Whatever Sells

Sometimes it’s hard to figure out how a book landed in a certain section of the library
(or bookstore); it may even be tough to identify the real author. Libraries and stores, of course, are busy public places, constantly in flux. Where’s the book I want, we ask? The answer so often is that it was moved. Why? So many books, so many categories; or so many books, so little space. And many books, these days, are written by authors (or author teams) using pen names. Figuring it all out can be exhausting.

Take The Housekeeper and the Professor, a first novel by the young Japanese writer
Yoko Ogawa. The book was written by written by a first-time novelist using her own name. It should be simple to find in any bookstore or library, right? Well, the book is a lovely, spare novel that could be read by adults or teens. It also includes more than a small dose of mathematics, right there on the page. So—is it a young adult novel or an adult novel or math book? As those commercials for kitchen choppers and cleaning cloths might say, it’s all three! Really. It is. So the decision is the publisher’s initially. How to market it? Math book? Nope; it’s a novel. For teens or adults? Both, of course, like Harry Potter or Twilight. Well, then, who wants to read a novel with math in it?

Not me, or so I thought until Ogawa captured me with her spare, elegant prose and the reminder that math is really about the symmetry of everything, from a leaf to an archway. Near the end of the novel the professor asks a young boy he has grown to love to picture 1 +1 = 0 this way: one bird lands, and then another. Both fly away, and we are left with sky and a tree and a complicated, imaginary number. Now where to you put a book like that? I don’t know about you, but I’m keeping my copy in a backpack these days.

Vampire Tourism

Even though I’ve read the Twilight series (okay, only the first two) and am aware of the whole vampire craze, I was shocked to see its effect on tourism in the actual towns featured in the books. A waitress from Port Angeles, Washington, recently told me that business has picked up at the local Italian restaurant featured in the book. In fact, some tourists are stopping by to dine with those life-size cutouts of Edward.

I found the whole thing hard to believe, so I decided to check it out for myself when we stopped in another Twilight location: Forks. Sure enough, the town was teeming with vampire fanatics buying up Twilight gear and signing on for Twilight tours. A local real estate brochure encouraged would-be entrepreneurs to buy commercial real estate in the hot new “vampire” area. And (why not?) you can buy “vampire blood” (syrup?) along with your Tully’s coffee at the local café.

The whole thing had me thinking of people who select vacation fiction that features the area where they will be traveling. I’m not that organized, but I did find myself fondly remembering a charming old memoir by Betty MacDonald called Onions in the Stew that details the author’s life with her young daughters on Vashon Island. MacDonald, who died in the late 1950s, was better known for The Egg and I. But her obscure memoir stayed with me for years and sprang to mind as I rode the ferry from Seattle toward the Olympic peninsula.

The amazing trees in Washington’s national parks also reminded me of how much I want to read Timothy Egan’s new book, The Big Burn, about the 1910 forest fire that inspired Teddy Roosevelt’s conservation efforts (in Montana and Idaho, not Washington).

So before you pack that next vacation book, why not consider choosing something related to your destination. Wherever you go, there you are, with a great book in your hand.

A Well-Deserved Success

Although I truly enjoyed Kathryn Stockett’s wildly popular novel The Help, I have to admit that her seemingly instant success bugged me. I mean, who writes a first novel that seems incapable of sinking below the fourth slot on the New York Times bestseller list AND gets made into a movie by Spielberg? Some reviewers were as bothered by Stockett’s use of heavy dialect and ability to cash in on a dark chapter in African American history (Stockett is a white Southerner) as they were by her white heroine Skeeter’s decision to begin her writing career by editing and transcribing the stories of African American maids. Was the story really Kathryn or Skeeter’s to tell?

Stockett claims writing the novel helped her deal with homesickness in the wake of 9/11, and, although she did more conventional research as well, she also revealed that Grandaddy Stockett (98!) supplied many of the family stories that allowed Kathryn to understand an era before her time. It seems to me that all great writing is an ability to inhabit the lives of diverse characters different from ourselves. It would, after all, be difficult to populate a fictional world with only a narrow range of characters similar to the author.

Besides, Stockett worked hard to publish the novel. Although she became so discouraged at one point that she stopped tracking her correspondence to agents, she estimates that 60 of them rejected the novel before it finally found a home. So, I’ll stop envying Stockett her success and hope that Grandaddy Stockett is telling her some good stories about the Great Depression, which is the topic of her second novel in progress.

A Beach Read for Foodies

Elin Hilderbrand’s Blue Bistro gives an insider’s view of an upscale Nantucket restaurant where heroine Adrienne Dealey is rebuilding her life after her ex-boyfriend stole her savings and left her flat broke. There to help her pick up the pieces is Thatcher Smith, charming owner of the Blue Bistro, who offers Adrienne a much-needed job, a crash course in the restaurant business, and perhaps more. Complicating the plot is Fiona, the restaurant’s talented and mysterious chef who may or may not be more than just Thatcher’s business partner. Some may find the behind-the-scenes descriptions of the restaurant a tad too detailed, but for foodies it’s the perfect frothy blend of mouth-watering menus and summer romance.

Orange is the New Black

Fashion is the least of Piper Kerman’s worries when she receives a fifteen month sentence for a decade old drug charge. Ivy League educated, Kerman misspent her post-college youth in Europe, where she agreed to pick up a cash payment for a drug-dealing friend. She seemed to think of it more as running an errand for a buddy than money-laundering. Eventually, Kerman tired of her aimless existence and shady friends and moved back to the States.

Ten years later, she is living a happy life in New York with her fiancée when the police knock on the door. Soon Kerman is trading in her comfortable apartment for a cell and the bizarre culture of prison life, where inmates earn as little of 14 cents an hour and toiletries like toothpaste are a treasure to newcomers. At times, prison is as awful as she feared, complete with strip searches and creepy guards. Yet gradually Kerman adjusts, finding small unexpected joys (illegal pedicures and cheesecake? Who knew?) Her eventual affection for her fellow prisoners is touching as is her epiphany that her offense, though nonviolent, was part of a larger industry that destroyed the lives of many of the women she comes to know and care about during her stay. If you’re looking for an offbeat, nicely written memoir, try Piper Kerman’s Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison.

Stuff

Sure, you might think things have piled up around the house because you have a penchant for collecting or have fallen a bit behind on your filing. And you mean to read those magazines as soon as you have more time. I believe you. Just don’t let Randy Frost and Gail Steketee see that backlog, or you might be diagnosed with a subclinical case of hoarding. The two are authors of the new book Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things.

Hoarding is receiving increased attention these days thanks to reality TV. Doctorow also tackled the topic last year in his novel Homer and Langely, about the famous Collyer brothers of New York, two eccentrics who walled out the world, living and dying in a decaying mansion packed to the rafters with stuff. This nonfiction take explores the causes of compulsive hoarding and potential treatments—from self-help groups to expensive forced cleanouts ordered by city governments worried about citizens’ safety.

Most hoarders, it turns out, are highly intelligent and creative; many are self-aware despite their inability to conquer their obsession with things. For them, every cast off object represents a lost opportunity or a failure to imagine how the strangest, smallest objects might find a new use or a new owner. Clearing away the mess requires an ability to focus, decide, and let go that are beyond the reach of hoarders. From children who weep when dirt falls off their shoe (because it belongs to them) to man who rents secret storage space to hide his hoarding from his wife, the book is packed (I couldn’t stop myself) with fascinating portraits.

Are You Done With That Tissue?

On the heels of the recent health care debate comes a timely bestseller about medical history and ethics: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. It tells the story of the woman behind HeLa cells, the first “immortal” line of cells grown in a lab. Although her cells facilitated everything from cancer research to cloning to the polio vaccine, the Lacks family never consented to their donation nor made a dime of profit from their use. In fact, they struggled to afford health care, and one son actually volunteered for medical testing to get a little money and a place to sleep. Lacks herself grew up in poverty, died at a young age from a particularly aggressive form of cervical cancer, and is buried in an unmarked grave.

The book raises interesting questions about medical ethics. Should we care if doctors routinely use discarded tissue for medical research? Should patient consent be required? Should the companies who convert these materials into medical products be the only ones to profit from their use, or do they owe something to the people who provided their raw materials?

Skloot is a gifted writer who profiles the characters in her tale as carefully as any novelist and makes complex scientific topics understandable and engaging reading. The book reminds us of the real, ordinary lives behind every scientific discovery and every historical event. And it illustrates once again how considerations of medical ethics lag behind technological and scientific advances.

Mr. Right?

Forget what those online dating sites say about how they’re able to locate your soul mate with a series of insightful survey questions. Everyone knows it’s tougher than that. It’s especially tough for Polly, the heroine of Nevada Barr’s stand-alone thriller 13 ½. Having survived a horrendous childhood of poverty and neglect, Polly is a successful professor and single mother of two when she meets Marshall Marchand, a New Orleans architect. Her daughters do what any level-headed pair of sisters would do when faced with the prospect of a step-father: they schedule an interview, which Marshall aces. Polly, however, asks for some time to think.

And as the novel proceeds, there’s plenty to consider. Did Marshall rescue Polly and the girls in the nick of time or was he the one who caused their peril? What connection does Marshall have to the fortune teller Polly meets? Why is Marshall’s brother always hovering nearby, and can Polly trust him when he warns her about Marshall?

13 ½ is a decidedly creepy little novel told from multiple points of view, including a disconcerting deadpan voice with an interest in famous serial killers. And then there are the axe murders; did I mention the axe murders?

Fast-paced and tightly written, Barr’s novel made the New York Times best of the year list last year. You won’t be able to put it down.

Now it’s time to read about something nicer. Anyone know of a good novel about kittens drinking warm milk?

Time to Party

So how will you answer this fall when the teacher asks for that “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” theme? If you can stand the heat, it might be time to head to Alabama for the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird. No matter how many times I read that book or see the movie, no matter how many awkward middle school essays it has indirectly forced me to grade over the years, I just never tire of Scout and Jem and Dill and Atticus and Boo. Who can resist the quiet moral authority of Gregory Peck patiently reading on the jailhouse steps, waiting for the mob he knows will arrive? What is more terrifying than the huge shadows on the Radley house at night or the kids fleeing through the woods to escape their unseen attacker?

It’s a nearly perfect novel, funded by the author’s generous friends whose Christmas gift one year allowed her to leave her job in airlines reservations and take time off to write.
Harper Lee, of course, never wrote anything else, but, really, why would you bother? She divides her time between New York and Alabama, still shops at the Piggly Wiggly and likes to drink coffee at Hardee’s. Her work is done. The characters live on. Boo Radley has become the namesake for everything from a rock band to a toy novelty shop in Spokane, and folks in Monroeville plan serve up “Tequila Mockingbirds” come July. I guess I should be horrified that people want to cash in on art this way, but I’m guessing that it doesn’t bother Lee that much. When you’ve written the nation’s favorite novel, you can afford to be generous.

Love in Mid Air

First-time novelist Kim Wright spins a tale of suburban discontent in her new novel Love in Mid Air. Mildly unhappy in her marriage, Elyse finds herself questioning her identity and risking her comfortable life after meeting an intriguing stranger on an airplane. Secret monthly meetings and heated cell phone exchanges ensue as Elyse begins to explore her sexuality and re-examine her life. She points out that in fiction women often leave their marriages while in real life what women do best is stay. Married for many years to a likeable if bland husband, Elyse suddenly begins to long for a more significant career and a deeper connection to those around her as Wright examines why some marriages endure while others collapse.

Although the topic is well-worn and the prose is just average, Wright develops well-rounded characters, creates believable dialogue and keeps the plot moving, tossing in a few twists and turns along the way. Love in Mid Air is a quick, engaging read from an interesting new novelist.

Beautiful Boy

I don’t know about you, but much of what I learned in college and graduate school classrooms has faded away over the years. Sad, especially given how long it took me to pay off those student loans. On rare occasions, though, something floats back. It happened while I was reading Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction by David Sheff. Although Sheff’s memoir of his son’s addiction to methamphetamine is painfully honest and poignant, it becomes an irritating read at times. Why? Well, Sheff fails to avoid what lit-crit types call the “imitative fallacy.” Basically, it’s a fancy way of saying that it’s best not to write a dull story to prove that your character has a dull life.

Sheff’s story is compelling: his charming and intelligent son turns into a virtual stranger, an unpredictable drug addict who lies, steals, and breaks into his own parents’ home. Unfortunately, the natural course of the disease is a seemingly endless cycle of recovery and relapse that can exhaust the patience of even the most loving family. Similarly, Sheff’s carefully crafted prose keeps looping back over the same territory one time too often as Sheff facilitates his son’s recovery then agonizes over the inevitable setbacks. Real life, unfortunately, doesn’t shape itself into a neat narrative arc, but the best memoirists find ways to make the patterns of their lives resonate more deeply each time the writer and reader revisit them. I think of Joan Didion’s brilliant memoir The Year of Magical Thinking with its haunting refrain “life changes in an instant.”

Near the end of the book, Sheff makes the difficult but painful choice to let go of trying to control his son. He enters therapy and begins to live his own life more fully, breaking the heartbreaking cycles of recovery and despair that are so excruciating to read.

A Friend of the Family

A friend once told me that all literary fiction follows the same formula. The narrator introduces herself and, in effect, announces “Hi, I’m a brilliant young woman who’s going to tell you about my troubled family.” In her new novel A Friend of the Family, Laura Grodstein tackles not one but two troubled families linked by lifelong friendship and the budding romance between two of their children.

Alec, the narrator’s son, is a college dropout and aspiring artist at loose ends when he’s suddenly reacquainted with Laura, a beautiful family friend with a notorious past. As a teenager, Laura hid a pregnancy and may have murdered the resulting premature infant shortly after its birth. While Alec’s mother feels Laura deserves compassion and the benefit of the doubt, Alec’s father is less sure. In fact, Pete is horrified when Alec becomes involved with the older Laura. His desire to protect his son eventually borders on obsession and causes him to neglect other responsibilities with life-changing results.

Although the pacing of the novel seems a bit off, with too many plot complications hastily resolved at the end of the book, Grodstein excels at creating fascinating well-rounded characters and asking larger questions. How well do we know the people closest to us? Are we all capable of violence given the right circumstances? A Friend of the Family is an imperfect book but a worthwhile read with memorable characters and an intriguing plot.

No More Writers, Please!

Perhaps they’re just trying to write what they know. I can’t think of any other reason why so many of the novels I’ve read lately feature writers as characters. And it’s led me to the conclusion that we need to pass a law requiring all aspiring novelists to get as many odd and interesting jobs as possible before they settle in to write the great American novel.

Writing about a writer creates two problems. First, if the narrator is a writer, it can lead to some tiresome meta-fictional book-within-a-book stuff. Usually this is a lot more fun for the author than the reader. Take Travel Writing by Peter Ferry. The novel features a writer and writing teacher who witnesses a car accident and becomes obsessed with a dead girl. In some ways, the novel is clever and entertaining, but Ferry spends too much time asking the reader to guess whether the central events in the novel actually happened or were invented by the narrator. The narrator’s writing career also provides an excuse for inserting sections on various trips that are never carefully linked back to the main narrative.

Kevin Casey’s newest novel, A State of Mind, features another author/narrator who keeps a journal recording the events that form the novel. This device seems unnecessary and at times confusing. It would have been far better to launch into the plot without this gimmick.

The other problem with books about writers is that writers live boring lives. Most of them spend the bulk of their time at their desks, writing or doing research. The plot of A State of Mind eventually takes off, but only when the writers in the book (there are three) leave their desks and find some trouble. The same is true for Ninni Holmqvist’s novel The Unit, in which a middle aged writer finds herself consigned to a futuristic medical unit where “dispensable” unmarried, childless middle-aged people are forced to undergo experiments and organ donations for the benefit of the more necessary members of society. Holmqvist’s protagonist lives a life so well ordered that it’s at times dull to read about. A dramatic plot twist midway saves the plot and keeps the reader turning pages, but the development has nothing to do with the narrator’s writing career.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is the exception that proves the rule. Stockett creates a rich novel that just happens to feature an unusual writing project that puts the participants’ lives at risk. Watching as those writers set up clandestine meetings and race against a tight deadline to record the story of their lives is a delight. So, perhaps it is possible to write about a writer, but it’s the rare author who pulls it off.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...

If you’re thinking of April 15th as your tax deadline, it’s time to get your priorities in order. Turns out there’s a much more crucial item on that day’s to-do list: your official entry in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest sponsored by the English department at San Jose State University. The challenge? Pen the opening sentence to the worst novel imaginable in under 50-60 words and submit (or “inflict” as the contest sponsors say) your entry by the deadline, which was selected because Americans associate mid-April with painful submissions and bad fiction.

So who was Bulwer-Lytton? A late-nineteenth-century English politician and novelist famous for the opening line: “It was a dark and stormy night.” Except the line didn’t end there. The reason his prose now seems so dated and mock-able is that the full line was:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

Fair warning: scanning the contest archives for ideas for your own entry may lead to a full lost hour in cyberspace as well as inappropriately loud bursts of laughter. If you find you need most of the next month to wrangle receipts for that other deadline, you can always try the Lyttle Lytton contest; same concept, twenty-five word limit. Good luck!

This Is Where I Leave You

Some books seem so ripe for film adaptation that you have wonder if the author didn’t write them with a movie contract in mind. This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper is a case in point. Judd Foxman, recently separated from his wife and newly unemployed (his wife had an affair with his boss), returns home to mourn his father. The dramedy begins as Judd and his siblings wisecrack their way through a week of condolence calls while negotiating their own troubled relationships, revisiting lost loves, and trying to control their over-the-top psychologist mother. The dialogue is witty, the plot is brisk, and the characters are likeable. Perhaps what’s most surprising is that in between the fistfights and inappropriate sexual trysts, Tropper manages to convey something deeper about the nature of love and family.

Although the open-ended close of the novel may bother some readers, most will find it an extremely engaging read. And (you guessed it) it’s coming soon to a theater near you.