March Madness Round-up

March has come to an end and with it my goal to read a bazillion novellas written by women. I say a bazillion, because I sort of set myself up for failure. I’d originally meant to read one each day and well, things happened, like things are always going to happen, some every day things, and then some more extreme events, like my 2-year-old breaking her femur. She’s going to be ok, but that (along with other minor things) sort of threw off the whole schedule. So instead I ended up reading as many as I could, which if you check back my posts, came out to 22 titles. Not too bad, I guess, considering my time limitations.

As one of my dear friends pointed out, ‘Hey, that’s one for every weekday.’ Plus one :o)

And it served its’ original purpose, which was to get me back into reading fiction, which I’d sort of consciously (and subconsciously) avoided for quite a few months. And I got to read works by authors I’d never even heard of before, some of whom turned out to be amazing writers that I look forward to revisiting in the future.

Some titles that stand out were: Fire in the Blood, The House on Mango Street, Passing, The Return of the Soldier.

I used quite a few resources to come up with my list to read. Here are a few of them:

• Lawrence Public Library Spotlight: 50 Books, 150 pages or less
• 1001 Books Challenge: Page Counts
• Boxall's 1001 Books You Should Read Before You Die Discussion on Goodreads - shorter books

And finally here are some of the books that went unread, in case anyone wants a few more ideas of titles to read :o)

books that sadly went unread...some day, little ones, some day :)

A Month of Novellas, Book 22: Beasts - Joyce Carol Oates (2002)

ack! giant squirrel coming to eat us!

Beasts, a recent-ish work of Joyce Carol Oates, she of the incredulously prolific output, tricks you from the beginning.

It’s narrated by Gillian, a student at a women’s college, who is obsessed with one of her literature professors, Andre Harrow. All she can think of is him and even goes as far as to stalk his wife, a sculptor of grotesque sexual figures, around town.

All of her waking hours seem to be dedicated to analyzing the minutia of their interactions, the whole ‘he said this, could it mean that?’ nonsense that all young women (and older women too) have done throughout millennia. So at first, it all seems like this is going to be about a college girl’s crush, one that has firmly passed the infatuation stage and has landed smack dab in crazy-town. But things aren’t quite that simple and clear cut.

Gillian wonders about her fellow dorm mates, the ones that also attend Harrow’s poetry workshop. She wonders if they’re jealous of his attention to her – this attention that at first is thoroughly in her head. And then at some point he nicknames her Philomela, ostensibly because Gillian is quiet in class:

“I reread the tale of Philomela in Ovid’s Metamorphosis. I hadn’t realized how ugly it was. Philomela, a virgin, is brutally raped by a man who should’ve protected her, her brother-in-law Tereus; after he rapes her, Tereus cuts out her tongue to prevent her accusing him.
[…]
But mute Philomela is no passive victim. With the aid of her loyal sister she takes bloody revenge on her rapist. And in the end she’s metamorphosed into a bird with, as Mr. Harrow said approvingly, “blood-colored” breast feathers.
A happy ending then.
Is it?” p.46

This page tells you almost everything you need to know about what’s about to happen in this horrific psychological nightmare of a story.

Professor Harrow does end up paying more attention to Gillian (as well as her fellow class mates). Instead of writing and discussing their poetry, he has them write personal journals instead, with the deepest, darkest thoughts they have, to be shared with all in the class. For his amusement.

Meanwhile some of the girls in the class have started to drop off like flies. Sybil disappears one day and soon it’s as if she never even existed, at least not in the girls’ lives, not in the college.

And who keeps on setting all the small fires and pulling all the false fire alarms in the college?

Is Professor Harrow, or Andre as he wants his “special” pupils to call him, really interested in Gillian after all?
What’s really going on in his house after hours? And why do so many of his students keep on disappearing?

I really enjoyed my first foray into the worlds created by Ms. Oates and I look forward to reading another of her innumerable works.

A Month of Novellas, Book 21: Bonjour Tristesse - Francoise Sagan (1955)

doing girlie things

Bonjour Tristesse is one of those titles that become part of one’s cultural lexicon without one necessarily knowing why. Is it a film, is it a book, is it a song, that you’ve heard of long ago? Well, in this case it’s all three, but it all started with a book. A book written by Francoise Sagan and published when she was only 18.

We’re introduced to Cecile, a teenage school girl on summer holiday with her father. Her mother died when she was little and since then her father has been quite the raconteur. Cecile used to frequent a convent school but has been now living with her womanizing father for the last two years. He takes her everywhere he goes and some of those places aren’t exactly kid-friendly. Still, Cecile thinks herself lucky to have such a hip dad, even if some of the lessons learned aren’t exactly the best:

“Although I did not share my father’s intense aversion to ugliness – which often led us to associate with stupid people – I did feel vaguely uncomfortable in the presence of anyone completely devoid of physical charm. Their resignation to the fact that they were unattractive seemed to me somewhat indecent.” p.8

Charming, charming people.

They’ve been joined in this holiday by her father’s latest conquest Elsa, a vapid, albeit beautiful young woman, just like the type he usually beds. Everything is going along well – Cecile has met a young man who she plans on seducing – until her father announces there’ll be another guest joining them. Anne Larsen, a friend of his wife, and a type of mentor for Cecile, is coming to stay with them. Cecile immediately realizes this is a truly bad idea, but there’s nothing to dissuade her father.

Not too surprisingly, they can’t manage to maintain a contented home with two women vying for the same man, because that is what Anne is there for after all, and Elsa goes packing. Soon, they’re a happy little family, Anne, Cecile and her father. But Cecile is starting to denote a change.

“But I could not keep from thinking that although my life was perhaps at that very moment changing its whole course, I was in reality nothing more than a kitten to them, an affectionate little animal. I felt them above me, united by a past and a future, by ties that I did not know and which could not hold me.” p.44

Cecile who had previously been so enamored of Anne and her sophistication, now starts to grow resentful of Anne’s control over her own life. And when her father announces he plans on marrying Anne, Cecile’s whole world comes crashing as she foresees how their “happy” home will soon be pacified and neutralized by Anne’s tastefulness and intelligence.

“Yes, it was this I held against Anne: she kept me from liking myself. I, who was naturally meant for happiness and gaiety, had been forced by her into self-criticism and a guilty conscience. Unaccustomed to introspection, I was completely lost.” p. 52

Cecile devises a plan involving her lover and Elsa to break up the happy couple. Once the plan is put into motion, she keeps on wavering on and off of it on the page, making the reader sometimes think that she regrets it and wants to put an end to it. But she’s one of the most fickle characters I’ve ever read and is soon enthused again about not only the original plan but in particular about her skills in manipulating so many different people into doing her bidding.

The ending will come as a shock, unless you remember the first paragraph of the novel:

“A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me, but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.” p.5

A wonderfully written novella about the shallowness and selfishness of youth as well as about a young woman’s burgeoning sexuality.

A Month of Novellas, Book 20: Fire in the Blood - Irene Nemirovsky (2007)

in the heat of the kitchen

I think almost everyone who reads even a little has by now heard of Irene Nemirovsky. She of the tragic tale, of the hidden manuscript years afterwards discovered. She wrote a novel called Suite Francaise which was lost after she was taken away to Auschitwz where she would later be killed. The novel was discovered and published recently to much acclaim. Now what I didn’t realize is that she was a well known writer all along. She was published during her lifetime and Suite Francaise turned out to be only one of the manuscripts that she left behind for safekeeping. One of the others was Fire in the Blood.

While researching which books I’d read (or try to read) for this month’s theme, I came upon this novella by the same author and thought it would be a good intro to her work.

The story takes place over many years. It’s narrated by Silvio, a late middle-age bachelor living in the French countryside. Once upon a time he went and traveled the world, but now he’s returned back home where he’s been settled for some time. And he’s happy to be mostly alone.

“But, in spite of everything, my idea of the perfect evening is this: I am completely alone; my housekeeper has just put the hens in their coop and gone home, and I am left with my pipe, my dog nestled between my legs, the sound of the mice in the attic, a crackling fire, no newspapers, no books, a bottle of red wine warming slowly on the hearth.” pp.4-5

I loved this description, which is something that in the past I might have wished for as well. But I’m not quite so anti-social anymore. I found myself marking this book more than any other one I’ve read this month. Each page one turns, there’s another paragraph that’s just begging to be quoted. I could probably write the equivalent to a five page post about Fire in the Blood. So much happens, the language is so rich, it’s all just so wonderful…but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Silvio goes on to tell us of the many goings-ons of his village and its’ inhabitants.

“Old Uncle Chapelain who married his cook, the two Montrifaut sisters, who haven’t spoken to each other in fourteen years, even though they live in the same street, because one of them once refused to lend the other her special jam-making pan, and the lawyer whose wife is in Paris with a travelling salesman, and … My God, a wedding in the provinces is such a gathering of ghosts! In big cities, people either see each other all the time or never, it’s simpler.” p.14

Being a city-slicker my whole life, I assumed that most of what would happen would be very, well, provincial, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

We’re soon introduced to Silvio’s extended family, his cousins, their children, etc. Some are about to marry, some are about to be unfaithful, but the seasons go on and on.

“Once again, darkness falls at three o’clock, the crows circle the skies, there’s snow on the roads and, in each isolated house, life closes in on itself even more, or so it seems – the space it offers to the outside world grows even smaller: long hours spent sitting by the fire doing nothing, not reading, not drinking, not even dreaming.” p.29

In the middle of all this bucolic living, we start to see an inner layer of rottenness develop and the same kind of luridness only thought to exist within the (for the most part) anonymity of city life. Soon there are deaths and confessions and long held resentments brought back to life and you’ll get sucked into it all. I don’t really want to give away any more of the plot because a lot happens and the surprise of it all is half the fun. But rest assured this is an excellent novella.

It’s the type of book you simply don’t want to end because the writing is so beautiful and the setting is so gorgeous and you’ve felt like you’ve actually been in the French countryside and have met all these people and regardless of their faults, you don’t want to leave. But you know nothing lasts forever and that it too must conclude. And so you linger over the last few pages, gasping at what’s happened in the end and then you close it and you are content because you’ve spent a day in Ms. Nemirovsky’s world.

A Month of Novellas, Book 19: The Driver's Seat - Muriel Spark (1970)

checking out some books in the library

I didn’t set out to read ‘genre’ titles. I’m not really familiar with mystery or sci-fi genre authors anyway, and I wanted this to be a list of literary novellas written by women. I’m sure someone else can do a great list of fantasy novellas by women, etc, but that’s not what I set out to do.

But somehow without meaning to, I’ve ended up reading a few books that I would definitely categorize into genres, like today’s title The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark.

I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to read anything by Ms. Spark, so this was my introduction to her work…and what an introduction it was.

Nothing seems quite sane in the world of our protagonist Lise. She comes from a Northern European country – Denmark – and has decided, or rather has been pretty much forced, to take a vacation in the warmer climes of Italy.

We’re introduced to her as she goes shopping for a travel outfit and completely and utterly overreacts to something a salesperson says to her about a stainfree fabric. We start to get an inkling that not all is well in the mind of Lise. She keeps on talking about going to meet her boyfriend on holiday, but no such boyfriend exists. She means to approach someone and see if they’ll ‘fit’.

But at some point, I start to wonder if everyone she meets is a bit mad as well, as they end up saying the oddest things:

“I’m from Johannesburg,’ says the woman, ‘and I have this house in Jo’burg and another at Sea Point on the Cape. Then my son, he’s a lawyer, he has a flat in Jo’burg. In all our places we have spare bedrooms, that makes two green, two pink, three beige, and I’m trying to pick up books to match. I don’t see any with just those pastel tints.” pp. 22

I know that sometimes interior decorators will buy books by the foot from bookshops for the less literary of their clients, to give them some intellectual cache. But a woman picking out a book at an airport bookshop to match her spare bedroom? It strained credulity.

Lise then encounters not one, not two, but three odd men in the airplane she’s flying in. One of whom changes seats during takeoff just so he doesn’t have to sit next to her and another who pesters her about his macrobiotic diet and yin and yang and who basically wants to sleep with her asap.

She manages to elude the ‘hippy’ pest once she’s landed, promising to meet him later just so she can get away from him. After a strange exchange in her hotel, she ends up going for some food and shopping with an elderly lady staying at the same hotel.

They then talk at each other without one really ever answering the other, but seemingly having two different monologues at once. Lise seems to like Mrs. Fiedke’s company but when she spots that she’s become unwell while in a bathroom stall at a department store they’ve wandered into, she leaves her there to her own fate while she goes browsing all over the store. The callousness and weirdness of it is a bit overwhelming. You just keep on wanting to shake Lise and say ‘But what about Mrs. Fiedke? Did you forget about her?’

Mrs. Fiedke seems to have a couple of screws missing as well though:

“They are demanding equal rights with us,’(…) ‘That’s why I never vote with the Liberals. Perfume, jewellery, hair down to their shoulders, and I’m not talking about the ones who were born like that. I mean, the ones that can’t help it should be put on an island. It’s the others I’m talking about (…) But they want their equality today. All I say is that if God had intended them to be as good as us he wouldn’t have made them different from us to the naked eye...” pp.72

In case you couldn’t tell what she’s talking about, she’s referring to 1960’s men, with their crazy hair, etc. The whole thing is so batty, that it makes you wonder about the sanity of the entire human race, since seemingly everyone Lise meets says something slightly bonkers.

But the craziest is yet to come…

This is a tiny book – 100 pages – but damn if it doesn’t pack enough madness and suspense for anyone.

I probably haven’t done it justice here, it’s a hard book to describe in a way. But if you enjoy thrilling and inexplicable stories, then this is the one for you.

A Month of Novellas, Book 18: The Age of Grief - Jane Smiley (1987)

matchy, matchy library lamp ;o)

I don’t usually like novels about infidelity. Not sure why, but just like stories about addiction, be it alcohol or drugs, stories of infidelity usually bore me to tears.

They seem to me to often be about selfish people who need ‘novelty’ in their lives and who don’t care about whom they hurt and leave in their trail. And most often they’re from the point of view of the one who strayed, which usually makes them even more galling to me.

So I didn’t exactly have a great deal of expectations before starting The Age of Grief by Jane Smiley…but I was surprised, very pleasantly surprised.

The Age of Grief is about a young family of dentists, Dana, Dave and their three little girls. The parents are in their mid-thirties and have been together since dental school. They even have a practice together where they each have an assistant as well as two receptionists hired from the local college. They’re struggling with parental tasks that prove to be universal. Dana speaking about their youngest Leah:

“Dana was overjoyed but suspicious. She would say, “No one grows up to be this nice. How are we going to wreck it?” p.130

Yours truly – I have a 2-year-old - struggles with this same thought as I often wonder how in the world will I be messing up this kid?

They have a contented life together or so Dave thinks until he suspects that Dana is having an affair.

Well…he doesn’t know for sure, nor does he want to know, sometimes going to ridiculous lengths to keep Dana from ‘confessing’ or confiding in him.

Dave senses that she loves someone else but can’t bring herself to tell him…and he wants to keep it that way. He’s become morose about life in general:

“I am thirty-five years old, and it seems to me that I have arrived at the age of grief. Others arrive there sooner. Almost no one arrives much later. I don’t think it is years themselves, or the disintegration of the body. (…) It is not only that we know that love ends, children are stolen, parents die feeling their lives were meaningless. It is not only that, by this time, a lot of acquaintances and friends have died and all the others are getting ready to sooner or later.” P.154

Although I myself have lately been going through my own Age of Grief, I think it has nothing to do with my age (I'm a bit older than Dave). Simply circumstances have made the last six months a sad period. So although I think this is to be a very powerful paragraph, I also can’t help to think that maybe he needs to move to a town that has a less high death rate. Of course everyone dies eventually, but if you’re 35, you shouldn’t have lots of people dying on you and everyone else about to. It’s a bit of a ridiculous and fatalistic statement to make. But then again, this shows where his head is at, at this particular moment.

There are definitely moments of pure sadness in Dave’s attempt to smooth everything over and ignore all the signs of Dana’s betrayal. He seems to think that if he can keep her from articulating her thoughts and feelings out loud, then he can keep their family together. But sometimes the pretense gets to him:

“(…) Oh, God! Dana, I’m sorry I’m me!” That’s what I said. It just came out. She grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me down on top of her and hugged me tightly, and said in a much evener voice, “I’m not sorry you’re you.” p.166

This was a wonderful and intimate portrait of a marriage about to self-destruct. I loved all the little details of family life and about each of their little girls. The writer took time to flesh them out as real human beings rather than just treat them as addendums to their parents’ marriage.

A Month of Novellas, Book 17: The Man in the Picture - Susan Hill (2007)

waiting for f. to be seen at the e.r.

I’m going to admit something a bit silly here. I’m a bit of a scaredy-cat. I refuse to watch horror film s and even though I don’t believe in ghosts, I usually stay away from anything having to do with them. I’m prone to nightmares and have a fertile imagination, so I don’t need any further help to disturb my sleep.

But then I spotted this little adorable volume The Man in the Picture by Susan Hill and I thought I had to read it. The fact that it’s subtitled ‘A Ghost Story’ didn’t put me off checking it out of the library but I did put off picking it up to read for a few days…’cause that’s the kind of ninny that I am.

I had nothing to fear. This book is scary but not in the usual way that would keep me awake. Creepy, but more intellectually so rather than viscerally. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The story concerns the tale of Theo Parmitter, a retired Cambridge tutor who’s lived his whole adult life at the college. One of his former students, Oliver, likes to visit him whenever he’s in town and spend an evening in conversation. Parmitter is an accomplished storyteller but during this particular visit, decides to share an unusual story. He tells Oliver about one of his paintings, a Venetian Carnival scene painted in the 18th century, and how he came to have it.

And this is how we come to know about the cursed painting and about the mysteries within it. Parmitter has been collecting art since he was a young man and during one of his many forays into art auctions spotted this painting and felt compelled to buy it. It was grungy and a bit beat up at the time and no one really fought him for it…until after the auctioneer’s gavel had come down and one last bid was made. But it was considered too late by the auction house and Parmitter was the winner, fair and square.

Alas, the would-be bidder could not be dissuaded from pressing Parmitter to sell him the painting for a healthy profit. He pesters and pesters him:

“My client gave me instructions…I was not to go back without the picture. It has taken years to track it down. I have to have it.” p.18

And after Parmitter turns him down, the emissary has a chilling warning for him:

“You will regret it. I have to warn you. You will not want to keep that picture.’ (…) ‘Do you understand? Sell me the picture. It’s for your own good.’ Id.

Parmitter decides to ignore all of this and takes his painting to be restored, but when it’s eventually up in his rooms, he starts to feel uneasy about it.

There’s something about it, about the look of some of the figures in the painting, that seems eerie and terrifying. One of the figures is being dragged away by two other men and he has an expression of horror upon his face.

Years later he receives a letter from a Countess regarding this same painting. Her representative has seen a photo of the painting in a magazine – Parmitter has been interviewed and photographed for an article about Chaucer – and beseeches him to join her at her home in Yorkshire so they may further discuss the painting.

Feeling up for an adventure, Parmitter agrees, never realizing what chilling tale he’s about to hear from the mouth of the Countess.

It would be wrong of me to say any more of the plot as I’d hate to give it away. Ms. Hill has conjured up a fascinating story of jealousy gone mad, changed lives and the utter power of a painting to wreak misery upon its’ owners. Eerie, macabre and well, damn spooky, this is indeed a great ghost story.

A Month of Novellas, Book 16:The International Shop of Coffins - Tiphanie Yanique (2010)

down in the tropics, a.k.a. our library

I was immediately intrigued by the name of this story The International Shop of Coffins. I’ll confess to having a bit of a morbid streak and of having read a couple of funeral related tomes in my time. So when this title popped up in one of my many research lists, I quickly reserved it at the New York Public Library. I was also interested in it because not too many of the novellas I found were written by women of color and Tiphanie Yanique is a Caribbean woman to boot.

This very small novella was broken up into three parts, each one a version of the same story, but each part concentrating on one of the participants.

It starts off with Simon Peter Jatta’s story, a local priest who is friends with the shop’s owner Anexus. They keep each other company in the shop in between clients. The shop is international in that it imports designs from abroad to supplement the more traditional types of coffins. So in addition to plain pine boxes, Anexus keeps a hefty marble coffin on display as well as little ones shaped like sneakers for small children. As Simon Peter and Annexus converse, two young girls from the island come in to the shop. They’re obviously there out of a morbid curiosity of their own but they lie to the men and say that they’re doing a school project on mourning.

After they leave, we get to find out Simon Peter’s back story and how he came to be a priest. He’d started out as an apprentice to a wood carver and through no fault of his own had practically been disowned by his parents over a sexual attack.

Then the story starts over again and we get to find out about Anexus Corban and how he came to have this shop. His story to me was the hardest to believe, a ‘love’ story that was a little too ridiculous for even a romantic like me.

And then we get to have the story start over a third time, but this time we get to meet Gita “Pinky” Manachandi, one of the girls who’d wandered into the shop at the very beginning. Her story to me was the most crushing and effective of the three, with a surprising and tragic end.

I’m not sure I really enjoyed the re-telling of the story at the beginning of each part , although it was interesting how tiny little details would change like who the plain pine coffin was meant for, as if it was a giant game of telephone. But Ms. Yanique has a gift for description and by the end I felt like I’d been in the islands and had myself visited Mr. Corban’s International Shop of Coffins.

A Month of Novellas, Book 15: Walks with Men - Ann Beattie (2010)

bedroom mementos (apologies for crappy pic)

I’m going to cut right to the chase and say that I really disliked this book.

That’s right, before I’ve even said what the title and who the author is, I’ll state that I hated this book. Just so we know where we’re standing.

I spotted this little tome in one of my research lists and thought it would be good to read something contemporary. This was published in 2010 after all, so besides a book put out this year, I thought this very much fit the bill. Well, its’ timeliness has nothing to do with my hatred for it, but let me actually say something about it.

This was another writer I’d never read. I’ve seen her name here and there, but well, there’s not quite enough time in a day, in a week, in a lifetime to get to all the writers one hears about, so this was my first foray into her work.

Walks with men at 102 small pages should’ve been a breeze to read and instead turned into a chore with each page becoming a Herculean task for me. As in it was Herculean to not just throw it across the room. But it was a library book so I had to be careful.

It concerns Jane, a recent Harvard graduate who seems to think she’s a lot smarter than she actually is. How else to explain the ridiculous risks she takes in her life? Neil, a sometimes writer as well as a professor who promises to fill her in into the mysteries of mankind. That’s right. Mankind. He promises her that if she, well, sleeps with him, he’ll teach her everything she’d ever want to know about men. Like he’s some sort of savant on the workings of the male mind. The set up is already ridiculous and I’m already annoyed at Jane and at Neil and particularly at the author for writing down this crap.

Yes, recent college graduates can be a bit naïf, but really? ‘Hi person I’m not actually attracted to that I’ve just met. What’s this you say? You’ll teach me all your great ‘wisdom’ in exchange for me sleeping with you? And I’ll leave my loving boyfriend and go against what everyone I know thinks in order to be with you, oh great guru?’ Give me a break.

Interspersed throughout is a litany of name-dropping, 80s NYC references to make sure that you know that you’re reading a story set in the 1980s. It all feels so forced, like someone has just been told that there aren’t enough mentions of Basquiat or AIDS, and could you please fit some more in?
Nothing about it feels real, and when one of the characters takes off inexplicably or another gets pushed unto the subway tracks (Really? Really??), it just adds to the disaffection for the whole thing.

The jacket of this book came complete with reference to Ms. Beattie’s various previous awards. I don’t think she received any for this one and its’ vapidness makes me unwilling to try out another one of her works.

A Month of Novellas, Book 14: When the Emperor was Divine - Julie Otsuka (2002)

on kitchen window looking north

When the Emperor was Divine is a novella by Julie Otsuka about what happened to a Japanese family when it was forced to enter an internment camp in the US during WWII.

I think by now we’ve all read about this shameful part of our past, when we crossed oceans to stop the Axis nations from interning (and killing) people in concentration camps whilst at the same time interning our own people. I would’ve liked to have been a fly on the wall when that decision was made:

--We’re fighting the Germans, the Italians and the Japanese. Shall we put all the American citizens whose family originates from those countries in camps?
--Er…well, most Americans are probably a bit German and there are loads of Italians too. Besides you can’t easily tell them apart. But we could go ahead and round up all the Japanese-Americans. They look different so are easier to spot and well, we’re all a bunch of racists, so they’ll need ‘protecting’ during the war.

Was that what happened? I can’t fathom such a discussion, but then again at present we have prisons where we ‘temporarily’ throw illegal immigrants into, people whose only crime was to enter the US illegally and who have otherwise been model citizens. So maybe we shouldn’t feel so superior in comparison with our WWII compatriots.

When the Emperor was Divine is a fictional account of what this historic event actually meant for individual people. I think it should be made required reading in classes dealing with WWII and the US’s involvement. So that we don’t assume that ‘we’ were the good guys without a fault to our name.

It breaks your heart almost from page one, when the family, who by now has been reduced by one – the father/husband has already been arrested and sent to a camp – has been informed that they must pack and leave to unknown destinations. The mother goes about buying little household implements, seemingly innocent ones but which very soon are discovered to have tragic purposes.

The reduced family - mother, daughter and son - have to be rid of their pets and pack only essentials like clothing, pots and pans and linens. How do you go about packing up your entire life in order to go off to prison? The pets are what got to me the most:

“She stroked the underside of his chin and he closed his eyes. “Silly bird,” she whispered. She closed the window and locked it. Now the bird was outside on the other side of the glass. He tapped the pane three times with his claw and said something but she did not know what it was. She could not hear him anymore.” pp.19-20

This is something that had truly never occurred to me. What happens to one’s animals when a family is forced to flee or is imprisoned? Having watched my share of footage of WWII deportations, I was always so immersed in the terror of what was happening to the people that their animals’ fates never occurred to me. This story truly brings to light the additional horror of displaced, lost, abandoned, killed animals. A pet parrot now forced to fend for itself, a loyal dog made to disappear…

But this was only the beginning.

Once at the camp, which although not a Nazi-run nightmare, is horrific nonetheless, the boy wonders if he’s to blame for their fate:

“…Something he’d done yesterday – chewing the eraser off his sister’s pencil before putting it back in the pencil jar – or something he’d done a long time ago that was just now catching up with him. Breaking a chain letter from Juneau, Alaska. (…) Forgetting to touch the hat rack three times when the iceman drove by.” p.57

The years pass, monotonously by, sometimes with letters from their father, sometimes not. They wonder if their friends think about them and wonder where they’ve gone. And then finally one day the war ends and they can return to their home. But well, you can never go home again, can you?

This is a wonderful book with touches of detail that place the reader right there in the barracks with them. I truly can’t wait to read another work by Ms. Otsuka.

P.S.If you’re an animal lover, be aware that there’ll be a very difficult scene early on, but it’s a thoroughly necessary one.

A Month of Novellas, Book 13: The Return of the Soldier - Rebecca West (1918)

on train back home from nyc

This is such a punch in the gut of a book.

I knew of Rebecca West, but only as a travel writer, she of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, the classic tome about Yugoslavia published in 1941. It's been sitting on my travel shelf for a while, and I'll honestly admit to being a bit daunted by its' 1,232 pages. Yeah, that's not a typo.

What I didn't realize before embarking on this month's quest, is that she was also an acclaimed novelist. The Return of the Soldier was her first novel published in 1918 and damn if it's not pretty amazing.

The basic plot is that a 30-something wealthy landowner returns from having fought in WWI suffering from amnesia.

He's very much aware of who he is, but he seems to have forgotten the intervening last 15 years of his life, thinking himself to be still be about 20 or so and well in love with a young innkeeper's daughter, Margaret.

But what he's forgotten is that he didn't marry that young woman and instead married Kitty, an incredibly shallow excuse for a human being, with whom he'd been living unhappily up until the moment he was called up for duty.

I'll give Kitty one wee break. Part of the reason why Chris - the returning soldier - is unhappy is because they lost their young child at the age of 2. No marriage can survive that sort of trauma unscathed, so Kitty is not solely to blame. But dammit if she's not also incredibly unlikeable. Her reaction to a visitor with an 'unfashionable' address:

"As the girl went, Kitty took up the amber hairpins from her lap and began swathing her hair about her head. "Last year's fashion," she commented; "but I fancy it'll do for a person with that sort of address."" p.9.

There's also Jenny, a cousin, living in the house. Her presence is never really explained, how is it that she's come to live with the couple, but she was Chris's childhood playmate as we find out later on.

But really both these women are detestable. This is Jenny's reaction to Margaret coming by with news of Chris (the women don't yet know who she really is, just think her a stranger who's come to their door):
"Yet she was bad enough. She was repulsively furred with neglect and poverty, as even a good glove that has dropped down behind a bed in a hotel and has lain undisturbed for a day or two is repulsive when the chambermaid retrieves it from the dust and fluff." pp.10.

At this point, they are yet unaware of the connection between Margaret and Chris, which would have made it a bit more understandable to be mean about her, but instead she's a perfect stranger to them. Someone who's come by to help them and they treat her and think of her as if she was the lowest scum, like an inanimate dirty object. I just kept on fuming the whole time they're speaking to her or of her.

But then again the joke's on them, as Chris doesn't recognize Kitty in the least and wants to spend all his time with Margaret...who not surprisingly has married and formed her own life as well during the past 15 years since they last met.

One should feel for Kitty and Jenny, for the sheer horror of having had their husband and relation go off to war to only come back having absolutely forgotten one of them, but instead I ended up rooting for Margaret and Chris to reestablish a life together. Again, this is what Jenny says to Chris before he's had the opportunity to see Margaret once again:

"She isn't beautiful any longer. She's drearily married. She's seamed and scored and ravaged by squalid circumstances. You can't love her when you see her."" pp.39.

Gah! What horrid people! Apparently as soon as one starts to age even a bit - they're in their mid-thirties for fuck's sake! - one becomes unlovable. Grrr.
Thankfully Chris is an actual real human being and of course is ecstatic to see Margaret once again.

I wish I could say it got better, that the women change and become better human beings and that there's an amiable resolution to all this. But of course there couldn't be. There are other spouses and traumas and pettiness and it'll make you cry. 

The language is beautiful and in the space of 80 pages you'll have felt like you really got to know a few human beings in depth.

But as for the crying thing, don't say I didn't warn you.

A Month of Novellas, Book 12: Passing - Nella Larsen (1929)

somewhere in the apartment

So apparently I'm the last person in the world to have heard of Nella Larsen and of Passing.

Just browsed wikipedia where I'm told this book is taught in loads of universities across the country. Hmm, guess my education wasn't as great as I'd thought...oh wait, I already knew that ;)

I used a few lists that I found here and there of novellas in order to eventually come up with a list of 31 titles to read for this month. I'm unsure on which list Passing was on, but am I ever glad I included it.

Ms. Larsen's writing is wonderful and very much places you smack dab in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance. The style is easy and engaging, one of those times where everything comes together to form a great book.

The basic premise is that one of two childhood friends has decided to 'pass' in white society.

Both women are light-colored blacks and while one, Irene, has followed the 'conventional' path and has married a black man, the other one, Clare, has decided to pass herself off as white and marry a white man. This doesn't mean that women who identified as black didn't marry white men and vice-versa as we get to see when we meet another chidhood friend, Gertrude, who has done exactly that. But Clare decided that she wanted to instead 'become' a white woman.

She pops back into Irene's life by pure chance - they accidentally meet in a rooftop hotel bar - and decides to reconnect as she's missed being with those of her own race. When Irene questions her about the danger she's placed herself in by not telling her husband of her race, Clare tells her about her terror when pregnant:

"No, I have no boys and I don't think I'll ever have any. I'm afraid. I nearly died of terror the whole nine months before Margery was born for fear that she might be dark. Thank goodness, she turned out all right. But I'll never risk it again. Never! The strain is simply too--too hellish." pp. 36

Clare's husband, Jack, then meets the women and we're treated to his nickname for his wife: 'Nig'. He clarifies by saying:

"Well, you see, it's like this. When we were first married, she was as white as--as--well as white as a lily. But I declare she's gettin' darker and darker. I tell her if she don't look out, she'll wake up one of these days and find out she's turned into a nigger." pp. 39

Just a charming man.
Well, after hearing this and further horrid things out of Jack's mouth, Irene decides she no longer wants anything to do with Clare. Clare's chosen this life and Irene will in no way give her away, but neither does she want to have to lie - Jack assumed Irene was white - in any way to help Clare out.

Two years later, Irene once again hears from Clare. Clare desperately wants to reconnect with her roots and knowing that Irene and her family live up in Harlem, wants to visit the hot spots with them.

Not too surprisingly, Irene wants nothing to do with this, but eventually relents under Clare's persistent badgering...that and the fact that Clare just shows up at her house uninvited.

"I can't, I can't," she said. "I would if I could, but I can't. You don't know, you can't realize how I want to see Negroes, to be with them again, to talk with them, to hear them laugh." pp. 71

Clare fully immerses herself in the culture that she'd previously tried to escape from, but there are always consequences to living a double life as we soon find out in the shocking climatic conclusion. 

But for that you'll just have to read it yourself. It's good. Really good.

A Month of Novellas, Book 11: Madame de Treymes - Edith Wharton (1907)

on desk, dreaming of far away places

How do you solve a problem like Madame de Treymes? Intrigue, intrigue, intrigue.

I've read Edith Wharton before. What college graduate hasn't? Ethan Frome is a handy little novel when someone is trying to be lazy about reading a classic. Short, few characters, perfect for the non-literary sort of college student.
But I'd already read that a long time ago, along with The Age of Innocence, a longer novel, and so had to come up with another title.

...Well, I say I had to, but no, no one forced me. But I thought I'd give Ms. Wharton another go seeing as she's a master at what she does.

It's just that what she does I tend to dislike. That's probably on me, and has nothing to do with the quality of her work.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Madame de Treymes is a wisp of a book, only 57 pages from beginning to end. But oh, how I wanted it to be even shorter.

It deals with an American, John Durham, who has fallen in love with Madame de Malrive, an American born married woman, who has been estranged from her husband for many years.
He'd like to marry her, but at first is unsure if she's even interested in him. Durham soon finds out that although she's receptive to his love, she's unwilling to do anything about it, as she is chained by deeper bonds to her separated husband.

Her husband's family is what we'd now call, very old school, and will have no divorce scandal damaging their standing in society. So even though her husband's indiscretions are spoken of as more than enough reason for a judge to grant a divorce - my mind started to wonder far and afield at what he could've done that was so egregious; a mere affair didn't seem like such an overwhelming reason in a French court - his family is wholly against it and will take away her child if she tries to divorce.

So Madame de Malrive asks Mr. Durham to find out for her if the family is in any way willing to allow her to divorce. If they'll even consider it, for she fears that to even bring it up, alone will be enough for them to take away her young son.

We are then treated to an intrigue worthy of Les liaisons dangereuses with Madame de Treymes saying one thing and then another and then another, but did she mean it? etc, etc, ad nauseum.

All it came to in the end for me was a whole lot of fuss about some rich people. This sounds possibly like reverse snobbery, but just as reading The Age of Innocence many years ago left me absolutely cold, so did this shorter work.

Wharton is a wizard at depicting the life and times of the people in her milieu and I'm glad she did. But I still can't bring myself to care about what games spoiled, entitled people will play with each other.

A Month of Novellas, Book 10: The Railway Police - Hortense Calisher (1966)

vacationing on bedroom dresser

I will admit that I'd never heard of Hortense Calisher before somehow finding out she'd written some novellas that fit the bill for this month's project.

And I was a little appalled at my ignorance. Here's a woman whose work has been put out by the Modern Library - whose selections I highly respect - and forget about reading one of her works, I hadn't even heard her name. Ever.

Well, now I've read one of her books. I won't be judging her work by just this one title, as it would be unfair, but geesh.

The Railway Police is a strange little novel, only 44 pages long, but yet it seemed soooo much longer.

We get to meet a social worker who suffers from a congenital illness which has made all (or most) of the hair on her head to fall off. She's compensated for this by having a large and expensive collection of wigs which she keeps in a room of their own in her apartment.

And then she has a transformative experience while riding a commuter train. She witnesses a young man who's attempting to ride the train for free, try to escape the clutches of the railway police and instead get dragged away from the train.
Apparently seeing this makes her see that she's been living an untruthful life and so decides to become a hobo. I wish I was making this up. She has some money - how else could she afford all those magnificent wigs on a social worker's salary? - but arranges it all with her lawyer so she can become a 'vagrant'.

Before this all happens, we are treated to a sad tale of a lover's rejection of her baldness, but in the end, and yes, I am giving away the ending, she becomes a vagrant...on purpose.

This bothered me from beginning to end. The writing was overly done and the set up just beyond belief.

Like I said, I don't want to judge Ms. Calisher by this story alone, so I'll try out another one soonish. But this one definitely was not for me.

A Month of Novellas, Book 9: Ticknor - Sheila Heti (2005)

living room windowsill

Ticknor is an odd little novel. It deals with the 'friendship' between George Ticknor and William H. Prescott, both writers from the 19th century.

Sheila Heti has imagined what such a friendship might have been like and relates it from the point of view of well, Ticknor.

We never get anyone else's opinion or view, which in itself is not unusual. There is one narrator and he is Ticknor. But after a while it starts to get a bit grating.

I had problems with this book from the very beginning. I couldn't actually figure out what was going on at first as there seemed to be a dialogue going on without identifiable participants. It's only after I read a couple of pages of this, that I came to realize that it was Ticknor arguing with himself, but sometimes in the third person. Ugh.

Don't get me wrong, there are flashes of great writing in this here book. Like the following:

"There were no books when I was a boy. Had I seen a book I would have thought it was a foreign object. I would have made it do tricks. I would have given it a bowl of food and waited for it to eat." pp.55

The only problem is that already something very similar to this had been said on page 3. And I could never really be sure of what year it was. It seemed as if Ticknor was on his way to a soiree with his friend whilst carrying a pie (the details of which were admittedly funny) and then suddenly he'd be discussing Prescott's funeral. It became a bit ridiculous actually.

It also becomes very apparent that Ticknor is incredibly jealous of his more prosperous - in every way imaginable - friend. After mentioning how his friend's home is well-appointed and has the best of everything, he says:

"My speckled lamp is very nice, though nicer when it isn't on. Still, everyone who visits remarks. No reason to think of moving. Wherever you'd end up would be full of dust in the same way, the same thick air and smell of smoke and the kitchen always without bread." pp.58

Ticknor is such a drip. Forever exalting and envying his friend, yet doing nothing really to change his present condition. And although he thinks of himself as a dear friend to Prescott, he's anything but. On the occasion of Prescott's father dying:

"Months later Prescott asked me, offhandedly, whether I had been at the house that day. Of course I had, I told him, and he apologized, smiling a little, explaining that he had been in such a state that, to this day, he could remember nothing of the weeks that followed his father's death except for flashes here and there, but nothing of the continuity of events or even whether he had slept or not, which I found hard to believe." pp.78

What a selfish prick!
Oh, your 'best' friend has had a traumatic experience and so he can't exactly recall whether you attended his dad's funeral or not, but you doubt him? Stupid, stupid man.

Still, that's not a reason to dislike a book, hating it's narrator/main character. But there came a point where there didn't seem to be any reason to continue reading the book. Yes, the narrator was incredibly jealous of Prescott's success, yes, he couldn't really be relied upon to say anything truly truthful, but this same sort of thing just went on and on. It was like reading some teenage girl's rants about the popular girl in her school. Occasionally amusing, but for the most part just dull and stupid and about people you didn't know or cared about.

After I finished reading this book, I decided to look up both of these writers as they were based on real persons. Well, let's just say that Ms. Heti has taken incredible liberties with their life stories. Good for her, using them as inspiration and then just taking off with it. I just wish it had been less deluded teenage girl and more fellow artist envy.

A Month of Novellas, Book 8: The House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros (1984)

in bedroom

You know how sometimes you read a book and you become jealous because you wished you'd written it?

No. 
Just me?

Well, that's how I felt about The House on Mango Street.

It's such a wonder of a little book. A series of vignettes really, all about Esperanza Cordero, or Hope Lamb, if we were to go all Anglo and translate her name from the Spanish.
Hmm, Lamb of Hope. Seems fitting for a girl who yearns to escape her surroundings.

But even if its' made up of more than 40 separate stories, they all mesh together to tell the wondrous story of Esperanza.

I say wondrous, but nothing much happens here. A young child of immigrants is witness to the comings and goings of her neighborhood. She sees some of her classmates grow up far too quickly and tries to stem the tide of young adulthood in herself by trying to remain innocent for as long as she can.

She relates all the stories of those that never get to speak out loud, at least not to outsiders. The mother who could've been somebody, the child-bride, the homesick Mamacita, Aunt Lupe of the limp legs. They all get to speak through her, through her stories.

This book has deservedly won awards and is taught in thousands of schools. But if you're reading this and somehow haven't read it, like I never had up until now, please do yourself a favor and buy it, borrow it, read it over someone's shoulder on the subway, whichever way you can. You can thank me later.

A Month of Novellas, Book 7: Disquiet - Julia Leigh (2008)

on cozy bed in well, bedroom

This is a horror story.

No one is killed or chased, but it's chock a block full of horror nonetheless.

A woman, Olivia, has arrived at her family's countryside estate in France after a long period of estrangement. She brings her two children with her, as well as half-explained tales of abuse by her husband.

They're alluded to - the psychological scars - while the physical ones are out right in the open.

She's come to escape, to regroup and maybe to do something incredibly rash.

But she drops into an even more stressful environment than possibly the one she's left half a world away in Australia.

Her brother and his wife have had a child, but it was stillborn. This is tragic in itself, but that's when the horror intensifies. Because they haven't buried it. Her sister-in-law in her overwhelming grief, has asked to spend some time with her dead baby, which the doctors and her husband acquiesce to. The plan is to then have the child buried within the estate, next to the grave of its' grandfather.

Except she's not willing to part with it. Even after they've taken to emptying the family home's fridge in order to keep the child in there overnight. Even after it starts to noticeably smell and decay. Still, she holds on to it and refuses to let go.

Meanwhile, Olivia has plans of her own and requests that an extra plot be added to the license for burial on the estate which she's obtained from the local municipality. I won't give those plans away here, but of course no good can come of it. There's a resolution in the end of sorts but it's probably not what one would first expect...

I found this book tense and spooky and Julia Leigh's prose very affecting and would love to read another of her works.

P.S. Physically, this is the most beautiful of the books I've read so far. French flaps and its' smallish size add to its' charm. Beautiful cover and beautifully designed - kudos to the art department.

A Month of Novellas, Book 6: Something Special - Iris Murdoch (1957)

making friends with my library squirrel

I chose Iris Murdoch’s ‘Something Special’ because I’d never read anything by her and was eager to have a chance to read a ‘lighter’ work of hers. This definitely was the ‘lightest’ one of the novellas I’ve read so far, at least as far as page count is concerned, as it was only 41 pages long, once one subtracts the bespoken illustrations.

I have to actually question whether this (and Yoshimoto’s Hard Luck before it) is actually a (long) short story rather than a novella. It felt a little too slight to be a short novel. Not quite enough development I thought, to be a short novel…but then again, one woman’s novella and all that…

But back to the story.

It concerns Yvonne, who at 24-years-old, is already considered a bit long in the tooth as well as a burden on her mother and uncle with whom she lives with. They both think she should marry Sam, a nice Jewish man who comes to see her and whom she goes out with. But Yvonne doesn’t see Sam in that way, and thinks him instead ‘Nothing Special’.

Her life revolves around the excitement derived from the Christmas card salesman coming by on his yearly visit to her mother’s store and the possibility of an outing with Sam. But she’s not excited about seeing Sam – she just sees Sam as the way to get out of the house for a night’s outing, nothing less. Sam meanwhile seems to be very much interested in her and tries to be acquiescent of her whims and desires, even when they severely contradict what he feels comfortable with. He wants a sweet, romantic walk by the river, while Yvonne wants a proper night’s out, to visit a pub. When the pub visit turns sour, she becomes angry with Sam, as if he was the one to drag her kicking and screaming into the basement bar, instead of admitting her own lack of common sense.

Later, when he tries to show her something special, she lashes out at him…which is why the actual ending seemed baffling to me.

I know people are complex and the reasons behind why someone falls in love or doesn’t can be many and varied, but I didn’t really believe the ending. It seemed to me almost like it was a ‘surprise!’ ending, which didn’t really fit in with the rest of Yvonne’s characterization.

A Month of Novellas, Book 5: The Passport - Herta Muller (1986)

window in baby's bedroom

Wow.

This was definitely an intense book.
This felt like a large novel somehow condensed into a small volume.

There were so many stories, so much going on, particularly in comparison with some of the other short works I've been reading.

As can be plainly seen by this picture over her to the right of your screen, this novella is by Herta Muller, a Romanian born, German speaking Nobel Laureate. I've actually started reading another work by her not so long ago but never quite seemed to finish.

She's not an easy author to get into. It took me much longer to finish this 85 page novel than I thought it would. Part of the problem was that there was just so much information in each page, so much going on. But the other issue was the writing style.

The whole thing was written very staccato like, i.e. He did this. He did that. He did the other thing.
I found this style very tiring, both visually and physically. I yearned for a complex sentence that was longer than one line. Occasionally there would be a longer sentence, but so many of them followed this pattern, that I just became worn out.

The basic story is that a family of 3, with an adult daughter, would like to emigrate from Romania to Germany, since they're ethnically German. But in order to arrange for their passport they seem to have to endure Herculean tasks which become almost Sisyphian in the end. Bring flour, have daughter sleep with priest, that sort of thing.

All along though we're often treated to some beautiful imagery:
"Widow Kroner's face shone. People said: "Something is blooming in Widow Kroner's face." Her face was young. Its youthfulness was weakness. As one grows young before dying, so was her face. As one grows younger and younger, until the body breaks. Beyond birth." pp.37

Then again at times, I wondered if there had been a mistranslation.
"With naked eyes and with the stone in his ribs, Windisch says loudly: "A man is nothing but a pheasant in the world."" pp.70

Is the author having the protagonist say that all we are is food to be devoured? Pheasants are pretty expensive eating where I come from, so this at least twice repeated sentence's meaning was lost to me.

Muller does have a gift for setting a mood and I desperately wanted to get away from this village and these people and their totalitarian everyday life. It was all so grim and horrid and gray - at least that's how I pictured it - that I too wanted to emigrate with half the village and leave that dreadful place.

I don't think I'll so quickly forget this place, no matter how much I'd like to.

A Month of Novellas, Book 4: Hardboiled - Banana Yoshimoto (2001)

making friends on my bedroom floor

This was one of two novellas included in the small volume by Banana Yoshimoto. Actually to say a Yoshimoto volume is small is a bit redundant as all her work leans to the slim side…or at least every book I’ve read of her so far.

She was probably the first Asian writer I ever read, way back in the early 90s when I first discovered her through the wondrously eye-opening membership in the Quality Paperback Book Club, a mail-order book club that used to be very generous with their goods J I believe ‘Kitchen’ was my first introduction to her sparse work.

I immediately thought of her when I first came up with this theme but didn’t want to re-read any of the works I was already familiar with. But then I came upon ‘Hardboiled & Hard Luck’, two novellas in one book. Purely randomly, I chose to read the latter ‘Hard Luck’.

This turned out to be a bit of an emotional choice. ‘Hard Luck’ is a wee little novel, clocking in at only 56 pages, but it deals with some pretty heavy material.

The narrator’s sister Kuni is laying in a hospital room in a vegetative coma, the sister’s fiancé has abandoned her, and the fiancé’s brother seems to be into her. It’s all very emotionally draining and confusing for the narrator, until suddenly it’s not, as the doctors tell her parents that her sister will never recover. Now everything becomes just a bit clearer, now there’s a purpose, so life isn’t quite so painful anymore.

This story hit a bit close to home as I’ve had a friend diagnosed with a terminal illness who within a very short period passed away. She might have faced a similar fate as that of the narrator’s sister if not for the ‘merciful’ swiftness of her disease.

Yoshimoto’s language is always quite simple and measured, so I was surprised to find a few odd phrasings within this story:
“The tears I shed lately, particularly those linked to memories, were all but meaningless. They came out on their own, like bird shit.” pp.133

And I couldn’t tell if this was meant as a joke:
“”Apparently they’re going to take your sister off the respirator soon.”
There was no difference between my dad’s tone when he said this and when he’d said “Pooch is dead” when the dog we had had for so long and who had liked my father best passed away. That’s how deep his sorrow was.” pp.130

Is the narrator really saying that she equated her father’s sorrow at his daughter dying with that of his dog dying? I love my cats and understand the deep love one feels towards them, but that sentence still felt odd.

There are other moments that felt strange like when the narrator is with Sakai, the fiancé’s brother, and says:

“I knew he was weird, and kind of a fraud, and that he was cold and unreasonably cheerful, and that he had no sense of responsibility.” pp. 140 But where was this all coming from? She’d mentioned that he ran a successful business and he’d been kind to her. It was another strange moment that I couldn’t quite explain away.

The bits about the stress and eventual peace related to her sister dying felt real, but much of the rest seemed odd for odd’s sake. I’ll have to read ‘Hardboiled’ as well to see if it holds up better than ‘Hard Luck’.