Tag Archives: fiction

The Secret Life of Bees by Sun Monk Kidd

Posted by melydia on February 5, 2009 2 comments

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd: It’s hard to describe this book without going into a lot of detail. It’s more or less about Lily, a teenager living in 1960s South Carolina, and her dealings with race, prejudice, and the death of her mother. It’s a sweet and gentle story of acceptance and forgiveness. A touch predictable, but not exasperatingly so. All in all it’s just a nice little tale.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Banana Rose by Natalie Goldberg

Posted by melydia on February 1, 2009 None comments

Banana Rose by Natalie Goldberg: Like, I suspect, most people who read this book, I picked it up out of a love for Goldberg’s books on writing, most notably Writing Down the Bones. In those books she emphasizes freewriting and original detail far more than standard stuff like plot, character, and revision, and it is quite evident in this debut novel. Nell is a hippie living near Taos, New Mexico; this is the story of her journey to becoming an artist. The language is vibrant and the metaphors unforgettable, but the story and dialogue often fall flat. Nell is a total brat for about the first half of the book, which was long enough that I didn’t really care much what happened to her by the end. That said, I cannot overemphasize the gorgeousness of the prose. Sure, the story is about Nell, but mostly it is a love letter to New Mexico. It made me long for the desert. Hopefully Goldberg’s later novels have improved character and story without losing the fantastic imagery.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

Posted by melydia on January 31, 2009 1 comments

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler: A clever little book about – you guessed it – a book club which reads all six of Jane Austen’s novels. Ignore the back cover blurbs; you will enjoy this far more if you’re already an Austen fan. The original characters are cute, but by and large it’s written for Janeophiles.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Time and Again by Jack Finney

Posted by melydia on January 23, 2009 1 comments

Time and Again by Jack Finney: Though the story is about time travel, this is not what one would commonly consider a science fiction novel. Simon Morley, a bored illustrator living in 1960s New York, joins a top secret government program that sends him back to 1882. Rather than your standard time travel machine, temporal distances are covered through self-hypnosis and a bunch of hand-waving involving vague references to Einstein. But never mind all that. Since the narrator is from modern times, his descriptions of New York of over a century ago emphasize the sorts of things historical fiction would not: the little differences in everyday life, the future locations of certain buildings, that kind of stuff. In terms of nostalgia, it’s simply wonderful, and I thoroughly enjoyed learning about life in the late 19th century. Unfortunately, at the end it becomes tiresomely preachy, obsessing over the “good old days” that, as any historian knows, never really existed. The loose ends are also a little too neatly tied up, but by and large the book is a fun look at how people really lived back in the day.

I listened to this on audiobook, then discovered the book has sketches and photographs. Perhaps if I’d looked at the paperback copy on my shelf I would have noticed that it was specifically listed as an “illustrated novel” but that’s what I get for not paying attention.

Note: this book was never made into a movie. That was Somewhere in Time by Richard Matheson. The confusion is understandable; both use self-hypnosis as a means of time travel, and both involve romance that spans the decades.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Romance Reader by Pearl Abraham

Posted by melydia on January 2, 2009 None comments

The Romance Reader by Pearl Abraham: Rachel is the teenaged daughter of a rabbi in a cloistered Hasidic community. She’s quite the rebel: she gets a library card, reads romance novels, wears sheer stockings, goes out without a kerchief, and wants to wear a swimsuit while working as a lifeguard (as opposed to an ankle-length dress). This book would have been much less frustrating had the rest of the family been more sympathetic. Everyone was so spiteful and self-centered, ready to sell out their kin in an instant to make themselves look good in front of the neighbors. It was frankly sickening. The ending was moderately uplifting, but by that point I was so tired of the petty bickering that I was just ready for it to be over. It was interesting to learn a little bit about Orthodox Jewish customs, such as the various things they cannot do during Shabbat and their wedding rituals, but mostly I wanted to take everyone in this family by the shoulders and give them a good shake.

Note: All comments in this review refer exclusively to the characters and situations in this novel. None of my comments are meant to apply to Hasidic culture or the Jewish community in general.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

Posted by melydia on December 31, 2008 1 comments

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink: Though it purports to be about a teenaged boy and his romance with a complicated older woman, this book is more about how the succeeding generations of Germans deal with the horrors of their Third Reich parents and grandparents. Michael Berg is a thoroughly introspective narrator, creating the feel of a memoir more than a novel. I found myself thinking about the characters and their choices long after finishing the last page. Recommended for those looking for a thought-provoking read.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

Posted by melydia on December 28, 2008 1 comments

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl: Blue van Meer and her somewhat eccentric dad live a nomadic life as he jumps between visiting professorships all over the country. Our story takes place during Blue’s senior year of high school in North Carolina, when the two actually stay in one place for an entire year. She meets a collection of unusual characters, most notably Hannah Schneider, a film studies teacher at the high school with a somewhat mysterious past. The most memorable and enchanting part of this book is the writing style. Blue’s lively narration is rife with intellectual asides, all backed up with MLA-style citations. I kept wondering how many of the references were real. So convinced was I of the legitimacy of the sources that I was rather surprised to discover that the Night Watchmen don’t actually exist. I found the plot and the unique storytelling methods delightful. And for the record, I think Blue is 100% correct. (Those who have read the book will know what I mean.)

I listened to this on audiobook. Though the reader (Emily Janice Card) was fantastic, the “visual aids” (illustrations) and other textual ornamentation would have been a nice addition. I picked up a hardcover copy at the library, so I was able to see what I was missing. Card was one of the best female readers I’ve ever heard; the story would have simply been better to experience as intended.

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

Posted by melydia on December 19, 2008 None comments

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult: Not one of her better books. There are a few things you can count on in your average Picoult novel: a family or two with teenage children, police and/or lawyers, at least one romance, and a heaping helping of dysfunction. I get the impression that Picoult reads a headline and decides to write a story about it. Which is fine, but this book’s Weighty Topic is school shootings, which reads a lot like a cross between We Need to Talk About Kevin and a Law & Order episode, with a generous sprinkling of high school stereotypes. The main characters were the shooter and his mother, the shooter’s crush and her mother (a judge) and boyfriend (a bully/jock), and the detective. The whole story was just so tragic that I stopped caring how things turned out. It didn’t help that I called the twist ending around halfway through the book. I’ve read some excellent books by Picoult; this just didn’t happen to be one of them.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith

Posted by melydia on December 6, 2008 None comments

On Beauty by Zadie Smith: Whenever I review a book, I feel a need to at least briefly sum up the plot. It’s hard to decide if one might want to read something without even knowing vaguely what it’s about. Unfortunately, I’m having a bit of a tough time with this one. See, this book is about family and infidelity and race relations and Haiti and Britain and New England and intellectualism and hip hop and poetry and more. The main characters are the Belseys: white British art history professor Howard, his black American wife Kiki, and his three very different children. Jerome is experimenting with Christianity and conservatism, Zora is an insatiable intellectual, and Levi is struggling to discover what it means to be black. My favorite character by far was Kiki. She was warm and friendly without being a doormat for her idiot husband. (Yeah, I didn’t have a whole lot of sympathy for Howard.) The story itself was interesting, more or less covering one turbulent year in the lives of the Belseys. Unfortunately, once it reached the (rather predictable) climax, there was a big time skip, followed by a sort of lackluster coda, like the author ran out of steam. I don’t need tidy endings with everything all neatly tied up, but I would have liked a little more detail on what happened between the Big Drama and the fizzle of a conclusion. If you’re the sort of person who likes reading page by page, enjoying the sensation of being in someone else’s life, you’ll probably enjoy this one. The characters are realistic and recognizable. Personally, I like books that go somewhere, where at the end I can tell why the author felt a desire to tell that particular story. This one left me a little disappointed.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Posted by melydia on November 25, 2008 4 comments

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand: It’s a shame that an opinion about this book is taken as a political statement, because the story’s actually really good. In a nutshell: the government decides that competition is unfair and starts regulating trade and production. In response, the producers disappear one by one, abandoning (or destroying) their mines, factories, and mills. Chaos ensues. Our protagonist is Dagny Taggart, head of Taggart Transcontinental Railroad. Objectivist women are evidently hard to find; she had so many admirers I almost wanted to rename the book “Everybody Loves Dagny.” But that’s neither here nor there (though the sex scenes were a touch disturbing); it is she who struggles to keep her railroad running as increasing government regulation and a decreasing population of competent people bar the way. At times I was reminded of Animal Farm, which is no surprise considering Rand grew up in Bolshevik Russia. What starts with good intentions rapidly devolves into a miasma of bribes, favors, and threats.

My favorite character was Francisco d’Anconia, CEO of d’Anconia Copper and childhood friend of Dagny. I just love his snarkiness. Everything he does seems calculated to piss off the looters (so the enemies of individuality are called) while remaining impeccably polite. As an aside, I also found it telling that so many of the looters had ridiculous names, such as Tinky or Chick.

I found this story fascinating from an intellectual and philosophical viewpoint. A lot of people seem to treat capitalism as a given (or as the enemy); I’ve never read such a detailed defense of it. And while I do not purport to completely understand Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, these are the nuggets I gleaned from this story:
* Logic and facts are paramount.
* You are entitled to nothing and must earn everything. Needing something – anything – does not entitle you to it. Even food and shelter.
* Government involvement in private enterprise screws everything up.
* The worst thing is to live a life without purpose.
* Every man working in his own self interest ultimately produces the most good for all.

I’m not going to go into my own personal philosophy here, but these views definitely made for some interesting reading. Certainly better than The Fountainhead. (Howard Roark struck me as petty.) Once again, this is a book that made me think, and that is always high praise coming from me.

I listened to this on audiobook, which I think was the only way I would have gotten through it. Not only is the book incredibly long, the characters spend a lot of time making speeches, most notably John Galt’s famous three-hour speech near the end. (Yes, you do learn the answer to “who is John Galt?” in the third section.) These speeches are unquestionably an integral part of the book, both the plot and the philosophical ideals, but they can get a little tiring. On audio they come across much more naturally.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

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