Tag: books (Page 7 of 7)

Book review Tuesday: The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst

I recently finished Alan Hollinghurt’s The Line of Beauty, winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for fiction.  It is an excellent and intimidating book: excellent in that it’s exquisitely plotted and crafted, intimidating for the very same reasons.  One of the reviewers on the back cover (Publishers Weekly) raved that it is “almost perfectly written” and “has the air of a classic.”  I must agree — which is why reading this novel is simultaneously satisfying and torturous.  Hollinghurst’s “almost perfect” prose is gorgeous, but it has a way of sapping all of my self-esteem about my own writing.  His sentences make mine seem wilted and puerile in comparison. I mean, how can he write so well?  Dammit, Hollinghurst!

I was recommended this book by one of Al’s friends from work, Jason.  I was in Kramerbooks in DC, picking up way too many books to bring with me to South Africa, when I ran into Jason and we started talking about books we love.  He suddenly said, “Oh my God, you have to read this book, it’s beautiful.”  He then took me by the arm and led me over to a shelf, plucked down The Line of Beauty, put it in my hands, and said, “You’re buying this.”

First, some background.  The book takes place between 1983 and 1986, mostly in London, at the height of Margaret Thatcher’s tenure as Prime Minister.  The main character, Nick Guest, is a young Oxford graduate who is working on a graduate thesis on Henry James and is renting a room from the Feddens, a conservative political family.  Gerald Fedden, the father, is a conservative Member of Parliament; Nick was friends with Gerald’s son, Toby, at Oxford, which is how Nick came to be living with them.  Nick is more than just a renter, though – he fancies himself a part of the family and becomes intimately involved in the family’s workings and secrets.  The book is about Nick’s fascination with the Feddens and their wealth and erudition, as well as his exploration of his own sexuality (he’s gay) and the complicated relationships he forms with several men, including a young Lebanese scion of a grocery store fortune.  Soon enough, excess — drugs, sex, wealth — begin to corrupt, and the consequences are devastating for everyone.

In Kramerbooks, I flipped open the book to skim through it, as I usually do when considering whether or not to buy a book. I opened randomly to page 104, a scene in which Nick and his new boyfriend, Leo, are having an argument about where they can be alone together, but also, on a larger level, whether their relationship is going to work out at all.  They had just come from visiting Leo’s ex-boyfriend, Pete.

All of Leo’s effusiveness with Pete and then with Sophie had ebbed away, and left just the two of them, in this horrible noise and crush.  Nick glanced at him with a tight smile; at which Leo stretched his neck with a moody, uninvolved air.  ‘Well,’ said Nick finally, ‘where do you want to go?’

‘I don’t know, boyfriend,’ Leo said.

Nick laughed ruefully, and something kept him back from a further lie. ‘A caff?’ he said. ‘Indian? A sandwich?’ — which was the most he could imagine managing.

‘Well, I need something,’ said Leo, in his tone of flat goading irony, looking at him sharply. ‘And it isn’t a sandwich.’

Nick didn’t take a risk on what this might mean. ‘Ah…’ he said. Leo turned his head and scowled at a stall of cloudy green and brown glassware, which was taking its place in their crisis, and seemed to gleam with hints of a settled domestic life.  Leo said,

‘At least with old Pete we had his place, but where are me and you ever going to go?’

Could this be his only objection, the only obstacle…? ‘I know, we’re homeless,’ Nick said.

‘Homeless love,’ said Leo, shrugging and then cautiously nodding, as if weighing up a title for a song.

Isn’t that delicious? I absolutely love the line about the glassware “taking its place in their crisis.” Hollinghurst is very gifted at picking up shifts in mood between characters and exploiting dialogue, scenery, and internal thought processes of the characters to subtly bring them out.  I suppose there’s a lesson in here somehow about how I can learn from Hollinghurst’s prose to improve my own, but all I can do is goggle at it.  Oh, well. Some books are like that.

I recommend this novel on several levels, but don’t read it if you want to feel uplifted.  Without giving much away, I’ll say that things don’t end perfectly for anyone in this novel.  But the uncertainty of how things will turn out for these characters is part of what makes the book compelling.

[Oh, and one final note: they made it into a BBC series starring Dan Stevens (Matthew Crowley from Downton Abbey) as Nick! I must buy this immediately.]

What’s a nerd?

My husband and I have an ongoing friendly debate about who was nerdier as a child, which always gives way to a debate about what actually makes one a nerd.

Al advocates for a more narrow, traditional definition of the word “nerd.”  He’s a nerd originalist. In his book, a nerd is someone who is interested in most or all of the following: science fiction (defined broadly to include the Star Wars franchise, among others), fantasy role playing games (with Dungeons and Dragons being the most obvious choice for the budding young nerd), space travel, math, and certain video/computer games.  Also, weapons.

And whatever this thing is.

My definition of nerdiness, however, is concerned less with one’s specific interests than with how different one’s interests are from those of one’s peers, especially in middle and high school.  This goes beyond mere social alienation: I mean, if nerdiness could be measured by how alienated one felt in middle school, then I would be the biggest nerd to walk the Earth.  But it takes more than being picked on to be considered a nerd, since one can be bullied or feel out of place while also having completely mainstream interests. I think nerdiness also entails a passion about things that others of your age are not into.

By my husband’s definition of nerdism, young Stephanie would definitely not be considered a nerd.  But here, for your consideration, is a short list of things I was really into in middle school:

  • Band (I played clarinet)
  • Manga and anime (there’s a BIG difference, you guys – just ask 12-year-old me), especially Ranma 1/2
  • Chinese language movies and literature
  • The Civil War (not the cool band — the war)
  • Monty Python
  • The Beatles
  • Egyptian mythology
  • Knitting and latch-hooking
  • Teddy bear conventions (yes, this is a thing)
  • The Redwall books, by Brian Jacques
  • Dog breeds, cat breeds, horse breeds, bird breeds
  • Weird Al Yankovic (I was a member of his fan club, the Close Personal Friends of Al)

I was also into computer games.

I’d also like to add that in middle school, I was a subscriber to Cat Fancy, Dog Fancy, Ellory Queen Mystery Magazine, and a quarterly Beatles fan magazine that was sent to me in Michigan via air mail from England.  I asked for the subscription for my birthday.   My interests as a middle schooler were not necessarily what one would call “tweeny.”

Al, meanwhile, was into, among other things, creating pen-and-ink labyrinths for his friends, playing Magic the Gathering, and reading sci-fi epics.

So — who’s right? Who was nerdier?  Could young Stephanie’s collection of esoteric and now-embarrassing interests be considered nerdy, despite the lack of sci-fi involved?  Or is Al the true nerd here and I was just, what, autistic?  It’s hard to say.

It’s also hard to say why we are both so eager to prove our cred as nerdy little kids.  Perhaps because we like to think we’ve come a long way (we haven’t).  But perhaps also because being a nerd carries a bit of cache these days.  People like to brag about being “huge nerds” about x, y, or z, whether it’s true or not.  Claiming to be a nerd proves that you’re passionate about something, that you’re not a follower, that you’re plugged into interests that others are only dimly aware of — these days, being a nerd is almost the same thing as being a hipster.  People use both terms — nerd and hipster — derisively, but let’s be honest, there are plenty of people who secretly aspire to both.  Plus, let’s face it, if you weren’t a nerd in middle school, you were probably cool in middle school, and we all know what happens to kids who were cool in middle school: it’s all downhill from there, I’m afraid.

Since I’ve met Al, his brand of nerdiness has rubbed off on me.  I have read all five books in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, I’ve seen at least part of two Star Wars movies, I know what a Dungeonmaster is, and I’ve watched two and a half torturous seasons of Battlestar Galactica.  So I guess I’m moving toward traditional nerd-dom, although it’s not where I feel most comfortable.

I’d like to think that my sprawling collection of odd interests has rubbed off on Al, too, but I’m not sure that’s true.  I’ve forced him to listen to a couple of the comedy podcasts I like (including this one) and have convinced him to read a couple of the books I love (such as these), but my influence on him has largely been a corrupting one – I’ve mostly just introduced him to reality TV and crime.

Ah, well.  Maybe we can agree to disagree on what a nerd really is.  I suppose I prefer to think of myself as a nerdy child because the alternatives are too disheartening.  In any case, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve encountered more and more people who are into the weird things that I’m into.  This has happened organically, both through the magic of the internet and in real life.  Turns out that a lot of smart, funny adults were also into a bunch of weird crap as kids.  Odds are, I probably wasn’t the only eleven-year-old who used to tape reruns of Ready, Steady, Go on VHS and rewatch it over and over again. I think.

Anyway, I think it’s safe to say that when Al and I have kids, they’ll be free to explore a wide range of interests, nerdy or not.  As long as they’re not cool in middle school, we’ll be happy.

Book review Tuesday: The Giver Quartet, by Lois Lowry

Since I’ve been off the radar for a week, I feel that I must make up for it by giving you some bang for your blogging buck.  Today, I want to talk about a series of books I recently finished, the so-called The Giver Quartet, by Lois Lowry.  Four book reviews for the price of one!

I get the sense that most Americans my age read Lowry’s The Giver (1993) at some point in elementary or middle school.  It’s the story of a twelve-year-old boy, Jonas, who lives in a planned community in which emotions — both painful and joyful — have been carefully erased from the populace’s experience.  The Giver traces Jonas’s awakening to the fact that his society, rather than being pleasant and harmonious, is, in fact, monstrous.  In case you haven’t read it, I won’t spoil the plot, but it’s moving and simple and lovely and, I think, a thought-provoking book for young readers (although I’ve re-read it several times in adulthood).

Lowry also wrote three companion books to The Giver: Gathering Blue (2000), The Messenger (2004), and Son (2012). I don’t know how on Earth the existence of these books escaped my notice, but I didn’t learn about them until right before I moved to South Africa (I think because I read this review of Son in the New York Times).  I downloaded all three new books on my Kindle immediately and devoured them each in a few days once I got to Joburg.

Rather than giving away the plots of all three of these books, I want to talk more generally about what I enjoy about Lowry’s writing, both as a writer and a reader, and why I think these books are excellent reading material for both children and adults.

First, Lowry has a gift for writing simply.  Reading her books, I’m reminded that to be a good writer, one doesn’t need to crowd the page with adjectives.  Sometimes her simplest passages are the most moving.  For example, I loved this really simple but evocative passage from Son, her final book in the series:

Alys and Old Benedikt stood watching the preparations for the marriage of Glenys and Martyn. Friends of the couple had built a kind of bower from supple willow branches and now they were decorating it with blossoms and ferns.  Beyond, on tables made of board and set outside for the occasion, the women were arranging food and drink.

“It’s a fine day,” Alys commented, squinting at the cloudless sky.

“I was wed in rain,” Old Benedikt said with a chuckle, “and never noticed a drop of it.”

She smiled at him.  “I remember your wedding day,” she said.  “And Ailish, all smiles.  You must miss her, Ben.”

He nodded.  His wife of many years had died from a sudden fever the winter before, with their children and grandchildren watching in sorrow.  She was buried now in the village graveyard with a small stone marking her place, and room beside her for Old Benedikt when his time came.

Lowry’s pared down language leaves room for emotion and feeling to shine through, unadulterated by too much fluff.  I’m sure part of the reason that Lowry writes this way is because she’s producing children’s literature, but I appreciate it nonetheless, especially because I’m currently reading a book — The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst — with the kind of absolutely opulent language that makes me worry that my writing will never amount to anything.

Another thing I appreciate about The Giver quartet is that they present several visions of societies that have somehow gone wrong, but which are ultimately solved by human compassion.  Sometimes Lowry beats us over the head with the theme a bit – in The Messenger, for instance, a once welcoming community of misfits who were exiled from other societies gradually turns xenophobic and insists on closing off the borders to the village, which results in the surrounding forest becoming evil and devouring those who try to enter or leave.  Okay, we get it, Ms. Lowry, this is an allegory for the United States. Closed borders, evil forest, got it — xenophobia’s bad. Again, though, these are kids’ books, and considering their target audience, they’re remarkably subtle.

I generally find the idea of societies gone wrong interesting — and as the NY Times’ Robin Wasserman points out, Lowry was doing dystopia before it was cool.  The difference between The Giver and, say, The Hunger Games, though, is that there’s an underlying lesson about humanity with The Giver that is much more nuanced and realistic than anything offered by Suzanne Collins.  The society in The Hunger Games went wrong because — well, we’re not sure.  There was a war, and then an oppressive, totalitarian regime took over, leaving some in poverty and others fabulously wealthy.  Although the government produces official propaganda intended to convince the oppressed that this arrangement is, in fact, for their own good, no one really buys it.  People are poor and miserable.  That vision of a dystopian society, as horrible as it may be, is much less insidious than the world that’s presented in The Giver and Son, both of which take place in a peaceful society in which people believe that they’re happy, because they’re unaware of the range of human emotions that their community planners have chosen to cut out of daily life.  As Jonas and Claire (the protagonist of Son) begin to awaken to the possibilities of feeling, they have to make complicated choices about what they want their lives to look like — peaceful and undisturbed by feelings, or messy but rich with emotion.  Unlike the choice faced by Katniss Everdeen — do I kill this other child or not? — Lowry presents moral dilemmas that readers might actually recognize from real life.

Knowing some of Lois Lowry’s backstory makes these books all the more poignant: her son Grey, a fighter pilot in the Air Force, was killed when his warplane crashed in 1995.  Lowry’s bio says of her son’s death:

His death in the cockpit of a warplane left a little girl fatherless and tore away a piece of my world. But it left me, too, with a wish to honor him by joining the many others trying to find a way to end conflict on this very fragile earth.

Lois Lowry

I think Ms. Lowry can be forgiven for overdoing a tad it on the moral storytelling she does in her books – this stuff really matters to her.  And her stories are beautiful.  I know when I have kids, I’ll be reading them The Giver quartet – and I might be re-reading them again before that.

The crime gene

For my thirtieth birthday, Al bought me a genetic testing kit – you can send it away and find out what percentage of Neanderthal DNA you carry, for example, and you can also discover all the hideous genetic diseases you might unwittingly pass to your children.  I know it’s not the most romantic gift, but I am super psyched about it.  And although I haven’t sent in my saliva sample for testing yet, I know one malignant gene that I definitely carry and will in all likelihood pass on to my poor, unsuspecting offspring: the crime gene.

Don’t let the term “crime gene” alarm you: I’m not a criminal. I just enjoy watching TV shows about them.

I come by this predilection naturally, I’m afraid. My mother carries the crime gene, and so did her father.  When I was growing up, I only remember my mother reading true crime books, thick paperbacks with titles like Bitter Harvest, The Stranger Beside Me, and Dead by Sunset.  In the evenings, my mom would always tune into TV shows about criminals: America’s Most Wanted, 48 Hours Mystery, even COPS.  When shows like Forensic Detectives and Cold Case Files started to crop up, these were added to the Early household’s TV repertoire.

Since I was raised by a true crime aficionado, watching shows about murder before bedtime always seemed pretty normal to me, although I do remember asking my dad one time to please not kill me and my mom, since I had seen a show in which the dad did just that. My dad, a bit taken aback, assured me that he wouldn’t kill us, but he couldn’t make any promises about our dog, Max, who was severely misbehaved.  Fair enough.

Bad dog

As I got older, I never got into true crime books but I would watch the occasional crime show on TV, although I preferred Law & Order SVU to true crime.  And, by the way, I don’t trust people who don’t love Law & Order SVU.  Love me, love Benson and Stabler.  The older I get, though, the more and more intrigued I become by true crime.  And I think I’ve hit the true crime jackpot in Joburg.

Here in South Africa, there is, to my delight, 24-hour true crime programming.  We get a channel called, simply, Crime, and also a channel called Discovery ID: Investigation Discovery, which, as far as I can tell, is 99% crime shows, and 1% shows about animals on an African game reserve.   Here are the programs that I’ve watched on Discovery ID so far: Nightmare Next Door, Murder Shift, Who on Earth Did I Marry?, Forensic Detectives, On the Case With Paula Zahn, Disappeared, and True Crimes.

You’d think I’d have trouble sleeping after watching these shows about horrifying crimes – today I saw one about a lady whose husband decapitated her for the insurance money – but, no.  I find these stories fascinating without feeling personally threatened by them.  In fact, one of the hypotheses about why women enjoy the true crime genre more than men do, on average, is because women may pick up useful survival tactics from stories about murder and rape.

But although women are typically more likely to be carriers of the crime gene, men are also susceptible. And I’m starting to think this fascination with true crime might not be strictly genetic after all.  In fact, it might be catching.  To wit: for the last two nights, my husband has requested that we watch crime on TV.  Uh oh.  We’d better get Al tested, too.

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