did not finish: Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

Posted on February 13, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I got not quite halfway through Alice I Have Been. I was looking forward to this book; I liked the sound of it. As it turned out, though, I couldn’t get motivated to continue. I wasn’t hating it, I just wasn’t particularly enjoying it, wasn’t particularly engaged, and I have so many books waiting for my attention that I’m trying to be very open to DNF’s. And I didn’t want to keep reading this one; so I’ve moved on to something that might please me better.

I really had two main complaints.

One, I spoke too soon in last Friday’s book beginning. The child-narrator I said sounded believable quickly took a turn in the other direction. Young Alice seems especially quick to empathize with others in ways that I don’t think are realistic for a child her age. For example: receiving a compliment – realizing the giver of said compliment had made her feel special when she so needed to – wondering if he has anyone in his life to provide the same service to him – giving him an awkward and dishonest compliment – musing that “every person, no matter how old, how matter how odd, needed someone like that [to make them feel special] in their lives.” Does that sound like an 8-year-old to you? It does not, to me. Or again, marveling “at how one man could appear to be so different to so many people.” Or being concerned at whether the musicians at a festival had gotten a break for dinner. While these moments make Alice seem very sweet and thoughtful, they don’t ring true for such a young person. Children, I think, are naturally selfish; empathy is something we learn with age. Especially a privileged child like Alice (who unthinkingly accepts her mother’s convention of calling all maids Mary Anne) would be unlikely, I think, to be concerned about meal breaks for musicians of a lower social class.

Second, the subject matter was starting to wear on me. The thesis of Alice I Have Been up to the place where I quit (page 155, if you’re concerned, of 345 in my edition) seems to be that the child Alice was not only the muse but the beloved of the adult Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll. As young as age 8 she adores him, and feels but cannot name a tingling sensation in his presence that later morphs into physical attraction. At 13 she initiates physical touching (totally tame, of course, but definitely inappropriate) and demands that he wait for her until they can be together – this will be when she is 15 and he 35, she thinks (and it appears that this would indeed have been socially acceptable). The short version of which I think is: Dodgson was a pedophile. He went all trembly and ecstatic in the proximity of this 8-year-old child. This was distasteful to me.

A few caveats to this second protest. First, because I didn’t finish this book, I don’t know how things turned out. It may be that Benjamin turns things around and I have a misconception which will never be corrected (because I won’t finish the book). I don’t know. But for my purposes here, I don’t care; I see what I see and I don’t like it. Second, I’m not afraid of reading about pedophiles. I’ve certainly read far worse (graphic, violent, sick) in thrillers, etc. and will do so again. But I didn’t like it here, it wasn’t what I was looking for, and I didn’t feel like reading any further, so I shan’t. That’s all.

A lot of people love this book and perhaps you do (or will) and I wish you all the enjoyment in the world; but in a few days’ investment I was not interested in finishing this book. I’m moving on to something I hope to enjoy more. Come back tomorrow and find out what in the next edition of Teaser Tuesdays. 🙂

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

book beginnings on Friday: Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

Posted on February 10, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages 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.

Charles Dodgson, who you know better as Lewis Carroll, based his Alice in Wonderland character on a real-life little girl he knew, named Alice Liddell. Alice I Have Been is the fictionalized life story of Alice Liddell. (That is, as I understand it, squarely fiction, although I can’t speak to where the line is drawn – especially not having read much of the book yet!) I have heard about this book for some time and am glad to finally be picking it up. It begins:

But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful? It is. Only I do get tired.

Makes sense to me; fame is tiresome, I’m told.

I am enjoying the tone of this book so far very much; the child-narrator we begin the book with feels very believable to me. My only concern at this point is the extent to which Dodgson feels like an icky child-groper! Tell me I’m wrong?

What are you reading this weekend?

Filed under: book beginnings | Tagged: , | 5 Comments »

Fire on the Mountain by Edward Abbey

Posted on January 29, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Oh my. I have difficulty beginning this review. I found this book very moving and beautiful. I’m glad to have found such joy in Edward Abbey this time around; I was disappointed in Black Sun, but I knew he had this in him.

Abbey tells us that this story was “inspired by an event that took place in our country not many years ago” but is fictional in its particulars. Billy Vogelin Starr has just arrived in southern New Mexico to spend another summer with his grandfather, on the ranch that has been in Grandfather’s family since the beginning. Billy is twelve, and he loves the land, the terrain, the work, the ranch, and his grandfather very much; they move something deep inside him. He only gets to be a cowboy for three months a year, but he takes this time seriously. He’s also very excited to see his friend Lee again; Lee is handsome, charismatic, a real cowboy, his grandfather’s best friend, and Billy’s hero. This year things are different, however; the United States government intends to take the Box V ranch away. The story is, they need it for national security. We’re fighting the Soviets, at least in theory and in spirit, and the land is needed for rocket testing (thus explaining the cover image, if you can see it that clearly). Grandfather’s response is that his land is not for sale. He was born here; his daddy died here, and he’ll die here, too. If he has to do battle to retain his right to his land, he’s willing. And of course, Billy wants to be right by Grandfather’s side.

A short book at under 200 pages, Fire on the Mountain is incredibly powerful. In few words – just like a cowboy – Abbey teaches his reader about old men like John Vogelin, whose tie to the land and to an older way of life is stubborn. The descriptions of the natural phenomena of Southern New Mexico are awesome, and I challenge you to resist respecting Grandfather’s final stand. Not for nothing is Abbey called (by Larry McMurtry) “the Thoreau of the American West.” This is a coming-of-age story for Billy Vogelin Starr, whose twelfth summer sees drama that will change his world forever; it’s also a lovely evocation of the beauty and power of nature, and the story of the classic, iconoclastic, Western loner resisting a world of change. An incredibly powerful and touching book, beautifully written, irresistible, exhibiting the greatness that I expect from Edward Abbey. More, please.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , | 6 Comments »

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Posted on January 23, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Another gift from my buddy Fil, and another hit! Fil says he hasn’t read this one yet, himself, and I say to him and to all of you: hurry up and read this slim but powerful book! My 25th anniversary edition includes an introduction entitled “A House of My Own” by Cisneros, which was gold; do find an edition with this intro, because it’s wonderful. I would say it was my favorite part of the book but I can’t relegate any other part to less-than-favorite.

So first, the introduction. (A bell rang for me as I opened this book, as I was reading A Room of One’s Own simultaneously.) Cisneros describes a former self, the woman pictured on the opening page, a young woman living in her own apartment in Chicago, after graduate school, working to become a writer. It’s a really lovely essay all on its own, describing some of the challenges that faced a young Latina writer and looking at that former self through her older, wiser eyes. It was beautiful. I cried a little, not because anything was too terribly sad (okay, there was that one bit), but because it was so well-done. And it served as a beautiful introduction, as it introduces the young woman who composed the short stories, the episodes, the anecdotes that make up The House on Mango Street, not yet knowing that they would become a book. Rather, she was working on her MFA thesis in poetry, so those fiction fragments (or “little-little stories”) were extracurricular, failed to fit into a known body of work. But oh, the book that they became…

The House on Mango Street is a collection of short stories, and I mean short – the longest run to 3-4 pages, most 1-2, some just a paragraph long. As a whole, they follow Esperanza (the narrator) through the first year of life at the first home her parents own, on Mango Street. It is not the home they aspired to and Esperanza doesn’t like it very much. She has a lot in common with Cisneros – the city, the time, and the ethnic background; but I know from “A House of My Own” that Esperanza is really a combination of Cisneros’s students, people she’s known and people she’s made up, and herself. There is a coming-of-age element, as well as a theme of home – what makes a home, what a person need from her home.

The stories are entrancing. The style is great, is dynamic; it’s both poetic and conversational. It’s not formal; sometimes a sentence runs on until it loses track of itself, but I’ve come away with the strong impression that every word was carefully chosen and exactly in its place. The economy of language reminded me of Hemingway, although I don’t suppose Cisneros gets compared to him very often, and I don’t mean to say that they’re very similar. Rather, they both seem to have very carefully created what looks like simple language but turns out to be poetry. (There is of course always the danger that I see Hemingway everywhere because I’m crazy about his work.)

The subject matter is mostly mundane and ordinary (a young girl’s life and disillusions, her disappointment that she has to wear old shoes with a new dress to a party) but also serious, weighty, and sad (because such things happen to a young girl, too). I only knew Sandra Cisernos by reputation before I picked up this book; that will have to change, because she’s amazing. It’s only about 100 pages long (including the introduction), a super-easy read, and so powerful. No excuse! Go get yourself a copy.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , | 7 Comments »

The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck (audio)

Posted on January 19, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I don’t remember where I got the recommendation for Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down. As far as I can tell, it’s not one of his better-known works; I know and love his Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, Travels with Charley, saw the movie East of Eden though I haven’t read it (yet!), also have The Grapes of Wrath on my radar. But this one I hadn’t heard much of. It was recommended to me (by someone) and I found the audio, and it’s just a short little thing on three cds, so it was easy to make time for. I do love Steinbeck’s style and subject matter, and this one is worthy of his high reputation.

Published in 1942, it handles the occupation of a small town in northern Europe by an army that has a lot in common with Hitler’s Germany, though it’s never named. There are references to “The Leader” and a war twenty years past that bears a resemblance to WWI.

This small coastal town is conquered with very little fanfare; 6 of the town’s 12 soldiers are killed, and it takes the people and the mayor a little while to realize what’s happened. The town is a center for coal production, which makes it an important possession, and the occupying force lodges its officers in the mayor’s house while managing coal production. Colonel Lancer has seen war before, and is weary of the tragic consequences of the orders he must carry out; he’d rather rule in peace and order, but the occupation quickly turns ugly. The local people learn to resist, and the occupiers live in fear. One memorable line occurs when one of the occupying officers – lonely for his homeland, friendly faces, and female attentions – wails at the senselessness and unpleasantness of their situation. “Flies conquer the flypaper!” he bitterly says of the occupation.

It’s been a while since I’ve read any Steinbeck, but I recognized his style. The prose is simple, yet moving. This is both a straightforward story of one fictional town’s experience, and an allegory and statement about the futility of war. I’m sure this short novel would make for extended discussion in an educational setting, and I wish I had a professor to help me pick it apart! But as a quick read for entertainment’s sake, too, it’s satisfying, if not happy.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

Teaser Tuesdays: The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Posted on January 17, 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!


I had a difficult time choosing a teaser from this amazing book for you. My review is yet to come, but in a nutshell – read it.

From “Minerva Writes Poems,” here’s your teaser:

Minerva cries because her luck is unlucky. Every night and every day. And prays. But when the kids are asleep after she’s fed them their pancake dinner, she writes poems on little pieces of paper that she folds over and over and holds in her hands a long time, little pieces of paper that smell like a dime.

Speaking of poems… prose poetry, no?

Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Posted on January 14, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I shall set the scene: Cassandra Mortmain is seventeen years old. She lives in an impressive but largely ruined castle that represents various historical periods, in the British countryside near the town of Godsend. Her household is composed of her father (known as Mortmain), who had one extremely successful novel and has been writer’s-blocked ever since; her stepmother Topaz, a free-spirited New Age-y retired artist’s model; her older sister Rose, who laments the lack of attractive, romantic, wealthy marriageable men in their neighborhood; her younger brother Thomas, a schoolboy; and the household help, Stephen, who is crazy about Cassandra. They live in rather abject poverty, about to scrape bottom when the book opens. Cassandra is an aspiring writer, and is practicing by keeping a journal; I Capture the Castle takes the form of three volumes of that journal, a fairly unique format for a novel.

The action of the book begins when a pair of American brothers arrive at the local estate, having just inherited it, and bring fresh life into the Mortmains’ little world. Rose finds men to work on. Stephen pursues Cassandra. The entire family tries to goad Mortmain into finally working again. Thomas matures; Topaz worries; everyone’s world is widened by a little bit of travel, made possible by a friendship with the new Americans; and Cassandra falls in love. I won’t give it away.

This book is rapturously admired by many readers, writers, reviewers, and bloggers whom I respect, and I was excited about it. My final reaction is disappointment; not because I didn’t enjoy the book, but because for me, it didn’t live up to the hype. Cassandra is indeed a sympathetic, clever narrator. I like her. I wish her the best. Her writing is witty, lyrical, reflective, and funny. The entire cast of characters is really great fun; I thought Mortmain and Topaz were especially amusing, and Stephen is poignant. I liked it, really I did, but I read this book much more slowly than usual (the holidays, me having been sick for three weeks now, general malaise), and I didn’t miss it when we were apart; that’s not a particularly good sign. I feel that I will quickly forget it. I’m sad that I didn’t receive the strong vibrations that so many readers do – and again I must stress that I did like this book! It just didn’t take me to the heights reached by others.

By the end of the book Cassandra has grown up a bit, and the family’s circumstances have changed. It’s a coming-of-age story, involving a charismatic young woman, and it comes in a unique format, with lovely, quirky writing. I liked it. If you read it, hopefully you’ll love it, as many do. I cannot give a resounding enthusiastic endorsement, but there are lots of those out there if you’re interested.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: | 2 Comments »

Teaser Tuesdays: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Posted on January 10, 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!

Here is a book that I had never heard of until I began dwelling in the world of book blogs. Thank you, fellow bloggers!

I Capture the Castle is the whimsical musing of Cassandra Mortmain, seventeen-year-old castle-dwelling aspiring writer. I’ve only just begun it but found a delightful teaser very quickly:

I suppose it was her sheer despair of ever meeting any marriageable men at all, even hideous, poverty-stricken ones, that made her suddenly burst into tears. As she only cries about once a year I really ought to have gone over and comforted her, but I wanted to set it all down here. I begin to see that writers are liable to become callous.

I don’t know about you, but that took me from Jane Austen to Ernest Hemingway in only three sentences, which is an effect I most definitely appreciate. How about you?

Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: | 6 Comments »

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova (audio)

Posted on December 31, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Left Neglected evoked strong reactions from me, which I think is always a recommendation.

Sarah Nickerson is in her late 30’s, happily married to Bob, with three children (Charlie, Lucy and Linus), and a successful career in a male-dominated hectic corporate world of 80-hour work weeks. She is accustomed to using every odd moment to send emails, make phone calls, or read up on work; she would be lost without her nanny Abby; a slight traffic delay costs her the chance to read to her daughter before bed. In other words, she likes her life, but it’s jam-packed-full with no room for error.

The error comes one rainy day on the freeway; a traffic accident leaves Sarah with a unique sort of brain injury called “left neglect.” She’s missing the left side of her consciousness of the world. She can’t find or use her left arm, her left hand, her left leg; she can’t see things or people on the left side of the room, her dinner plate, her world. She can’t conceive of left. Sarah wakes up in a hospital and has to laboriously relearn everything. Juggling international corporate intrigue with a staff of 1000’s is no longer her primary concern; she can’t even dress herself.

Sometimes post-accident Sarah’s whining and frustration with her condition annoyed me, and sometimes pre-accident Sarah irritated me with her material and work-related priorities. But overall, she was definitely a sympathetic character; and if I was sometimes mad at her, that only made our relationship stronger in the end. As in a real friendship, we had our ups and downs, and our bond increased through those trials.

I sometimes felt that Genova tried to maximize the angst. Sarah’s flashbacks to the childhood death of her brother Nate, and its repercussions for her present-day relationship with her mother, might have been pushing the psych-drama angle a little bit. But overall, it worked.

I was reminded of another book, My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. I read that one pre-blog so no review here, but it touched me very deeply. Taylor’s book is nonfiction, and deals with a different brain injury; but the two are similar in that they describe a brain injury from the patient’s perspective, along with the recovery. I suffered a brain injury in a bicycle accident in 2007, and while I was lucky to suffer less severe injury than either of these protagonists, I still found myself identifying. My own recovery was fascinating to me and made me think about things I’d never considered before; when I read My Stroke of Insight a year or so later, it helped me look at my own experience and learn from it. Left Neglected held a similar self-referential interest for me. (To go even further out on a limb: I’m now doing physical therapy following my knee surgery, and trying to get back to mountain bike racing. The connection is vague and yet I can’t help but compare my frustrations to the fictional Sarah’s. Again, my injury is very minor by comparison. But the cycle of optimism and pessimism, frustration and success, crosses over.) All of this means that when Sarah gets annoying – failing to recognize how lucky she’s been; refusing to work hard with her therapists; wanting to give up and cry – I’m annoyed, and yet I understand, too.

The massive change in the way Sarah views her world – and not just in terms of right and left – may seem ambitious, even unrealistic, to some readers. This might be said too of Taylor’s change in philosophy in My Stroke of Insight. But in both cases it rang very true for me. I felt that I had traveled so far with the protagonists, both fictional and non, that I was right there with them at the end of their stories. Is my outlook unique? Possibly, but I doubt it. I think we’ve probably all had some life-changing experience (hopefully less painful than the ones detailed here) that allows us to get inside Sarah Nickerson’s head a little bit.

Maybe it’s odd that I’m drawing such a strong parallel between two books that are really rather different, but they both affected me strongly. In the end I give Left Neglected very high marks, and I’m interested in Genova’s earlier novel, Still Alice. For those who are curious, she does have credibility in this subject matter: she has a PhD in neuroscience. Check it out. And if/when you have/do, please let me know if this book touches you as it’s touched me. Here’s to being thankful for our health!

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , , | 6 Comments »

did not finish: Upgunned by David J. Schow and Cosmopolis by Don Delillo (audio)

Posted on December 28, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Just very briefly here, because I didn’t get very far into either…

David J. Schow was the screenwriter of The Crow and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. These credentials are not terribly meaningful to me, not being a fan of horror movies, but they did give me some hope. Upgunned begins with the perspective of a semi-celebrity photographer of the scuzzy, scummy upper crust – drug-addled anorexics and the like. He is kidnapped and forced at gunpoint to take blackmail photos of a local politician. And then the perspective shifts to the man behind the gun.

The plot premise was mildly interesting to me – I can get into a good thriller regardless of framing elements if it’s done right – but the writing and characters didn’t hold up. I found both early characters a little bit cartoonish and overdone, the society in question was just a little too sickening for my taste, and the writing did nothing to redeem it. Nancy Pearl would be disappointed as I quit just 48 pages in, but I couldn’t motivate any further than that.

This DNF review is based on a galley sent to me by the publisher. Many thanks!

I have fond memories of Don Delillo from his amazing White Noise (and also my buddy Jerko is a big fan and I value his opinions). But Cosmopolis didn’t hold up. (And to be fair, Jerko specifically did not recommend it.) I made it maybe an hour in, which I think should count as 50 pages, if only just. 🙂 The story of Eric Packer’s billionaire troubles while wending his way through the city in his limousine (as pictured on the cover) failed to make me feel anything deep. Delillo’s trademark tone of detached despair is there, but the writing feels a little stilted, a little overdeveloped. Mostly though, I just couldn’t get interested in Packer’s fate.

Am I a little disenchanted and difficult-to-please these days? Hey, it’s possible. We all go through those phases. I will point out, though, that I attempted these two DNFs within a week of reading my two most recent additions to the Best of 2011 list: 11/22/63 and The Home-Maker. So maybe everything else pales in comparison. 🙂 At any rate, I’m sure there’s more outstanding reading right around the corner, and I hope the same for you as well!

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »