Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

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Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), Mindy Kaling

I love Mindy Kaling. Just getting it out in the open right off the bat. Major girl crush over here. When reading a biography(which I don’t do very often, as you can probably tell from this blog), I have to have either a keen interest in the life being written about (like when I read hundreds of histories of the European royal families in middle school) or a feeling that you’d love to be best friends with the person you’re reading about. Because this book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), is sort of an autobiography, sort of a collection of humor essays, and sort of a lifestyle guide, I wouldn’t have liked it nearly as much if I didn’t care about Kaling anyway. However, since I’ve loved her all the way back since the second season of The Office, I definitely was already buying what she’s selling. The claws below are mine.

Kaling does many things well in this book. First, she makes herself extremely accessible to her audience, which is primarily quirky(ish) young(ish) women. She relates her misadventures and mistakes as a way to establish commonality with the reader and invest the reader in her from the start. Second, Kaling is smart. Each story or essay in the novel is exactly as long as it needs to be to maximize both humor and the plot of each episode itself. Her intelligence also elevates the humor she specializes in as a storyteller. Though pop culture references appear on almost every page, so do references to literature and history. Kaling has a Dartmouth degree, so this shouldn’t be surprising. Finally, she blends self-deprecation and confidence in a way that made me simultaneously respect her and feel that she was a “real girl.” She talks candidly about both her successes and her failures, from the time she stormed out of her job for a petty reason to when she co-wrote a critically acclaimed play.

Ultimately the sign of a great autobiography or work of nonfiction is that, despite having just read pages and pages about a person or topic, you want to know more  once you finish the book. That was definitely the case here. I like Kaling much more than I already did after finishing her book and learning about her past— what’s more, I also respect her in ways I didn’t expect. So I’ll keep watching her shows and following her twitter account, because Mindy Kaling is totally awesome (and so is this book).

The Son of Neptune

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rick riordan, Son of Neptune

The second installment of Rick Riordan’s spinoff series, The Heroes of Olympus, is The Son of Neptune. The series began with The Lost Hero, which I read while I was studying abroad in England. This book reintroduces Percy Jackson, who is the protagonist from the original series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. I reviewed that awhile ago, too. I know it’s confusing, but are you still with me?

I think both of Riordan’s Olympians series are the cleverest applications of mythology I’ve ever read. I laugh out loud at the goofy pop culture references and really appreciate the way Riordan updates the myths to fit modern times. This book is no different in those respects. Riordan leaves Jason Grace behind at Camp Halfblood and refocuses on Percy, who finds himself wandering around America continually battling monsters who don’t stay dead. This would be the usual for a demigod like him, but something is making his life a lot harder than usual: he can’t remember who he is or where he belongs. Luckily Juno appears and gives Percy two options. He can carry her to across the river and see his friends again, or he can retreat to the sea and live a long and happy life. Percy, being the courageous hero he is, chooses the former.

When Percy crosses the river (after defeating the Gorgons who were chasing him) he finds himself at Camp Jupiter. Once he is accepted into the camp as a Roman demigod, Percy is assigned a quest. He departs for Alaska with Frank Zhang (a son of Ares) and Hazel Levesque (a daughter of Pluto) to free Thanatos, the god of death. Until they do this, monsters will not stay dead once they are killed; instead, the creatures will continue to be undefeatable and terrorize the camp. Once the quest begins, Frank, Hazel, and Percy find out more about their pasts, presents, and futures than they ever expected. Above all, Percy hopes to find Annabeth and recover his memory, but with un-killable monsters and giants as obstacles, that’s a lot to ask.

This book delivers what I’ve come to expect from Riordan: lots of jokes, witty mythological tie-ins, and suspenseful cliffhangers. It really was fun to read, while also making me excited for the next part of the series: The Mark of Athena. It’s funny that all I wanted was to know how Percy was doing while I read The Lost Hero, because now that I know Percy’s okay I want to make sure that Jason, Grover, Annabeth, and the rest of Camp Half-Blood are as well. I guess I’ll have to read the next book soon.

One of Riordan’s talents is being able to equally develop a large cast of characters and connect the reader with each one. The other aspect of this book I really liked was that it continued to illustrate the differences between the Greek and Roman world: things are much more regimented on this side of the little Tiber and the gods aren’t as easygoing (for the record, they aren’t as funny either). More than anything else, Riordan’s novels are done well, and The Son of Neptune was a continuation of this. I’ve yet to see an adaptation of mythology made (whether it be film, TV, or books) for adults that works as well and is as sharp as Riordan’s young adult books. It’s safe to say that I’m still a huge fan.

White Teeth

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White Teeth, Zadie Smith

I loved this book, which is interesting because I’ve had it for years and have continued to put off reading it until a couple of weeks ago. I think one of the main reasons that I wasn’t looking forward to reading Zadie Smith’s White Teeth is because I didn’t much enjoy the only other novel of hers I’ve read, On Beauty. However, I may need to reevaluate my previous opinions because White Teeth is hilarious and smart, and Smith’s writing style is exactly the kind I enjoy reading.

Sorry for using a stock photo two posts in a row! I just moved back to school after Christmas break and left my own edition at home.

The plot of the novel focuses on the lives of two long-time friends, Samad Iqbal and Archie Jones. Samad, who is Bangladeshi, and Archie, who couldn’t be more English, became close during their enlistment in WW2 and remained constant friends afterwards. Later in life, Samad married a fellow Islamic woman, Alsana, and had Millat and Magrid, twin boys; Archie married the Jamaican Clara and had one daughter, Irie. Their children are the same age (17 during most of the novel’s plot), and because of this similarity Samad and Archie’s wives have become friends as well, making the lives of the two families closely linked despite vast cultural and religious differences. White Teeth, which takes places in London in the early 1990s, is concerned with the ways the Iqbal and Jones families deal with the problems and situations particular to immigrants and their offspring. With expansive wit, deep cultural knowledge, and great accuracy of description, Smith is able to effectively present the conflict between the old world and the new in ways that kept me both laughing and enthralled.

The best part about this book is Smith’s style. It is Dickensian in its affectionately accurate presentation of modern London and modern Londoners, and is able to convey the characters’ innermost thoughts and personality traits by blending humor with heartbreak. I can’t remember the last time I read a novel and loved a writer’s style so much. Despite the seriousness of some of White Teeth’s content, Smith never becomes sentimental; instead, she maintains a presentation that makes her keen sense of the ridiculousness of modern life and the idiosyncrasies of human beings clear. Perhaps best of all, Smith is understated, never making too much of a joke or a gut-wrenching detail.

Smith tackles a varied and complex series of topics: religion (or lack thereof), immigration, imperialism, science, education, wealth inequality, and sexuality, to name a few. However, rather than feeling like I was being hit over the head with the deplorable state of the world (as I did while reading Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, for example), White Teeth presents a much more balanced view of existence. She takes the good and the bad, the hilarious and the upsetting, and seems to mix them up until the reader gets the sense that most aspects of life are not wholly black and white (definitely a pun, considering the novel’s penetrating exploration of race). Smith presents a world in which the lives of humans are at times simultaneously funny and unbearably sad, and events can seem evil and still work out for the best in the long run.

Most of all I’d say that Smith presents a realistic view of the world, and rather than being totally disappointed by its representation the reader is more pleased with the state of things than they would have originally believed. At least, this was the case for me. Reading White Teeth and loving it as much as I did makes me want to go back and give On Beauty another try. I could have just read it at the wrong time or with the wrong mindset, because if this novel is any indication I should be a very big fan of Smith’s work.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

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Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs

Full disclosure: I read this one on my kindle and I stole this picture from Google. Until I get the new Paperwhite for Christmas, the screen on my Fire is too glare-y for taking photos, and I know none of you care about seeing my teal kindle case yet again. Also, a great deal of the eerie-ness of Ransom Rigg’s Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is encompassed in the photographs he includes, of which the cover is one of the best.

See, isn’t this design fantastic? And it fits perfectly with the aesthetic and tone of the rest of Rigg’s debut novel. I didn’t really know what to expect when I first started reading it, but a lot of the first impressions I gleaned from the cover held true. So let’s talk about the plot.

I suppose I would categorize this one as a young adult book (the Internet tells me it’s a children’s chapter book, but I respectfully disagree). It centers on Jacob Portman, a 16 year-old boy who, after discovering his grandfather’s mangled body in the woods behind his home, travels to Wales in order to find out about the mysterious past his grandfather always referenced before his death. Once he arrives Jacob finds himself in a time “loop” with a group of “peculiar” children that are, on average, 80 years old. The children each have a special talent or skill, such as invisibility or levitation. In order to guarantee their safety from the malevolent forces that want to kill and eat them (yes, seriously), their guardian has used her exceptional powers to create a sort of never-ending day from the 1940s. This day is during WWII, a time when all of the children were living with Miss Peregrine in the home that is the novel’s namesake. This, as I mentioned, enables them to stay hidden from “hollowgasts,” the monsters that killed Jacob’s grandfather, Abe. Oh, and did I mention that Abe was peculiar also, and lived with Miss Peregrine and the children after his family was murdered by the Nazis? A bit dark to be considered just a “chapter book,” if you ask me.

As far as style goes, I appreciate what Riggs does. He deals with such complex and frightening themes by having his narrator, Jacob, describe them as a typical 16 year-old would, complete with slang and dirty jokes. At times it got a bit too corny for me, but I understand the need for this method. However despite Jacob’s occasionally annoying tone, I got incredibly creeped out while reading the book, especially at night. There are a series of black-and-white photographs that Riggs includes sporadically throughout the plot; they are seriously creepy and always managed to catch me off-guard. The cover photo above is a mild indication of what some of the others are like. 

I found the story told in Miss Peregrine’s to be exceedingly well-done and well-explained, especially considering how much trouble I had just summarizing the basics of the plot for this post. I was rarely confused and constantly interested. Riggs builds suspense and writes action well, and is able to blend crime with fantasy and horror and history in quite a seamless way. It’s the first horror-adjacent (I just made up that genre) novel I’ve read in a long time, and I enjoyed it a lot.

The book reads incredibly quickly and embraces the best aspects of all the genres it blends together. Overall, it was a great read, despite the “young adult” or “chapter-book” label. Some of the best books are written for people younger than me, and I know I’ve ranted about YA stigma before, but I’m a firm believer that if you were ever or ever plan to be the age of the characters in a book, there’s something for you to learn (and enjoy) by reading it. Miss Peregrine’s is no exception.

 

My Life in France

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Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, My Life in France

This was a gorgeous book. I loved reading it. Maybe it’s because I read it during a really stressful time in the semester (dead week and finals week), but it was a fantastic way to relax. Julia Child’s narrative voice is charming, easy to understand, and intelligent. She’s really witty and you can feel the passion she has for both France and food. I really want to buy Mastering the Art of French Cooking and try to make some of the recipes she talks about, too.

Shout out to my sister, Amber, for letting me borrow her copy! It’s well-worn and likely well-loved as well.

The story is told through a series of short anecdotes that relate Julia and her husband’s life together from the late 1940s until the early 1990s. Surprisingly, the long timeframe of the novel is incredibly easy to follow. It starts with Paul and Julia’s move to Paris just after World World II. The two fell in love with the city and its cuisine immediately, and as they move from Paris to Marseilles and then to Provence, their love only deepens. It was even more interesting to read about the places they went because I spent time in both Paris and the Cote de Azur while I studied abroad last semester. I remember some of the places Julia and Paul traveled to, and even though I couldn’t afford to eat at any of the gourmet places they did I do recall eating some similar (and probably much lower-quality) dishes in France.

One of the most interesting aspects of this book is that it chronicles Julia’s move from a government worker’s housewife to an author and TV personality. It sneaks up on you; Julia’s self-deprecating and funny tone downplays the fact that she was so famous. It’s also a sort of “feast” for the senses, pardon my pun. The descriptions of food, places, and people are so detailed and lively that I became wholly engrossed in the Childs’ story. The love and respect that Paul and Julia clearly felt for each other is great as well.

Overall, this book is an experience. It inspires the reader to eat, cook, travel, laugh, and live in a way that makes for truly great reading. Julia must have been a gorgeous human being, as her personal narrative style is one of the many great things about reading her story. I’m determined to make boeuf bourguignon as soon as I can manage it.

If you like food at all, or are interested in travel, or just like to laugh, pick this one up. There’s not much more to say. It’s such a happy book, satisfying in every way.

Gone Girl

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Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

This was a crazy one: half of the time I wasn’t sure how I felt about any of the characters, and I definitely didn’t know where the plot was headed until the very end. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn is everything there is to love about crime/mystery novels: suspenseful, fast-paced, shocking, chilling, stomach-churning, and intricate. As you can probably tell, I loved it.

However, it’s going to be pretty difficult to write about Gone Girl without A, giving anything away and B, letting my final impressions after reading the ending affect my interpretation of the rest of it. I’m going to do my best.

The events of the novel are alternately told from the point of view of two characters, Nick and Amy Dunne. A young married couple, the Dunnes have recently moved back to Nick’s hometown of North Carthage, Missouri. The excuse for moving back is that Nick’s mother is dying of cancer and his father is suffering from severe dementia in a nursing home; however, Nick and Amy’s real impetus for leaving New York City is that they’ve both recently been laid-off from their jobs. Amy, who has grown up in the city and is the only daughter of two famous children’s book authors, has a lot of difficulty adjusting to life in the small Midwestern town. Nick is happy to be back (despite his appalling relationship with his father) and has opened up a bar in town with his twin sister, Margo (called “Go” for short). Unsurprisingly, the Dunne’s marriage is extremely rocky when the novel starts. Nick and Amy are constantly bickering and rarely spend time together, but even so Nick is shocked and tormented when he gets home from the bar one afternoon to find that their living room has become a crime scene. Amy is gone.

Nick immediately contacts the police. However, he soon realizes that he is their prime suspect. As the story becomes national news, Nick is painted by the press as a distant, neglectful husband who could easily be Amy’s murderer. Even the support of Go and Amy’s parents, who arrive in town soon after Amy’s disappearance to aid in the investigation, can’t help Nick convince America that he did not kill his wife. (In fact, even I began to suspect that Nick was guilty.) As the evidence against him piles up, Nick gets a lawyer and begins investigating the matter on his own. Where the plot goes from there involves one of the most successful twists I’ve ever encountered.

Flynn is brilliant. As the author of a novel in which nothing is as it seems, she is able to remain completely distant from the text and let the characters tell the story (literally). Nick and Amy are very complicated characters, and by the end of the novel I thought about them both completely differently than I did at the start. Gone Girl rapidly throws out false clues (and real ones), allowing the reader to misinterpret their way into complete and utter astonishment and disbelief once all is revealed. What’s more, the ending is genius, both understated and incredibly meaningful, and made me think about relationships, love, and marriage in a new way. I can’t stress this enough— don’t skip ahead to find out what happens. I know we all do it sometimes, and it’s incredibly tempting with a novel like this one, but you’ll regret it so much if you do.

I’m finding it really hard not to drop hints (I hope I haven’t already), so I’ll leave off here. This book is smart, funny, and well put-together, as are Amy and Nick themselves. But you might not want to get too close because, as the dust jacket of my edition points out, “Marriage can be a real killer.”

 

 

Anna Karenina

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Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

You guys probably think I’ve been slacking off again. I promise I haven’t. Well anyway, not much. You see, since I wrote my last post (almost TWO MONTHS AGO), I’ve been making my way through one of the titans of literature, a book that is almost equal to Moby Dick in the stigma and awe attached to it. That’s right, I tackled Anna.

We’re posing together because I’m so proud of myself. I can’t honestly remember the last time a book took me so long to read. I finished it about a week ago, meaning that it took almost two months. Granted I was also doing a lot of stuff for school, but I don’t really think that’s the reason why. Anna (we’re on a first-name basis by now) is complex, fascinating, difficult, and above all a test of willpower. But after bonding for so long and being completely immersed in Tolstoy’s writing, I can say that the two of us are parting as friends. As this was my very first foray into Russian literature, I didn’t really know what to expect when I began reading. I knew that it was massive and that a lot of people I knew had started it but never finished. I vowed not to quit.

The novel is set in Russia (obviously) and concerns itself with the aristocratic class. Anna, the novel’s namesake, is a socialite who unexpectedly falls in love with another member of her class. Count Vronsky is younger and unmarried; Anna has a child with her husband, a distant man quite different from Anna’s fiery self. After realizing that they can never be apart, Anna and Vronsky decide to go public with their relationship, scorning the social norms of a society that all but outlaws divorce. Anna leaves her husband and son and begins a tumultuous relationship with the man she can’t live without.

Running parallel to the story of Anna and Vronsky is that of Levin, an aristocratic landowner who chooses to live in the country and farm his land himself. Levin marries Kitty and the two are happy together after a difficult beginning to their relationship. Most of the Levin side plot focuses on his ideological struggles. A contemplative man, Levin is constantly pondering the meaning of life and how best to spend his own.

A few aspects stick out most to me about this novel and define what made it such an interesting read. The first is that Anna’s affair with Vronsky is not itself the issue that causes her to be cast out from society. Rather, it is her refusal to continue to live with her husband while having a relationship with Vronsky. Choosing to take this alternative route would have been wholly condoned by her society; a sort of tacit consent would have been possible and Anna could have continued to keep the same friends and live essentially the same life while loving Vronsky. However, it is her decision to live openly with her lover (he’s actually more like a soulmate) that causes her ultimate downfall. By striving to live honestly in a society that values appearances and false morality, Anna constantly struggles against powerful social forces that she can never fully overcome.

Another fantastic thing about this novel is how insightful Tolstoy is as an observationist. His writing is invariably true and relatable, partially because it is clear that he fully understands the human race. Take the first line in the novel, for example. Tolstoy writes, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Now I had never thought about families that way, but as soon as I read that sentence I both recognized it as utterly true and could think of several applications of his observation to my own experience. Tolstoy is a master at this sort of writing; to me, that is what makes his style so compelling. As a realist, Tolstoy must be extremely connected to the way people think and function. In this, he absolutely does not disappoint. He’s a genius, essentially.

One more thing that I found extremely affecting and compelling about this novel was the length. I’m not saying that I didn’t struggle a bit during the middle section, when Levin goes on about farming for hundreds of pages. I did truly enjoy the story and was completely engrossed in its plot most of the time. I got so frustrated with the characters at several points in the novel, but I was even more angry at the society they lived in. This is one of the marks of great literature, and by writing a book that is nearly a thousand pages long, Tolstoy is able to illustrate the world of pre-revolution Russia in a way that a middle-class college student from Indiana can completely understand and relate to (and not just because Indiana’s essentially all farmland). The length is important: it essentially initiates the reader into the society with which it is concerned. As much as I have enjoyed reading classics that are much shorter (think A Tale of Two Cities or The Awakening), none of them have done so much work in reader immersion. Even though I had never read Russian literature previously, I feel a little like I could be part Russian after finishing Anna. Not only that, but I can’t wait to read more novels by Russian authors.

This book is nothing if not fascinating. Yes, at times it was a battle of wills between Tolstoy and me. I wanted to get back to Anna and Vronsky’s struggles, while he wanted to explain to me the ins and outs of running a large agricultural estate. In the end though, Levin’s side plot does a lot to explain and give context to the story of Anna and her lover. The two story lines work together to create a massive, fantastically insightful novel that still resonates today. It’s a classic for a reason; the haters are wrong. More than many other books I’ve read, this one was worth finishing.

Playing Catch-up

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A Feast For Crows, Allegra Goodman, Elizabeth Strout, Faithful Place, Freedom, George R. R. Martin, Jonathan Franzen, Olive Kitteridge, Tana French, The Cookbook Collector

It’s been awhile. A LONG while. This is because of two reasons. The first is my fault but the second isn’t. I got busy with packing for school, moving in to my new apartment (which I LOVE by the way), and then of course actually going to school. It’s been a crazy few weeks but I’m back in the routine of a full class schedule at IU now. The second reason why things have been at a standstill blog-wise recently is because it took almost TWO AND A HALF WEEKS for my roommate and I to get internet access in our apartment. PS: I hate you, Comcast. So before about a week ago, even when I had time to post I couldn’t post because of the various technical difficulties that were going on around here. None of that matters though; let’s play catch-up!

I’ve read five books since I last posted (that’s right, I’m behind on posting but I NEVER stop reading) and they’re kind of a mixed bag as far as genre, style, and how I feel about them. Sadly, one of them is back at home so my mom can read it, but the other four books are hanging out here in Bloomington with me. Let’s go through in the order in which I read them.

First, I read Jonathan Franzen’s novel Freedom. It’s a long one and even though I read it a while ago I’m still not completely sure how I feel about it. The premise is that a Midwest family, the Berglunds, are middle-class and liberal. Patty and Walter are the parents and they have two children who are teenagers when the plot begins, one boy and one girl. The story jumps back and forward in time from the couple’s college years to the present. Patty has an affair with Walter’s best friend Richard, and the fallout from the discovery threatens to totally tear the family apart. Walter works at various environmental pursuits, and Patty is a homemaker who was a basketball star in college. Somehow, this story manages to both focus in on the Berglund family in an almost microscopic way while still making plenty of assertions about modern society. I liked what Franzen was saying about family and America, but I didn’t much like his characters. None of them were especially likeable but they were definitely interesting. There’s a slump in the middle that I felt like I was never get through but in the end I think Franzen is successful in providing an exploration and a portrait of today’s family.

Next I read The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman, and it was fantastic. It’s not pictured in the photo above because my mom’s at home enjoying it as we speak. I loved it. It has received a lot of press for being loosely based on the characters and plot of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, but I don’t think it’s immediately apparent unless you know the Austen story quite well (which I do). The writing was gorgeous and rich, the characters were totally developed and fascinating, and the subject matter itself was incredibly interesting. Two sisters, Emily and Jessamine Bach, live very different lives in California. Emily is the CEO of a successful start-up tech company in the Silicon Valley during the late 90s, and Jess is a philosophy student at Berkeley who works in a rare book shop. The two sisters are foils for one another, which shouldn’t come as a surprise if you’ve read Austen’s book. It’s one of my new favorites and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who loves books, has a sister, is living a post-college life or remembers what it’s like to live a post-college life, or anyone who has a family. Its topics are varied, from unexpected love to family loss to religion to cooking, and I loved every page.

Now for something completely different. I’ve continued on with the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin and I’m proud to say that I made it over the hump that is the fourth novel in the series, A Feast For Crows. A lot of Martin fans have trouble with this book because many of the characters that have been central to the plot thus far in the series are markedly absent from Feast. I too was a little put-off at first, but as I went through the book I started to become just as attached to and interested by the new characters that Martin introduced as I am by the old. He apparently tried to write Feast and the next novel, A Dance With Dragons, into one massive tome, but instead decided to split them up into two still-massive-but-less-so complete novels. I can see the logic in this as far as money goes for his publishing house, but I also think Martin was correct in deciding that he needed some new blood (figuratively and literally) in the plot of his epic. He brings in new characters to build suspense, flesh out the plot events more fully, and to gain a more wide perspective on life in Westeros and the surrounding countries. I think it’s a genius move. Of course I got a bit bored by some of the storylines at times, but honestly that happens to me with his other works sometimes too. The new characters are as completely developed as the old and I think that’s an essential part of introducing new perspectives this far into a series. One of the best parts about Feast is that you get to read from the perspective of Cersei Lannister, and let me tell you that it is fascinating and wholly disturbing. The book was fantastic; don’t mind the haters.

After A Feast For Crows I switched gears again and read another Tana French novel, Faithful Place. Even though I always get a little annoyed by the kitchy “cop” language of her books, the plots of the crime novels are so great that I can’t quit them. Plus they take place in Dublin and now that I’ve been there I love the connections I can make to memories I have of that beautiful city. Faithful Place is told from the perspective of Frank Mackey, who was a supporting character in The Likeness, which I’ve written about here previously. The plot centers around Frank’s old neighborhood, Faithful Place. Frank left as a young adult because he couldn’t stand his family and also because the love of his life, Rosie Daly, left him on the night they had planned to run away to London together. He’s never seen Rosie or heard from her again, but one night years later he gets a call from his estranged family back in Faithful Place and the past he’s been trying to avoid comes rushing back to him. Rosie’s suitcase from the night of their planned elopement has been found near their chosen meeting place, due to construction in the area. All of a sudden the story of Frank’s life completely changes: Rosie had planned to meet him after all, and someone didn’t give her the chance. Upon investigating the murder (Frank works for the Dublin Murder Squad), he finds Rosie’s body and from there the novel escalates into a full-blown investigation and detective story. Frank’s heartbreak and pain are staggering and completely come through in French’s writing. Life in pre-millennium Ireland is portrayed in a bleak but totally accurate way as well, and I spent at least four nights staying up until 4AM because I couldn’t sleep before finding out what the next big revelation or clue would be. It’s really great; French knows how to write crime novels with a strong, human, emotional aspect.

Finally, I recently finished Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. If you think back a couple of years you’ll remember that I reviewed Amy and Isabelle, which is also by Strout. It was a bit too girly for me but I recognized that Strout wrote a female-based novel in an intelligent, non-pandering way that I liked. Olive Kitteridge is much better than Amy and Isabelle, if you ask me. It is sort of a collection of short stories that all have one character in common: Olive Kitteridge, the namesake of the novel. Almost all of the book takes place in the small town of Crosby, Maine, and just as before I was struck by Strout’s elegant writing style. She handles the most diverse types of events in the lives of drastically different characters with ease and clarity; I was never confused about who characters were and I always felt connected to their lives and struggles. The main character, Olive, is feisty and insecure, brash and wounded, hilarious and sad. In other words, she’s very real. In a way that’s similar to Maeve Binchy, an author that I love and who recently passed away, Strout is able to focus on one town that could be seen as mundane, but relates the lives of characters in such a way that it makes you understand that no town is “boring,” because people are living their lives there. No life is boring, no matter how insignificant and small it seems from the outside. This book is so well done; I’d highly recommend it.

Overall, the books I’ve read during the end of my summer and the start of my last year of school (at least for awhile) have made me excited to read more books. I have an Amazon and Half-Price addiction and my book shelves are bursting at the seams, but I can’t wait to read more books and yes, write more blog posts. I promise this every time after I’ve taken a bit of a break, but things will be more regular from now on. As always, thanks for reading (both my blog and books, of course)!

The Known World

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Edward P. Jones, The Known World

This review is going to have a lot in common with the one I just wrote for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Like Junot Diaz’s novel, this book has won a Pulitzer. Also like Oscar, it is extremely complex. And what makes it the most similar to the book I reviewed last is that I didn’t think it was amazing. It’s like I have a thing against Pulitzer Prize-winners or something. I actually think I have really high standards as to what caliber of book should win it. The Known World by Edward P. Jones is highly interesting for a lot of reasons, so I should stop making generalized statements and get to the specifics.

The premise of this book is a really interesting one. It takes place in antebellum Virginia, in the fictional county of Manchester. It concerns itself with neighboring plantations within the county, one of which is the Townsend place. Henry and Caldonia Townsend are free African Americans who own slaves. Yes, you read that right. It wasn’t common, but it did happen every now and then in America before the Civil War. Henry Townsend, the owner of the plantation, was freed by his parents when they bought their own freedom. At the start of the book Henry has fallen ill and dies, leaving Caldonia to run the plantation. Nearby the Townsend place is the plantation owned by William Robbins, a white man who is the richest man in Manchester County. He previously owned both Henry and his parents. The fascinating, pragmatic scenarios that play out in this book, of which what I’ve listed above plays a major role, takes a fresh look at slavery in the American South while exploring the hypocrisies and motives behind the social institution.

There was a lot to like about this book. The concept is a unique one, and something I’d never even considered before picking up Jones’ novel. I didn’t know that freed black people sometimes owned slaves of their own before the Civil War, and I definitely was unaware of the social justification that was at play. Jones sets up a system in which there are three types of African Americans: those who are enslaved, those who have bought their freedom, and those who were born free. Jones acknowledges and explores the clear divides between these three groups in a way that presents the antebellum South as a complex, changeable system, with unspoken rules and the unspoken breaking of them. I liked the historical aspect of The Known World the most; Jones does a seamless job of blending the true with the fictional. He is able to evoke varied emotions in the reader: anger, joy, indignation, disgust, and pride, sometimes within the same scene. He creates myriad characters and also manages to develop most of them independently and completely. He also switches perspective pretty deftly. In these areas, this book is nearly perfect.

The main issue I had with the novel was with Jones’ style. It was extremely fragmented and jumpy. It moved forward and backward in time with little regard for clarity or understanding. Here’s my impression of it:

Sam looked off into the distance and wondered how many hours were left until dinner. His wife was making roast chicken. He smiled and thought of how lucky he was to have a wife who could cook. Twelve years later, Sam would die in a car crash on the way to work. He would not have his seat belt on, and his body would go flying through the windshield before hitting the pavement. He would expire on impact. Sam checked his watch: it was half past four.

This is the kind of stylistic stuff that goes on throughout the entire book. It’s confusing, and it doesn’t get easier as you progress through the book. I’m not saying that it completely ruins it or takes everything away from the characters and plot, but it definitely impacted my enjoyment of the book. I did get used to it enough that I wasn’t shocked every time it happened, which is a good thing because it happens about once a page. The ending is also pretty abrupt; I wouldn’t say that the story felt completely finished when I got to the last page. Stylistically, I didn’t love what Joes does. Otherwise, I thought it he did a strong job.

Overall, I would say that The Known World is worth the read. There really are a lot of great things happening in it. The style is distracting, but if you can get past it to focus on the themes and the questions Jones poses about race as a social construct you won’t be disappointed in this book. I learned a lot and thought about a lot of things that I’d never considered before, and that’s one of the marks of a good read.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

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Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

I didn’t love this one. It’s another that I have to read for my lit course in the Fall at IU, so I didn’t stop in the middle and give up like I may have otherwise. I stuck it out, and I actually liked the ending. But despite its extensive nods to the fantasy genre and Hemingway, two things I love, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz wasn’t the best book I’ve read this summer by far. Although judging by all the awards it’s won (the Pulitzer included) I may be alone in this.

The concept of this book revolves around its main character, Oscar de Leon. Oscar is an overweight Dominican growing up in New Jersey who has an obsession with science fiction and fantasy novels. What he wants most is to fall in love and have a girl love him back, but this wish always seems to be out of reach for him. There is a curse that has supposedly haunted the de Leons for centuries, part of which has to do with the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Much of the center parts of the novel (basically the whole middle chunk) tells the story of the other members of Oscar’s family: his sister, mother, and paternal grandfather. Some of the novel’s main concerns are the identity and struggles of immigrants to America and the oppression in the Dominican Republic.

Let’s talk about what I didn’t like. There were extensive footnotes on a lot of the pages, and this was distracting. I felt like they were a stylistic choice by Diaz, but I could have done without them. The information was important in understanding a lot of Dominican history and culture, so most of it could have been included in the main body of the text. Also, there were a lot of Spanish dialects involved which left me confused some of the time. The story moves back and forth in time, which I didn’t like at first but am getting more and more used to as I become more widely read in modern fiction. Another downside for me was that I found almost every side storyline in the book more interesting than Oscar’s own. Especially since he was supposedly the central character, this was unfortunate.

As far as what was good about this book, the choice of narrator was interesting. The apparently omniscient narration is told by Yunior de Las Casas, Oscar’s college room mate and his sister’s ex-boyfriend. His narration is funny and makes the book move along much faster than it otherwise would have. I also enjoyed the references to fantasy and sci-fi, although I only got about one in ten of them. The book explores (and respects) the culture of nerd-dom in a way that I really liked. There were also elements of the supernatural in the novel, and I found this really interesting. It provided insight into cultures that I previously knew nothing about and the paranormal aspects of the book were handled in a way that made them seem reasonable and essential to the plot. Diaz balances the bevy of stylistic devices and story lines in this book in a very skilled way; sometimes I just thought there was a too little much going on but at the same time nothing was happening.

It will be interesting to see how my class discussion of this book goes in the fall. I get the feeling that I “missed” some bits of this book that could make it a much better read. Right now I can’t really see myself rereading it, but if a lot comes out in discussion that makes me curious and excited about things I didn’t catch the first time around (and that’s what happens a lot of the time) I may come back to Oscar. For now though, it’s on to the next book on the list. In sum, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao wasn’t quite brief enough for me, but parts of it were indeed wondrous.