Wednesday Roundup

Currently reading:
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
by Barbara Kingsolver

Yeah, so...um...I didn't get very far with Seven Storey Mountain. Yeah...oops. That's because I was completely swept away by Barbara Kingsolver's latest book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I have been an avid Kingsolver reader for several years, but was so annoyed by the preachy environmentalism masquerading as fiction in her book Prodigal Summer that I haven't ready anything she's written since. When Animal, Vegetable, Miracle first came out, I rolled my eyes and walked right on by.

And then picked it up off of a friend's coffee table, read the first page, sat down on the couch, read a little more, and couldn't put it down. I think what turned me off about Prodigal Summer was the underhanded way that (I felt) Kingsolver pushed her environmental agenda onto the reader. It felt passive aggressive, overly defensive, and forced. But in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Kingsolver can be direct and honest with the reader about her views, and the resulting book feels like conversation between the reader and Kingsolver. A conversation that perhaps takes place in her cozy kitchen while canning tomatoes or flipping through poultry catalogs.

Anyways, it's a good read, especially at this time of year when the summer bounty is winding down and hot tea starts to sound like a mighty fine idea.

Speaking of which...

Currently drinking:

Nutcracker Sweet Tea from Celestial Seasonings

Earlier in the summer, my good friend Dave arrived in my cube all a-flutter and grinning from ear to ear. He held out a box wrapped in Christmas paper: "Open it! Open it!" By this point, he was hopping from foot to foot and giggling a little, so I tore off the paper in about two seconds and revealed....an entire box full of Nutcracker Sweet Tea. That's right, Dave had heard my cry for a dependable supply of Favorite Tea Ever, and went straight to the source: Celestial Seasonings Mecca and got me six whole boxes of Nutcracker Sweet Tea. All for me! To ration or splurge as I please! Oh, Dave, did I ever tell you that you're my hero? Yes, and also the wind beneath my wings.

At the time, I had one lonely box of tea that I'd been slowly rationing out. Then it got hot here in Boston and hot = iced coffee, and for whatever reason, it's only been this last week that I cracked the first box of Favorite Tea Ever. And it's so timely since just this week, fall arrived. Just like that. Sweater time!

Currently Knitting:

Not a sweater, alas. No, it's that time of year when I still believe I can really truly finish all my knitting projects in time for Christmas. Yes, like any true Red Sox fan, I still believe.

And yes, pictures of the Daisy Dukes to come. Sorry it's taken me so long. Sorry sorry sorry! They're done, actually, but just haven't gotten photographed. To come. To come. The best is yet to come.

Currently eating:

Calzones!

I need to do a separate post about this asap as this is my new favorite thing ever. It's essentially my recipe for pizza dough (HERE) split into eight pieces and folded into calzone-shape. I spread out the dough into a palm-sized round on a piece of parchment paper, put a few spoonfulls of filling, fold it over into a half-moon and pinch it shut. Leave the parchment paper around it (the paper comes off in the oven) and cut a few steam vents in the size. I bake these on a baking sheet in the oven because the filling tends to ooze out and get all over my oven (which is always perfectly clean. Of course.). That's it! They're about 3.5-4 Weight Watcher points each, depending on the filling and they freeze like a dream. I made a double batch this past weekend--sixteen calzones! I had a whole production-line going there. These are perfect for how crazy my life is these days--I leave a bunch in the freezer at work for lunches and throw one in my bag to scarf down between lecture and lab on class nights. Yum!

What else?....mmm...that's about it. That's about all I have had time for! Well, that and watching America's Next Top Model. (Go, Bianca! So fierce!)

Later, gators!

Wednesday Roundup

Current Reality Reading:
Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton

because I've had it on my shelf for, oh, four years without reading it, and now I have been given a big poke in the keister by THIS interview with Paul Elie about his book The Life You Save May Be Your Own, which looks into the lives of Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Connor, and Walker Percy. Because I'm slightly insane, I feel obligated to read at least one work by each person before reading Elie's book. To add another layer of intrigue--at one point or another, I have tried to read at least one book by each person and have failed each time.

Current Escape Reading:

The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (Book #3 of the Song of the Lioness Quartet) by Tamora Pierce

Currently eating:

Spinach Pesto Pasta with Chicken

Followed by too many:

Crunchie Bars that the Engineer's aunt and uncle brought me from Scotland. Soooo delicious and addictive. P.S. Here's a link to how you can make your VERY OWN Crunchie bars! (Click HERE). I dipped mine in chocolate, and will eventually post pictures, I plomise.

Currently wanting to make:

Fruit and vegetable preserves (a.k.a. Stuffing my squirrel cheeks for winter)--link HERE.

Also thinking about:

Starting a food-only satellite blog to My 3 Loves. Any suggestions for clever creative names that haven't already been taken by some of these clever creative people? A dinner (or goodie care package) courtesy of yours truly if I pick your name for my blog title!

Almost done knitting:

THE DAISY DUKES!!!

Then I'll be on to knitting:

Christmas Presents. For real. I mean it this year. No, I really do!

And that might actually be possible because:

Patriots Season (I mean Football Season) starts on Sunday!

Except I'm probably going to be just a leeetle bit distracted by THIS....

Books: The Children of Men by P.D. James

The Children of Men
by P.D. James

Quickie Synopsis: Set in the not-too-distant future of 2021, Children of Men tells of a time when humans have become sterile, science has failed to find a cause or a cure, and no children have been born for twenty-five years. The Warden of England holds the country from chaos by promising security, comfort, and pleasure through a thinly-veiled dictatorship as civilization fades into old age. Theodore Faron, the Warden's cousin, is one of the apathetic masses until he is approached by a group of rebels eager to change the system. Initially reluctant to help, Theo is drawn further and further into their plans and finds a passion awaking in him that he thought he'd lost long ago.

***

I have a border-line obsession with stories of the apocalypse. Give me a good end-of-the-world novel (or movie or art show or podcast or...you get the idea) and I'll cancel all appointments, hole myself in my apartment, and refuse food and drink until I've finished devouring it. Good apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic books are hard to find--both because there aren't that many that have been written and also because they often get shuffled into other, misnomer categories and are hard to find. By my definition, apocalyptic books are NOT stories of utopian or dystopian societies. They are not science fiction (by my definition, anyway). They do not involve any society other than humankind or take place on any world other than Earth. The events being described do not happen more than fifty years in the future. The best stories of apocalypse deal specifically with the end or near-end of the human race and could happen at any time to any society--The Stand by Stephen King, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and the movie 28 Days Later are primo examples of this.

At the root of my obsession is an insatiable curiosity for how humans behave when all the trappings of 'normal' society are stripped away. We humans cling so tightly to arbitrary ways of defining ourselves and our place in society--ideas of ourselves as doctors and housewives and baristas and public-transit-commuters and radical thinkers and protesters and parents and nerds and food critics on and on and on. What happens when all these labels become meaningless? What is there to protest when there is no more government? Why collect money when there is nothing left to buy or no one left to sell it to you? How do you find food when you've only bought frozen dinners from the grocery store your entire life? What happens if you have any kind if disability and were dependent on technology to function? How will you spend your days when life is about survival instead of toeing the line? How do you define yourself when you are no longer being marketed to or pigeon-holed or compared against? I find these questions fascinating. I am obsessed with knowing all the possible permutations of the human spirit within this kind of vacuum.

And it was with this level of exuberance and fascination that I approached Children of Men. I hadn't heard of this book before previews for the movie started airing and everyone at the Noodle Factory was gibbering about it. A friend of the Engineer's who works in movies saw a sneak preview and declared that this would become a seminal movie for how humans think about the future, and that we would look back on it decades from now and see how the ideas from this movie came to pass. And thus my excitement grew.

As is my habit, I wanted to read the book before seeing the movie, and was delighted when I discovered that the original book had been written by P.D. James, an award-wining British mystery novelist. She is most well-known for her Adam Dalgliesh series, which was turned into a well-respected BBC mini-series. Her mysteries tend to be highly-detailed and fast-paced, and James imbues her characters with genuine ethos as she propels them through the twists and turns of her novels. When the killer is revealed in the grand finale, it's often done in the way you'd least expect with a twist that gives readers cause for genuine reflection.

I wasn't surprised that I'd never heard of Children of Men. It was written in 1992 (which was a whole different century, after all), doesn't fit in with her mystery-novel repertoire or appeal to her fan-base, and also....well...it just isn't any good. It was really, utterly, tragically disappointing. How some crazy script-writer or director came across it and decided to make it into a movie, I'll never know. Actually, they were probably going through all of P.D. Jame's novels and wondered why no one had made it into a movie yet. I'll tell you why--because it would take a script writer or director of singular creative genius to find the diamond in the rough in this book. I've heard such stellar things about the movie from people who's taste I trust that I can't WAIT to see the adaptation.

The first half of the book focuses entirely on Theodore Faron, our main character and apocalyptic hero. He has just turned fifty and is ruminating about his life and the deteriorating state of humankind. As a historian, he feels himself somewhat removed from the events going on around him. His voice as the narrator is clinical and detached, and his observations are unemotional and objective. He is approached by a representative of a small group of rebels and asked to represent their concerns to the dictatorial Warden of England, who happens to be Theodore's cousin. Theodore has little interest in what he considers to be their juvenile grievances and initially dismisses them in disdain. He is only convinced to talk to his cousin after he witnesses a government-organized and theoretically voluntary mass suicide for elderly men and women. Theodore's attempt to communicate with the Warden is clumsy, ill-prepared, and ultimately ineffective. Theodore's momentary enthusiasm for action subsides back into depression.

In the second half of the book, Theodore is once again approached by the rebel group, now calling themselves the Five Fishes, and this time he is asked to provide protection. One of the members, Julian, has become miraculously pregnant and the group needs Theodore's help because he is ostensibly the only man in Britain who can keep Julian from falling under the control of the Warden (a thin premise). Lucky for young Julian, Theodore has fallen in love with her and would do anything to protect her, even overcome his own apathy. What ensues is an unimaginative race through the English country side as the group tries to evade detection, meets with bands of feral humans, scavenges for supplies, and is ultimately hunted down. The climactic scene is so goofy that I don't even mind spoiling it for you--Julian's baby is born, and then Theodore kills the Warden, assumes his place, and wins Dame Julian's affection. Nice. And. Tidy. Barf.

The main characters are particularly disappointing. Theodore has heroic potential, but his transformation from cold observer to humanitarian hero is poorly conceived and unbelievable. Julian and the other Five Fishes are all caricatures of themselves. Each plays out a specific symbolic personality whose literary history can be easily traced through the great (and far greater) works of literature that precede this one and whose permutations have been long exhausted. The Warden is probably the most intriguing and well-written character in the book. He is multi-faceted and has a depth of spirit with which readers can truly empathize. Unfortunately, inconsistencies in his character keep him from being truly believable and trustworthy. (Why why WHY would P.D. James think that at this stage of the apocalypse, the Warden would still be testing only the fertility of those humans he deemed "healthy" and not ALL humans regardless of their mental or physical impairments or their criminal record? A character as smart and survival-oriented as the Warden would recognize that the end of humanity is not the time to practice eugenics. It baffles me.)

The only reason for reading this book at all is for the novelty of it's apocalyptic vision. The idea that no more children are being born and that the human race will just slowly fade into obscurity is a unique idea worth considering. Every other apocalyptic book I've read assumes that the end will happen relatively quickly and without a lot of advanced warning: nuclear annihilation, a super-plague that sweeps around the world and leaves bodies piled on street corners, uncontrollable tidal waves or earthquakes or meteors. One day everything is fine; next day, no more humans. With an apocalyptic event like this, humans can only react and survive as best they can. In a scenario like the one in Children of Men, the apocalypse evolves gradually one day at a time, always lurking on the horizon. Humans have plenty of time to get familiar with the inevitability of their situation. They have already moved beyond the initial stages of panic, hope, and despair, and have settled into resignation. They have time to plan, prepare, and decide how they are going to face the end. It's a different kind of survival and a different aspect of the human soul.

The first quarter of the book, which consists almost entirely of excerpts from Theodore's journal and includes his observations of events going on around him, gives a nice snapshot of what human society could be like in this kind of apocalyptic scenario. Theodore describes the feeling of despair when the last generation of humans reached their mid-twenties without becoming pregnant, the special treatment those last children received, the growing popularity of mass suicides, the preparations for consolidating the last humans into urban centers, how the remnants of the government will ensure that there will be enough resources to see the youngest generation into old age, and all the other signs of a society coming to terms with it's own death. In this sense, society exhibits all the characteristics of any individual come to the end of their life: crankiness, despondency, dementia, weariness, relief, rebellion, fragility, resignation, and acceptance--all wrapped into one package.

One of the key characteristics of all apocalyptic books I've read so far is a final note of hope. The good guys win. The child is born. The last survivors find one another. Life begins anew. Sometimes this is done very well (The Stand by Stephen King and the movie 28 Days Later). Sometimes it feels forced (The Road by Cormac McCarthy). And in the case of Children of Men, it's downright wrong. However it's handled, so far there are very few books where the author was able to bring him or herself to actually end the book with the idea that the human race comes to an end.* Especially in the case of The Road, it is as if the author builds up and up and up to the conclusion that humans fail and ultimately die out, but at the last minute just can't follow through and HAS to end on an up-note. This phenomenon in and of itself says something interesting about human nature--maybe it's a fundamental instinct of self-preservation that prevents authors from 'going all the way,' similar to how in dreams, you will always wake up before you see yourself die. It's as if denying hope is denying life itself.

And so I await with feverish anticipation the release of Children of Men on DVD.** Even if it only lives up to half the reviews I've heard, it's bound to be more entertaining than the book and promises a few more glimpses into the depths of human spirit.

***

*Now that I think about it, the only book I've encountered where all humans do actually die is in The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. But even in that book, it's implied that the human SPIRIT lives on, even if not corporeally.

**Yes, I'm a notorious tightwad, and by the time I'm done debating whether or not it's worth coughing up $10 to see a movie, it's usually left the theaters.

***

Final Recommendation: Skip the book; see the movie. If you insist on reading the book, stop after Theo goes to the Quietus and meets the Warden.

Good Read for When You're: Doing research for a book on apocalyptic visions.

Good Choice For: Someone you know is doing research on apocalyptic visions. Or is having apocalyptic visions.

If you're interested in having some apocalyptic visions of your own, I highly recommend:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Stand by Stephen King
28 Days Later

If you'd like to read some good books by P.D. James, try:

Death of an Expert Witness
Devices & Desires
Original Sin

Book Review: The Brief History of the Dead

The Brief History of the Dead
by Kevin Brockmeier

Quickie Synopsis: In the city of the dead, life for the recently departed continues much as, well, life for the living. Restaurants are visited, jobs are attended to, new loves and old become reacquainted. The real plus side is that there's no need to worry about such trivial human concerns like eating well or exercising since you're already dead. And you suddenly have all the time you ever desired to stroll in the park or catch up on your reading. The city of the dead is a kind of holding area--you have definitely died, but you haven't quite yet left earth. There are still people down there who remember you and hold on to you. Until all the people you know have also died, you will stay in the city. And when the last person who remembers you dies, you disappear from the city, and none of the deceased residents knows where you disappear to.

On Earth, it is a time of war, of terrorism, of environmental collapse. Large groups of people appear and disappear suddenly in the city--gradually it is realized that no one left on Earth to remember the dead. As the population of the city slowly stabilizes again, a connection is discovered among the remaining residents: they all know or are somehow connected to a woman named Laura Byrd. And on Earth, Laura Byrd is struggling for survival. She is trapped in Antarctica, alone, running out of supplies, and unaware that she may very well be the last human on Earth.

-----

In The Brief History of the Dead, Kevin Brockmeier explores two classic philosophical questions: "What happens after we die?" and "What if you were the last person left on earth?" Each question follows its own thread, but the narratives weave through each other with a musical grace until the two are finally twined into a single inevitable piece. Neither story is quite strong enough to stand on its own, but when combined, they represent a moving and powerful whole.

Some of the most impressive writing in this novel comes in the character of Laura Byrd. Laura is an unlikely heroine for this novel. She is a mid-level employee at the Coca Cola Corporation and has been sent by her employer to Antarctica as part of a publicity campaign. She is billed as the team's wildlife expert, but she herself readily admits that her expertise in that area is rather lacking. Alone in the arctic desert and cut off from any other humans, she doesn't possess a great deal of survival knowledge, and endures mainly by virtue of fancy space-age equipment and her own tenacity to live. She is quirky and immensely lovable, reacting to situations in much the same way we might imagine ourselves reacting if we suddenly realized that we were trapped in an arctic science station while an epidemic was killing off the rest of humanity. Most significantly, we see Laura grow and develop as she reacts to new situations and new realizations about the reality of her situation. Brockmeier has created Laura's character to perfection.

And in stark contrast to Laura Byrd's high-action adventure, the segments of the novel that take place in the city of the dead have a dreamy, reflective quality. The newly dead are rediscovering what they loved about living and realizing that they have been given a second go-around at pursuing their dreams. Brockmeier meditates on what connects us to each other, crafting mini-stories that profile different residents of the city who are both close to and only loosely connected to Laura Byrd. While the movement and story of the city of the dead isn't as plot-driven or presented in the same sharp detail as Laura's story, the city is the necessary backdrop that gives Laura's story added substance and consequence.

Still, there were some aspects of this book that left me severely wanting. Take the title: The Brief History of the Dead. What did Brockmeier intend by calling this book a 'history'? Because it's not; it's really more of a "Brief Story of What's Happening to the Dead." Or "The City of the Dead: A Guidebook." One of the whole points of Brockmeier's version of the afterlife is that it's relatively timeless. There are days and nights, there are tomorrows and yesterdays, people come and leave the city, the weather fluctuates--but there prevailing understanding is that time is suspended. The inhabitants of the city are waiting. Nothing ever really happens in the city of the dead--no revolutions or political shenanigans, there are no famines or environmental disasters, no major inventions or leaps of humankind. In short, nothing happens to MAKE history. I toyed with the idea that the author is being ironic and is trying to emphasis the lack of history in the book by including it in the title. But really, I think he got lazy. I think he thought of a great title for a book a long time before writing it and clung to that title even as the book he was writing changed and grew to the point where the title was no longer the right fit. (P.S. Any grammar geeks out there want to have a go at discussing the significance and merit of calling this "THE history" as opposed to "A history"?!...Or perhaps I should say "AN history"....)

And let's talk about the city of the dead. This is an interesting idea: a city (just the one) like a cosmic waiting room where the dead go after their bodies have died but they are still half-alive in the memories of the people they knew on earth. It makes sense that these recently departed still have attachments to their earthly selves--their jobs, their hobbies, the idea that they need to eat, and so on. This idea inevitably led to some obvious holes in the conceptualization of the city--holes that I at first took to be intriguing intellectual puzzles, but with which I became increasingly frustrated as either they remained unresolved or they were resolved in a way that only let to more puzzles.

For instance, take the concept of money. At first I thought that there was no money in the city and everything operated on the Utopian ideal of plenty-for-all. But toward the middle of the book, there is a scene where a woman throws coins at another resident of the city because she thought he was begging. Aha! Money after all! But then: why? Why is there money? Where does it come from? What does it represent--is there a ghostly Fort Knox somewhere? How do people get it? Are there banks?

And where does the 'stuff' come from? Who makes the coins and where does the metal come from? Where do things like paper come from--paper to print the newspapers and book all the dead are reading? Where does the food come from? Are there fields being harvested somewhere in the land of the dead, somewhere off-screen? Or does food appear by magic in the larders of the restaurants and kitchens of the city? Maybe when the living back on earth think about food, food also appears in the land of the dead--spirit food! And do the dead actually need to eat anyway, or is it just force of habit?

At one point, one of the characters notices that the trash hasn't been picked up yet, which immediately made me wonder, "Who is choosing to spend their afterlife as a trash collector?" Maybe the dead don't get a choice. Maybe they automatically just do what they were doing when they died--whether they were a child or a retired person or a stockbroker. Maybe the whole technical operation of the city relies on the fact that people of all ages die and therefore the city of the dead has enough diversity to sustain all its functions.

The further I got into the book, the more these kinds of questions bugged me and distracted me from the story. I'll grant you that Brockmeier MAY have left these kinds of details intentionally ambiguous in an attempt to draw attention to the fact that we in the land of the living don't always have a good idea of where our goods come from and we often treat them as if they appeared by magic. That's possible. But I think not.

But just as with my suspicion with the title, my gut feeling is that Brockmeier got lazy. I don't think that Brockmeier knew the answers to these ambiguities and inconsistencies any more than the reader does. As any writer worth his or her salt knows, the writer needs to know every last detail of their story down to the color of Timmy's shoelaces and how many stoplights Mr. Jones passes on his way to work. If the author is completely conscious of the world and characters he or she is describing, the necessary details will naturally float to the top and the reader will be able to fill in the rest of the blanks on his or her own. These small details of shoelaces and stoplights may never make it into the final story; but it's the fact that the author has them firmly in mind as he or she is writing that deepens the story the same way a dash of secret spice will deepen the flavor of chili and make it a better stew without anyone being the wiser. Brockmeier clearly knew Laura Byrd's character inside and out, so why didn't he apply the same level of craft to the city of the dead?

Intended or otherwise, The History of the Dead only manages a superficial, if highly entertaining, look into some of humankind's deepest questions. It's this lack of depth that ultimately keeps an otherwise well-written and well-conceived book solidly in the camp of whimsical science fiction and prevents it from becoming anything more than an interesting philosophical jaunt.

-----

Final Recommendation: Worth the read

Good Read For When You're: Waiting at the airport, on vacation, or sick on the couch looking for good distraction.

Good Choice For: Science fiction fans, precocious teenagers, and philosophy majors thinking of switching to creative writing. Oh, and book groups. This is a bone fide book group read if I ever read one.

If You Liked This Book, You Might Also Like: Eva Moves the Furniture by Margot Livesay

Books: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road
by Cormac McCarthy

Quickie Synopsis: A man and his son journey south--always south--through a barren, desolate, post-Apocalyptic world. The landscape, the air, the sky--they are all filled with ashes. The vegetation is dead, burned to a crisp and frozen in time. Along the road are abandoned pieces of humanity: cars with melted tires, empty houses falling inward upon themselves, luggage abandoned and picked over by people moving south. It is always raining and cold. There are no birds or deer or animals of any kind, and the only humans that the boy and his father meet are either near death, insane, or predators.

-----

This is not a light-hearted or uplifting book by any kind of standard. And I read it in great big gulps over the course of about two days. Even when I put it down, I felt myself constantly pulled back toward that world, its struggle for survival, and Cormac McCarthy's stark, biblical language.

The Road is a book that must be read all at once to be truly appreciated and understood. It is told in short snippets no longer than a paragraph or two and in one long continuous sequence with no breaks for chapters. The effect reinforces the feeling of disjointed, confused reality, a reality that feels like it begins in the middle of a sentence and ends before the speaker has finished speaking. The story, the characters, the dialogue, the language, the writing, the pace, the structure of the book: all these aspects work together in perfect harmony to continually reinforce the themes of the book like a symphony or a force of nature that builds on itself without any seeming effort on the part of the crafter. The reader walks next to the man and his son, sees what they see as they are first seeing it, feels what they feel, judges their actions and experiences just as they judge themselves. McCarthy has achieved a work of master craftsmanship in this book.

This is a story of apocalypse--the worst apocalypse imaginable, the one that is preached by every present-day prophet with a bullhorn, and the one that is often dismissed as being alarmist. I am also guilty of the dismissal, and yet as I read McCarthy's book, I found myself constantly thinking, "Yes, this is how it would be. This is how humanity would end."

But the book is not just a warning of some possible dystopian future; The Road can also be read as commentary on the increasing soullessness of human society, the psychic wasteland of the spirit as evidenced by shootings in schools, corruption and immorality at the highest levels of our government, increasing incidences of suicides and mental illness, bystanders to violent crime who turn away or--worse--take pictures on their camera-phone instead of stepping in. The wasteland is both literal and metaphorical: a city ghetto, a suburb of perfect green lawns, a refugee camp, a prison, a person's mind. I'm not saying--and nor do I think McCarthy is saying--that we all need to get a little more of that old time religion. Rather, by putting his reader directly into this terrifying landscape, I think McCarthy aims to bring the apathy and despondency into focus and to show us what's really at stake here. And what's at stake is our souls.

I feel that it is just as crucial to have books like The Road as it is to have books like Savage Inequalities and Manufacturing Consent because it tells what is real and true without artifice or angles or even statistics. The nightmare being told in this book is alarmist, but it's a nightmare that needs to be faced in order to be understood. It's already around us and choosing not to face it only makes the nightmare more real. The Road will never be a best seller. It will be read quietly, alone, and then slipped back on a shelf while the reader walks away--thoughts turned inward, steps slowed, tongue softly touching lips, fingers checking all the locks.

Books: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards

Quickie Synopsis: When his wife goes into labor during a freak March snow storm, Dr. David Henry is forced to handle the delivery himself. The first baby is a fine, healthy boy; but the second infant, a twin girl delivered moments later, shows obvious signs of having Down's Syndrome. Dr. Henry makes a split-second decision to send the infant to an institution and tells his wife that the baby died. The nurse charged with the baby girl finds herself unable to leave her at the institution, and in a split-second decision of her own, decides to disappear to another city and raise the child on her own. The Memory Keeper's Daughter is the chronicle of these parallel families. Dr. Henry's son Paul is raised in a household filled with grief over the believed death of his sister and layers of deceit between his parents. His "lost" twin Phoebe thrives in the unconventional family that surrounds and loves her, and she grows into a happy, well-adjusted young woman.

-----

Kim Edward's debut novel is born of those "what if?" questions that lurk at the back of every parents' mind: What if my child is born with a disability? What if my baby dies? What will I do then? In The Memory Keeper's Daughter, each character is forced to confront a different 'what if?" scenario: Dr. Henry gives away his child in an effort to spare his wife and himself greater suffering in the future; Norah, his wife, finds herself suffocated with grief from the death of a child; Caroline raises a child with Down's, constantly afraid of doing something 'wrong' or failing in her devotion. Each character represents the life of "what might have been" for each of the other characters had different decisions been made, but unlike Sartre's version of hell in No Exit, these characters gradually do find a kind of peace.

This is a technically ambitious novel, as is any novel that attempts to span entire lifetimes and catalogue each small triumph and failure of all its characters. As a result, the pace constantly oscillates between slow motion and giant leaps--I often found myself totally hooked into a particular situation only to turn the page and discover that we have leaped forward five years and the event I was so enthralled by is now ancient history for the characters in the book. This left me feeling disconnected from the characters and vaguely annoyed at Edwards for constantly wrenching my attention somewhere else. I got the feeling that Edwards didn't believe that her characters or the world she had created could stand on their own without having every detail meticulously plotted, right down to the last arch of an eyebrow and existential crisis. Instead of seeming to evolve naturally, the plot and character development felt more like an over planned road trip. I really think this novel could have benefited from a little less control on the part of the author and a little more trust in her own abilities as a writer.

And her abilities are many! I respect any author who can make us genuinely care about characters who we'd pass on the street without a second glance and who can take the story of those common characters and create a saga of personal identification and revelation. Edwards has all the earmarks of a masterful storyteller, and I look forward to seeing how she evolves.

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Other good reads in the category of "ironic novels that chronicle the lives of middle-class families and their strained interpersonal relationships":

Zadie Smith, On Beauty
Charles Baxter, Saul & Patsy
Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections
Ali Smith, The Accidental

Books: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
by Alexander McCall Smith

Quick Synopsis: Set in present day Botswana, Precious Ramotswe decides to set up the first ever Ladies' Detective Agency using inheritance money from her father. Within the first few weeks of business, she's called upon to find missing husbands, recover stolen vehicles, and follow errant daughters. As her reputation grows, Mma Ramotswe is hired to solve increasingly complicated and delicate mysteries.

This is a simple, basic, and uncomplicated book perfect for long plane rides or afternoons strapped to the elliptical machine at the gym. After the opening introduction of Precious Ramotswe's character and some background on her childhood and family, the book is essentially broken down chapter-by-chapter into the individual cases Mma Ramotswe is hired to solve. On each case, Mma Ramotswe encounters a bevy of vibrant, amusing characters, each with their own special quirks and agendas. The book is set against the backdrop of Gaborone, a small village in Botswana near the Kalihari Desert, and the geography and history of this country weaves in and out of the stories being told.

Toward the middle of the book, something started nagging me. The book reminded me of something--I was sure of it. Had I read it before and forgotten as happens to even the best bibliophile from time to time. But no, I hadn't read this book before, I was sure of it. What was it? Something about the characters, the cases Mma Ramotswe is set to solve, something about it was just so familiar. It bugged me through the rest of the book, through several sessions with the elliptical machine, and all the long waits for the #39 bus last week. I finished the book and sat frowning at the cover. And then it came to me: Encyclopedia Brown. Alexander McCall Smith has succeeded in writing an Encyclopedia Brown series for adults. All it's missing are case solutions at the back of the book--remember the letters were turned around so you had to look in a mirror to read the answer? Man, I loved those books. And I loved Precious Ramotswe and the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency in the same simple, addicted way.

Still, case solved, book finished, I was left wanting more. As much as I adored Encyclopedia Brown as a kid and can still appreciate those One Minute Mysteries for what they were, No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is not a children's book and was frustrating in its lack of depth. There were a few glimmers of Truly Sensitive Subjects--wife beating, children sacrificed to witch doctors, Botswana's own complicated social and political history. But every time one of these subjects was broached, Smith quickly veered the storyline back to the sunny side of the street, wrapping everything up with a laugh and a happy ending.

It was obviously not Smith's goal in writing No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency to spark a revolution or even necessarily to increase Western sensitivity toward Botswana culture. I feel that Smith intended to write a fun, light-hearted book that portrayed both black and white Africans as regular people who deal with straying husbands, medical fraud, and rebellious teenagers just like, well, everyone else in the world. And, heck, if he inspired just one middle-class white American look up Botswana on a map, that's an added bonus. Not every book set in Africa or written by an African (black or white--Smith was born in Zimbabwe) has to tackle the cultural and ethical minefield of African history. In fact, I'm positive there are people who have religiously read every book in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series who will probably never crack the cover of books like A Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela or even The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. If Smith had gone into more detail about the South African diamond trade or the possible political corruption of some of her clients, would he have lost some of these readers?

I do think that Smith missed a literary opportunity in glossing over the hard issues. Even if he chose not to engage in a discussion of African politics, there were plenty of other universally human emotions that could have been brought to the front of his writing. Exploring these issues would have added much vibrancy and urgency to Smith's otherwise emotionally level book. In particular, Mma Ramotswe's character could have benefited enormously from a dash of complexity and a bit more soul-baring. Smith almost does this in his few mentions of Mma Ramotswe's baby who died in infancy, but never quite manages more than an 'Oh...sad. Ok, moving on!" feeling. Unfortunately, none of Smith's quirky characters are ever more than just characters, and his writing never accomplishes that literary magic of fully transporting the reader into the "here and now" of the book.