in that thinking: first, subject matter alone rarely makes for an enjoyable read. Just because a book is about baseball won’t necessarily do it for a baseball player or fan. Secondly, as it turns out, I was too close to this sport. I’m sure Cleave did some research – he had some terms and concepts down, certainly – but he made several errors of inaccuracy that I believe are due to track cycling’s obscurity, and the public’s low awareness. These errors will go unnoticed by a large percentage of the average readership. In this respect I’m far from the ideal reader: I’m so close to the sport that I spot the errors and to me they are egregious. They rankled.

Unfortunately that’s not all that bothered me about this book. I found the characters to be a little one-dimensional (all good, all bad) and unbelievable. Really, the Olympic gold medalist is also model-gorgeous and could make a living posing for photographs?? Come on. (Okay, I guess there’s always Lolo Jones…) And the dialog was stiff, too. Particularly the parent-child dialog: every conversation was a heart-to-heart. I don’t think children really open up and get earnest and profound every time they talk to their parents (at any age). It didn’t feel real, because there were no mundane moments. And here’s the final kicker, fair warning to any who may be sensitive to such things: there is a (fairly central) little girl with cancer. That was a bit much for me personally, considering that I work full-time at a cancer hospital and therefore see enough of this. Just a personal reaction.

I made it a little better than halfway through this book, which sort of surprises me. I was certainly frustrated, annoyed, exasperated with it much earlier than that: in fact, I can pinpoint it for you. I was impatient with the first chapter’s interactions between Zoe and her coach, Tom; but I was really annoyed for the first time on page 11, when Jack relates that Zoe has won her first sprint and he has to get off the phone because her second is starting. The second ride of gold-medal round sprints should follow the first by more than an hour; putting them right back-to-back like that is completely unrealistic and was the first sign that the reality of track cycling would not be taken too seriously in this book.

But I made it past halfway. Why? I’m not sure. I was hoping it would get better? I cared what happened to the characters? But I didn’t, really; I’ve walked away not knowing the outcome of OH so many dramas, and that’s okay. Cleave failed to make me invest in his characters because he failed to make them fully human.

I didn’t read Little Bee; maybe it’s better than this. But Gold didn’t work for me at all.

Minor redemptive points: Emilia Fox’s audio narration was fine. And the only character I liked, related to, felt was human, was the coach. Some of his moments of self-doubt and retrospection felt real. More people like Tom in my fiction, please.

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Hayduke Lives! by Edward Abbey

Posted on July 12, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Hayduke Lives! What fun! I have been looking forward to this one – with some trepidation, yes, since lovers of The Monkey Wrench Gang tend to be disappointed; but also with good cheer, because even if it’s not the bible of eco-warriors that the other is, I have faith in Abbey and his sense of humor. And my instincts were more or less correct.

We follow a few different plots in this installment. One: George Washington Hayduke is, yes, alive and well, and trying to reconnect with his fellow monkey-wrenchers Bonnie, Doc, and Seldom Seen. Bonnie and Doc have married and have a second child on the way, and Seldom Seen is trying to (ha) lay low and play family man to all three of his wives; none wants to be pulled back into criminal activity, but each is eventually sympathetic to the cause (naturally). Two: A new, younger generation of eco-activists, including the nascent Earth First!, is organizing (sort of) to stop the latest earth-terrorizing mega machine, in this case the Arizona GEM (Giant Earth Mover). [And this is getting kind of meta, since EF! in real life came about after publication of The Monkey Wrench Gang, inspired by it. Abbey never refers to the first book or his own role, in this second book.] Three: An unnamed government organization is working with local Utahn Mormon yahoo J. Oral Hatch and (from book 1) Bishop Love to try to infiltrate and undermine EF!. Hatch and Love are both total boobs, in their own ways, and provide much of the comic relief of this book.

As in TMWG, Abbey portrays a bumbling but good-hearted, solid, self-deprecating love of Mother Earth, some action, and some laughs. What doesn’t carry over is plot: I could sort of feel that Abbey was riding the popularity of TMWG, playing around with the well-loved characters and theme, without crafting the same total package. The first was not only a good story, with a little more plot to it, but also a remarkable magic chemical confluence of characters; I think part of what we fell in love with was the odd foursome that made up the Gang, and the way they all clicked. Where the first book was already a little silly, farcical, juvenile, and heavy on the penis jokes (and don’t get me wrong, I loved it), this book is practically only those things. Enjoyable? Yes, absolutely. As important as Monkey Wrench? Not by a long shot. But I have no regrets that I (appropriately) spent part of my camping-out-in-New-Mexico vacation time reading this silly romp; it was worth every minute.

And yes, I have already purchased my bumper sticker.

Rating: 6 raucous whoops.

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book beginnings on Friday: Hayduke Lives! by Edward Abbey

Posted on July 6, 2012 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.

Hayduke Lives! is more than just a bumper sticker: it’s the sequel to The Monkey Wrench Gang, published at the very end of Abbey’s life. It begins:

Old man turtle ambles along the deerpath, seeking breakfast. A strand of wild ricegrass dangles from his pincer-like beak. His small wise droll redrimmed eyes look from side to side, bright and wary and shrewd. He walks on long leathery legs, fully extended from the walnut-colored hump of shell, the ventral skid-plate clear of the sand. His shell is big as a cowboy’s skillet, a gardener’s spade, a Tommy’s helmet. He is 145 years old – middleaged. He has fathered many children and will beget more. Maybe.

…so we don’t meet Hayduke and the gang immediately. But I love this opening paragraph for its eccentric descriptive style, and clear love of the land, which is what really defines Abbey.

What are you reading this weekend?

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Touch by Alexi Zentner (audio)

Posted on June 21, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I didn’t know what this was about when I started it. I know I got this recommendation from somewhere – possibly another book blog – but the source is lost to me now. (Thank you, whoever you are.) So I went in absolutely cold, which is sometimes a really fun way to do things.

It turned out to be a great book, and a great audio version. Our narrator, Stephen, begins the story reminiscing about his childhood in Sawgamet, a fictional British Columbia town, growing up with his mother, father, and sister, and quickly leading into the tragic accident that claims half their family. Then we go back even further, to visit his paternal grandfather, Jeannot, who founded the town. It gradually becomes clear that Stephen has returned to Sawgamet after several decades’ absence, bringing along his own wife and children, to sit at his mother’s deathbed. I’m not sure if we ever learned who his intended audience is in this reminiscence, whether he’s working on a memoir or leaving a story behind for anyone in particular, but he does directly address the reader from time to time. He muses quietly, lovingly, contemplatively, on the experiences of three generations of his family scraping their livings from the bitterly cold winters and dark woods surrounding the town.

Jeannot founded Sawgamet with a gold rush, finding first one and then a second large chunk of gold, with panners and miners following on his heels; but his gold-luck ran out and he quickly turned to logging, which industry outlasted the gold by many years. The young Jeannot takes a wife and their child will become Stephen’s father, Pierre, but Pierre is but a babe when the first tragedies hit their family. No spoilers here, but my, it is a brutal place, where people are sometimes snowbound for months on end, and the woods offer not only gold, and lumber, but also a supernatural element of danger, fear, insecurity. By the time Stephen is born, gold is a distant memory and the town is employed by logging, which has its own obvious expiration date.

The story, switching between the lives of Jeannot, Pierre, and Stephen, is beautifully told, and the narrator of this audiobook, Norman Dietz, performs wonderfully. There is a wondering quality – appropriate, since much is recalled through the eyes of a very young Stephen – that makes the lyrical language feel lovely and dreamlike. The setting was quite exotic and fantastic for me, a Texas native with limited experience with snow; the cold that is described here is literally beyond my imagination. Make no mistake, there are scary, disturbing, dark moments. But there is also love, romantic as well as a loyal familial love. There is death, but also redemption and reunion. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but I’m so glad I did. I highly recommend this book. It is evocative, beautiful, loving, quietly disturbing and engrossing; and I recommend this audio version, as well.

Rating: 8 trees felled.

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Mary Anne by Daphne du Maurier

Posted on May 28, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Daphne du Maurier is best known for Rebecca, and Rebecca is all I knew her for before I began this book. But Mary Anne is rather a different work – the defining creepiness of Rebecca is nowhere to be seen – and absolutely entertaining and page-turning as well.

The historical figure Mary Anne is an ancestor of du Maurier’s, so this novel is based in fact. Mary Anne grows up as a girl in relative poverty in Regency London. At a young age she begins to take control of her own destiny, finding work and a benefactor, earning herself a few years’ formal education. She decides very early in life that success – money – security – are her aim above all else; she will not grow up to be poor in a London back alley like her mother. She marries young, unwisely and against all advice, a man whose claimed fortune quickly (and predictably) goes up in a puff of haughty perfumed smoke; and after a few years of unhappiness with a raging alcoholic, she takes her four children and escapes her marriage.

From here, Mary Anne begins trading on the commodity she finds at hand: her attractive self. She makes several lucrative liaisons, but none so great as her eventual relationship with His Royal Highness the Duke of York. When he tires of her and fails to support her and her family as promised, Mary Anne joins the opposition and takes HRH to court – thus becoming infamous, a symbol, a figure of notoriety, a whore or a heroine depending upon perspective.

The novel opens with the near-death musings of three men who loved Mary Anne most of their lives, their different perspectives on her and and their regrets. The rest of the story is told in a third-person voice that takes on Mary Anne’s perspective. This woman is complex, possesses a variety of virtues and flaws; she loves her children and is concerned about providing for them but doesn’t seem to do much mothering (and exposes them to her morally questionable lifestyle); she values material wealth almost above all else, but also fights for principles and for the benefits of others. She attracts great public attention and a great deal of love and admiration; even her detractors often find themselves drawn to her.

Mary Anne shares qualities with a great many iconic heroines. I rattled them off like mad as I read: her early industry to find work editing copy reminded me of Francie of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; her determination to do whatever it takes to avoid returning to poverty screamed of Scarlett from Gone With the Wind; her enterprising sale of herself recalled Moll Flanders, and her joyful discovery of her own body, wrought with troubles, brought to mind both Lady Chatterley and Madame Bovary. By which I do not accuse du Maurier of copycatting. The hints of all these other classic heroines brought a richness and familiarity to Mary Anne that I appreciated.

At some 450 pages, this is not a small book, but it is a quick one! Mary Anne is engrossing; she holds the attention. And the pages turn: there is plentiful drama, and her future is in question repeatedly. Mary Anne is well-written, entertaining, and full of pathos. You will care what happens to the title character, and even to poor Bill Dowler. Daphne du Maurier scores again! Read her!

Rating: 6 hearts broken.

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Teaser Tuesdays: Mary Anne by Daphne du Maurier

Posted on May 22, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

Why did it take me so long to pick up another of du Maurier’s books, after I loved Rebecca so much? Ack! I ask you! Mary Anne is something rather different, but still wonderful. I see a number of other archetypal heroines (or anti-heroines) in the character of Mary Anne. The teaser I’ve selected for you rang a bell loud and clear, for me at least, reminding me very much of a certain young lady from another great book. Leave me a comment and name that other lady if it is equally reminiscent for you! Hint: the author of the other book shares the same set of initials with the author of The Song of Achilles. And without further chit-chat, here is your teaser.

She could not separate success from peace of mind. The two must go together; her observation pointed to this truth. Failure meant poverty, poverty meant squalor, squalor led, in the final stages, to the smells and stagnation of Bowling Inn Alley.

Go get ’em, Mary Anne. Check back for a review to come, but for now: I like it.

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book beginnings on Friday: Touch by Alexi Zentner

Posted on May 18, 2012 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.

I’ve just begun Touch, and I’m not entirely sure what I’ve gotten myself into – I was recommended this book, by whom I do not know, and am not sure yet even what genre to put it in. But I can say for now that it is, well, touching. It begins:

The men floated the logs early, in September, a chain of headless trees jamming the river as far as I and the other children could see. My father, the foreman, stood at the top of the chute hollering at the men and shaking his mangled hand, urging them on.

I love the setting, the woodsy northern (Canadian?) feel.

And what are you reading this weekend? Do share.

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The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Posted on May 17, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I read this book in a day, rapt and tearful and awed. Madeline Miller, I love you. Write more, please.

I expect that most people are at least vaguely familiar with the story of the Trojan War, even if you never read the Iliad, yes? The Greeks sail to Troy in pursuit of Helen, “the face that launched a thousand ships” (that’s these ships!), the most beautiful woman in the world, stolen from her king-husband Menelaus by the Trojan prince Paris. They fight at the gates of Troy for ten years before Odysseus’s characteristically clever notion of the big wooden horse (the Trojan horse of idiom) wins the war for the Greeks. Achilles is a hero of the war, on the Greeks’ side. He had been sitting the war out in protest against an offense to his pride when his close friend (and, most scholars agree, lover) Patroclus goes into battle and is killed. In the opening scene of the Iliad, Achilles is mad with grief and rage, about to rush into battle, kill Hector, and be killed by Paris.

That’s the background. Miller, a scholar of ancient languages (including Greek) and theatre has written a novel from Patroclus’s point of view. This gave her quite a bit of leeway, since Patroclus is not given much coverage in Homer or in ancient myth generally; she got to do what she wanted with him. Here, we see him grow up from a boy: he was a disappointment to his father, then was exiled in dishonor and sent away to be fostered in another kingdom, where Achilles is the prince and heir. The two boys form a decidedly unlikely friendship, with Patroclus the dishonored and weak following in the footsteps of Achilles, whose future is prophesied to be something enormous: he will be Aristos Achaion, the greatest of the Greeks.

Patroclus joins Achilles in his studies and their bond grows closer until they become lovers. They are not eager to join the Greeks and sail to Troy to fight for another king’s wife, but circumstances (and Odysseus, the crafty one) conspire to see them off. From there, you can revisit my synopsis of the Iliad, above – except that we keep Patroclus’s perspective, which actually made the Trojan War that I thought I knew so well spring fresh from the page.

And that is one of the several strengths of this book: that an ancient myth that is familiar to many readers, like me, becomes so real, new, crisp & juicy in Miller’s hands. It definitely made me want to go back and reread the Iliad, as well as other cited works. (Check out the Character Glossary, whether you think you need it or not, for background as well as mentions of other books you’ll want to go find.) The myth of the Trojan War comes alive with Patroclus as it hasn’t before.

Another great strength is the emotional impact Miller achieves. This book is moving, sweet, heartfelt, powerful, in its tragedies as in its loving moments – and the tragedies are plentiful. There is visceral wrath in Achilles’s mother Thetis and her hatred of all mortals and Patroclus in particular; that emotion comes through just as strongly as the love that makes Patroclus put aside jealousy and envy, makes him put Achilles’s needs before his own. I noticed that the first-person voice of Patroclus rarely uses the name Achilles, but just refers to his lover as “he” – thus emphasizing the extent to which Achilles is the center of his world.

As I said at the start of this review, I want more of this! It’s so well done. If you’re taking requests, Ms. Miller, I would like to read a book about what happened to the happy family of Odysseus, Penelope and Telemachus following the conclusion of the Odyssey: how does Odysseus manage to gracefully step down from power and transfer to Telemachus without sacrificing any of his machismo? Reading The Song of Achilles raised this question for me – how a king could step down and preserve his dignity and quality of life. I wonder, too, whether Penelope ever gets grumpy about all the philandering Odysseus did along his homeward journey, while she was standing strong against the suitors.

In a nutshell, this retelling of the Trojan War and the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus is lovely, loving, sweet and deeply emotional; it preserves the grand, sweeping scale and feeling of humanity and drama in the original, but brings it freshly alive in an appealingly different format. The Song of Achilles made me sigh and think and cry, and I wanted more when it was all gone. This may very well be the best book I’ve read in 2012.

Rating: a rare 10 loving caresses.

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Teaser Tuesdays: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Posted on May 15, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

Head’s up, friends: expect a wildly raving review of The Song of Achilles in the next few days. I am mad for this book. I’ve chosen a teaser for you today that I especially enjoyed.

This was no slouchy prince of wine halls and debauchery, as Easterners were said to be. This was a man who moved like the gods were watching; every gesture he made was upright and correct. There was no one else it could be but Hector.

I reread this passage a few times, it made me so happy. Run out and get you a copy.

What are you reading this week?

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