Tag Archives: reviews

Back in good graces, and two not-to-be-missed novels

Our library here in Edgewater is being torn down. The projected opening date isn’t until some time in 2013, so in the meanwhile they have parked a little bookmobile at the corner of Thorndale and Broadway where you can pick up hold requests. So there’s no browsing–but at least there’s easy access to the stuff you request online.

One of the downsides of the bookmobile: to detract potential thieving situations, they have a sign proclaiming “No cash on premises” on the front door. This has implications for me personally: not only can I not thieve a drawer full of loose change (dangit!), but they also don’t accept late fees at this location. Which means that if I’m late with a book, I have to hoof it to another branch to pay up. In the beginning of my relationship with the bookmobile, not wanting to hoof it anywhere, I resolved simply never to be late with my returns. However, a few months into my resolution, somehow a certain book was returned 1 day late (notice how the passive voice makes me sound somehow less responsible?). Hence, my account was frozen.

All I have to say about that is . . . crabbadonk!

With an empty library basket sitting on my shelf, I began resorting to certain comfort novels from my high school days–and that’s great for a while, but soon it was time to stimulate the ole brain cells just a little more if you know what I mean. So the very day I paid off my fine (about 6 weeks ago), I immediately went online to request books. The first two  books I arrived two weeks ago, and I devoured them. Devoured them, I tell you. Here they are!

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

This book is essentially a collection of short stories centered around the staff of a small newspaper office in Rome. From the founding of the paper to its final edition, the novel moves through time and ends up being an obituary of sorts for the paper, which finally closes in 2007. Each story revolves around a different character, and each character of course brushes shoulders with the others, so that all the stories are interconnected and the book feels holistic.

What I loved–and you will, too–is the compassion, grace, and art of the author as he shapes each character. From the plain girl who finally finds a boyfriend–though he’s a scamp–to a lunch meeting between old lovers, to an airplane flirtation between the CFO and a man she fired, to a stringer in Egypt who is walked all over by a hot-shot journalist of the most annoying proportions, the stories all touch on love in some shape or another. Now that I’m thinking about it, maybe you could say that about any book, since people and love can’t be separated. But that’s another topic for another day.

The vignettes are alternately tender, sad, happy, all centered around significant events in each person’s life, and through Rachman’s brushstrokes, he paints a picture that I wanted to keep looking at even after I was done reading. As the characters navigate death, betrayal, aspirations, and the ordinary, I got the sense that I was reading a poem about each soul. I highly recommend this book.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

This is a marvel of a book (thanks Erin for recommending it!). The Second World War has just ended, and England is starting to process what happened. A writer in her early 30s living in bomb-scarred London, Juliet Ashton, is casting about trying to find inspiration to write a new book after the success of her first. While doing research for an article she’s working on, she starts corresponding with the members of a Literary Society on the island of Guernsey.

But this is no fancy-schmancy Literary Society! It comprises a handful of ordinary, not particulary intellectual people, each with a unique voice full of  quirks and eccentricities. One of the members reads only one book over and over again–the Letters of Seneca–and refuses to take up any other. Another one, effusive upon discovering the joys of Pride and Prejudice, berates Juliet for “hiding” this jewel of literature from her. There’s an amateur phrenologist, reading the bumps on everyones’ heads; a gay manservant who impersonated his employer for 3 years; a pig-farmer whose silent nature is just the curtain around a soul of deep thoughts.

The novel is a collection of letters, telegrams and notes going back and forth between Juliet, her editor, the islanders, Juliet’s rich and imposing suitor, and other assorted characters. The letters from the people on Guernsey begin as an explanation of how their Literary Society was formed, but as they become friends with Juliet through their correspondence, they begin to retell their war stories, full of both tragedy and poignant comedy. Juliet starts sensing that her unwritten book lies in the stories of the islanders, so she decides to go to Guernsey herself to write.

The members of the Society met for solace and distraction at the beginning of the German occupation, but by the end of the war, they have become a family. They all share in the guardianship of 4-year-old Kit, whose mother Elizabeth disappeared during the war after conspiring to hide a malnourished laborer. Elizabeth, though absent in the flesh, is a central character in the book as stories about her courage and heart are woven through so many of the memories shared by the Society.

But this novel isn’t just a bunch of letters and war-stories–it’s also a love story, which is the best kind of story. The writing is not dark, though it deals with dark times. It is a book with spirit, with sunshine, with humor, which will leave you uplifted. Read it! You’ll love every second.

Under the net

This is my third read by author Iris Murdoch, and I have to say–what a versatile writer she is! From the poetic and dramatic ‘The Sea, The Sea‘ to the dark and disturbing ‘The Time of the Angels’ to this quirky comedy (actually her first novel, published in 1954), she runs the gamut with impressive skill. I loved this book–it has an entirely unique humor with rollicking amounts of wit. I laughed out loud at least 3 times in the course of an hour on the couch with this book. Not little giggles–actual, loud ‘hahas.’ Or ‘hree hrees’ as the case may be.

The main character is Jake Donaghue, a slightly lazy young writer and translator of novels who lives in London mooching off his artistic friends and engaging in various . . . capers. Because they can only be called capers. Madcap capers, if you will. From the kidnapping of a movie star dog to a midnight swim in the garbage-strewn Thames to breaking out of a movie actress’s house with a pocket full of crackers and paté, life is never dull, but the amounts of energy that Jake puts into each little adventure are out of proportion with the results–he seems to be scurrying around in a frenzy of activity but not really going anywhere or accomplishing anything of value.

Narrated in the first person, Jake navigates the London scene trying to reconnect with Hugo, an old friend he betrayed, and resume his attachment with his long-lost love, singer Anna Quentin. He is shadowed by his Irish friend and accomplice Finn (who has a knack for jimmying locks with a hairpin and acts as Jake’s unofficial manservant), a charismatic politician called Lefty, and the famous dog Mr. Mars.

Philosophical at times, silly at others, this book is the work of a truly gifted writer. As he sits on a bus on his way to reclaim a sheaf of manuscripts, Jake muses “I felt neither happy nor sad, only rather unreal, like a man shut in a glass. Events stream past us like these crowds, and the face of each is seen only for a minute. What is urgent is not urgent forever but only ephemerally. All work and love, the search for wealth and fame, the search for truth, life itself, are made up of moments which pass and become nothing. Yet through this shaft of nothings we drive onwards with that miraculous vitality that creates our precarious habitations in the past and the future. So we live–a spirit that broods and hovers over the continual death of time, the lost meaning, the unrecaptured moment, the unremembered face, until the final chop-chop that ends all our moments and plunges that spirit back into the void from which it came. So I reflected . . .”

This excerpt for me perfectly encapsulates the book: a character jumping from moment to moment and adventure to adventure with this ‘miraculous vitality,’ but after pursuing a task with frantic urgency–it comes to nothing.

And just in case you’re still doubting the awesomeness of this book, I should add that a few years ago, Time magazine chose ‘Under the Net’ as one of the top 100 English-language books written from 1923 to 2005, and the Modern Library chose it in 2001 as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The conclusion is clear: make a date with your library!