Monthly Archives: June 2012

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.