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.