Wayward Saints

Wayward Saints by Suzzy Roche (of the folk band the Roches) follows the lives of Mary Saint, lead singer of the once indie-famous band Sliced Ham, and her friends and family. Mary left her home of Swallow, New York as a teenager, leaving behind her mother, Jean, and abusive father, Bub. She travels the world with Sliced Ham. The band starts to grow in popularity, but they become weighted down by drugs and liquor. Her lover and fellow band mate, nicknamed Garbagio, falls intoxicated from a balcony and dies one night. Sliced Ham peeters out from there, and Mary slips into depression and alcoholism. She recovers, eventually, and moves to San Fran. There, she meets a tranny named Thaddeus at a homeless shelter, and the two move in together. It is then that she gets the call from her mother, asking her to return to Swallow to play a show at the town’s high school.

Jean has been living on her own since she checked Bub into a nursing home after he suffered a stroke. When the English teacher at the high school approached her about contacting Mary to do a show, Jean was hesitant but complaint. Throughout most of the book she anxiously awaits her daughter’s return, trying to understand her abusive relationship with her husband and distant relationship with Mary. She coincidentally meets Garbagio’s father—his wife is in the same nursing home as Bub—and the two strike up a friendship. Jean is also incredibly devout, and much of the book focuses on how she grounds herself with her faith.

There is a cast of secondary characters that float in and out of the book, but Mary and Jean are the staples that keep the novel propelling forward. Although the book is told in the third-person omniscient, I found most of the closer looks at secondary characters to be a bit unnecessary. I was always most interested in Mary and Jean.

Wayward Saints is Roche’s debut novel, and it is somewhat uneven because of that. For example, Mary seems very authentic and her character is fully conveyed to the audience. Somehow, she doesn’t fall into the stereotypes of “alternative rocker chick” and manages to seem fresh and interesting. However, there are other parts of the book that are less realistic or fleshed out. The conversations between Jean and Garbagio’s father are ones I know are supposed to be meaningful but felt a little trite to me. Whenever I was reading the dialogue, I kept thinking that their conversations needed to go a little deeper, and the word choice needed to be a little more original. The dialogue itself felt flat, even though I cared about both of the characters and their relationship. “This is exactly how I would expect older people to interact with each other,” I found myself thinking.

Another place of unevenness was the theme of religion and faith. The references to religion and the characters’ attachment (or discord) from God are constantly present throughout the novel. However, Roche needed to expand the theme a little more. When Mary was a child, she thought she was visited—and fondled—by the Virgin Mary.  Mary finds this memory to be somewhat of a comfort, and states the Virgin gave her the strength to sing. Her devout mother finds this vision appalling. By the end of the novel, I couldn’t quite understand what we were supposed to feel about religion. Is it a support system? A fantasy? A crux? All of these things?

I did appreciate the way the book looks at the music industry. It is critical of it (for its drugs, money, alcohol) but also encapsulates the magic of a good live show, which can be a quasi-religious experience in itself. I think in the future Roche will be able to flesh out her novels a bit better. I was reminded of when I reviewed High Fidelity. One of the things I loved about that book was that it was equal parts a wonderful book about music and a wonderful book about relationships. Wayward Saints is a wonderful book about music and an ok book about relationships. More than anything, the book just had the feeling of being published a draft too soon. But the prose is beautiful, clean, and descriptive. And I have faith that Roche’s second novel will be even and masterful.

The Year of Magical Thinking

I am not sure what I can say about Joan Didion’s non-fiction book The Year of Magical Thinking that hasn’t been said before in a review. The book is famous, a masterpiece even, for a reason—it is complex, masterful, reflective, and beautifully sad. Instead, I wish to offer more of a reading guide to the piece. 

If you haven’t read the book, here’s what it’s about: Writers and couple John Dunne and Joan Didion watch their only child, Quintana, develop pneumonia and septic shock several days before Christmas in 2003. She is admitted to the hospital in critical condition and falls unconscious. A few days later on December 30, 2003, while Quintana is still comatose, John is struck at the dinner table by a massive coronary. He dies instantly. After several weeks, Quintana regains her health. She travels to California with her husband Gerry where she collapses in LAX. She is rushed to the hospital where she is diagnosed with a massive hematoma. Quintana, once again, falls unconscious and gravely ill but later recovers.

Didion attempts to make sense of these events, and attempts to understand death. She researches death and the medical problems her loved ones suffer. She turns to the literature. She is a smart, grounded woman, but a part of her still expects John to come back. It is this expectation of his return that she refers to as her “magical thinking.”

Clearly, this book is a rough book to read. It has been on my list for about two years now, as I am quite a fan of Didion. The Year of Magical Thinking is a book that people always talked about in my writing classes in college. It’s an important book in terms of style—Didion never falls into being overly sappy or sentimental, which is a challenged giving the subject matter. (Who could blame her if she did get sentimental or sappy?) If you are going to write a book about death, this is a model of how to do it effectively.

But, like I said, all of this has been said before about The Year of Magical Thinking, so I am going to give two pieces of advice to the reader of this book, based on my own experience. First of all, read it when you must, when it fits for your life. There were other times in my life when The Year of Magical Thinking could have been of use to me, but I decided to pick it up now. The book made me scared of all of the terrible things that can possibly happen. I think if I had been reading this at a rougher period in my life, I could have related to the book more. But instead it just made me nervous. I read the book quickly, trying to get through it so that I could escape the parts of it that made me uncomfortable.

Which brings me to my second piece of advice: Read this one slowly. Read it carefully; absorb it; pay attention to how Didion copes through language. I remember in “The White Album” she writes, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” This is what Didion is doing in The Year of Magical Thinking. She constantly puts the events of John’s death and Quintana’s illnesses into a story, into a timeline. She slows down. She takes the time she needs to make sense of the events in her life. So when you read it, don’t power through it. Take it nice and slow.

In summation, read The Year of Magical Thinking when it is necessary to your own understanding of your own circumstances, and read it slowly. Do not read it like I read it—fast, wanting to know what happens next but also trying to escape the difficult subject matter of death that Didion forces her reader to confront.

The Weird Sisters

The Weird Sisters is one of those novels that you think about a lot while you read it. The premise involves three sisters—Rose (Rosalinda), Bean (Bianca), and Cordy (Cordelia)—who move in with their parents because of their own various failures and problems. However, they all make the transition back to the nest under the guise of helping their mother who has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. The book doesn’t leave you in the time between when you are reading and when you are not. I found myself thinking about the novel throughout the day: Which sister was I the most like? Responsible, homebody Rose? Sneaky, party-girl Bean? Free, gypsy-esq Cordy? 

All of the girls move home with secrets—Rose is too afraid to leave her hometown and move to England with her fiancé, Johnathan. She uses the excuse of her mother’s cancer as a reason to move back in with her parents and avoid following Johnathan to his new, one-year job in London. Cordy is pregnant and returns to her parents’ house where she tries to keep her situation hidden. Bean has just been caught stealing from her job in New York. Penniless and indebted to her former employer, she trots back to Ohio.

This book isn’t heavily plot driven—most of the plot points are a bit predictable. However, the interesting part of the novel is watching how the three sisters grow as individuals and as a family. The nature of the novel constantly comes back to questions of identity: Is it possible to define yourself and your personality in a vacuum? Does your role in your family play a part in your self-definition?  For example, Bean is often left feeling self-conscious because she is neither the responsible Rose nor the loveable Cordy. Similarly, Cordy has always been the baby of the family and has a hard time seeing herself as an adult who is about to have her own child. The girls come to realize that they can be defined separately from their family while still having a connection to their roots. 

Brown also discusses the nature of hometowns—how they can be hard to leave and hard to come back to. The duality of hometowns is something that has always been a favorite topic of mine in my own writing, and I really admired Brown’s discussion of the subject. Each sister represents a stance on their hometown of Barney: Rose never wanted to leave. Bean moved somewhere else and made that her home. Cordy never wanted to have a home at all and lived a wanderer’s life. However, by the end of the book, the sisters’ views on hometowns/homes shift. At one point Cordy says, "We all want to become something better than Barney, but we won't" (313).

The together/separateness of the characters in the novel is mirrored by the point of view in which Brown writes. I have never read a book with this exact style. It is told in the first-person plural (think The Virgin Suicides), with the sentences focused around the sisters as the collective “we.” However, much of the book breaks away from the collective mentality and focuses on a specific sister with the third-person voice. The book will discuss just what Cordy is doing at the moment, for instance.

The book is aware of its own literary prowess. The characters often talk in lines of Shakespeare, because of the sisters’ father being a scholar on good ole Bill’s work. The Weird Sisters are a reference to Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth and the girls are individually named after characters in various plays.

The Weird Sisters is great for two kinds of readers: those who enjoy a unique point-of view narration and literary allusions, and those who like stories about people going through changes and transitions. It’s a great read, and I highly recommend it. 

The Cabinet of Earths

So I've been writing for Yahoo! Contributor Network, and I reviewed this children's book for their site. Not what I usually review, but check it out anyway! It was a cute book. Also, I will be writing a review of Eleanor Brown's The Weird Sisters within the next day or two, so check back!

My review of The Cabinet of Earths by Anne Nesbet. 

The Sex-Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not really an adventurous person. I’ve lived a pretty typical American life, and I’ve never been out of the country. Reading The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift In the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost is almost like reading a fantasy novel of another realm. Whereas I’ve never even seen the countries that border the US, author Maarten and his wife Sylvia travel to the Kiribati, a country consisting of a series of atolls spread throughout the Equatorial Pacific.

After finishing grad school and flitting around through random temp jobs, Maarten doesn’t really know what to do with his life. Sylvia is in a similar boat, and the two of them begin searching for jobs in remote parts of the world. As someone who is in a similar stage of confusing unemployment, I can't help but admire Sylvia and Maarten for being so brave. I won't even contemplate moving out of my state, and these two apply to move halfway across the globe. Eventually, Sylvia gets an offer to join a development team on Kiribati’s capital atoll Tarawa, and when the two arrive Maarten assumes the role of homemaker on an island known for its subsistence living.  Sylvia’s predecessor told them that the island was hell, and Maarten and Sylvia begin the adjustment process.

This is what Tarawa is like: It is hot. So hot. So hot that when one I-Kiribati (the name for people native to the island) went to Hawaii, he returned complaining how bitterly cold the trip was. Water is hard to come by on the atoll, and the only real type of vegetation is coconut trees. Fish are the main staple of the Kiribati diet. The average I-Kiribati consumes over 400 pounds of fish per year. There are no seasonings to put on the fish, and many of the types of fish that surround the atoll are toxic. Disease is common on Tarawa. Maarten and his wife suffer from all kinds of illnesses during their stay. But somehow, the island becomes their home, and they are more than a little bit shell-shocked when they return to America two years later.

The book is full of funny and terrifying anecdotes. For example, at one point, Maarten attempts to create a garden. He builds a fence for it, only to discover that the piece of plastic he plucked out of the reef to use as a latch is actually a hospital IV full of blood.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals is a really fantastic travel book, but also one that is great for the reader interested in international development. Maarten takes ample time in the book to discuss the pitfalls of the international aid industry and developmental politics. He goes into the complex history of Tarawa and Kiribati while also describing the internal politics of the country.

As someone who studied politics in college and has read many books and articles on the international aid industry, The Sex Lies of Cannibals stands out as a more relatable exploration of the issues that plague the developing world and the aid industry. The book is a personal look, written by someone who has seen the aid industry at all angles.

After returning from Kiribati, the Troosts are strapped with debt. Maarten says to Sylvai at one point in the book after they return from Tarawa, "Remember that meal we had in Annapolis three years ago? Well, after three years of interest and late fees and finance charges, that meal is going to cost me $1,500" (266).

Their unfortunate financial situation pushes Maarten into accepting a job with the World Bank, where he receives a large pay check but eventually becomes the kind of person he used to hate. Maarten's experience with grassroots development projects like the ones Sylvia started on Tarawa, and his knowledge of the projects the World Bank starts makes him a reliable source. He has seen both, and knows that the large-scale ones created by international institutions are out of touch with the reality of the places they claim to help. But he also understands that even at a grassroots level changing a society is no easy feat.

The book is hilariously and masterfully written, while also being educational and illuminating. This is a must-read. And if you're an inexperienced traveler like me, the book offers a lens into a world that is both foreign and engrossing.

Treasure Island!!!

Sara Levine's unnamed 25-year-old protagonist and narrator of Treasure Island!!! is a pretty insufferable person, with no real redeeming qualities. But somehow, Levine managed to write a good, first-person story through an unreliable, mean, and unstable narrator.

The plot involves the protagonist developing an obsession with the Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. She attempts to learn lessons from the book and start a new life based on four qualities she admires in Stevenson's character Jim Hawkins: BOLDNESS, RESOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, and HORN-BLOWING. Instead of creating an adventurous new life for herself, the protagonist ruins her life and her relationships. 

There are a few important aspects to the book that make it so readable, even though the protagonist is so self-centered and cruel. First of all, before things start to get really tense in the very last few chapters of the book, Treasure Island!!! is incredibly humorous and well-written. Levine knows how to combine black humor and absurdity to create funny sketches and scenes. Secondly, the supporting characters are all sympathetic and help ground the book in reality through dialogue. These characters, especially the protagonist's family, also have their own problems that help shift the direction of the book away from the protagonist's self-made calamities and help raise the emotional stakes in the novel.

Lastly, the book serves as the anti-guide of how to live your life. Where as the protagonist finds a way to live a "good" life by studying Stevenson's Jim Hawkins, I've discovered exactly how to not live my life by studying Levine's protagonist. We have a lot of things in common at the moment, with both of us moving back in with our parents and all. As long as I stay away from the protagonist's versions of BOLDNESS, RESOLUTION, INDEPENDENCE, and HORN-BLOWING, I know I will be just fine.

If you enjoy a quirky book with an unreliable narrator and some fierce humor, than Treasure Island!!! is something worth checking out.

(Note-I couldn't really come up with a playlist for this one. Oh well!) 

High Fidelity

Rob is an asshole, or as British author Nick Hornby writes in High Fidelity, an arsehole. I’ve seen the movie High Fidelity before, with John Cusack playing lead character Rob, and move-Rob is an asshole too. But book-Rob is definitely more of a jerk.

High Fidelity is about record store owner, music enthusiast Rob and his lawyer girlfriend/ex-girlfriend Laura. The two split up, and then Rob is left trying to make sense of the break-up, of Laura going to live with someone named Ray. He is also left trying to figure out his life, his career direction, and what to do about his floundering record store. He contemplates death. He sleeps with an American singer-songwriter. This book is all about a man in transition, trying to figure out his life, so naturally I could relate to Rob a bit. Rob is sort of what would happen if a mid-twenty something was actually a mid-thirty something. He is still directionless, immature, and self-centered. His closest friends, Dick and Barry, are similar.

But there is something sympathetic about Rob, and admirable too. He has impeccable music taste. Rob reminds me of the jerky boys I put up with in high school because they had good taste in music. And at the end of the day though, he ends up being the kind of character you have a soft spot for, although I still can’t figure out why. He isn’t completely horrible, I’ll give him that, but he is still a real big jerk.

High Fidelity is great because it is an in depth study of Rob’s character and of his relationship with Laura as well as an amazing commentary on long-term relationships. However, it is also a book about music. Rarely can a book about music and a book about relationships be combined so brilliantly, so that each of the themes is equally expressed. Usually one theme overshadows the other.

Written in the first person, some of Rob’s music-musings really hit home for me. Rob, Dick, and Barry constantly list their top fives (favorite singles, best songs about death), so you can easily get an insight into everything these well-versed characters enjoy. In my favorite music-music, Rob is discussing some of his top favorite songs, most of which are sad (“Only Love Can Break Your Heart” by Neil Young, “Last Night I Dreamed Somebody Loved Me” by the Smiths, etc.), “Some of these songs I have listened to around once a week, on average (three hundred times in the first month, every now and again thereafter), since I was sixteen or nineteen or twenty-one. How can that not leave you bruised somewhere? How can that not turn you into the sort of person liable to break into little bits when your first love goes all wrong? What came first—the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music?” (Hornby 25). 

So, whether miserable or happy, here is a playlist of some of Rob’s favorite songs:  

High Fidelity playlist--On Youtube1. Let’s Get it On—Marvin Gaye
2. Last Night I Dreamed Somebody Loved Me|
3. Janie Jones—The Clash
4. Thunder Road—Bruce Springsteen
5. Got to Get You Off My Mind—Soloman Burke
6. The Look of Love—Dusty Springfield
7. This is the House that Jack Build—Aretha Franklin
8. Baby Let’s Play House—Elvis Presley
9. Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag—James Brown
10. Back in the USA—Chuck Berry
11. So tired of Being Alone—Al Greene