The Goldfinch

Novel by Donna Tartt

I haven't blogged since March 19? What? I knew it had been a long time but I guess I didn't realize I'd slacked that much. And before you start judging me or wondering if I'm slipping, it's not because I wasn't reading in all that time. Well, mostly not because of that. I read two books in the last month and a half. And the second one was so.very.long that I can't even remember what the first one was. Honestly. I'm trying and I can't recall. I feel like I've been reading The Goldfinch for about a year. The library probably feels that way, too, since they keep emailing and asking for it back.

I suppose that's what I get for tackling a recent Pulitzer Prize-winning 700-page masterpiece-behemoth just as the sun is gracing us with its presence and both my pasty skin and pasty children are asking to go outside all the time. More playing, less reading, which generally is good for everyone (except my library status).

So now you know that you shouldn't begin this book unless you have a serious amount of time on your hands, plus strong hands in general because it's so heavy (literally). Here's a few other things it might help to know, courtesy of my mistakes and ignorance.

A) The story is about a boy who steals a painting after a tragic accident in a museum. All that is disclosed very early on. What I did not know is that this is a real painting. I thought surely it was made up because it is so central to the story, the author wouldn't fictionally DO all those things to a real painting. And also because I'd never heard of it, and I think I know a few things about art, but apparently not.

B) Everyone I talk to agrees that the book could be about 200 pages shorter. I wonder, though, if it would sort of stick with you the way it does if it was shorter. We basically grow up with the main character and he is all kinds of messed up, in a way that as a teacher and parent makes me cringe and gasp and cry for him. It's at times understated, his grief and depression, and other times incredibly stark, his drug use and lack of parenting and moral guidance. And even though it was almost more than I wanted to know, you really do know him, could probably recognize him if you saw him on the street because you would know his eyes and his soul.

C) It's definitely literary. I mean, it won the Pulitzer, but it also has that "important book" quality about it in the way it combines modern culture and art history and characterization to the max and intriguing story. I wasn't expecting such a heavy book (figuratively this time) because of its mass marketing. It makes me feel a wee bit dumb, actually, to read a bestseller and have it be a bit above my head in some places.

All in all, I'm glad I read it, but I'm more glad to have read it (to borrow an idea from Glennon Doyle Melton, the satisfaction in having done something more than in actively doing it). I'd love to hear what you think, either because you are in the have read it club or because you're thinking of reading it. Just don't ask too much about the end. I was so relieved to be almost done that I pretty much skimmed the last five pages.

From the bestseller list

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my library? They should pay me for mentioning them so much in this widely popular blog. Except that they lend me books for free...so really I should be paying them...not really making much of a case for myself here. Moving on.

Recently there have been so many new books out that I want to read, and there's this beautiful thing where, with a few clicks of my mouse, I can get these brand new fancy pants hard back books delivered straight to my mailbox in a gorgeous purple cloth envelope. I do a little happy dance every time one arrives. I'm not sure my mail carrier is as thrilled, since I don't bring my mail in very often and that box gets pretty full.

The two I've read most recently thanks to this ingenious system are The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan and The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.

I would have to say I usually enjoy Amy Tan but don't rave over her. Her books offer that glimpse into another culture that I so enjoy. What I find interesting about her is that her focus is sometimes Chinese culture and sometimes Chinese American culture. Multiculturalism and the questioning nature of people raised with multiple ethnic backgrounds is a really important theme to Tan. This story includes the best of both, as a young American girl in China is forced into the life of a courtesan, which is a fancy prostitute. The characters make it clear that in Chinese culture of the 1920's, courtesans and prostitutes are not the same, but Tan makes even more clear that no matter what you call it, the sex industry is an evil perpetrated against women. In the cultural and romantic side of the story, it's similar to Memoirs of a Geisha, but I love that Tan tries hard not to glamorize powerless women being forced as children to become sex workers. Also, she does it all in a pretty package and with complex characters.

While I kind of labored over The Valley of Amazement, I finished The Fault in Our Stars in a few days. This young adult novel just totally slayed me. I cried for about 45 minutes at the end and made my husband hug me for a long time. It's still totally worth it. The synopsis will tell you why I cried: two teenage cancer patients meet, fall in love, change each other's lives, and have an ending that is hinted at in the Shakespearean title. The writing is why it's worth it: I have never loved two teenage characters more. These kids are fantastic. They're who I hope my children become, witty and respectful and compassionate and friends with their parents and completely their own selves. It also helps that cancer is the only bad guy in this book. You can truly love everyone else. Well, almost everyone. There's sort of an anti-hero. But the rest of them are awesome parents, funny and supportive friends, and the two main characters who I can't wait to see in the movie version because I just want to hear them talk some more. Worth the tears, believe me.

Next up on my nightstand (in this order since this is the order in which they are overdue): Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, and The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. That's a lot of names with double letters.

Finishing the Divergent series

Insurgent, Book #2

Allegiant, Book #3

Young Adult novels by Veronica Roth

You won't like the last one, they said. The ending is terrible, they said. I have to read it anyway, I said. I have to finish the series. But I did what I do. I read the ending first.

Let me back up here. You can read my thoughts on the first book in the series here. These young adult novels are the next big thing after Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games. Yeah, That Big. The movie of the first book comes out next month. And I must agree, the first and second book live up to the hype. The writing is a little clunky, in my opinion, but written at an appropriate level for the young adult crowd, and the plot is break-neck fast.

Tris, the main character, lives in a city that we come to believe is Chicago, but with only enough population to fill a portion of the city, so it's probably the future. That population is divided into five factions who each venerate one character trait. On Choosing Day, 16 year olds can choose the faction they were raised in or a different one. Tris does just that, moving from Abegnation, a humble service-based faction, to Dauntless, a thrill-seeking faction that provides the city's security.  Tris goes through a great deal of self-discovery, finding out she is special even among the rare people who switch factions, at the same time that she is discovering some hidden truths about her city. 

That's the premise of the first book and the essential ingredients of the next one. With similarities to all the popular series I listed above (choosing day and factions are like Harry Potter, the romance a bit like Twilight, the female heroine in a dsytopian society like Hunger Games), it's engrossing. It also has a fairly strong female protagonist, a teenage romantic relationship in which they decide not to have sex before they're ready, and a realistic treatment of values and ethics in characters who are neither all good or all bad. I would and did recommend it for teenagers I know.

And then the third book hits. First, the setting changes. I can't say how or where without ruining a huge plot twist, but I think that change alone takes away a lot of the intrigue. Second, Roth adds another voice to the narration. Since I read the end first, I knew that was important to the outcome of the story, but it's still disconcerting after being accustomed to only one voice. Also, the writing gets even sloppier, like Roth was in a big old hurry for her publishers. Even the plot, which could continue to be intriguing, goes so far down a new tunnel of morals and science at war with each other that I was often confused. No wonder most of her teenage readers were disheartened. And finally, from the teacher/mom/Young Life leader standpoint, I was incredibly frustrated that the main characters ended up having sex. It's more implied than described, but still. I don't think it's necessary to the story and now I can't recommend that my students read this.

If, like me, the laundry list of faults doesn't discourage you from reading the third book, I'd love to hear your thoughts. One question I'm struggling with after reading it is how much a writer should aim to please her readers. Maybe this ending is where Roth was going all along, and she stuck to her guns and made it end the way she wanted. If so, I applaud her. But it feels to me more like she didn't know where to go and took the less obvious but more shock-inducing road. If so, she sold out anyway, so she should better have stuck to an end that would give everyone what they wanted. 

Four in One

I'm feeling more than a little divided these days. A week and a half ago, I went back to work after taking maternity leave with my third child. Of course, being a teacher, I really went back to work long before that, envisioning how my classes would go, meeting with colleagues, and finally, the long last weekend before, doing all my copying and laminating and organizing. And did you hear that this was maternity leave with my THIRD child? So now I'm responsible for the hearts and reading levels of ninety kiddos over the course of a school day and the ENTIRE well being of three others 24 hours a day. I feel like I embody the phrase "walking around with your heart outside your body." More than the sheer amount of work and never-ending potential for all hell to break lose, it's the emotional friction between my career and my kids, my life's calling to teach and my (willing) surrender of my soul to my family. So yeah, I'm a little divided.

And distracted.

Is it any wonder that I have read three and one-twentieth books of a vastly different nature over the last few weeks? I mean, I know you forgive me for not writing until now. I know you kind of like the four-in-one posts, right? It's just that this list of books is pretty diverse. Here goes.

Flight Behavior 

Novel by Barbara Kingsolver

This is the one-twentieth of a book I read. I did the math. I read to page 35 out of 671. It's not truly that long; I somehow ended up with a large print edition from the library. So actually, I probably read far less than 35 real pages, which isn't that much effort to give to a book before quitting. But I have fallen so much in love with a few of Barbara Kingsolver's other books (The Lacuna, The Poisonwood Bible, amazing!) that it felt wrong to not love this one. I can't even really tell you what it's about. Some red headed woman is about to have an affair and stops because she sees some weird thing in the hills, which I think turns out to be butterflies, but I don't know. Sorry. It didn't grab me, I'm tired, I quit. May you be a better reader than I and give it more than 35 large print pages to hold your attention. 

Divergent 

Young Adult Novel by Veronica Roth

The OPPOSITE of boring, this book may give you whiplash. It was just what I needed to take my mind off my...mind. The fact that it kept me up reading until 12:30 at night is my only complaint. (Yes, that's really late for me, I have a baby and a two year old and I'm a teacher. Stop calling me old.) Anyway, you may know this is coming out as a movie soon and is a trilogy that rivets some young readers almost as much as Hunger Games. It's similar in the futuristic dystopian setting and female lead but different in the writing (not quite as tightly constructed) and characters (the female lead takes a while to come into herself and even seems a bit damsel-ish like Bella from Twilight at first). The message is awesome for teenagers and I'm glad I listened to my many students and cousins and one nephew who literally pushed it into my hands to read. One warning--I've heard from EVERYONE that the third one disappoints. I'm still going to read it, though.

Carry on Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

Memoir by Glennon Doyle Melton

A memoir is not that much of a departure from my norm. They're really the only non-fiction I like, probably because they are still narratives and often read like fiction. But this book veers more toward collected essays (blog posts, actually) and a bit of self-help, which I totally stay away from as it usually makes me feel worse about myself instead of better. Not true here. I knew I loved Glennon from her blog Momastery.com. She is truly humble and genuine in her pursuit of being the most...the least...just herself. Which is a recovering addict, mom, wife, Jesus follower. She calls us all be ourselves and let others be themselves, with grace and mercy and frozen pizzas. I love her piece called Carpe Don't, telling parents of young kids that it's okay to not savor every moment. You can't do it. Just look your kids in the eye when they talk to you and carry on with the rest of the crazy. Think I needed to hear that? Ayup. 

The Last Runaway

Novel by Tracy Chevalier

First of all, if you read this, get the one with the other cover. This is the one I read and it's weird. I don't think it looks like a facial expression the main character would make. Her name is Honor and she's Quaker, which just might be an element of the next book I'm working on writing, so I was very intrigued. My Quakers would be 1950's American, though, and she's 1850's British but moves to America. She follows her sister, who dies, leaving her in rural America without family or friends, just the uptight Quaker community her sister's fiancee lives in. Honor gets involved in the Underground Railroad and has to decide which path to follow in life, hers or that of the people around her. I was riveted by the story of slavery that is told and realized it's still very relevant today, with people in misery in so many parts of the world, even our towns, and the choices we have about how to get involved. Chevalier is an interesting writer, and she doesn't make the obvious choices or follow typical story lines, so expect to be surprised about which way the story goes. Honor truly makes her own choices, even when it seems like her choices are laid out first by community and then by literature. I wish I could meet her.

Thank you for letting me unload the little bit of my mind that was storing up thoughts on these books. I'm sure I could use the space for focusing on school or family, but instead I'm going to go ahead and read the second Divergent book and have a glass of wine. 

The All-Girls Filling Station's Last Reunion

Novel by Fannie Flagg

That's a mouthful, huh? Kind of like Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. That's Fannie Flagg's big hit turned movie and a good representative of her style. All her books are Southern charm, meets whimsical characters, seemingly silly plots with serious social issues and major twists at the end.

This one is no different.

And yet. I knew exactly what I was getting with a Fannie Flagg book, yet I went through a series of changing emotions while reading. At first, I felt like I was home. There was a sense of "aaahhhh" as I read the first few pages and remembered her way of creating characters who feel like neighbors (despite the fact that I'm about as far from a Southerner as you can get). The main character, Sookie Poole, is just looking forward to a quieter time in life after playing mother of the bride at four weddings in two years. She has a sweet husband, quirky friends and neighbors, and a hilariously overbearing mother, all of whom feel familiar, either as incarnations in Flagg's previous books or reminiscent of people I know and love. (Go ahead, guess which one you are.)

A few chapters in, though, the shift began. I became a little disillusioned and even frustrated with the writing. When Sookie finds out a secret about her family's past that changes how she views herself, she reflects on her life up to now and calls on several friends and family members to help her understand. Some of the internal and external conversations are just plain awkward. One section of dialogue has seven lines starting with "Oh" and another leans heavily on "Well." Those aren't characterization; it's multiple people repeating the same sentence starter. And it"s just one example of the ways the middle of the book feels clunky to me. I started to compare Flagg's writing to some of the more serious stuff I've read lately and it paled a little.

And yet. When I found myself staying up late to finish the book, I realized several things. For one, her secondary story line, the one that has to do with the title, is actually the main story line. Sookie finding out about her past is a way of humanizing the part of American history that Flagg wanted to write about, which includes World War II era sexual politics and what the cover blurb calls a little known spot in American history, the flying of planes by female pilots during the war. Also, I realized that the mystery of the book, which seems so simple I thought I had it solved early on, actually kept me guessing. Flagg drops clever little distracting details that made me think I had it but I was wrong all along. Finally, as I was crying at the end, I knew that Flagg's writing has its own kind of genius. It's not Jess Walters or Elizabeth Gilbert but it's a different kind of American classic. I fell asleep that night wanting to re-watch "A League of Their Own" and hearing patriotic music, yet praying fervently for my daughter to never know the sexual discrimination that has been part of our country's history since forever. All that from a simple Southern charm school kind of story. She's clever, that Fanny Flagg. Clever.

The Signature of All Things

Novel by Elizabeth Gilbert

I have to admit, I didn't want to like this book. You've heard of Elizabeth Gilbert, right? Of Eat, Pray, Love fame? I really enjoyed that memoir and thought that probably a fictional book by her wouldn't be as awesome. You can't do everything well, after all. And instead of being a good comrade in writing (as if I even compare to a best selling author), I kind of wished that she wouldn't do everything well. But apparently she does. This is a phenomenal book.

The plot and characters are refreshingly but deceptively simple: it follows the life of one woman from birth to death. Alma Whittaker is born in 1800 to an enormously successful and wealthy pharmaceuticals magnate. As a brilliant but physically unattractive child, she has a charmed early life with no friends but many interactions with adult geniuses and other interesting people. Her life is less enviable as she grows older and begins to lose the few people who are close to her. Never allowed or daring to leave her home in Philadelphia, the walls of her world begin to close in, so she turns to botanical research, which as always been at the heart of their home. Her research brings her joy and eventually more relationships and adventures in travel, some of them heartbreaking but all of them interesting.

Aside from publication jealousy, another reason I expected not to enjoy this book as much as I did is that it's so very much about science. Alma is a scientist above all else and there is a good bit of evolutionary theory that threatened to go over my head and interests. In writing about scientific research, Gilbert must have done a great deal of her own research, plus more about the customs, language and even philosophical and cultural leanings of the nearly 100 years and multiple settings in the book. Yet she manages to distill it down for the most part, writing at some times in generalities and when necessary in specifics that don't bore. Alma also dabbles in the gray area between the scientific and the spiritual, hence the title, which mixes things up enough to keep me interested.

Reading back on this post, it still sounds like a book I wouldn't enjoy. But truly, I did, and not just because I think I should. It has all my must-haves: likeable characters who snuck into myheart, a bit of suspense to keep me wondering and reading, the opportunity to live in another time and place for a short time. So congratulations, Elizabeth Gilbert. I guess I'll just have to like you and your sweet, wise face smiling from the book jacket. If only you could give me a hand in this publishing thing!

Call the Midwife

Memoir by Jennifer Worth

I should start getting a commission from Amazon. Because right now, I say to you, if you have Christmas gifts left to buy for anyone who can read and has a heart beating in his or her chest, go buy this book. Ohmygosh.

Set in 1950's London, specifically the East End or Docklands, it's the story of an upper middle class young woman who becomes a midwife at a convent. She's not a nun, which is interesting, but a nurse and midwife who assists the nuns as they serve the impoverished women of the area. Nurse Jenny Lee, as she's known at the time of her memoir, is surprised to find herself in a convent when she arrives at the door of her new job, and even more surprised by the variety of life in Docklands. She tells her story with both a sense of history and immediacy, from looking back on the changes in health care and midwifery, to generalizing about the way of the world at the present time, to telling with compassion the circumstances of the individuals right in front of her, which are so amazing you almost wouldn't believe them to be true. Her voice has a combination of naivete and world weariness that gives a sense of what life as a young woman and the world was like just after World War II.

If you haven't heard and can't read the tiny print on the cover image, this story has become a series on BBC/PBS. I actually began watching the show before I started the book, but was told that the book is pretty much covered in the first season. I immediately stopped watching because I hate to spoil a good book, but I'm not sure if I did spoil it or not. I had the actors' voices and faces in my head instead of my own imaginings. On the other hand, I now can look forward to reliving the parts I already read and seeing new stories as I watch the rest of the show. It's like getting an unexpected sequel.

Also speaking of tiny print, the subtitle is "A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times." I think the reason this book so struck me is that this is life right now. It's the holidays, Christmas, the time of Christ's birth and families and supposedly joy joy joy. Yet it's so dark sometimes. Just reading any segment of news shows that the world is completely torn between darkness and light, desperately evil events like school shootings and heart-growing acts of love like football players befriending disabled students or people helping strangers buy their Christmas gifts. My life seems full of smaller versions of these ups and downs, too, with a beautiful but teething baby and the pleasure and loneliness of staying home with my children. It's comforting somehow to see this universal phenomenon mirrored in Jenny Lee's experiences with good people, bad people, poor people, generous people, birth, and death. Through the late nights and early mornings, the women she serves, and especially the nuns she serves alongside, she finds herself changing from scoffing at the faith of the nuns to yearning for their peace and love and eventually coming to her own faith. It's a good subtitle, and as nuanced as the story and its telling.

See? It's not just a story for women or BBC eggheads or whatever you might have thought. It's for all of us who need an excuse to smile and to cry and to gasp. Merry Christmas.