BOOKS RE-DISCOVERED WHILE BROWSING OLD DOCUMENTS

August 13, 2000

Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeter Nasland--The book is rich with wonderful figures of speech.  As a writer, I particularly liked this passage on page 148:

     “(But do you know me?  Una?  You have shipped long with me in the boat that is this book.  Let me assure you and tell you I know you, even something of your pain and joy, for you are much like me.  The contract of writing and reading requires that we know each other.  Did you know that I try on your mask from time to time?  I become a reader, too, reading over what I have just written.  If I am your shipbuilder and your captain, from time to time I am also your comrade.  Feel me now, standing beside you, just behind your shoulder?)”

     The flyleaf: “Inspired by a brief passage in Moby-Dick, Sena Jeter Naslund has created an entirely new universe--a vast, enthralling, and compellingly readable saga, spanning a full, rich, eventful, and dramatic life . . . But great as her debt to Melville may be, Ahab’s Wife stands alone, intact, and vital for any reader.  Inspired by a masterpiece, Ahab’s Wife is a legitimate masterwork in its own right.” --The Boston Globe

Black and Blue by Anna Quindland

      Flyleaf:  “For eighteen years Fran Benedetto kept her secret, hid her bruises, and stayed with Bobby because she wanted her son to have a father.  And because, in spite of everything, she loved him.  Then one night, when she saw the look on her ten-year-old’s face, Fran finally made a choice--and ran for both their lives.

     "For the woman who now calls herself Beth, every day is a chance to heal, to put together the pieces of her shattered self.  And every day she waits for Bobby to catch up to her.  Despite the flawlessness of her escape, Fran is certain of one thing.  It is only a matter of time . . . .

     “There is not a badly written sentence in 300 pages.  The scenes are deftly drawn.”

June 2, 2000 
     The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreve grew more interesting after the first 100 pages.  I certainly could relate to the story of a woman who didn’t know her husband as well as she thought she did.  There were a few appalling grammatical mistakes that a Little Brown editor should have picked up: Pg. 110 “He moved his hands in a slow, un-confident circle as though he were directing traffic and weren’t particularly good at it.”  Yikes.  Wouldn’t it sound better to say, “as though he was directing traffic and wasn’t particularly good at it”?  [True fact, not contrary to fact according to grammar rule re subjunctive case]

     Pg. 207 “She crossed the room and lay her purse on the banquette.”  The battle of “lie” and “lay” is a losing one, a knowledgeable friend tells me, but to be correct, she laid her purse on the banquette.  On the next page is a similar usage, this time the way it should be: “She studied the menu, laid it down on the polished bar . . . “

     Pgs 219 and 220: “Mantel” is misspelled.

August. 2000

Steps and Exes by Laura Kalpakian

     It was a great stroke of luck when I happened to pick this book up at the library, knowing nothing about it.  I read about 70 pages that night, loved every word, then brought it to Mass General to read to Kathie.  She had had an operation on her throat on August 8th, was too sore to talk much, so I read this unusual novel aloud for two hours Wednesday and Thursday afternoon.  We laughed together and at one point (when Dorothy has a non-fatal heart attack and her famous last words are: Maybe my floors didn’t need to be that clean), choked up together, Kathie wheeling over to the box of tissues, my voice strained with held-back tears.

     The Seattle Times reports, “The pages fairly crackle with energy. . . . Kalpakian’s descriptive powers are wonderful.  Characters, landscapes, interiors, and even a bevy of small dogs . . . all of which lodge firmly in the reader’s imagination.      '

November 1, 2000

`Tis, by Frank McCourt

     Jill Laurie Goodman, of The Philadelphia Inquirer, is one of more than 30 reviewers quoted in the opening pages of McCourt’s second memoirs: “A remarkable book, often hilariously funny, occasionally painful, always lively . . . McCourt . . .  possess a singular genius that serves him uncommonly well.  He can weave the stuff of his life -- sad, disappointing, humiliating, or grand -- into glorious stories, as funny as any I know.”

     I loved McCord’s Angela’s Ashes, except for the ending, which seemed unnecessarily crude, as if his publishers had said, “You gotta get some sex into this.”  What particularly impressed me, as a writer, was the author’s gift for projecting himself into his early childhood, and the portrait of his younger brother.  They both sounded truly like little kids, the style unforced and natural.

     As for `Tis, I was enthralled by the middle part, when the young man gets into teaching kids of junior-high-school age and has a hard time dealing with them and with the pedantic advice given by the “authorities.”  Kathie will relate to this, I know, when I bring her the book.
June 17, 2003

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, by Alexandra Fuller

     This deeply satisfying book has something in common with Angela’s Ashes—the ability of the author to project herself back into her childhood in Africa for the first half of the book and to write her impressions from a child’s point of view.  As Bobo matures, Fuller’s writing style reflects this new maturity.  Snapshots of a superb quality illuminate the chapters.  My first impression of Bobo’s “mum” was of a mother who drank too much and too often, which indeed she did.  I visualized her as blowsy and unattractive.  However, a snapshot on page 94 shows a breathtakingly pretty woman, a vulnerable woman, whose life story I became increasingly interested in.  But the reviewers’ blurbs say it better:

     “[Fuller’s] pitch-perfect, staccato style spurs you on from first to final page, transforming an interesting life into inimitable literature . . . Always honest but never judgmental, Fuller pens her mother into flesh-and-blood exquisite scenes that reveal her essence without reducing her complexity.”  The Miami Herald

     “Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight is surprisingly engaging and even moving . . . [Alexandra Fuller] presents her account with wit and verve and no apologies . . . The key figure is that of Fuller’s mother—surely one of the most memorable characters of African memoir . . . [Fuller’s] love of the place is vividly apparent.”  The New York Times Book Review

      “Ms. Fuller’s gripping memoir . . . gives the reader an intimate sense of what daily life was like in a segregated and racist society . . . a place of cruel politics, violent heat and startling beauty.”  The New York Times 

      And now I must get ready to go to the Father’s Day gathering at Ted’s, where Aliceann and the family will be reunited in remembrance of her husband and their father and the ex-husband of BBM, Edward W. Malley, Jr.

           

September 9, 2001

From David Played a Harp by Ralph Johnson, Pgs 238-239:

     Today I came to this tale in Johnson’s memoir and knew I had to send it to Aliceann and her finicky husband, my finicky ex:    

      One afternoon in winter when Plato got off from his first-shift job at the Davidson asbestos plant, he found Oskeegum waiting for him.  It was during the Depression.

     “Hi, Oskeegum.  What you doing out here in the cold?”

     “I’m waitin’ for you.  Want to see you a little bit.”

     “What you want with me?  I ain’t got nothin’ to drink.”

      “Don’t want nothin’ to drink.”

     “Well, what is it then?”

      “I’m hungry.”

     “The hell you say.”

     “Yes, I am, too.”

     “Well, I ain’t got no money.  Ain’t got a cent.”

     “Hmmmmm.”

     “Tell you what you do, come on home with me and eat your supper.”

     The two of them got in Plato’s old Ford and went to his home about five miles away.  Supper was about ready, and they sat and talked until his wife got the food on the table.

     Now, Plato was a poor white man and things hadn’t gone too well with him during the Depression.  He had a one-dish supper—cabbage.  They pulled their chairs up to the kitchen table and prepared to eat when Oskeegum noticed the one dish of food before them.

     “Don’t eat cabbage,” he said.

     “Huh?”

     “I don’t eat cabbage,” he said.

     “Like hell you say.  Cabbage is good.  Good for you.  Anything taste good if you hungry.”

     “Like I say, I don’t eat cabbage.”

     Plato sat in thought for a minute, then left the table.  Oskeegum was sure other food was being prepared for him. 

     When Plato re-entered the room, he was holding a shotgun and pointing it towards Oskeegum.  His face was an unpleasant scowl.  “Oskeegum,” he said, “I brung you all the way up here with me in my car to eat supper with me, then you say you’re too good to eat what I eat.  Now you eat them cabbage.  Do ahead.  Eat!”

     With the gun pointed at him, Oskeegum put a generous helping of cabbage on his plate and began eating.  When he had finished that plateful, he went back for more.  After the third helping he looked up at Plato, still holding the gun.

     “Say, Plato,” he said, “you got any more these cabbage?  I want to take some home to Mama.  These things good.  And like you said, I believe they’re healthy, too.”

October 24, 2001

The Dangerous Husband by Jane Shapiro

     I picked this book up two days ago, seduced by the wildly enthusiastic reviews:  “Dazzling . . . I burst out laughing on page 54 and couldn’t stop until the end of this novel . . . . provides us with a close, hard-hearted, sadly funny rereading of that old fairy tale Beauty and the Beast.”

     “Wicked.  That’s the only description for . . . . a black comedy that will speak to anyone who has dwelled, briefly or at length, on how useful the death of a spouse might be.”  “A gimlet-eyed dissection of the marital do-si-do . . . . Shapiro’s most subtle accomplishment, aside from her continual adroit application of a deadpan humor, is her creation of a loony-beyond belief marriage that nevertheless bears a resemblance to every marriage.”

     The book lived up to its lavish praise.  Halfway through it, enjoying every sentence, every paragraph, I showed it to Kathie.  She said, “Mom, we read that two years ago.”  I said, “I don’t remember this stark red cover.”  She said, “The cover was different.” 

     At one point I had come to a description of a pet frog (Bianca) Dennis kept in his basement, the poor creature perpetually treading water in a bucket.  I thought, That sounds familiar.  I must have seen it in a review.  No, I didn’t see it in a review, I read the whole hilarious book, shared it with Kathie, and have just now finished it for the second time, as tickled with Shapiro’s humor as if I’d never read a word.  Losing one’s memory is not all bad.

The Education of Rick Greene, Esq. by Harvey Sawicken

      I can’t remember much about this book except that Rick Greene’s problems were related so amusingly, I wrote a fan letter to the author.  Some day I’ll have to read some of these funny books again, relying on my poor memory to renew my pleasure.  (I keep a book by P.G. Wodehouse in my car.  If I’m stuck in traffic, I can open it to any page and start chuckling.)

August 23, 2001  The saga of The Forsythe Saga by John Galsworthy

     Kathie reread this classic and passed it along to me so I could do the same.  I was a teenager when I last read it, and only skimmed long books like this, my goal being quantity, not quality.  Oh, how much I had missed of Galsworthy’s subtle touches of humor, his insights into human nature, and scenes dramatic enough to make your heart pound in empathy. 

     When I had begun reading the book, I had been irked by faintly printed comments in the margins and many under-linings, but I thought, “Whoever the student was that marked up this book, I’ll bet she’ll give up this weighty volume before she’s a third of the way through.”  I was wrong.  Moreover, I became interested in the mystery reader’s observations and wished she had pressed a little harder on her pencil.  I even got out a magnifying glass at one point.  

     When I had read only a portion of the 921 pages, I noticed an odd inscription at the front: “Malicious Malley.”  Then this was not, as I had assumed, a second-hand book picked up by Kathie's husband Frank for a pittance.  Someone in our family must have owned it.  In a phone conversation, I asked Ed if a friend given him the book when he was in college or prep school, and had he ever been teasingly called “Malicious Malley.”  He was very sure this was not so.
     On August 19, during my 80^th birthday brunch at Jamie’s Pub, I asked each of my sons the same question and got the same answer.  Kathie, involved in another conversation, had not heard me quizzing Tim and Ted.  I said to her, “Perhaps the book was Dad’s, after all, and he just doesn’t remember.”   She said, “I think it was Vonnie’s.”

     Of course it was Vonnie’s!  She and her friends used to call each other funny names, like Margo Embargo for Margo Whitcomb, and Veronica Moronica for Vonnie.  The Forsythe Saga must have been assigned reading during the short time Vonnie was at Dean Junior College. I had no idea I was disparaging my daughter when I initially suspected she would never get through the book.  Now that I understood, I paid close heed to her comments, exclamation points, question marks, and under-linings

     On page 851, Jolyon writes in a letter to his son Jon:  “. . . But with the experience of a life behind me I do say that those who condemn the victims of these tragic mistakes, condemn them and hold out no hands to help them, are inhuman, or rather they would be if they had no understanding to know what they are doing.  But they haven’t!  Let them go!  They are as much anathema to me as I, no doubt, am to them.”  Beside these remarks is a large exclamation point.

     On page 858 is a question mark, gracefully drawn in a two-dimensional style.
     “ . . . (Jolyon’s) heart thumped and pained him.  Life—its loves—its work—its beauty—its aching, and—its end!  A good time; a fine time in spite of it all; until—you regretted that you had ever been born.  Life—it wore you down, yet did not make you want to die—that was the cunning evil!  Mistake to have a heart!”

     And on page 864, a similar artistic exclamation point next to this passage:  “He went close to the dead face—not changed at all, and yet completely changed.  He had heard his father say once that he did not believe in consciousness surviving death, or that if it did it might be just survival until the natural age limits of the body had been reached—the natural term of its inherent vitality; so that if the body were broken by accident, excess, violent disease, consciousness might still persist till, in the course of Nature uninterfered with, it would naturally have faded out.”

     The discovery that I had been reading a book that Vonnie had held in her hands and had absorbed with such care, such appreciation, made me feel very close to her.  And proud of her, for being the sensitive, loving person she was.

August 11, 2001 The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank

     I spent a steamy yesterday smilingly reading this book to its somewhat nutty conclusion.  There are many hymns of praise in the front.  Publishers Weekly says it better than I can:  “One marvels at Bank’s assured control of her material, witty, distinctive voice and her ability to find pathos and drama in ordinary lives.”

     My mother would appreciate the author’s adroit puns but not her heroine’s love life.  It’s difficult even for me to understand why Jane would move in with Archie, who has charm but is more than twice her age and not a good prospect for marriage or anything other than friendship.

     Entertainment Weekly:  “In this swinging, funny, and tender study of contemporary relationships, Bank refutes once and for all the popular notions of neurotic thirty-something single women.”

September 3, 2001 John Adams by David McCullough

     How could I help but be fascinated by a biography, so much of which is based on letters, especially those exchanged by Adams and his wife Abigail.  I am currently about halfway through this “riveting portrait of an abundantly human man and a vivid evocation of his time.”  I was particularly taken with this paragraph on page 339:

     Of the English novelists, Abigail was especially fond of Samuel Richardson, whose popular works, Pamela and Clarissa, were tales told through the device of extended letters.  Abigail is quoted as writing, “Richardson, master of the human heart, had done more towards embellishing the present age, and teaching them the talent of letter-writing, than any other modern I can name.”

     That her own outpouring of letters was influenced by Richardson, Abigail would have readily agreed.  In Richardson’s hands events unfolded in letters written “to the moment,” as things happened.  “My letters to you,” she would tell Mary [her sister], “are first thoughts, without correction.”  (And that is how I have written my own letters, recording events as they happened, in a format unloved by editors, unfortunately.)

August 11, 2001 The Last Convertible by Myron Somebody

     Kathie gave me this one, and I have passed it along to Timmy.  He will relate to it on many levels, although it is about my generation.  The convertible is a 1939 Packard—I believe Ed’s was a 1938, on which he was making payments when I met him.  The entire book is gripping except for the Harvard reunion near the end, which in my opinion doesn’t match the quality of the preceding chapters.  The descriptions of World War II and its horrors, the portrayal of George’s marriage and its horrors, the introduction of young Jack Kennedy for whom one of the Harvard buddies goes to work in Washington—all this background is intensely believable.

I Will Bear Witness by Victor Klemperer

     Next to The Diary of Anne Frank, these two lengthy volumes are the best record I have read of the Nazi persecution.  To quote a historian’s words, “Klemperer’s personal history of how the Third Reich month by month, sometimes week by week, accelerated its campaign against the Jews gives as accurate a picture of Nazi trickery and brutality as we are likely to have . . . with a concrete, vivid power that is, and I think will remain, unsurpassed.”

     What helped me to read on about the terrors of those years was the knowledge that they both survived, Victor to the age of 79.  The author had constantly worried that his writings might be found (meaning death for him and his wife and the relative to whom Eva brought his accounts). Fortunately, all the books he had been working on, including this memoir, were eventually published.  He was reappointed a professor at the Technical University, Dresden and won many other prestigious posts.  Also remarried after Eva passed away.

The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz

     From flyleaf: “Slavomir Rawicz was a young Polish cavalry officer.  On 19th November, 1939, he was arrested by the Russians and after considerable brutality and a farce of a trial, he was sentenced to twenty-five years forced labor . . . Rawicz was soon thinking of escape.  He chose six companions, and about Easter, 1941, the seven broke out . . .”

     Like We Die Alone, this survivor story is a riveting one, almost beyond belief.  “By March [1942] they were climbing the last barrier to freedom.”

August 11, 2001 Revere Beach Boulevard 

     I liked this well enough to make a notation in my daily calendar to get it in paperback for Kathie.  She remembers reading it, she says, and was able to recall more about it than I can, which is zilch.

June, 2002

The Shipping News by Annie Prouxl

      Kathie has been reading old favorites for the second time, so I have been doing the same.  When I got into The Shipping News, I was sure I had never read it before until I came to an episode that resonated faintly—the rotters who commissioned “the aunt,” an expert upholsterer, to renew the interior of their luxurious yacht, then took off without paying for the work.  Except for that dim memory, the writing was entirely new to me and breathtakingly wonderful.  Prouxl's way with words is unique, like her description of a child fascinated by a body in a coffin.  She was led away, but soon “eeled” back into the parlor and took up a station beside the coffin.  The author again and again uses words in a startling way that delighted me throughout the book.

July 28, 2002

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

       It took me three or four chapters before I could let go of disbelief and fall under Alice’s spell.   Alice-Through-the-Looking Glass?.  Curiouser and curiouser but increasingly wondrous.  Here are lines that I particularly loved: 

      “Mr. Harvey left his house for the final time while my mother was granted her most temporal wish.  To find a doorway out of her ruined heart, in merciful adultery.”

       The book is related by murdered Susie Salmon, who watches from heaven what is going on in her bereaved family.  Oh, come on, I kept thinking.  But I persevered in deference to the friend who recommended it, Charlene Jackson.  I ended up a believer, which is more than I am in my agnostic daily life.

     Today Kathie gave me the name of Dr. Eli Newberger’s agent, Don Cutler, and I have mailed him a copy of our book.  She talked to him on the phone and said he sounded really enthusiastic when she described RESCUING DAD.  Oh, how we hope and pray with our 16 crossed fingers that we’ll end up RESCUING KATHIE! [8-11-01 Not yet.] 

January 20, 2001

Hot Six by Janet Evanovich

This author was recommended by a duplicate bridge acquaintance, Sandy Drum.  Now that I’ve read Hot Six, I’ll be eager to read all the other Stephanie Plum mysteries, starting with One for the Money.  Evanovich has a racy wit that keeps you smiling from beginning to end.  As the flyleaf says at the end of its description: “Plus there are other things keeping Stephanie awake at night.  Her maternal grandmother has set up housekeeping in Stephanie’s apartment [and what a character she is!], a homicidal maniac has selected Stephanie as his next victim, her love life is in the toilet, she’s adopted a dog with an eating disorder, and she can’t button the top snap on her Levis.” 
August 23, 2001  1tried to read some other Evanovich mysteries but they didn’t capture my interest the way this one did.

September 24, 2001

Dear Enchantress Jeanne Ray,

            That’s the way I felt as I was reading Julie and Romeo—enchanted.  My chest almost hurt, it felt so full and thrilly as I turned page after page, relating to Julie and her feelings about Romeo. Oh, those kisses, how well I remembered those kisses!  I was transported back to a time when I was 50, heart-broken for a year and a half after my marriage broke up, then miraculously heart-mended when my funny Jack came into my life.  I called him Chris in the book I wrote 20 years later, Take My Ex-Husband, Please—But Not Too Far.  I am enclosing the chapter about “Chris,” so you’ll see why I feel such a sisterhood with Julie.

            As for your uninterrupted flow of witticisms, it was remarkable.  I kept saying to myself, “She can’t keep this up, no writer can be that hilarious from beginning to end.”  But I was happily wrong, and I want to thank you for all the smiles and outbreaks of laughter in my solitary bedroom. 

            I would be most appreciative if you would autograph my copy of Julie and Romeo, for which I am providing an SASE.  I will be buying other copies as Christmas and birthday presents for family and friends.  They’ll love the book and they’ll love you and they’ll love me for the introduction to a true original.  I hope you are working on another gem.  My warmest congratulations on this one.

From: "Barbara Malley" <bmalley@attbi.com>

To: "Kathie malley" <kmalley@bu.edu>

Date: Saturday, August 10, 2002 4:46 PM

     For the last hour I've been treating myself to Glazunov's 6th symphony on the classical channel and Eizabeth Berg’s Never Change.  I got to page 63 where Diann is trying to convince Myra she didn't mean what she said the way it sounded.   Myra doesn't empathize with her the way I'm empathizing.  Then comes the last sentence: "And damn it, I'm starting to like her."

     After I stopped crying I had to tell you how much I'm loving it.

September 15, 2001 
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

            Having just finished this book, I am stunned.  I cried hard two pages from the end.  I’m almost afraid to give it to Kathie because she will wail.  Alfred Lambert, losing everything that’s important to him because of Parkinson’s, is Ed Malley.  When he finds himself in a hospital, he thinks he is in a prison, just as Ed did.  Just as Ed imagines during the night that a black male nurse is trying to attack him, Alfred sees a big black lady who “intends to make his life a hell.”  When his son Chip comes to see him, he points and says, “That woman is a bastard." 

            “No, she’s a physical therapist,” Chip said, “and she’s been trying to help you.”

             In the first third of the book, Alfred is Ed in his more lucid and more stubborn days.  Enid, his wife, has the faculty of getting on her children’s nerves, very much like my mother-in-law, Mimi.  One difference is that Enid's conversations have some give-and-take to them, while Mimi’s were monologues.  I even recognized myself in Enid in certain respects.  Ted will know what I mean when he reads this masterpiece.

            The Malley family will find much to relate to in the Lambert family.  The flyleaf describes the book as “a comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes.”  A blurb on the back cover by Michael Cunningham:  “In its complexity, its scrutinizing and utterly unsentimental humanity, and its grasp of the subtle relationships between domestic drama and global events, The Corrections is a major accomplishment.” 

            I was disappointed in the second third of the book, which I found difficult to read compared to what preceded it.  A lot of technology involved, no humor to speak of.  Tedious, I thought, but that could have been because I lacked the necessary smarts to comprehend it. 
            In the last third, Franzen again used the voice that another blurb describes:  “Funny and deeply sad, large-hearted and merciless, The Corrections is a testament to the range and depth of pleasures great fiction affords.”  (David Foster Wallace)