The Swan Thieves, by Elizabeth Kostova

I began this book feeling sure I was in good hands. I haven't read Kostova's first book, "The Historian", but I've heard the glowing reviews, so I was hoping that "The Swan Thieves" would be a treat. In fact, as I tucked into the first few CDs of the audiotape of this book, I was happy to find I was very much into the story. I'm not usually a big fan of genre writing in the first place, especially of historical fiction -- am I the only person out there who hated "The DaVinci Code"? -- but this book had such a compelling start I thought I might be converted. The book's beginning had such great architecture that I got the same supported, "in good hands" kind of feeling that I get when I sit on my red couch -- that I am on a solidly constructed structure -- as opposed to the feeling I get sitting on my green couch -- which is the fear that I might actually end up on the floor. But the honeymoon didn't last long. The story disappointed and I was not converted to the legions of genre lovers. Double whammy.

"The Swan Thieves" begins with Dr. Marlow, a psychiatrist, as he accepts painter Robert Oliver as a patient. Oliver has been arrested in a museum after trying to damage a painting with a knife. Now he is depressed, obsessed, and mute. I had flashbacks of the movie "Ordinary People" as Dr. Marlow begins his quest to find the key that will unlock Oliver's mind.



And then things quickly fall apart. First complaint: Kosova's characters do implausible things to move the story along. The breath-catching suspense the author crafted so well at the very beginning of the book fell apart because the story became unbelievable. For instance, Dr. Marlow's character is a professional, middle-aged man, never married, but not gay. Still he is well-adjusted, confident, and caring. Has any of us ever come across a man like this? I know this is fiction, but it has to seem real! Personally, I have never come across a never-married, straight, middle-aged man who does not have the word "Issues" lit up on his forehead! And then there is the matter of how Marlow struggles with his interest in helping Robert Oliver. Marlow repeatedly takes liberties with patient confidentiality, going to extraordinary lengths to interview the people in Oliver's life. And then - Spoiler Alert! - he beds and weds Oliver's ex-lover. Come on! Second complaint: The parts of the story that take place in France in the 1800s were so incredibly boring I often realized a passage had ended and I had no idea what had happened - nor did I care. Third complaint: TOO LONG! Come on, Elizabeth. Don't you think it's a little self indulgent to write a tome that tops out at over 500 pages? I listened to the book on tape, and there were 17 CDs in the case! This is not a big-sweep story, a story that needs the long fingers of detail necessary to dip into myriad far-reaching topics. Sometimes, less really is more. In fact, although the descriptions and exposition that filled the text were well written, so much of it riffed on the same topics, all written with the same sensibility, that I became dreadfully bored by the whole thing.


More interesting to me was that Anne Heche was one of the readers on the audiotape, which also featured Treat Williams. Heche's life, way more far fetched than anything within the unbelievable pages of "The Swan Thieves", is completely believable. Why? This is what I think: Anne's cringingly honest story is crazy all the way through, from beginning to end; that she's "crazy", whatever that means, is the premise of her memoir. If she didn't act out in crazy ways her story would lose its credibility! Every story needs its characters to do crazy things. That brings the conflict, the tension, the drama. It's what makes us want to turn the page. But when characters aren't developed in a way that makes us believe they might actually do the crazy things they do to move along the plot, then it's time to call it a day. Stay tuned for a review of Heche's memoir, "Call Me Crazy", which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Going Gray, by Anne Kreamer

"Going Gray" is a book that is both superficial and deep. Kreamer begins by telling how she had an epiphany while looking at a photo of herself, noticing for the first time that her hair color looked artificial and much too dark for a woman her age. She investigated and did a lot of soul searching, finally forgoing the dyes and letting her hair return to its natural gray. This doesn't necessarily speak to anything deeper than hair color, but when you think about it, there may be no signifier that packs more punch as to how we want others to think of us than the color of our hair.



I found this book, no surprise here, on my hairdresser's counter. Or maybe that is surprising, since a hairdresser has a vested interest in keeping her clients coming back for more expensive hair color! I usually add up the costs while my head covered in goo and I'm sneezing over the fumes.



Going Gray is filled with an assortment of coif-related trivia. For instance, I didn't know that the percentage of people dying their hair has gone up dramatically in the past few decades. When I read Kreamer's take on the outdated looks some people continue to sport -- that people become "frozen" in the look in which they felt they looked their best -- that sounded just right. I smiled, remembering my Dad in his toupee and 1970s leisure suit and how, even though he has thankfully moved on, I occasionally still see that look on men that came of age back then.



Kreamer connects the fact that hair coloring is so ubiquitous these days that it reflects society's collective anxiety -- hair dye as a reflection of our need to be in control, and to show off that control to the rest of the world. She reflects on this in her conclusion, coming clean as a borderline OCD control freak who, despite ten years of therapy, becomes able to identify the problem, but never strong enough to overcome it. By going gray, Kreamer finally feels able to relinquish some of the control in other areas of her life, too.



I have been dying my hair for decades, since the first grays started streaking through. I haven't seen my true hair color in so long I'm even not sure what it would look like, but a check at the roots leads me to believe that my hair would be completely gray! Perhaps it's time for me to call it quits and give up the expensive, time-consuming, and no doubt toxic, chemicals of hair dye. It's scary to think about doing this, though; I imagine I would look much older. But come to think of it, I am older! And, really, why would I want to look younger than my actual age? Sure, every year brings with it some new sign of the body's slow disintegration, but it also undeniably brings with it more experience and, if I may be so bold to say so, wisdom. "Going Gray" was a nice, light, yet thought-provoking read, as within this superficial topic there are many layers of meaning.


And under the category of "Who Knew?", gray hair may be the newest fad! Below is a link to a recent article in The New York Times, that features models, and other fashionable women in their twenties, who have decided the gray hair is in!



http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/young-trendsetters-streak-their-hair-with-gray/?scp=4&sq=on

Thoughts on Books and Basketball

Monday night's championship game made me wonder why Butler's "Cinderella story," as it was called, had so captured our hearts. Yeah, the underdogs came out of nowhere; this in a town where basketball matters. But it occurred to me there was something more to this story, something that grabbed us from a place deep inside and sparked a wide-eyed optimism that we long forgot we harbored.



Every day, this world of ours seems to stretch further and further out of our control, cannibalized by rampant globalization and massive unemployment. Our culture is governed by the glossy concerns of commercialization and fame; money and fame being the only two currencies that haven't been devalued. The culture of celebrity distracts us with never ending stories about the escapades of the young, beautiful and talentless fame-seekers. Today's culture's focus is not on the journey, not in the long years of learning, practice and hard work necessary to produce excellence, but is solely concerned with the accolades of fame that used to be prerequisites for public acknowledgement.





The superficiality of the values of today's culture extends to all aspects of our lives. The models who appear in TV and magazines sport looks no self-respecting woman should aspire to. Society's idea of womanly beauty is exemplified by anorexic girls painted up with heavy, black eye-liner, smudged to give them the look of a heroin addict.




How tiring, and soul-sucking is the vapidity of today's culture. So here's where our Dawgs come in. How refreshing to see the unexpected, meteoric rise of The Butler Bulldogs, who, against all odds, found themselves fighting for the championship Monday night. In a culture that values athleticism over academics, where multi-million dollar salaries for pro athletes are the norm and our schools that struggle to teach kids from impoverished neighborhoods, Butler brought us back to a time when values mattered. A time when the term college athlete meant exactly that - a college student with one foot in the athletic realm and one in the classroom, not a marquee athlete paying lip-service to the college that has recruited and groomed him.



When Butler ascended to the top, I felt a slight shift in perspective, a bright hope, and I suspect others did, too. This shift took us momentarily away from present day culture, where the flash-in-the-pan glory of a star, fame, and athleticism are valued above all, to a world that holds at its bedrock the solid values of honesty, teamwork, and academic achievement. Duke may have scored more basketball points, but in my book, Butler definitely won.



March is the month of tournaments, and not only for basketball, but also for books. Who knew? A recent article in Salon by Laura Miller spoke to the insanity of these "battles of the books." How do you pit a collection of short stories against a novel? A sci-fi thriller against a memoir? Again, just as in college football, the question is asked: What makes one thing better than another? Follow the link below:


March literary madness

Books I were supposed to love - but hated!

Okay. I've accepted the fact that certain authors will write books I am not going to "get." Maybe to fully understand and appreciate some of these books the reader has to be able to reflect back on classic texts and make connections. I'll just go ahead and say it: I do not like these authors. These authors are not welcome on my nightstand. Granted, I have a bit of a handicap here which flavors my opinion - due to the informal drug education I received in high school (this was before my formal education in drugs at pharmacy school) I just don't remember any of the classics I read, or much of anything else. Still, when I think about these kinds of books, I wonder, what is it with all this pretense? What is our reading experience supposed to be about?

This is what I want when I pick up a book: a compelling story and characters that are believable (although they don't have to be likable). Maybe the elephant in the living room is that the "literary" books that flow from the publishing houses are like the rancid Passover crackers I whined about a few posts back. Sure, they had a nice box. Yes, they were kosher for Passover. My G-d, they were even WHOLE WHEAT! They must be good for me, I told myself. When I think about it, life is way too short to plod through a book to see if it gets good (it should already be good); or because it's supposed to be good; or because you will sound smart if you can chat about the book over lattes with your friends; or because you've already suffered through two-thirds of the text and feel committed to finish it.

So I tried to give 'The Infinities", by John Banville, the benefit of the doubt. I hung on for a little while but then I could stand no more of Adam and the chatting gods who look down on their pathetic world. And I gave "Where the God of Love Hangs Out", by Amy Bloom, even a bit more leeway. I remember suffering through her book, "Away", which had a strong Jewish connection, thinking there was something there I was not getting. The characters were as dimensional as spilled water; I didn't believe in them for a second. At the time I thought, this must be a writer's technique. I'm just not sophisticated enough to understand it. In WTGOLHO it was deja vu all over again! And the writing was very...studied. I read once that a writer's job is to get out of the way; in other words, the reader shouldn't be aware that a tortured, obsessive writer is conjuring up these sentences; the writing should be invisible. Maybe it's just me and what's left of my LSD-addled brain, but I'm going to label these books the elephant in the living room - the books we think we're supposed to like, the books that everyone tells us are supposed to be good for us, but are just Bad Books!

Enjoy your celebratory end-of-Passover pizza! Then find something GREAT to read!

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, by Elizabeth McCracken

I recently read a quote by McCracken. I can't find it for the life of me but I'll do my best to paraphrase: I've always despised memoirs, especially the ones in which the author writes of surviving the worst possible thing. Then the worst possible thing happened to me, and I had to write about it.

This is a truth I see over and over in memoir - that the worst possible thing happens and it sits, festering, waiting to be transformed by the process of writing, by the telling. The magic of the memoir is that when that horribleness is finally organized into words and put on the page, the transformation that reaches into the writer also reaches out, seeping into the consciousness of the reader.

An Exact Replica is the difficult, beautifully told story of McCracken's first baby, who was stillborn. The author takes us deep into this journey with her, from the exciting before, to the stun of the news, right around her due date that the baby had died in utero, to the pall of the afterward. And although the afterward certainly takes us into the grief, and the adjustment, it also tells of the healthy baby that came after.


What Elizabeth McCracken went through was a worst case scenario, something too horrible to happen to anyone. Even though the specifics of her story may be different than our own tragedies, I think it's a fallacy that any of us ever make it through life dodging the worst case scenario bullet. By writing, in such stunningly honest detail, the painful truth of her own story, McCracken unites us all as we share in the transformation the telling brings.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, by Allison Hoover Bartlett

I was proud of myself; I had the foresight to stock up on kosher for Passover crackers ahead of time, remembering that inevitably, the stores sell out of all the kosher for Passover snacks by the time the first Seder comes along.



Last night I looked at one of the boxes of Maneschewitz whole-wheat, kosher for Passover crackers I stashed on the overflow shelves in my garage. Needed a carb fix. I ripped open the hermetically sealed inner bag. I was Passover hungry. A terrible odor rose from the box. Okay, I said to myself, I'll be generous. I'll just wait a minute. The mustiness of the cracker vapor must have built up, so I'll give this a chance to disperse, to air out. I was desperate for my fix of carbs. I was also desperate to hold onto what felt like the last shred of my respect for the kosher manufacturers who, it seems to me, put out a pathetic array of outrageously overpriced, underflavored, cardboard-like foodstuffs every spring. So I stepped away from the box, wiped the ever-present matzah crumbs off the kitchen table and then turned back to the box, ready to nosh.

The rancid odor was still there, maybe even more pungent than when I first tore open the bag. I couldn't believe it. The contents of this particular box of crackers had to be seasons old, although of course, there was no "sell by" date on the box. At over $5 a box I was out over $15 for my 3 boxes. I was mad. More importantly, I was hungry. Were the people at Maneschewitz crackers?

The same scenario happened when I read this book. I had high hopes, was ready to dig in, only to find out that what's inside wasn't what was billed on the outside. In The Man Who Loved Books Too Much I thought I would get to read about someone like me. Not that I steal rare books, or any books for that matter. I thought this book would tell the story of someone so hungry for stories he would go so far as to steal to get them. I imagine that if you're reading this post you love books too, so you know exactly what I mean: That magical (is magical too "precious" an adjective?) moment of magnetic connection to a book; the moment you know you're a goner; the moment you know that it's time to start dinner so you reluctantly put the book down, but your mind is still in those pages; the moment you know you are sunk because you know you will end up staying up til 2am to see what happens.


I thought this book would be about just that: a man who so loved "story", that his need for more, more stories, more books, eclipsed everything else in his life. But that is not this book. Here, Bartlett chronicles the exploits of John Gilkey. In Bartlett's description there is clearly something "off" with Gilkey. Way off. Dare I say anti-social? The book is peppered with quotes that communicate his persistent sense of victimhood. He doesn't abdicate responsibility, he has a mindset that he never was responsible in the first place.

But Gilkey's motivation in stealing rare books is not the have-to-stay-up-past-midnight book lover syndrome I was hoping to read about. His impulse to steal rare books seems to have at its bedrock more of an obsessional need to impress others with his books than with anything within those books' pages. The story of The Man Who Loved Books Too Much was different from the one I expected, but it could have been compelling in its own right. Sadly, it wasn't. It dragged on and on, like reading one police report after another.


Turns out I didn't love "The Man Who Loved Books Too Much" very much at all.

Not Becoming My Mother, by Ruth Reichl

I have to laugh at the title of Ruth Reichl's recent book, "Not Becoming My Mother". I'm still recovering from my father's recent Passover visit, where I devoted most of my energy to "Not Becoming My Father." That, however, is a story for a different day.

Reichl writes about her mother, whose mental illness she has written about in her memoirs "Tender at the Bone" and "Comfort Me With Apples". I thought "Not Becoming My Mother" would be an examination of how Reichl's mother's mental illness affected the author, but it's not. Essentially this is a study of the stultified world of the 1950s housewife. Reichl does a great job putting her mother's illness into the feminist, political context of the bored, repressed woman who is offered no other choice than to be a homemaker. Here, her mother is representative of all the women of her time. Society had stifled women's intelligence and creativity, and these life forces had no outlet. As the author explores this scenario and how it played out with respect to her own mother, she never says, but seems to insinuate, that this build up expressed itself as bipolar illness. As I read Reichl tell of her mother's sad story of frustration I pictured her mother's smarts and artistry overflowing, like a running bathtub whose drain is plugged.

Along with Ms. Reichl, I am a card-carrying member of the daughters-of-mentally-ill-mothers-club, and maybe this is why I left this book feeling cheated. Perhaps the title misled me, but I craved the personal story, not the political one. I thought Reichl would offer up an in depth look at how her mentally ill mother affected her own life, but that part of the story was conspicuously missing. Reichl's chronicle of her mother's challenges brought a different focus onto women of that time, and I was glad to have this part of women's history detailed so intelligently. Still, I have to admit that unlike Reichl's previous books, all which involve her life as a foodie (She eventually became the editor of the now-defunct Gourmet), "Not Becoming My Mother" did not leave me feeling sated.