Fickle

When I decided not to read John Adams last week, I got some great suggestions for alternatives–probably enough to keep me busy for another two or three months. I ended up reading The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford, thanks to Terri, which is also clearly going to send me into a Mitford frenzy (not the Jan Karon kind!). But I knew the other suggestions were going to have to wait, since I really did want to get back home and pick up some nonfiction–specifically said John Adams.

However, my passion for a book invariably burns with a white-hot intensity that fizzles as soon as something else shiny catches my eye. Last night, when it was time to finally start John Adams, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Hip: The History, by John Leland, was beckoning me from the shelf. “Look at me! Not only am I hip, I’m surely much more interesting and readable than that long, probably dry biography you’ve been stringing along!” John Adams no longer looked like a pleasure–it seemed more like a chore. I brought Hip upstairs with me and even, I confess, read the first few pages. For once, though, I tapped into my reserves of willpower, set Hip aside, and picked up John Adams. I figured I’d read the first chapter, and if it did indeed grab me, I’d go back to my original plan and save Hip for later.

I’m so glad I did! I’ve hardly started it, but so far John Adams is interesting, engaging, and very very readable. I need to hold onto my initial book passions more often, and not drop them when something new comes along. Maybe if I tried that more often, I wouldn’t end up with books languishing on my TBR shelves for 20 years.

What Next?

I am a chain reader, and I almost always know what I’m going to read next. I generally get the notion to read a particular book while I’m in the final stages of the current book, and I am often guilty of longing for the book I want instead of loving the one I’m with.

Night before last, Tom and the kids and I started watching HBO’s John Adams, and even though we only saw about 20 minutes of it, that was enough to convince me that what I really, really wanted to read was David McCollough’s biography (on which the miniseries is based). So sure was I that I brought it up to my room with me, even though I had plenty left to read of Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski, just in case I finished faster than expected and needed something else to start. Not only did I have too many pages left for that to even be a remote possibility, I fell asleep, and it took me until midnight last night to finish Fieldwork.

It was at that point that I realized that John Adams was a bad next selection–we’re going away for the weekend, and a heavy biography just doesn’t fit in with a family visit. I need something I can read while the children are running around and playing. (If it’s on the shorter side, I need two somethings.) So, I find myself in an unusual situation (for me, at least)–I don’t know what I’m going to read next. I’ve got plenty to choose from–just check out the books in my library tagged TBR–but which one should it be? Any suggestions?

The Gathering

My grandmother Olive was a gun runner, perhaps the youngest gun runner, for the IRA. Her mother, Kitty, would lay the guns in the bottom of the pram, arrange the pad and blankets over it, and tuck Olive in on top. In this way, she was able to walk right past the soldiers at the barricades. Kitty’s husband, Patrick, was active in the Easter Uprising of 1916, and was on the roof of the Post Office in Dublin during this historic battle. Later, when soldiers came looking for Patrick and his compatriots, Kitty hid them in the basement, covering up the trap door with a rug. When the soldiers came, imperious Kitty drew herself up to her full height and shamed them into leaving her house.

The first two parts of the above are true–they are part of my family’s history and I’ve heard them from my mother, from my uncle, and from Olive herself. I think the last part is true, but I can’t remember where I heard it, and as I think about it, Kitty reminds me a bit of India Wilkes when the soldiers come looking for Ashley. Who knows–maybe I made it up. And as to the first two parts, none of the participants are still alive. So who knows–maybe they’re made up, too.

Family history, which is for the most part oral tradition, relies on memory and is therefore changeable. The Gathering by Anne Enright (fiction, 2007 Man Booker Prize winner, 261 pages) explores the relationship between memory and truth, and the possibility of multiple truths. Not in the way of Peggy Seltzer, stealing others’ lives whole cloth and making them your own, but in the way that fragments of memory are stitched together, with outside details sometimes pulled in to make them whole.

As Veronica Hegarty brings her brother’s body back to Ireland and her family gathers for the wake, she recounts to us her family’s history and the past secrets about her brother Liam that she has kept to herself since childhood, secrets that may have tormented Liam to his eventual suicide. Veronica is an unreliable narrator–she as much as tells us so. Early on, she tells the story of her grandmother Ada’s first meeting with Lambert Nugent, a meeting that is to echo throughout the generations of the Hegartys, mesmerizing the reader with the story and its possible outcomes, and then pulling out the rug with her admission that she imagined it all. The reader is left with decisions as to what is real and what is not, and whether, in the end, the reality or unreality of the stories matter.

Veronica and Liam’s family is huge (12 children), with the requisite alcoholics and priests, and they tend to blend together. I was particularly intrigued by the mysterious Alice, the only surviving sibling never to arrive onstage. But the story is primarily concerned with the tight duo of Veronica and Liam, with the next stairstep, Kitty, tagging close behind, and what may or may not have happened to Liam, what Veronica may or may not have seen, when the three children stayed with Ada one year while Veronica was eight and Liam was nine.

Veronica is an angry woman, and The Gathering is one long, searing howl of rage and pain. Enright’s brilliant, incisive writing for the most part overcomes the familiar territory over which this very Irish novel treads, although some of her creative touches, such as her references to bodies, living and dead, as meat, can wear thin with repetition. The book is well done, but draining. And it leaves the reader with more questions than it answers. This is a book that will stay with readers for a long time, and can lead, as in my case, with examinations of our own personal family histories.

A Little Catch-Up

I’ve been a bit quiet lately while pushing my way through Tom Jones, which I was reading for my book group. I finally finished, and I have to say that, while I understand why it’s considered a great and important novel, I hated it. At some point I’ll have to gather my thoughts about it, but in the meantime I’ve been struggling over a review of The Gathering by Anne Enright. I’ve been working on a draft for quite a while, and appear no closer to the end, but perhaps some flashes of insight later today will enable me finally to finish it.

Alice finished Artemis Fowl this morning, and was a much happier reader than I–she loved it. I always get a thrill when I press a book on someone and it’s a good match, but none better than when I’ve made the match with my own kids. I’d been trying to persuade both my girls to read this series for some time, and Alice finally took me up on it. She’s got the second book sitting on the coffee table now, awaiting her return from the Maritime Aquarium. I suspect she’ll go through the entire series in one go, as she did with Harry Potter. She and I will snuggle up on the couch tonight to read together, and hopefully this time we’ll both enjoy our selections.

Purple Hibiscus

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (fiction, Orange Prize shortlist, 307 pages)

Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja live in a privileged world within Nigeria, where their wealthy father Eugene can provide them with many comforts and luxuries. In stark contrast, Eugene’s sister Ifeoma struggles as a university professor to put food on the table for her children. However, for all their wealth, Kambili’s family has much less joy than her cousins’. While Eugene and Ifeoma were both converted to Catholicism by missionaries, Eugene embraced it to the exclusion of his culture and his former life, while Ifeoma was able to incorporate Catholicism into her life without rejecting her heritage. Eugene sets exacting, impossible standards for his children, who only learn to enjoy life and find out more about their family and their heritage when they are sent to stay with Ifeoma during a school holiday.

One of my favorite books I read last year was Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, about the Nigerian war to create the independent state of Biafra, so I approached Purple Hibiscus, her first novel, with a mix of eagerness and dread. I confess to being rather hard on first novels, and I wanted this book to compare favorably to Half of a Yellow Sun. Purple Hibiscus is not nearly as wide in scope as Half of a Yellow Sun–while political unrest in Nigeria informs the work, Adichie’s main focus in Purple Hibiscus is family and religion. Within its narrower confines, and more familiar territory, Adichie still manages to demonstrate her considerable talent as a writer, and while the book doesn’t equal Half of a Yellow Sun, the path to it from this work is clear.

On the surface, Purple Hibiscus reads like a YA novel, and Kambili’s narrative voice at times seems younger than her 15 years. Yet Adichie’s oblique questioning of Catholicism/Christianity as any more valid than polytheism gives the mature reader plenty of food for thought. Eugene’s abuse of his children is at times tough to take, and while I would recommend this book to mature teenagers, their parents should be prepared to discuss this difficult issue.

Gentlemen of the Road

Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon (fiction, 204 pages)

Full disclosure: I love Michael Chabon. I would probably read a collection of his grocery lists. Also, I am a sucker for adventure stories–I think it has something to do with not having read them much as a kid, so now I’m trying to make up for lost time. I am particularly enamored of Dumas’ novels, with their cliffhanger chapters born of the serial method of publication. So, while Chabon’s latest novel, an adventure story originally published in serial form in the New York Times would appear to be tailor-made for me, your mileage may vary.

Chabon’s first two novels, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys, firmly established him as a well-respected literary novelist, and he certainly had the talent and the fan base to continue in that vein. However, he has taken that currency and gone on to play with various genres (comic books, mystery, science fiction, and now adventure fiction), taking that same fan base along for the ride and surely picking up new ones along the way. He is one of a select group of authors who are working to bring genre fiction out of the corner and really embrace it in the mainstream.

Set in 950 A.D., Gentlemen of the Road follows two Jewish mercenaries, Amram and Zelikman, in the Caucasus as they reluctantly get involved in a quest with a young noble, Filaq, whose family has been destroyed by the usurper to Filaq’s father’s throne. Chabon’s working title for the novel was Jews with Swords, and religion (Jewish, Muslim, and Christian) and swordfighting play a significant part in the tale’s events.

As with any good adventure story, to tell you more of the plot would be to ruin the fun of it. And I did have fun. This is not Chabon’s best, and certainly not his deepest or most polished, work, but it is still an enjoyable read. He is true to the genre, while still putting his indelible stamp on the work.

Unless you are a true adventure fan, I wouldn’t recommend Gentlemen of the Road as your first Chabon read (try The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay though!). But for adventure fans, or for those who are already fans of Michael Chabon, give Gentlemen of the Road a try. It’s a quick, fun read, with great illustrations by Gary Gianni (the current artist for the Prince Valiant comic strip). The genre may be different, but the writing is pure Chabon–intricate sentences, 10c words sprinkled casually throughout, spot on descriptions. The book is fairly cinematic, and I suspect it will be translated to the screen before too long.

London: The Biography

London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd (history, 773 pages)

I was on vacation President’s Day week, and while I originally planned to read as many books as I could get my hands on, I decided that perhaps it would be better to get through a doorstopper that had been sitting on my shelf. Thus, my imaginary trip to London.

Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography is a huge, sprawling, messy book, somewhat like London itself. Rather than look at London chronologically, Ackroyd moves back and forth in time while exploring different topics. This structure worked very well, as the various layers gradually form a picture of London as a whole. While Ackroyd does touch on major historical points (the Great Fire of 1666, the Blitz of World War II), his main focus is on broader themes such as economic development, poverty, health, urban sprawl, and crime.

London: The Biography was a long, sometimes tough read. I was interested in the social history, but not so much in the topography and geography. I tended to fade a bit when Ackroyd would go into long discourses on the history of development of a particular street, for instance. I often found the last paragraph of a chapter to be forced and a bit windy as he would try to segue from the topic of that chapter to the topic of the next. For the most part, however, his writing was lovely, painting strong pictures of London in all its facets.

My sense was that Ackroyd wrote this book for Londoners themselves, and he assumes a body of local knowledge and vocabulary that as an American reader I didn’t have. I would have appreciated a glossary in the American printing. I wish I’d read this book years ago, though–I learned so much that I can directly apply to the fiction I read.