I have moved and haven't had internet and haven't had the time to post my published reviews! Sad, huh. But I have internet once again, so things are good. Look for slow going, however, as I spend the next few weeks unpacking ...
"Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia." By Elizabeth Gilbert. Penguin. $15.
I really loved this book.
That said, I also really hated this book.
Eat, Pray, Love is the memoir of a year that writer Elizabeth Gilbert spent traveling in Italy, India and Indonesia. She decided that a trip around the world was exactly what she needed after her divorce and subsequent failed rebound relationship; because she was a writer for GQ, she was able to get a book deal for the trip.
Gilbert is best known for her last book, The Last American Man, the nonfiction account of an authentic “Mountain Man.” I first discovered her when I read her novel, Stern Men, several years ago. The charming and quirky tale mixed romance and lobster fishing in a small town, but got little notice.
The memoir is a self-indulgent genre to begin with. But Eat, Pray, Love takes self-indulgence to a whole new level. We are supposed to care about Gilbert’s self-destructive relationships and quest to find good food, God and love.
And we do – or I did, at least. Gilbert is funny and clever and has a great way with words. When she travels to Naples with a friend to eat pizza, she writes:
“These pies we have just ordered – one for each of us – are making us lose our minds. I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair. Meanwhile, Sofie is practically in tears over hers, she’s having a metaphysical crisis about it, she’s begging me, “‘Why do they even bother trying to make pizza in Stockholm? Why do we even bother eating food at all in Stockholm?’”
I have felt like that about pizza (Sally’s in New Haven, in case you’re wondering), so I identified with Gilbert. Throughout the book I found myself saying, “Yes, that’s exactly like that!”
But 334 pages (in the paperback version, at least) of this prose gets old. Gilbert may be a good writer, but it takes editing to make a good writer great, to make her whiny complaints while at an ashram in India or struggling with visa issues in Bali matter.
The problem with Eat, Pray, Love is that it is too many things at once. It is a travelogue, a meditation on food and Italy, a search for enlightenment and a romance. Gilbert loves too many things, and she tries to cram it all in, and it just doesn’t congeal.
Still, if you can stop yourself from screaming when Gilbert is at her most annoying, her charms are plentiful. A year might be too long to travel with someone, but for a few days, here and there, Gilbert’s an amusing passenger to have along.
"After This." By Alice McDermott. FSG.
I’m always wary of comparing authors to William Faulkner.
It’s not just that anyone who writes long sentences inevitably gets compared to the man, or that anyone who has some Southern Gothic plot that involves race and class must be obviously aping Faulkner, because God knows, race and class would so totally not be anything anyone would have ever written about specifically relating to the South if it weren’t for him.
I just think the comparison is overused. It’s weak, it’s lazy. It’s like comparing anyone who writes about fishing to Hemingway. There are those wannabes out there, but there are also a lot of people who write about fishing as, well, fishing, and not as some test of virility.
Thus, when I say that After This is Faulknerian, you should know that I mean it.
In fact, it’s hard not to see After This as a modern retelling of The Sound and the Fury, substituting Long Island for Yoknapatawpha County, World War II for the Civil War, and Catholicism for the almost religious faith the Compsons have in the South. Because make no mistake, if there is one thing After This is about more than any other, it is about the Catholic faith.
The novel begins as Mary Keane (though she isn’t a Keane quite yet) leaves church in the late 1940s. It ends inside a church, three decades later, as her youngest daughter is about to get married.
Catholicism is the culture of the Keane family and their neighbors, and it is what their children (or two of them, that is) rebel against, the way Quentin and Caddy Compson rebelled against the stifling expectations of a Southern gentlemen and lady.
As the world changed around the Compsons during Southern reconstruction and tore their family apart, so the world changes around the Keanes during the 1950s and ‘60s. What begins as a hopeful love story evolves into a sparse, subtle meditation on faith, family and duty. Although the changes imposed by Vatican II are never directly mentioned, they are clearly as important to the devolution of the family as Vietnam and women’s lib.
McDermott has always been a talented author, but in After This, she takes her skills to a completely new level. She moves back and forth in time, presenting a stream-of-consciousness narrative that moves from Mary Keane to her husband John to their children Jacob, Michael, Annie and Clare.
Lest those who have attempted (and failed) The Sound and the Fury avoid this book for similar reasons, I should note that while Faulknerian, McDermott’s narrative is hardly confusing and actually propels the reader forward at a swift pace. Some moments in time in the book move slowly and are retold — a day at the beach, a party, a dinner. Others pass in just a few words, or none at all — a marriage, a death.
It is not what happens, per se, in After This that matters. It is the evocation of it, the audacity of McDermott to tell such a minuscule, particular story that is yet meant to stand for an entire generation. You, the reader, are what happens “after this,” she seems to be saying.
Ignore all those reviewers who have praised this novel as a statement about the Baby Boom generation and read the book on its own terms as a story about a family, a faith and the dying culture of both.
"The Sweet Potato Queens’ 1st Big-Ass Novel." By Jill Conner Browne with Karin Gillespie. Simon & Schuster.
Jill Conner Browne’s series of books might seem to some to be already fictional, what with titles like The Sweet Potato Queens’ Wedding Planner/Divorce Guide and The Sweet Potato Queens’ Big-Ass Cookbook (and Financial Planner).
However, her wild tales, however funny and embellished they may be, are not, technically, fiction, according to Browne. At the urging of her agent, she decided to attempt a novel and hauled along author Karin Gillespie of the Bottom Dollar Girls series (Bet Your Bottom Dollar, A Dollar Short and Dollar Daze) for the ride.
The tale that ensues is a mythical imagining of how the Sweet Potato Queens came to exist. In real life, Browne created the Queens 25 years ago for a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Jackson, Miss., her hometown. In the novel, the Queens (which include four queenly gals and one queeny man), form the group in high school in the 1960s.
The main character, aptly named Jill, has a life that unfolds in a manner not dissimilar from her author. Still, enough differences remain that no one will assume Browne is unburdening her autobiographical secrets, especially as the true stories have already been told in her previous books.
The Sweet Potato Queens’ 1st Big-Ass Novel traces the course of the five friends’ love affairs, joys and turmoil over the ensuing decades. As one might imagine, their lives are affected by the political and cultural changes that happen in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s — civil rights, feminism, gay pride, the AIDS epidemic. But all these changes play second fiddle to the true core of friendship — gossip, petty squabbles and lots of food. (And yes, recipes are included!)
While the book is aimed towards readers of Browne’s other books and her Million-Queen Nation (and world), it still has the light, sweet-as-molasses tone that will please fans of Mary Kay Andrews, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, or other books of that ilk.
The Sweet Potato Queens’ 1st Big-Ass Novel may not be as funny as Browne’s other works — truth is stranger than fiction, I suppose — but it will definitely brighten up any gloomy February day.
There is no way I could attempt to review the stunningly large impact the late Ms. Smith has had on our society. All I can say, however, is this is one celebrity death that has truly saddened me (which doesn't happen very frequently) — all the odder for who it is.
I loved Anna Nicole at the Supreme Court. That has to be my all time favorite S.C. moment. She looked so glamorous, so sad, so svelte. I've never much wanted to be Anna Nicole Smith, but at that wind-blown moment, I did.
They say from every tragedy comes a silver lining. Thus, if there is any meaning in this senseless loss it may be the legal ramifications.
WAIT.
I'm not being callous here.
Forget the fact that the paternity of her tiny daughter has yet to be determined (poor little baby who will never know its mother, sigh). I'm talking about the estate case, the one that went to the Supreme Court and is STILL unsettled. The case that has lasted almost as long as "Bleak House." According to this AP article, the legal complications could take YEARS to unravel. And, when and if they are ever done, Anna Nicole Smith could be posthumously setting legal precedents all over the land.
Now that's some influence.
And may angels sing thee to thy sleep.
"Gossip Girl." By Cecily von Ziegesar. Little, Brown. $9.99. 201 pages.
Wow, did I drink too much tonight. Three chocolate martinis in one giant gulp and instead of smoking, I burned through this whole book, "Gossip Girl."
I'm not sure which would have been healthier, the Dunhills or this book.
While I've been aware of the whole "Gossip Girl" phenomena since 2002, when the first book (this one), came out, I just never got around to reading any of the books. Frankly, Nick McDonnell's overrated "Twelve" was enough sourness from the UES teen set for me. But my sister wants the books, so if I'm going to send them to her in Africa, I might as well read them first, right?
Even the nice teens aren't very nice. But on the other hand, the mean teens aren't all that evil. "Cruel Intentions" this is not. The rich party kids who grew up blocks away from me? Well, maybe.
Ok, so I'm totally hooked into "Gossip Girl," now, sadly, even though I kind of despise all the characters. But this is a lot better than the "Sweet Valley High" books of old.
“Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood.” By Ann Brashares. Delacorte Press. $18.99. 384 pages.
All good things must end, they say. Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, even Star Trek. (Yes, I know J.J. Abrams is committed to the next movie, but, like, whatevs).
So why not, too, the Sisterhood?
For those uninitiated — i.e., you male readers — the Sisterhood is a group of four best friends, all born weeks apart, who find a magical pair of blue jeans that not only fit all four of them but also are amazingly flattering on each girl.
As a woman who might spend a month or more trying on jeans just to find one pair that fits (currently the search is at three months, in case you were wondering), I can confirm that such a pair of pants is, indeed, magical. Forget “He-who-must-not-be-named.” This is scary shit.
Well, that’s not exactly true. The SOTP series deals with “real” issues, you know, like they do on Degrassi (it doesn’t still have the “Jr. High,” does it?) or One Tree Hill (ok, bad example).
But the four friends — Lena, Carmen, Bridget and Tibby — do have divorced parents, dead parents, dating parents and weird parents. They fall in love, they get sad, they get happy, they get stressed out. They fight with their parents, with their siblings and with each other.
In short, they act pretty much like real teenage girls do.
Years ago, when a friend of mind recommended reading The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, I thought she had to be joking. I hadn’t read so-called “Young Adult” fiction (excepting Harry Potter) since I was a mere babe.
Then I heard another friend, much older than me, recommend the book. If women in their 20s, 30s and 40s were reading a book written for pre-teens and passing it along to their friends, I knew there had to be something to it.
I devoured The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I remember reading it at a Mexican restaurant in Athens, Ga., trying not to cry as the server brought me my check. It felt so real, even while it was so patently unreal.
I didn’t have divorced parents, but I emphasized with Carmen’s struggles. My mother hadn’t died, but my dad had, so I got it when Bee (a.k.a. Bridget) went nuts. I was a social outcast in high school, just like Tibby. And, like Lena, I have that timid, prudish side.
I was these girls.
The most refreshing thing about the book, however, was the way it dealt with sex. That is to say, there wasn’t much.
I know that today’s ‘tweens are crazy liberated or whatever, according to the media. However, I also remember hearing that same media criticism back in 1989, when I thought I was so grown-up for reading Seventeen when I was 12.
When I was 12, the idea of sex was really gross and scary. Even in high school, when I wore super short skirts that literally caused my mother to yell, “You are not leaving the house wearing that!” — sex freaked me out. Judging by the popularity of the SOTP series, there are a lot of girls today who still feel that way, whatever the media says.
In the first book, Bridget has sex. No one else comes close. Bee later regrets her decision, but not in the Hollywood way — i.e. “We have to tack on the guilt to keep the Christian Coalition from breathing down our necks.” She instead realizes that maybe she was too young to have sex, that maybe what she was seeking was the emotional closeness she lost when her mother died.
The reason The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was so refreshing was that it didn’t make sex seem like an easy thing to do when you’re 15, but neither did it make it seem like something you shouldn’t do until you’re married. It made sex seem messy, complicated and all too real.
The first book, released in 2001, spawned a 2003 sequel, The Second Summer of the Sisterhood. Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood followed in 2005, as did a movie of the first film, staring Alexis Bledel of Gilmore Girls and America Ferrera of Ugly Betty.
The movie was nowhere nearly as good as the book and glossed over several key (in my mind) plot points, but I still left the theatre sobbing. I mean sobbing. So did my mom.
However, the second and third books in the series were simply not as satisfying as the first, which may be why no movies are in the works for them.
Series tend to either get better and deeper as they evolve, a la Harry Potter and LOTR, or they fade into mediocrity, repeating the same plot over and over to fill the same emotional need while never having quite the same emotional resonance as the first work (see Tim Burton’s Batman or Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic series).
Forever in Blue picks up the year after the girls have started college, three summers after the first book. Of course, everything hasn’t exactly happened the way they thought it would.
Carmen is at Williams and has lost the vibrancy she once had. Bee is happy at Brown but confused about her long-distance relationship with Eric. Tibby is in love with Brian but scared of having sex with him. Lena, being Lena, is still hung up on Kostos. (And if the fictional Kostos looks anything like the filmic Kostos, I would be hung up on him too.)
The four girls spend the summer, as usual, mailing the pants back and forth between them. (This is where the science fiction also comes into play in the series — even when mailing the magical blue jeans to Mexico, Greece or Turkey, they always arrive astoundingly quickly, which, if you have ever mailed something to a country other than Canada, you know does not happen.)
As usual, by the end of the book, there are some tidy endings and you feel all warm and fuzzy and sad too. Yet this sequel is better than the other two, by far (although I say that with the caveat that I have not read them since they came out). It is not as good as the first one, but the emotional depths this novel probe come close.
The biggest difference between the fourth book and the previous three is that it does tackle sex. Two of the four girls have it. Complications ensue. Hearts break and mend, lessons are learned, but, as is the case in every other SOTP novel, nothing is completely resolved.
The only thing that is final (or so it seems) is that there can be no more sequels taking the girls through college with their magical pants. (Yes, something happens to the jeans, but no, it isn’t as obvious as them tearing beyond repair.)
The end of this book made me almost as sad as I suspect the new Harry Potter will in July. For the first time since the first book (excepting the movie), I cried. How I can I not find out what happens to Lena and Kostos? Or Bee?
Brashares has a new book (or series) in the works. Please, please let it be something like Felicity: the Next Generation.
