A Universal History of Iniquity by Jorge Luis Borges

Borges via

Reviewed by Susanna Allred

Published: 1935

It's about: Borges appropriates and tweeks lives of historical criminals--Chinese pirates, Old West gunslingers, New York street toughs--to explore paradox. Each entry into this collection masquerades as a truthful historical narrative; however, Borges liberally diverges from his source material, essentially turning factual events and people into props through which to set up elaborate philosophical ironies and paradoxes. For example, the protagonist of the first story in the collection, "The Cruel Redeemer Lazarus Morell", is a bloodthirsty and pious con man who induces enslaved African Americans to run away with his band of thieves, promising that if they allow him to sell them back into slavery, only to "steal" them away again, they will eventually be escorted North to freedom. Every time, of course, Morell eventually kills his victim when he begins to suspect the true nature of his "Redeemer." Eventually, one of Morell's confederates denounces his scheme to the authorities. Morell, ironically, believes his only hope of salvation lies in fomenting an insurrection among those slaves who still believe rumors of his benevolence--essentially taking on sincerely the role he had only maliciously affected before. The greater irony however, is that rich possibilities afforded by the potential turn of events are thwarted when Morell himself is robbed and killed by a petty thief who does not recognize him.

Part of the richness of A Universal History of Iniquity stems from Borges' ability to weave his dense, darkly humorous paradoxes into genres that tend to be consigned to the pulpy end of the high-low cultural divide. Borges sets his short stories into contexts modeled after Westerns, crime stories, and orientalizing adventure tales. His nominally historical characters participate in the theft, murder, and warfare endemic to these genres, but remain essentially flat characters who exist to be irony incarnate. One of the most intriguing stories, "Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv" purports to be the tale of a prophet who rises up in the Middle East in the 8th century to spearhead the meteoric rise of a blasphemous religion. Claiming that communion with God had made his face too brilliant for mortals to look upon, Hakim goes about imposing his religion through warfare while veiled, promising that men will be able to look on his face when they have accepted the truth. Hakim's truth is typically Borgesian.

The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it. Revulsion, disgust, is the fundamental virtue, and two rules of conduct (between which the Prophet left men free to choose) lead us to it; abstinence and utter licentiousness--the indulgence of the flesh or the chastening of it.

This being a collection of tales about violence and deceit, Hakim's charade is spoiled when one concubines lets slip that his supposedly glorified body is, in fact, riddled with leprosy. The suggestion, seemingly, is that an entire religion of degradation and heresy had sprung up to justify one man's physical corruption.

I thought: The entire collection boasts similarly clever, circuitous ironies that can be revisited endlessly. While the tales are all philosophically dense, they contain enough swashbuckling adventure to sustain interest in casual readers as well. The tone of scholarly historicity is a playful contrast to to the elaborately constructed labyrinths of plot twists that Borges builds into each story. The one entry into the collection that wears less well is "Man on Pink Corner", Borges' attempt to write a wholly fictional crime store that pivots around a knife fight between two Argentine street toughs. While exotic backdrops are a favorite for Borges, the setting and dialogue feel oddly forced or stilted in this attempt, as if Borges still needed to lean heavily on specific historical and literary texts in order to create lively literature of his own at this point.

While Borges eventually moved away from drawing so explicitly on other historical and literary sources (though his writing always remained famously inter-textual; many of his stories are literally books about books), the edition of A Universal History of Iniquity I read, which is part of Penguin Classics Collected Fictions, a complete anthology of Borges' short stories, contains helpful footnotes to each story. The footnotes are most enlightening and intriguing when highlighting Borges' divergence from his source material. For example, they confirm the existence of an actual set of "Rules for Pirates" in a book Borges cites in "The Widow Ching--Pirate" but the footnotes also reveal that Borges has (perhaps deliberately) appropriated and changed several other minor details of the story for apparently no reason. None of this really detracts from the stories themselves; rather, it adds to their enigmatic character.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf or Rubbish Bin? On the shelf. 

Reading Recommendations: An interesting discussion of Borges the man and his propensity for certain themes.

Suttree by Cormac McCarthy

 

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 Reviewed by Susanna Allred

Published: 1979

It's about: Cornelius Suttree, known to friends and his estranged family as "Buddy", has abandoned a life of prosperity and prominence to live among the riff-raff that collect along the shores of the Tennessee River during the mid-twentieth century. By day, he ekes out a living selling what fish he can catch. He passes his nights in mooonshine-soaked carousing, immersing himself in the hedonistic pleasures of his camaraderie with river's hookers and small-time criminals. Yet, even as he periodically loses himself in grotesque adventuring, Suttree's adaptation to life on the river is never quite complete or natural.

In contrast to the underclass crooks and prostitutes with whom he mingles, Suttree is a born philosopher and a keen observer of both human character and the sublime hideousness of the forsaken waterfront he frequents. His life has been darkened by death and his exit from social prominence was tinged with shame. Haunted by the stillbirth of his twin brother, and reluctant to examine his sudden abandonment of his wife, son, and mother, Suttree frequently protests to himself that life--both the work of building up a family, a career, and a community; as well as life in an essential sense--is inherently without meaning.

I thought: Suttree matches its anti-hero's aimless existentialism with a sprawling, episodic structure that never builds up to a definitive climax. McCarthy alternates lovely, dense descriptions of the physical filth and amoral, grotesque characters dotting the Tennessee River's shores. Like Suttree himself, McCarthy never suggests any sharply defined philosophical interpretation to the events of the novel, save to draw out a certain grace and beauty in the polluted river and the half-wild misfits who collect around it.

Suttree, by nature of its setting, heavily descriptive, virtuoso prose style; and deft employment of dark comedy fits in more closely (in some respects) with the works of Southern writers such as Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner than with McCarthy's better-known Western novels. McCarthy excels within the  vein of the Southern Gothic without being overshadowed by his predecessors. He makes his mark, in part by his exceedingly experimental approach to diction and punctuation, and by writing scenes of decay or degradation in prose that is at once elegant, heavy and voluminous.

A row of bottles gone to the wall for stoning lay in brown and green and crystal ruin down a sunlit corridor and one upright severed cone of yellow glass rose from the paving like a flame. Past these gnarled ashcans at the alley's mouth with their crusted rims and tilted gaping maws in and out of which soiled dogs go night and day. An iron stairwell railing shapeless with birdlime like something brought from the sea and small flowers along a wall reared from the fissured stone. 

What connects Suttree with the The Border Trilogy or No Country for Old Men  (besides McCarthy's preference for experimental prose), is its protagonist's paradoxically aloof, yet romantic nature. The novel is mostly told through his point of view, but the audience is allowed to glean few hints about Suttree's past life, or to what degree he truly sympathizes with the carnality of his new associates. Even in the throes of a love affair or in the deepest reaches Tennessee's backwoods, Suttree maintains a persona of cool detachment. For all this, Suttree is clearly enthralled by the rich chaos of life on the river. In one of the most poignant passages Suttree observes in the night sky

A sole star to the north pale and constant, the old wanderer's beacon burning like a molten spike that tethered fast the Small Bear to the turning firmament. He closed his eyes and opened them and looked again. He was struck by the fidelity of this earth he inhabited and he bore it sudden love.

This scene is bookended by a vivid description of an illicit encounter between Suttree and his young lover, Wanda and Suttree's abrupt, brutal attempt to end his affair with her. His appreciation of the North Star is made especially ironic in light of his own inconstancy and by Wanda's unexpected death in a landslide a few pages later. This darkly ironic contrast between the human desire to impose consistency and personhood upon nature with the nature's unconscious cruelty is vintage McCarthy, and a draws a thematic line between Suttree and McCarthy's more popular later works. For fans of either Southern Gothic or McCarthy, this novel is essential reading.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf.

Warnings: Poetically gritty sex and drinking.

What I'm reading next: Titus Andronicus

Review: The Social Animal by David Brooks

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Reviewed by Christine-Chioma

Published: 2011

It's about: David Brooks uses fictional characters to explore "how success happens". To quote the summary on goodreads (cheating): "Drawing on a wealth of current research from numerous disciplines, Brooks takes Harold and Erica from infancy to school; from the “odyssey years” that have come to define young adulthood to the high walls of poverty; from the nature of attachment, love, and commitment, to the nature of effective leadership. He reveals the deeply social aspect of our very minds and exposes the bias in modern culture that overemphasizes rationalism, individualism, and IQ. Along the way, he demolishes conventional definitions of success while looking toward a culture based on trust and humility."

I thought: The book is kind of a mix between books like "Blink" and "How We Decide" but it has a narrative running through it that makes the facts more interesting.  I really enjoyed the fictional parts of the book. I liked that Brooks set each story in present day instead of the time period it would really occur in. I especially enjoyed the first portion of the book which covered studies about dating, newlyweds and raising children through the experiences of Harold's parents. I felt that the book got too bogged down in details about Erica's work and the policies found there. I'm not interested in business or business models. I think it deterred from the book's thesis about how social interaction and relationships impact success more than anything else. I preferred my facts mixed in with the story.

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However, I did love all the new things I learned: You learn better when you vary the environments you study in, you should praise your children for hard work and not for being smart, sleep improves memory by at least 15 percent, a person's friends have more influence on your habits than their spouse, divorce peaks in the fourth year of marriage when it is difficult to transition from passionate love to companion love, Alexander Hamilton was a pretty amazing guy, people who are in love overestimate how attractive, funny, and intelligent their partner is, in healthy relationships you need to say five positive things for every negative thing, etc.

The book really made me think more about my social interactions with others. I love my current job and I know it has more to do with the people I work with and for then the actual duties of the job (cleaning up poop, vomit and urine?) Brooks says  "the daily activities most associated with happiness are all social--having sex, socializing after work, and having dinner with friends--while the daily activity most injurious to happiness-commuting--tends to be solitary." At my work we are constantly planning activities and getting together--it reminded me of how Erica wants to be a connector. I also loved
learning that social professions (corporate manager, hairdresser, health-care providers) correlate more closely with happiness than those that are less social (a machinery operator).

However, at times the novel made me feel discourage as if certain things were set. I felt like characteristics about myself were unconsciously inevitable because of my upbringing or background. Then I remembered that the author was using studies and information that proved certain points. Obviously if i cared enough I could find studies that proved the opposite point. Likewise, I could have researched the studies and looked into their methods and the exact results. But I didn't care that much.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. Brooks has a wry sense of humor and insight into human character and personality that was spot on. The book is all about how "succes" happens. But at the end of it, I did not really think Erica was successful or made that many good decisions or had many good relationships. Or at least--she was not successful in ways that I would want to be. Religion did not play a big role in the book, but it plays a big role in my life so I would have liked some more information about that.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf. It's a good one to have to reference the studies and facts

Reading Recommendations: This isn't a book that is comfortable to read straight through. I read it in spurts and pieces over several weeks. It's a good book for a book club in that you could talk about the definition of success, nature vs nurture, and the interesting tidbits and facts found in the pages, but it's not a book that one would emotionally connect to.

Warnings: Scientific talk about sex. Some swear words.

Favorite excerpts:

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"Yet by far the most important decisions they will make are about whom to marry and whom to befriend, what to love and what to despise, and how to control impulses...We are good about talking about material incentives, but bad about talking about emotions and intuitions. We are good at teaching technical skills, but when it comes to the most important things, like character, we have almost nothing to say."

"Erica decided she would never work in a place where people did not trust one another. Once she got a job, she would be the glue. She would be the one organizing outings, making connections, building trust. She would carry information from one person to another. She would connect one worker to another."

"She was in the camp of the more-emotional-than-thou rather than in the camp of the more-popular-than-thou. This meant she was always exquisitely attuned to her superior emotions, and it also meant, unfortunately, that if she wasn't having an engrossing emotional drama on any given day, she would try to make one up."


What I'm reading next: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Memorial to victims of 1968 Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, via

 Reviewed by Susanna Allred

Published: English translation, 1984

It's about: A quartet of European intellectuals attempt to understand the upheaval and oppression of Soviet-era Czechoslovakia through marriage and erotic encounters. Tomas, a brilliant surgeon, is also a dedicated womanizer, driven by a desire to find that which is unique and essential in his female conquests through sexual intercourse. His wife, Tereza, an amateur photographer and auto-didact is despairingly faithful to him. A consummate dualist, Tereza blames her body for failing to capture Tomas' marital fidelity and privately desires to cut her soul free from it, believing that the metaphysical amputation would also free her from sexual jealousy. Sabina, Tomas' mistress and a painter, has come to view betrayal as the guiding principle in her life. In order to establish her own autonomy, Sabina resolutely refuses to be loyal to any political principle, lover, or nation. By contrast, her Austrian lover Franz is a true idealist. He sees his love for Sabina as a gesture of solidarity with the repressed Czech people; in fact, he derives his entire sense of identity from making similar futile gestures that, in his imagination, are full of nobility.

I thought: The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a post-modern novel. As such, it plays unpredictably with structure and delights in peeling back the curtains that more traditional novels draw over real phenomena (such as marriage, infidelity, and sexual intercourse) in order to make their fictitious renderings more appealing. Kundera eschews a linear narrative in order to skip back and forth through time and switch points of view, often discussing the same event multiple times. For example, he describes Tereza gripping Tomas hand tightly on their first night together two different ways, first from Tomas' point of view, and then Tereza's.

He never spent the night with the others....That is why he was so surprised to wake up and find Tereza squeezing his hand tightly. Lying there looking at her, he could not quite understand what had happened. But as he ran through the previous few hours in his mind, he began to sense an aura of hitherto unknown happiness emanating from them. 

Tereza, who is eager for self-improvement, believes the urbane Tomas is a passport into a life softened by high culture and refined emotions, a step forward from her vulgar family.

Even at the age of eight she would fall asleep by pressing one hand into the other and making believe she was holding the hand of the man whom she loved, the man of her life. So if in her sleep she pressed Tomas' hand with such tenacity, we can understand why: she had been training for it since childhood.  

Neither Tomas nor Tereza view the event exactly the same way, though both allow it have a profound influence on the years that they will spend together as a married couple. Tomas comes to believe that love (as opposed to sexual desire) is wanting to sleep with another in the same bed, and being happy to do so. Love, essentially, is contented cohabitation, something quite separate from erotic fascination. For Tereza, love is an irrevocable, all-consuming destiny. While both feel and, at times, resent the difference in their personal erotic philosophies, neither can quite articulate it to the other.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a graceful, nuanced work. In spite of its thoroughly post-modern sensibility, it unifies its quartet's geographic and sensual wanderings by setting up and exploring paralleled thematic opposites. The "unbearable lightness" of the title refers to Sabina's refusal to be tied idealogically, romantically, or erotically to anything. Tomas shares her philosophy to some extent, while Tereza and Franz, who long for idealized love, prefer the heaviness of fidelity and well-defined purpose. This heaviness versus lightness is the central philosophical concern of the novel, and to some extent, the four characters who perform the bulk of the novels action are created to be representations of the tension between weight and lightness. Nevertheless, the characterization of all four remains vivid, touching, and life-like.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf.or Rubbish Bin? Stick it on the shelf.

Reading Recommendations: Doctor Zhivago explores similar philosophical territory through similar political terrain.

Warnings: Fairly explicit sexual and scatological passages. If you avoid R-rated movies, this book isn't for you. 

What I'm reading next: Sagas of the Icelanders.

If on a winter's night a traveler bY Italo Calvino

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Reviewed by Susanna Allred

Published:1979 in Italian, 1981 in English

It's about: If on a winter's night a traveler is not a novel, but rather, fragments of many novels. The fragments are interspersed in alternating chapters with unifying thread about two hypothetical readers attempting to gather together and read the complete forms of the fragmented novels. However, the two readers, while succumbing to an obligatory romantic attraction, find themselves enmeshed in a byzantine web of conspiracies, totalitarian governments, fraud, dead languages, deceptive translators, and disorderly publishing houses.

The style is as winkingly playful as the plot. Calvino narrates the unifying thread in the second person singular; in other words "you" are the protagonist of If on a winter's night a traveler. Furthermore, the fragments of other novels are all written in widely varying genres, settings, and voices, though they are thematically linked (love triangles, for example, recur). These two characteristics, the unusual narrative voice and the array of novelistic styles are key to Calvino's major project in If on a winter's night a traveler, exploring how readers experience literature and why literature is written, given that so much of retreads similar themes and types.

I thought: This is a clever, witty book that clearly draws on Calvino's wide and deep knowledge of world literature while adopting a elusive literary style. The unifying thread of the two increasingly frustrated readers gradually ramps up absurdity in a uniquely post-modern style. As "you" draw closer to the end of "your" odyssey to scrape together the fragments of novels, "you" meet a seemingly-friendly ally in a chaotic dictatorship who tells "you"

I'm an infiltrator, a real revolutionary infiltrated into the ranks of the false revolutionaries. But to avoid being discovered, I have to pretend to be a counterrevolutionary infiltrated among the true revolutionaries. And, in fact, I am, inasmuch as I take orders from the police; but not from the real ones, because I report to the revolutionaries infiltrated among the counterrevolutionary infiltrators."

The fragmented novels themselves fall recognizably into distinct genres, among them the pastoral novel, the thriller, and the war novel. However, each novel seems to be telling a strikingly similar story, even though each one was supposedly written in a time and place disparate from the others. To be specific, each fragment includes a complex psychological drama among one or more erotically-charged love triangles. This extends to the unifying frame narrative as well, as "you" are partnered with a fellow female reader, Ludmilla, who has a sister, Lotaria, who is both antagonistic and attractive to "you.

The novel requires patience, attention, and perspicuity to follow. Being a post-modern novel, it doesn't exactly give up its meaning easily. Calvino does not argue vehemently for a single philosophical purpose driving the composition of literature, rather he suggests competing hypotheses through competing narrative voices. When "you" finally reach the library where all the desired books are supposedly held, you encounter, not books, but readers who, one-by-one parrot popular theories on "why we read."

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf.

Reading Recommendations: Don Quixote is the most obvious literary antecedent to If on a winter's night a traveler, but it's well-worth reading or re-reading.

Warnings: Some sexuality.

Favorite excerpts:

In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the this barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. 

What I'm reading next:

The Diary of Napoleonic Foot Soldier by Jakob Walter

In 1812, by Illarion Pryashnikov, via

Reviewed by Susanna Allred

Published: 1991

It's about: The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier is the memoir of Jakob Walter, a German conscript in Napoleon's Grand Army. While many veterans of the Napoleonic Wars eventually wrote memoirs of their military service, Walter's is unique among them because it is written from the point of view of a private foot soldier. All first-person accounts to have surfaced so far have been written by men of the officer class who were more educated, cultured, and ideologically invested than he. Consequently, Walter's diary is especially valuable for its candid insights into the day-to-day experiences of a lowly conscript in Napoleon's massive military campaigns.

The Diary itself is divided into three sections; the 1806-7 campaign in Poland, the 1809 campaign in Austria, and the 1812 campaign in Russia. All three are a mix of Walter's casual anthropological observations of Eastern European culture, his accounts of combat in various battles, and personal reminiscences of military culture among foot soldiers. By far, the bulk of the Diary focuses on his memories of the retreat from Moscow, and the long months of starvation, cold, disease, and reprisals from Russian cossacks that it entailed. This section is rendered especially vivid though Walter's focus on his unending efforts to scavenge enough food to keep himself and his friends from starvation: a handful of raw meat from a slaughtered horse one night, a bit of cabbage boiled with dog fat the next. Nevertheless, the visceral nature of his memories is balanced by an off-hand and modest tone. 

I thought: Jakob Walter's memoir is a concise and engaging account of a foot soldier's observation of the turmoil wrought by Napoleon's wars. By this point in history, most people's mental image of those wars is heavily influenced by fiction: War and Peace, Horatio Hornblower, and Master and Commander study the Napoleonic Wars through the eyes of ideologically engaged and aristocratic literary heroes. By contrast, the historical Jakob Walter embarked on his first campaign as a foot soldier conscripted out of private life as a stonemason. Furthermore Walter was remarkably indifferent to Napoleon's personal charisma and political principles for two reasons. First, Walter's native German principality of Swabia had recently been made a tributary state of Napoleonic France; second, as a low-ranking private citizen, Walter had little to gain from his participation in the wars.

For the most part, the Diary actually benefits as a work of literature from Walter's political indifference and lesser education. His prose style is plain, direct, informal, and completely readable. Walter generally restricts his attention to his own experiences, generally refusing to speculate or comment on the political context of the war or the motivations of the generals and princes who directed its progress. While he does not shrink from fully recounting the shocking deprivations of the retreat, he is never stoops to self-pity or recrimination. However, this same limited scope can become frustrating. As a reader, I very much wanted to know what Walter thought of his own conscription and Napoleon's military projects, but the author is generally silent on these matters.

Walter's self-portrait is filled with intriguing contradictions. In the 1806-7 portion especially, he casually recounts drinking binges, brutally requisitioning supplies, and violently forcing Polish peasants to act as guides and translators with little  embarrassment. This unapologetic roughness is offset by pious allusions to his Catholic beliefs, and his evident affection for the brother and two sisters from whom he is separated by war. At one point, he finds a book he deems insulting to his faith and "bound a stone to this book, and sank it in the big lake." When Walter, nearly dead from typhus and malnutrition, is finally able to visit with his younger sister after the retreat from Moscow he mentions that they "tarried as a loving brother and sister for an hour's time and then parted again with tears." However, Walter's personal contradiction add up to a convincing portrayal of a conflicted, complex human.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf. 

Reading Recommendations: For an interesting historical comparison, read In Deadly Combat: A German Soldier's Memoir of the Eastern Front Gottlob Herbert Bidermann's account of his military service to Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union.

Warnings: Some mild references to alcohol.

Favorite excerpts:

He [Napoleon] watched his army pass by in the most wretched condition. What he may have felt in his heart is impossible to surmise, His outward appearance seemed indifferent and unconcerned over the wretchedness of his soldiers; only ambition and lost honor may have made themselves felt in his heart; and, although the French and Allies shouted into his ears many oaths and curses about his own guilty person, he was still able to listen to them unmoved.

What I'm reading next: If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

The Last Man by Mary Shelley

 

Mary Shelley, via

Reviewed by Susanna

Published: 1826

It's about: The year is 2096. In the past few decades, England has retired the monarchy in favor of a republican government, Greece has reconquered Constantinople, and men have begun to travel long distances by hot air balloon. Now, however, plague ravages the globe, upending law and order, breaking down social barriers, and giving rise to a deadly messianic cult.

The end of the world is observed by Lionel Verney, an English historian who, by accident of fortune, is both immune to the plague and uniquely placed to document its progress. Verney's account begins as an autobiography: he spends the first third of the novel relating his and his sister Perdita's impoverished youth as orphans in the rugged countryside, his eventual friendship with the former Crown Prince of England, Adrian Windsor (who paradoxically cherishes republican beliefs); his courtship of Adrian's vivacious sister Idris; and Perdita's marriage to the brooding, tempestuous Lord Raymond.

The pastoral romance of the first third takes an abrupt, Gothic turn when a seemingly-abandoned ship drifts into an English harbor. Its lone surviving crew member lives only long enough to spread a deadly, voracious contagion to London. As England's population rapidly dies off, Adrian attempts to stave off chaos and lead the few survivors to safety across the English Channel, only to encounter warfare, accident, and further sickness.

I thought: Mary Shelley is better known for Frankenstein, but The Last Man is her lost masterpiece. At the time of its publication in 1826, the possibility of humanity's extinction was considered grotesque and almost offensive. Consequently, the novel languished in obscurity for over a century. It was only after the possibility of a nuclear holocaust was realized in the mid-twentieth century that critics began to revisit The Last Man and recognize its innovative and prescient nature. Specifically, Shelley is the first major writer to treat the theme of apocalypse as a primarily secular, scientific event, and to thoroughly explore is social repercussions. Novels like The Walking Dead and The Road, which prominently feature dwindling bands of survivors attempting to preserve some semblance of morality and civilization in the face of a dubious future, can claim The Last Man in their literary ancestry.

Nevertheless, The Last Man is a highly unique work that differs significantly from its modern descendants. Unlike the emotionally spartan works of fellow post-apocalyptic writers Cormac McCarthy, George Orwell, and Ray Bradbury; Shelley is an unabashedly emotive writer. She ably demonstrates her place in the pantheon of Romantic writers with numerous, rapturously beautiful descriptions of pastoral abundance and rugged wilderness. She is also adept at turning debates on moral philosophy between her characters into riveting, poetic exploration of psychology. These two qualities are united in Shelley's exploration of the psychological differences between Raymond who believes that

Our virtues are the quick-sands, which shew themselves at calm and low water; but let the waves arise and the winds buffet them, and the poor devil whose hope was in their durability finds them sink from under him.

While Adrian muses that

The choice is with us; let us will it, and our habitation becomes a paradise. For the will of man is omnipotent, blunting the arrows of death, soothing the bed of disease, and wiping away the tears of agony.

Shelley's skill at crafting elaborate Gothic thrills only fully comes to the fore in the latter two thirds of the novel, as she expertly conjures up bizarre and unsettling images, increasing their intensity and frequency as the horrors of the plague ramp up. They foreshadow social chaos by disturbing the orderly progress of natural events. As the survivors cross the English Channel

three other suns, alike burning and brilliant, rushed from various quarters of the heavens toward the great orb; they whirled round it. The glare of light was intense to our dazzled eyes; the sun itself seemed to join in the dance, while the sea burned like a furnace, like all Vesuvius alight, with flowing lava beneath.   

Her ability to seamlessly combine political commentary, horror, romance, and nature writing makes for a unique, complex reading experience that readers return to repeatedly. Fans of Wuthering Heights, The Road, and Edgar Allan Poe should make this lost classic a priority. 

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf!

Reading Recommendations: The Wordsworth Classics edition has an engaging introduction and notes by Pamela Bickley and the Wikipedia entry contains a detailed plot summary and character list.

Warnings: None.

Favorite excerpts:

There were few books that we dared read; few, that did not cruelly deface the painting we bestowed on our solitude, by recalling combinations and emotions never more to be experienced by us. Metaphysical disquisitions; fiction, which wandering from all reality, lost itself in self-created errors; poets of times so far gone by, that to read of them was as to read of Atlantis and Utopia....

What I'm reading next: Angle of Repose

Review: Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar

Julio Cortazar, via

Reviewed by Susanna

Published: 1963 in Spanish, translated into English in 1966

It's about: Horacio Oliveira, a disaffected Argentine intellectual, wanders the streets of 1950s Paris, meeting occasionally with a group of beatniks and bohemians to sip mate, listen to jazz records, discuss modern art, and debate politics. He is accompanied by his uneducated mistress, La Maga, an aspiring singer and single mother to a baby boy she has fancifully named Rocamadour. Aside from La Maga, each member the group (which has dubbed itself the Serpentine Club) appears to exceptionally well-educated but exhibits little genuine pleasure in art and literature. The only real enjoyment they seem to derive from their meetings is in weaving intricate webs of allusions to esoteric artists and philosophers (Anacreon and Piet Mondrian among them) in which to entrap and mock the ignorant Oliveira's mistress, who has high ambitions for cultural sophistication. The group abruptly disbands when Rocamadour dies in the middle of one such gathering and La Maga, crushed by grief, disappears. Oliveira, heretofore cold and withdrawn towards his mistress, departs on a journey back to Argentina to search for her and gradually descends into madness.   

I thought: Plot summary feels almost entirely beside the point when discussing Hopscotch because the novel's "point," so to speak, is communicated more through its experimental style than its story. Some critics have classed Hopscotch as a sort of anti-novel for its flgrant abandonment of traditional structures and language. Case-in-point, Cortazar prefaces the book with this curious bit of advice on the possible sequences of chapters in which readers can approach the novel:

In its own way, this book consists of many books, but two books above all.

The first can be read in a normal fashion and it ends with Chapter 56, at the close of which there are three garish little stars which stand for the words The End. Consequently, the reader may ignore what follows with a clean conscience.

The second should be read by beginning with Chapter 73 and then following the sequence indicated at the end of each chapter.

Cortazar's other innovations on the traditional novel's conventions leave the reader disoriented and floating in a playfully dissonant wash of citations, dialogue, allusions, references, and sudden shifts in narrative voice. For example, Chapter 34 tells two stories, one is the personal reminiscences of a retired businessman, and the other is Oliveira's stream-of-conscience mourning for his lost mistress. The catch is that Cortazar alternates one line on the page of the first story with one line of the other until the end of the chapter. Individual chapters appear that have, superficially at least, nothing to do with the plot of the novel. Many of them, labeled Morelliana are the philosophical musings of a fictional literary critic and writer named Morelli. The ninety-nine expendable chapters at the end of the first book, skip unpredictably among the Serpentine Club's debates, Oliveira's thoughts as he settles into the mental institution, and quotations from various post-modern writers, presented without further explanation. At various points, Cortazar invents new spellings for words, invents new words entirely, or abruptly slips into a new language.

So, if this deliberately difficult style communicates the purpose of Hopscotch more than the plot, what is the purpose? Hopscotch is the sort of novel that, like Ulysses, uses the author's encyclopedic knowledge of arts and letters to evade easy summation. But one persistently recurring theme is finding authenticity in a world where passions and desires are articulated through cliche. Oliveira's suspicions of his authenticity run so deeply that at the moment he realizes Rocamadour has died, he coolly asks himself "why turn on the light and shout if it won't do any good?" and curses himself for being "an actor", rather than raising the alarm. The desire for authenticity underlines each emotionally void meeting of the Serpentine Club, just as it drives La Maga's search for intellectual fulfillment. And it is evident in Cortazar's experimental style. Every departure from traditiona is meant to expose the artificiality of the conventional novel and challenge the reader's assumptions of how a novel ought to be composed and why they read.

All that said, it's my opinion that Hopscotch is not the kind of book one reads for pleasure, at least not on the first attempt (I honestly can't say that I enjoyed it). It takes expansive knowledge of the art and literature of, and influential to the post-modern era to grasp the majority of Cortazar's references. At five hundred and sixty-four pages, the purposefully difficult style will try the patience of even the most die-hard wannabe-beatnik. For reasons I can appreciate without necessarily enjoying the book, Hopscotch has been hailed as one of the most important twentieth -century novels, and for professional students of literature, it undoubtedly is. However, there are many other brilliant and innovative books that open themselves up to readers more willingly. 

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf. 

Reading Recommendations: Browse the Wikipedia entry on Hopscotch; it gives a thorough outline of the novel's themes, characters, and plot.

Warnings: Some veiled descriptions of sex and some swearing.   

Favorite excerpts:

I swallow my soup. Then, in the midest of what I am reading, I think: The soup is in me, I have it in this pouch which I will never see, my stomach." I feel with two fingers and I touch the mass, the motion of the food there inside. And I am this, a bag with food inside of it.

Then the soul is born: "No, I am not that."
No that (let's be honest for once)
yes, I am that. With a very pretty means of excape for the use of the finicky: "I am also that." Or just a step up: "I am in that."

What I'm reading next: The Last Man, by Mary Shelley.

Review: Eight Pieces of Empire by Lawrence Scott Sheets

Chechen rebels in Grozny, 1995. (via)

Reviewed by Christina
[I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.]

Published: 2011

It's about: "Not with a bang, but with a quiet, ten-minute address on Christmas Day 1991: this is how the Soviet Union met its end.  But in the wake of that one deceptively calm moment, conflict and violence soon followed.  Some of the emergent new countries began to shed totalitarianism while others sought to revive their own dead empires or were led by ex-Soviet leaders who built equally or even more repressive political machines.  Since the late 1980s, Lawrence Scott Sheets lived and reported from the former USSR and saw firsthand the reverberations of the empire's collapse.  Eight Pieces of Empire draws readers into the people, politics, and day-to-day life of the region, painting a vivid portrait of a tumultuous time.
Sheets's stories about people living through these tectonic shifts of fortune- a trio of female saboteurs in Chechnya, the chaos of newly independent Georgia in the early 1990s, young hustlers eager to strike it rich in the post-Soviet economic vacuum- reveal the underreported and surprising ways in which the ghosts of empire still haunt these lands and the world."  (back cover of my paperback edition)

I thought: I loved it.  I've never been particularly interested in war reporting, and I didn't really realize that's what I was getting into when I requested a copy of Eight Pieces of Empire.  I didn't know that this book would be difficult to read, and if I had I probably would have politely declined.  BUT.  I'm so glad it came my way.  You know those books that force you to examine how little you know about the world?  This is one of those books.

Lawrence Scott Sheets is a strong, journalistic writer (he covered the former USSR, especially the Causasus, for Reuters and NPR) and he fills these dire conflicts with some bizarre characters and absurd situations.  I can totally get behind the stories and the people in them; in a lot of ways, things weren't so different where/when I lived in Kazakhstan.  And despite the innately foreign and occasionally gruesome subject matter, Sheets makes his material human and relatable. 

There are a few stylistic things that grated on my nerves- the overuse of scare quotes,  Sheets' inconsistency in referring to characters sometimes by their given names and sometimes by their surnames, and a few other minor quirks.  But the book itself is excellently paced and so well-written.  Combine that with important and interesting recent history- I would never not recommend this.  It is interesting and worthwhile, especially for a reader who has any connection to or special interest in ex-Soviet countries.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf!  сейчас!

Reading Recommendations:  Be ready for the war violence.  Technically this is a quick, easy read.  Emotionally, not so.

Warnings:  Appropriately grisly descriptions of war violence.  And a couple of swears.

What I'm reading next:  McSweeney's Issue 11

(P.S. - Sorry for not doing something funny today.  As you may have noticed, all the BB writers have a little preoccupied lately.  If you need a laugh, you can check out last year's post.)

Review: Where Things Come Back

Arkansas town, via

Reviewed by Christina

Published: 2011

It's about:  Seventeen-year-old Cullen Witter is having an eventful Summer.  First his cousin dies of an overdose.  Then an alleged siting of a supposedly-extinct woodpecker brings a flurry of activity to his small town in Arkansas.  Cullen even has a few shots at romantic relationships.  But everything seems pretty unimportant after Cullen's sensitive, kind-hearted younger brother disappears.

Meanwhile, in Africa, an 18-year-old missionary named Benton struggles with finding his true purpose.  His ideas and choices eventually have intense and unintended effects upon his philosophy-major roommate.

(And, of course, the two seemingly unrelated stories do come together in the end.)

I thought:  I really really liked this book.  Things started off right with a pretty title page and, on the back, lyrics credits given to Sufjan Stevens and TV on the Radio.  Plus I generally do love "Coming-of-Age" (ugh, that term!  Let's come up with a better one. Ideas?)  novels about outsider teens, especially with quirky or absurd elements.  Plus I award extra points for being set in the South.

So I guess Where Things Come Back and I were just meant to love each other.  Cullen won me over early with his earnestness and his attempts at cynicism and his love for his family.  His sections of the book really truly read like a smart teenager's writing: there are clichés here and there and attempts at originality that sometimes do and sometimes don't work.  He seems real and sincere, and because his story is alternated with the secondary story, he doesn't become tiresome.  John Corey Whaley has a degree in secondary English education; he probably graded plenty of essays that helped inspire a legit-sounding high schooler's style.

There are a lot of feelings in this book, but they worked well for me because Cullen is not an overemotional character and because he and everyone in the book seemed sincere.  Sincerity: it's a powerful thing.  I think that's what made me like Where Things Come Back.  The more I think about it the more sorry I am that it's over, and the more likely I am to read it again someday.  I hope John Corey Whaley will write more.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf for sure.

Reading Recommendations:  It's a quick, engaging read- pick it up when you have time to finish it in a few long sittings.  Don't stretch it out over a few weeks.

Warnings:  A fair number of swears and definitely some heavy themes.  My edition says it's for ages 14 and up, and I'd second that.

Favorite excerpts:  “We didn’t let them help us because we needed it, we let them help us because inside of humans is this thing, this unnamed need to feel as if we are useful in the world. To feel as if we have something significant to contribute. So, old ladies, make your casseroles and set them on doorsteps. And old men, grill your burgers and give them to teenagers with cynical worldviews. The world can’t be satisfied, but that need to fix it all can.”

“Being seventeen and bored in a small town, I like to pretend sometimes that I’m a pessimist. This is the way it is and nothing can sway me from that. Life sucks most of the time. Everything is bullshit. High school sucks. You can go to school, work for fifty years, then you die. Only I can’t seem to keep that up for too long before my natural urge to idealize goes into effect. I can’t seem to be a pessimist long enough to overlook the possibility of things being overwhelmingly good.”

(Check out the tumblr tags for more.)

What I'm reading next:  Eight Pieces of Empire by Lawrence Scott Sheets

The Other Side of Normal by Jordan Smoller

via

Reviewed by Christina
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Full Title: The Other Side of Normal: How Biology is Providing the Clues to Unlock the Secrets of Normal and Abnormal Behavior

Published: 2012

It's about:  "In this enthralling work of popular science, respected Harvard psychiatrist Jordan Smoller addresses one of humankind's most enduring and perplexing questions: What does it mean to be "normal?" In The Other Side of Normal, Smoller explores the biological component of normalcy, revealing the hidden side of our everyday behaviors--why we love what we love and fear what we fear. Other bestselling works of neurobiology and the mind have focused on mental illness and abnormal behaviors--like the Oliver Sacks classic, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat--but The Other Side of Normal is an eye-opening, thought-provoking, utterly fascinating and totally accessible exploration of the universals of human experience. It will change forever our understanding of who we are and what makes us that way." (goodreads)

Wow, what a blurb!  I had high expectations for this one.

I thought:  I didn't love it.  And that's a shame, because it's right up my alley: I love pop science, especially when it's in the psychology/psychiatry/neurology department.  And The Other Side of Normal is certainly smart and well-researched.  There's a lot of interesting information about the brain and human behavior here.  It reads a little like an update for those of us who took AP Psych back in the day but haven't stayed up to speed with current trends in the field.

So why was I falling asleep when I read it?  The style itself isn't dull; Smoller writes conversationally and adds appropriate humor, research summaries, and personal anecdotes.  But there are also parts in each chapter where he delves into more of the nitty-gritty:  molecular biology, epigenetics, anatomy.  This book has far more detail about the inner workings of the brain than any other of its type (that I've read) and I'm a little embarrassed that I couldn't always concentrate.  In my (and the author's) defense, I did read this during a busy period of my life.  I was very, very tired most of the time when I finally sat down to read, and a more alert reader might have had no problem.  Still, I can't help but think that in the general populace the audience is pretty small for illustrations like this one:

I did enjoy Jordan Smoller's punny, Dad humor-ish subtitles.  Here are some examples: "Facial Profiling," "The Gland That Rocks the Cradle," "Crocodile Fears," and "Mind Your Pleasing Cues."  Teehee!  I have a feeling that this is one of those books that I'm going to look back on more fondly than what I'm thinking and feeling about it right now.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf or Rubbish Bin?  In between.

Reading Recommendations:  Don't be tired.

Warnings: none

Favorite excerpts:  [About Big Five Personality tendencies in different states]
"North Dakotans seem to be the most outgoing, friendly bunch of traditionalists you'd ever want to know: they topped the list of all states in agreeableness and extraversion but came in last on openness.  On the other hand, Alaska scored at or near the bottom on all five traits, suggesting that the typical Alaskan is a calm but disagreeable and introverted slacker who doesn't like unconventional ideas.  If you're looking for open-minded, enthusiastic, friendly neighbors who are emotionally stable and conscientious, your best bet is to move to Utah."

(I'm amused by that paragraph because I have lived in both North Dakota and Utah.  By the way, I took the Big Five personality test and it told me that the highest concentration of personality traits similar to my own is found in North Carolina.  Guess where I live.)

What I'm reading next:  Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

Review: Moloka'i by Alan Brennert

Bishop Home, via

Reviewed by Christina

Published: 2003

It's about:  Rachel Kalama is a happy seven-year-old girl living in Honolulu at the end of the 19th century.  But then her mother discovers a numb red sore on Rachel's leg, and there's only so long her family can keep it a secret: their little girl has leprosy, a feared, poorly understood, and shameful disease for which there was no cure or effective treatment.  Soon Rachel is removed from her family and shipped off to Kalaupapa, a leper colony on the island of Moloka'i.

On Moloka'i, Rachel grows up and finds life, love, and family (alongside a heaping dose of tragedy) among her fellow exiles and their caretakers.  Her life coincides with an eventful period in Hawaii's history; she sees the overthrow of the monarchy, the introduction and boom of tourism, WWII and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and eventual statehood.  Rachel and the islanders get to experience a lot of twentieth-century inventions for the first time: recorded music, moving pictures, airplanes.  I loved reading about people's introductions to these and other pieces of modern life.

I thought: This is exactly the kind of novel I love: rich with well-researched historical and cultural details, a tragic and dramatic life story with memorable, complex characters.  It even has a medical element to boot!  There aren't really heroes and villains, just people struggling along with what they have and making choices based on their selves and their circumstances.  I should probably mention that I lived in Hawaii when I was in high school, and so the setting and trappings of Moloka'i have some special significance for me.  I loved that Brennert included lots of Hawaiian words, culture, and mythology.  Despite the author being haole, the book feels Hawaiian.

I also thought Alan Brennert did a decent job writing from a woman's perspective.  I forgot, sometimes, that Rachel was written by a man, and you really can't say that about some male authors.  My only complaint in that department is that all the female characters in Moloka'i seem unusually willing to part with their clothes, including disfigured teens who were raised in a convent and even some of the nuns!  This isn't the first time I've read a book by a male author that has a bunch of female characters casually getting naked regularly.  The tendency amuses me.

While I'm in complaint mode, I do have a few other things to mention.  Brennert's style is smooth and easy to read, but there is some slight cheesiness now and again.  I can tell that he is a screenwriter and OH how I wish some studio would pick up Moloka'i and make it into a miniseries.  Brennert's prose isn't high art, but it is capable enough to bring out his real strengths: storytelling and character development.   I really would have appreciated a more detailed map of Moloka'i than the one printed in the front of the book, and a glossary of Hawaiian terms and some pronunciation guidelines would have been nice.  My memories from 11th grade Modern History of Hawaii class are pretty fuzzy and I had to turn to google for clarifications.

Moloka'i may not be timeless great literature, but it's a full, beautiful story grounded in fact, with lots of Big Ideas to chew on: freedom and exile, forced exile/imprisonment and self-exile, parent-child relationships within and without biological ties, faith in the face of tragedy.  This book is going to stick with me, and it was just the thing to get me out of my post-Anna Karenina rut.  You can bet I'll be reading Alan Brennert's other Hawaii book, Honolulu.  

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf!

Kalaupapa today, via
(note the pali, cliffs that isolated the
settlement from the rest of the island)

Reading Recommendations:  I read this at a breakneck pace, and I'm not sure whether I read it so fast because I loved it or I loved it because I read it so fast.  But either way, I'd recommend reading this at a time when you can really sink into it and read a hundred pages or so each day.  Be prepared to cry, though; I am not generally a weepy reader but this book got me going more than once.

(And if you like this setting, be sure to check out the movie Princess Kaiulani.)

Warnings: A little fairly-descriptive sex, one brief but graphic scene of domestic violence, some swears.

Favorite excerpts:  "Grief and anger doesn't shock me." Catherine paused.  "Rachel, do you remember the day at the convent when we saw the old biplane?  Remember what I said?"
Rachel laughed without amusement.  "I don't even remember what I said."
"'Who can doubt the presence of God in the sight of men whom he has given wings.' I recall that so precisely because I've had time to consider my error."  She smiled. "God didn't give man wings; He gave him the brain and the spirit to give himself wings.  Just as He gave us the capacity to laugh when we hurt, or to struggle on when we feel like giving up.
"I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, of death... is the true measure of the Divine within us.  Some, like Crossen, choose to do harm to themselves and others.  Others, like Kenji, bear up under their pain and help others to bear it.
"I used to wonder, why did God give children leprosy?  Now I believe: God doesn't give anyone leprosy.  He gives us, if we choose to use it, the spirit to live with leprosy, and with the imminence of death.  Because it is in our own mortality that we are most Divine."

What I'm reading next:  The Other Side of Normal by Jordan Smoller

Review: The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love by Jill Conner Browne

The Sweet Potato Queens, via

Reviewed by Christina

Published: 1999

It's about:  "To know the Sweet Potato Queens is to love them, and if you haven't heard about them yet, you will.  Since the early 1980s, this group of belles gone bad has been the toast of Jackson, Mississippi, with their glorious annual appearance in the St. Patrick's Day parade.  In The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love, their royal ringleader, Jill Conner Browne, introduces the Queens to the world with this sly, hilarious manifesto about love, life, men, and the importance of being prepared.  ... From tales of the infamous Sweet Potato Queens' Promise to the joys of Chocolate Stuff and Fat Mama's Knock You Naked Margaritas, this irreverent, shamelessly funny book is the gen-u-wine article." (back cover)

I thought:  You know, sometimes I don't notice or I'm not terribly annoyed when a person is being a little sexist if they're also being really funny and I get that it's not serious.  I mean, if an actual person is standing right in front of me saying mildly offensive things, I'll usually give them the benefit of the doubt and laugh at their jokes in the name of social nicety (within reason).  Making everyone in the room feel uncomfortable over a small or imagined slight wouldn't really do anything for the progress of feminism, and besides!  I just don't have a confrontational personality.

But books (and movies, and celebrities) get no such special treatment from me.  I will probably always be annoyed by books that exploit gender stereotypes and paint men and women rigidly, even if the goal is hyperbolic amusement.  I understand that lighthearted sexism is supposed to be funny.  But I'm not laughing when I know I've still got 200 pages to go.  Two hundred pages is a lot of time to spend with somebody who doesn't share your sense of humor.  So I'm not sure why I ever picked up this book.  I do consider myself a fan of Southern humor and Southern writing and Southern story telling.  And The Sweet Potato Queens do fit in that category and do some things well.  I did laugh aloud several times:  I loved Ms. Browne's Possum Under the Bed story, I liked her phonetic spellings of certain Southern words and phrases (see Favorite Excerpt below), and I LOVED reading her descriptions of and recipes for a few beautifully fattening foods.  She has some genuinely wise words to impart (humorously, of course).  And the mentions of "off brand" evangelists made me chuckle, as did the legit, hilarious obituaries.  This book IS funny, and I'll bet if Jill Conner Browne were to read this review she'd just shrug because some Yankee Feminist doesn't "get" her.  I'm pretty sure my cranky criticisms would roll right off her back.  I would probably have enjoyed a non-love-themed book more.

I'm not going to tell anyone to avoid this book, and I'm not going to warn you that you'll be terribly offended if you pick it up.  But it is very silly, and overall I didn't really think it was worth my time.  If you want to read something Southern and humorous, pick up some Celia Rivenbark instead or Julia Reed's Queen of the Turtle Derby.  And if you want something Valentiney, go back in time and read our posts from 2012 (They Call Me Naughty Lola) and 2011 (Are Feminism and Romance Mutually Exclusive in Literature?).

Verdict: In Between.  On the lower end of the category.

Warnings: Raunchy humor, a few swears.  And, like I said, sexism.

Favorite excerpts:
"'He-e-e-ey!  Cuteshoestellyoumamahi!'
That is the gist of most conversations in the state of Texas.  In Mississippi, a lot of conversations go like this:
'He-e-e-ey!  KewtshewsyewthenkOleMissgonweeun?'
(If you were born north of the Mason-Dixon line, you probably can't imagine what's being said.  I suggest that you read each line aloud several times, sounding out the syllables phonetically until the words register.  This would be a good preparatory exercise if you ever plan to visit the South.)"

What I'm reading next:  Moloka'i by Alan Brennert

Review: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg

Chestnut Lodge, the institution where INPYaRG was unofficially set

Reviewed by Christina

Published: 1964

It's about:  "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is a semi-autobiographical account of a teenage girl's three-year battle with schizophrenia. Deborah Blau, bright and artistically talented, has created a make-believe world, the Kingdom of Yr, as a form of defense from a confusing, frightening reality. When Deborah was five, she underwent surgery to remove a tumor in her urethra, a traumatic experience that involved a great deal of physical pain and shame. During her childhood, Deborah suffered frequent abuse from her anti-Semitic peers and neighbors. When Deborah first created Yr, it was a beautiful, comforting haven, but over time the gods of Yr became tyrannical dictators who controlled Deborah's every word and action." (wikipedia)

I thought:  I'm not sure why I've always pegged this book as a sensationalized account of mental illness written to titillate the masses.  Maybe that first impression is the fault of the cover of the paperback copy I snatched from a beach house a couple of years ago.  I mean, look at it.  It does sort of seem to say "misery porn," right?

It's not that way.  It's an honest, well-rounded, memoirish novel.  It's more nuanced and introspective than I expected.  There is some real poetry in the language of Yr, and Deborah's attempts to translate it for her doctors mirrors the patient's struggle to communicate her world of psychosis.

But I can't say I loved it.  I'm still coming down off my Anna Karenina high, and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden was pretty much a rebound book.  I had a hard time getting into it, and I never really felt emotionally invested in the characters.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf.  This is one of my favorite topics, and I'm pretty sure I would have liked it a lot better if I'd read it at a different time.  I don't have any legitimate complaints about it.

Reading Recommendations:  Don't read it right after Anna Karenina, I guess.

Warnings:  I can't really remember anything.  Maybe a swear or two and some vividly imagined violence.

Favorite excerpts:  “She now knew that the death she feared might not be a physical one, that it could be death of the will, the soul, the mind, the laws, and thus not death, but a perpetual dying.”

What I'm reading next:  The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love by Jill Conner Browne

Review: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

photograph of the author via

Reviewed by Christine-Chioma

Published: 1987

It's about: The book follows the lives of two married couples who meet and become friends while living in Madison, Wisconsin during the height of the Depression. The book explores the small details of their inner lives, the complex nuances of their friendships, and the minutiae of their marriages.

I thought: This is an intricate and well-crafted novel. Although it is not plot driven, I eagerly read it quickly. It was fascinating for me to read about the realistic quiet lives. I loved how interesting Stegner made situations that occur in every day life. It made me think a lot about the intimacies of friendships and the small details that make people whom they are. The novel is focused and well-written. I could tell that every detail was deliberate. I really came to know the Langs and Morgans. The introduction of my copy calls the book a "modern classic" and I'd have to agree. Since graduating from BYU in English I never wanted to read another scholarly article analyzing a work of literature  but this book (KIND OF) gives me that desire. It is one of those books that I think about over and over even after it is finished.

Reading Recommendation: I enjoyed this piece on Stegner. It gives a lot of information about him as an author and gives insight into some of his writing decisions. After reading the book I was very curious about the meaning of the title which is explained in the piece: "Stegner says there is a kind of crossing to safety for each character in the novel. 'Every one of these four lives crosses to a different kind of safety. And crosses something different. And takes with him something different." The Paris Review also had a good interview with Stegner.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf or Rubbish Bin? Stick it on the shelf!

Warnings: I purposely read this book because it is squeaky clean

Favorite excerpts:

"And so, by circuitous and unpredictable routes, we converge toward midcontinent and meet in Madison, are are at once drawn together, braided and plaited into a friendship. It is a relationship that has no formal shape, there are no rules or obligations or bonds as in marriage or the family, it is held together by neither law nor property nor blood, there is no glue in it but mutual liking."

"No cautionary words had any effect on her. If you wanted something, you planned for it, worked for it and made it happen"

"You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and something you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine"

"Why? Because they are who they are. Why are they so helplessly who they are? Unanswered questions, perhaps unanswerable. In nearly forty years, neither had been able to change the other by as much as a punctuation mark."

"But Charity and Sally are stitched together with a thousand threads of feeling and shared experience. Each is for the other that one unfailingly understanding and sympathetic fellow-creature that everybody wishes for and many never find."

What I'm reading next: The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

Guest Review: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

Family in Cartagena, Colombia, c. 1930, via

Reviewed by Arminda!
Combine a dash of determination with a twist of opinionated, a heaping scoop of energy and mix vigorously, while slowly adding to this combination equal parts writer, actor, swing dancer, chef and mom. Fold in laughter, happiness, originality and a great book, and your concoction will resemble Arminda, whose passions are varied, but her focus to accomplish much never wains. Through her food blog www.yumveg.com she strives to make whole food, plant-based eating accessible to everyone, and when she just feels like rambling she dumps those thoughts onto www.allarminda.com, where it's all Arminda, all the time. Twitter handles for each, respectively, are @yumveg and @allarminda.

Published: 1988

It's about: Two young people, Florentino and Fermina, fall desperately in love with one another through letters they exchange and furtive glances they make at one another across the park, and eventually decide to marry. Their plans are thwarted by Fermina's father, and while she moves on with her life and marries another, the anguished Florentino channels his heartbreak into a lifelong obsession with other women, hundreds of other women, yet reserves his heart for Fermina. After the death of Fermina's husband, some fifty-one years later, Florentino declares his love again.

I thought: This book, and author, come highly recommended, and Love in the Time of Cholera is the winner of the Nobel Prize. What greater endorsement can you possibly have than that? If the criteria for winning this most-revered literary prize is to have "produced 'in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction, (source Wikipedia)'" then let's just say I thought the direction was kind of creepy. Young lover, desperate from his broken heart, turns obsessive stalker, turns womanizer, turns pedophile, all the while claiming a virgin heart for his one true love? And this is okay with everyone?

I want to be clear that I thought the writing was lyrically beautiful, and the character development was remarkable. I have rarely felt so connected with the inner feelings of two characters as I did with Florentino and Fermina, and the beautiful imagery and lives painted by Mr. Marquez's exceptional command of the English language. But can we fairly separate the characters from their actions from their thoughts from the plot from its message? To attempt to do so would be no different than when someone says they love a song for its beat, but pay no attention to its lyrics. Yet this book is heralded as one of the greatest love stories of all time.

I'll leave Newsweek's review of "A love story of astonishing power," to Newsweek, because I have a hard time celebrating, honoring and revering the "ideal direction" for which this novel has received literature's highest honor. I can't get on that band wagon.

Verdict: In Between - I'm really torn over the separation of music and lyrics. The writing is scrumptiously beautiful, but I don't endorse the behavior of the main character.

Reading Recommendations:  This book is heralded by many many people as one of the greatest ever written. It's an Oprah's Book Club selection, among other ringing endorsements. I'd love to know your thoughts if you've read it.

Warnings:  Well, there's LOTS of sex, sexual references, and even an affair with a child.

What I'm reading next: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon