Death Comes to Pemberley, by PD James

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Generally speaking, I think that writing sequels to much-beloved works of fiction by long-dead authors is ill-advised. The murder mystery angle in this follow up to Pride and Prejudice, however, made for a fun read. P.D. James is also a talented enough author that she can pull off a good Jane Austen imitation. It’s a little hard to picture Mr. Darcy as a man in touch with his emotions, but maybe that’s just the 21st-century interpretation of a 19th-century romantic hero.

This story is set six years after Elizabeth and Darcy’s wedding, and the couple is suitably blissful. A mysterious death on the estate, coupled with the reappearance of the always troublesome Wickham, creates unrest for both the family and staff of Pemberley. Nothing, however, can ruffle the rock-solid marriage. I can’t help thinking that had Jane Austen written this novel, she would have raised at least the suspicion that the lovers would come desperately close to the brink of breakup. Without actually shoving us over that precipice, of course. But this book remains faithful to the situation at the end of the earlier novel – characters act just as they did on the final pages of Pride and Prejudice, and there is no change of heart or awakening of feeling that could offend Austen enthusiasts.

I like this kind of murder mystery. There is very little blood or violence, and the suspense lies purely in discovering who did what to whom. There is no heart-palpitating danger to our heroes, and no hard-bitten loner detective with a brutal back story. How civilized! P.D. James has always been a favorite of mine in a genre I generally avoid, and her status remains unchanged after this enjoyable book.

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

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There are many things to be said for Jane Austen, but here is my current favorite: When you are in the mood for a steady diet of chick lit, you can read Jane Austen and get your fill of romance, gossip, and fashion, and still proudly announce that you are reading classic literature! Perfect!

Pride and Prejudice follows the tried and true formula for fictional romance. In fact, it may be the blueprint: Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy meet. They dislike one another. Concurrently, her sister meets his best friend, and are enchanted with one another. Various friends and relatives meddle in both relationships, various other people behave badly. Mistakes are made. To say any more would be to engage in spoiling. It’s a period romantic comedy – need one say more?  I don’t know whether the outcome seemed predictable to Austen’s original audience, though it’s hard for me to imagine it having turned out any differently. We’re simply following the characters down the garden path.

One is almost required to love Jane Austen these days, which is fairly easy to do. Her chief attributes are lovely sentences and well-envisioned characters. The writing is precise and wonderfully descriptive, with phrases rounding in on themselves. Particularly when  it comes to dialogue, nothing is said in five words if it could be said in fifteen. It occurs to me that conversation for members of this class in this era must have been exhausting. How intelligent everyone sounds!

Austen’s understanding of human nature is admirable; you have, in your life, run into every character in this book. The personalities are universal, and timeless. What may have changed is the value we place on various human characteristics, which is why Mr. Darcy will never get my vote for leading man. Who wants to marry a guy who can’t even be civil to a pleasant young woman at a party? He embodies both pride and prejudice, which are not necessarily seen in the negative light you’d imagine. Elizabeth, meanwhile, is the perfect heroine; smart and independent, with a good dose of humility. The elder Bennets, Elizabeth’s parents, embody the traits that most annoy teenagers. The mother is boorish and overly concerned with appearances, the father removed and dismissive of his daughter’s interests. Other characters are charming, deceitful, vain, loyal, amusing, dull… every type is covered.

Another thing I adore about this book is that everyone knows what everyone else has in the bank, or stands to inherit! Each young woman comes with a valuation, generally expressed in pounds per year. The men are described by their net worth. The goal for both sexes is to marry as much money as possible. Loooks count for quite a bit, and then finally there are good home management skills (women) or amiability (men). You might not be lucky enough to get them all, but some combination will no doubt suffice, as Elizabeth’s friend Charlotte calculatingly decides: though her husband is annoying, his situation is good, his prospects even better.

I may have read this book twenty-five or so years ago, but honestly, I don’t remember it. When I think of Mr. Darcy, I mostly think of Bridget Jones swooning over Colin Firth. I kept waiting for the wet shirt, victim of a dive in a pond. Did not happen in the book. Sigh. I really must watch that adaptation.

Before I Go to Sleep, by S.J. Watson

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If you are planning to read this book, you will need an amazing capacity for suspending your disbelief. Not only is this story chock full of this-would-never-happen moments, there are at least two places where it contradicts itself within a few pages.

So. Christine has amnesia, and is incapable of creating new memories. Think Memento, but less compelling. Christine lives with her husband, who, of course, she does not remember from one day to another. Every morning she wakes up (naked, interestingly) next to a stranger, and runs in a panic to the bathroom. There she is confronted with signs and pictures explaining her reality. (You are old! And married! To Ben! We are happy!) We, along with Christine, soon learn that Ben is either lying to her or is just not up to recounting her whole sad history every single day. But Christine is keeping a journal, and each day she uncovers a little bit more about her situation, and about her past. She’s coming to some conclusions, and you can bet that at some point they’re going to get her into trouble.

One thing I did like about the story is that Christine feels differently about her discoveries from day-to-day. It reminded me how hard it is to determine other people’s motivations. It’s nearly impossible to try to know someone intimately after just a few hours in their company, first love notwithstanding. It’s also pretty natural to see things differently at different times – imagine having to judge and weigh the sum total of your life each day.

This book also made me think about the concept of living in the moment. You might think that a victim of amnesia would experience the bliss of being confined to the present. Quite the opposite. I do believe that Christine’s reaction to this uncommon situation is realistic; with no sense of her own history she is obsessed with both the unremembered past and the unimaginable but all too predictable future. Too bad; it seems like this particular disorder could use a gigantic silver lining.

I was compelled to finish this book, despite its lack of logic and pacing, because, after all, I really wanted to know the outcome. Not so much to find out what had happened to leave Christine in her unenviable condition, but to determine who had betrayed her, and whether she’d figure it out. And whether she’d remember any of it after the fact. I bought this book for my Nook, needing something light for a day of travel. I never spend money on books, aside from sometimes exorbitant library fines, so I’m a little mad about paying for something I didn’t love. But at least I remember it.

The Neighbors Are Watching, by Debra Ginsberg

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There is nothing quite so satisfying as a story about suburbanites with secrets. If you tune into popular culture regularly, you might come to believe that every cul-de-sac is a hotbed of lust, avarice, infidelity and worse. Alas, most are not. Fuller Court, however, is rife with several of these vices, and is marinated in a heavy broth of suspicion, indifference and bias. The perfect setting for a juicy novel!

Pregnant 17-year-old Diana appears one July day in this Southern California neighborhood of virtual strangers. She has come seeking her birth father, whom she’s never met, having departed her mother’s home in Las Vegas. Has she been banished? Ore escaped? Over the course of the summer, her presence shakes up the households in her new neighborhood, pulling families apart and making unexpected allies among the group. As the Santa Ana winds sweep fire through the valley in September, the little community cracks. What emerges is a mystery and the unveiling of many secrets. Fabulous!

This is one of my favorite genres of novel, beautifully executed. There is a mystery, there is possibly a crime, there is a great sense of people forced to abandon a very modern kind of solitude. The author also takes on the subject of parenting: what makes a good parent, what makes a bad parent, and how we feel about our children, particularly those who are not with us. Like many parents, I struggle almost daily with the worry that I am not doing enough, or enough of the right things, for my kids. And as a parent who shares custody, I know that horrible black hole that opens in my life when I’ve been separated from them for too long. This novel describes all of these feelings beautifully. It also provides some great examples of people who are definitely doing the whole thing less skillfully than I! Which always gives me a great sense of satisfaction.

The writing is quick, smart and evocative. I’m glad I read this on a long travel day – otherwise I would surely have missed hours of precious sleep reading Just One More Chapter. I’ve been meaning to read all of the author’s work for some time now, having loved Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress. I especially want to read About My Sisters, since I have the absolute privilege of actually knowing one of them! Time to load up the nook.

Debra Ginsberg, in addition to having written lots of terrific books, both fiction and non, also has a great blog, which I could spend many hours reading. This is one of my favorite posts, which I would like to steal and re-title Another Reason Why Judaism Is So Much Cooler Than Christianity.

The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson

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According to the jacket, this book was chosen as “a best book” by several popular entities, among them Salon and Esquire. I had never heard of it, so that shows you how up on the literary world I am. Luckily for me, my sister Anne keeps current, and also lends me books.

I whipped through this novel pretty quickly, and am still sort of deciding how I feel about it. It is very engaging; I really wanted to know what would happen next, and felt very sympathetic toward the main characters. Always a good sign. The story, in a nutshell, is this:

Caleb and Camille Fang are performance artists, and so, by extension, are their children Annie and Buster (charmingly, albeit clinically, referred to by their parents as Child A and Child B). The family makes art by creating surprising, disturbing, chaos-making situations for the public to react to; shopping malls are a favorite venue. Think projectile vomiting, cross-dressing, catching on fire. The children are integral to the pieces, but whether or not they are willing participants is difficult to establish. This is the most interesting and well-executed element of the book.

Kids, as we know, assume that their lives as normal right up until they realize that they’re not. And kids adore their parents, and crave acceptance by them, even when they don’t like the things they do. The Fang family is a petri dish of conflicting desires and reactions; Caleb and Camille love their children, and respect them as great artists. They are completely unaware of being manipulative. As far as they’re concerned, the four of them are peers; the kids are living their best lives and are fortunate to have the opportunity to make such an impact on the world. Normal is boring, and unworthy of them.

Annie and Buster rise to the expectation of participation throughout their childhoods. They are children, after all, and in this case particularly obedient and compliant children, perhaps in part because they are respected as full partners in the dramas they enact. And maybe also because their parents entirely unable to relate to them as children, rather than co-conspirators. Their reactions to their roles are different, and cleverly cover what I’d expect to be different but complementary attitudes to the situation. Annie is resentful, Buster is anxious.

The two of them come back to their family home as young adults, having both screwed their lives up in more or less spectacular fashion. The elder Fangs, unaware that their children have been stewing in a soup of pent-up emotion, are unable to understand why they view their childhoods as dysfunctional. The children, unable to make an emotional impression on their parents, revert to adolescent impotence. When Caleb and Camille pull the ultimate stunt, Child A and Child B are forced to reckon with all of the demons of their childhood.

I will avoid any spoilers, but this second half of the book is great in that it provokes an almost painful sense of suspense. Will they or won’t they? Did they or didn’t they? I changed my mind several times about the outcome, as do Buster and Annie. When we finally discover the truth about the fate of the Fangs, I guess it’s bound to be a little anti-climactic. At least I found it so. The book  might have been more successful had it left a little more to the imagination. As it was, the symbolism of the last chapter seemed like overkill.

For the most part I found the writing sharp and compelling. The situations are funny, some of them grimly familiar to many of us, though satisfyingly worse than one’s own.  I probably should learn not expect outlandish plots and situations to seem totally realistic. If you use a microscope, some things come into extra-sharp focus, and some become too blurred to see clearly. Viewed like this, the book does what it aims to do, and is an enjoyable journey into the foibles of family.

Kevin Wilson lives in a cabin in rural Tennesse with his poet wife, and counts among his friends both Ann Patchett and Padgett Powell. For those of us who routinely idolize and romanticize Southern authors, this guy is living the writerly dream.

Evolution

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If you had told me five years ago that I would be texting my daughter about American Idol, I would have rolled my eyes. If I were being polite… I thought American Idol was stupid, and texting annoying. But I am willing to change, and to embrace the new. If my 14-year-old wants to communicate her enthusiasm to me, I will gladly converse with her about any topic, through any medium she chooses. Aren’t we lucky to be a species that adapts and changes, and aren’t we smart to have invented so many forms of communication.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris

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Arrgh. Book jacket will not load. You’ll have to use your imagination.

There are few pleasures that can compare with sinking into a whole book of David Sedaris. I’ve been meaning to read this collection for ages, and am so glad I didn’t get around to it until now. It was the perfect choice for my fourth cross-country journey in two weeks, following a fortnight of alternating fun and worry.

I have heard David Sedaris read his work many times, enough that when I read his books I hear his voice in my head. As amusing as his words are on the page, the effect pales next to his vocal delivery. Dry and drawling, I’d say. I’ve just been watching Downton Abbey, and it strikes me that David and Maggie Smith might be the most perfect dining companions imaginable. Though it might help, were you put at their table, to be fairly thick-skinned.

The combination of self-deprecating and judgmental is really the key to comic memoir, if I may reduce great writing to a made-up genre. I’ve always been impressed with this kind of personal essy – really, who cares that David Sedaris likes spiders, or is terrible at learning Japanese? Trust me, you will.

I always wanted to be an essayist. I love the idea of being fascinating while musing on the minutiae of life. Sadly, I have no facility for this. I’ll content myself with reading, and be glad there are other people who are so good at it.

Here is a selection of Sedaris hits, read by the author.

Big Girl Small, by Rachel DeWoskin

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Beware, parents of teenage girls, this book will scare the crap out of you. If you are a teenage girl, by all means read this cautionary tale, and take the lesson to heart.

Judy Lohden is 16, and starting a new high school. The book describes that particular social hell in perfect detail, with all its attendant hope and trepidation. The next several months of Judy’s life are filled with the basic highs and lows of adolescence: new friends, homework, a crush on the coolest guy in school. The twist? Judy is a Little Person.  Add to this that she’s an exceptional student and sings like Adele, and you’ve got one bigger-than-life heroine. Through the lens of this unusual girl, the reality of high school is magnified: at 3’9″, everyone really is staring at her, and wondering about her, and judging her. What happens to Judy, however, could happen to just about any girl who suffers from an all too familiar lack of social confidence.

The pitfalls of being young in the digital age are legion, as are, of course, the advantages. Judy discovers that the repercussions of a lapse in judgment can be devastating, and excruciatingly public. Anyone who has gotten themselves into a bad situation through making a poor decision will have at least some degree of sympathy, and parents of teenagers will be made ill by the thought of what their kids might be doing while ostensibly at band practice. When I was a teenager, our exploits were mercifully unpublicized and likely soon forgotten; this novel is a stark reminder that there is very little privacy in this brave new world.

We’ll continue to hope our kids take care of themselves in the world, and help them get over it when they don’t. Which is what Judy strives to do in the aftermath of her humiliation. This, of course, is what being a teenager is all about; not every fall from grace is fodder for public comment, but each one, no matter how small, feels like the end of the world. This story is also a reminder that even if you’ve got an awful lot going for you, your place in the social strata may be the most important factor in your sense of self-worth. Unfortunate, but true.

Rachel DeWoskin has captured the voice of a sixteen-year-old perfectly. She’s created a heroine who is likable, funny, and very typical, despite her unusual appearance. YA is a great genre for managing huge social issues; although the protagonist delves pretty deeply into her own emotions, there is a certain lack of exhaustive detail that is both acceptable and appropriate. One of the great pleasures of reading YA is that you can really get into the heads of the characters; that’s the whole point. Overall a great read, good characters, and believable enough; though the last portion of the book strained credulity, it still worked.

The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje

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I first read this book about 15 years ago, and was blown away. I rushed to finish it the day before the movie came out, and thus ruined my enjoyment of a highly acclaimed film.

My disappointment stemmed from the filmmakers choosing what I considered to be the secondary love story as their main theme. Otherwise, I remember it as beautiful and moving. What can I say, the book is always better…

Rereads are so satisfying. I love to see how I’ll react to a book once I’ve moved into a different phase of life. And then, of course, I already know the ending. When I read this the first time, I was closer in age to Kip and Hana; now I’d call Caravaggio and the English patient my contemporaries. I feel more nostalgia for the younger pair, and having been disappointed and having disappointed in turn, I have more sympathy for those characters who fail to act honorably, or who suffer lapses in judgment.

The story takes place in 1945, in a bombed out Italian villa. A young Canadian nurse takes care of a badly burned man, known only as the English patient. Her wounded surrogate uncle stumbles them, and joins the household. Which coincidence somehow seems reasonable. A young Indian sapper, a bomb-defuser, lives in the garden while he clears mines from the countryside. The story relies on flashbacks and internal dialogue, as the four of them limp through the physical and emotional aftermath of the war. There is a mystery to solved, which takes pressure off the rest of the story; the relationships among those present and missing is the real meat of the novel.

The writing in this book is gorgeous. Ondaatje evokes landscape vividly, and is one of those authors who says a lot with just a few words. Each character is given a lot of attention, and all are fascinating. Despite being a wartime novel, this is less about the horrors of war then about the profound solitude they engender. The two older men embody loads of moral ambiguity, while Kip and Hana are mostly reacting to the unrelenting sorrow they’ve been exposed to, and do so with strength and grace. This may be a comment on the complexities that arise from age and experience; it’s hard to stay untarnished over the course of a lifetime.

There’s an undercurrent throughout of disaffection, isolation, people intentionally turning their backs on familiarity and tradition, and the damaging aspects of obsession. This is a terrific book, worthy of rereading, and definitely deserves to be called a classic.