novel

Gladdy’s Wake

mandy — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

It took me a while to really sink my teeth into Gladdy’s Wake. The book weaves in and out of three generations, each tying together through family, hints of religion, and the story of Nawal Habib, a devout Muslim. Nawal (once Janie Kelly) is suspected of terrorism, an act that reunites her with her estranged brother, Frank (now a priest) and hospitalized father, Daniel (a once devout Catholic); both of whom she left to eventually reinvent herself as Nawal Habib. The story runs through Nawal’s family tragedy, her rebellion, the birth of her son, and eventual religious transformation, all the while introducing the reader to her grandfather, James Kelly, a womanizing Irish immigrant interested in fast cash with no real ethical principles, lest it regard his passion: Gladdy Sage.

Though each story is captivating, the book is fractured and difficult to engage in. It seemed that each time I fell into the story, the author interfered with an abrupt switch from one narrator to the next. It was not until the near end of the novel that Anderson’s transitions became fluid and absorbing, the way a book should really grab your attention and not let go.

Nevertheless, the story is a unique twist on the post-9/11 novel and introduces the reader to the challenges of belief systems and the interconnectedness of the human race through the passion of moral conviction. While the protagonists devote their lives to different ideologies, from Islam to Catholicism, atheism and the idolization of romantic love, each struggle with the reality of their idols and the conflicts that exist within themselves and their systems of belief. In this way, Gladdy’s Wake takes a critical look into how we follow faith and why we accepts conceptions of the “moral life” that contradict our character.

Nawal struggles with jihad and the role of women in Islam; Frank with the Catholic vilification of his hidden sexual orientation; Michael Kaminsky (Gladdy’s object of affection and James Kelly’s match) struggles with his Jewish heritage in the Communist revolution; and James Kelly with the real Gladdy Sage – an alcoholic escapist, devoted to Michael Kaminsky and the drink. None of the characters in Anderson’s novel are able to see their deities for what they are. Each blinds himself or herself, excusing as a way of maintaining the pedestal upon which they have placed their flawed idea of morality.

In turn, the story employs a seemingly fractured start to reveal the connection between the disconnected by relating the characters on a moral level. In this way, the author recovers her initial shortcomings. Though this lends the question, what makes a book? Its ability to capture its audience upfront, or to engage its reader with a critical approach to a heavy issue?

Written by: Ani Colekessian, April 22nd 2011

Arcadia Falls

brittany — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Carol Goodman

Ballantine Books

Meg Rosenthal needs a fresh start after the death of her husband. She gave up her career as an artist when her daughter Sally was born, but when she is left with virtually nothing except for a barely functional car, she finds a job teaching folklore and English at a small boarding school for young artists in upstate New York. Sally, now a teenager and a promising artist herself, is admitted to the Arcadia School where her mother will work. Meg hopes that this new career will not only allow her to research the school’s founders—Vera Beecher and Lily Eberhardt—for her dissertation, but perhaps she will also find the daughter she once knew instead of the sullen girl who hides away with her iPod and drawings.

The Arcadia School is the perfect setting for a gothic campus novel, having inspired its creators to write and illustrate many of their own fairy tales. This book is replete with many signature fairy tale elements: a cottage in the woods, an orphan, a murderous villain, and even a Prince Charming of sorts. However, the fairy tales of Arcadia Falls are not the stuff of Disney movies; rather, they are more akin to the Grimm Brothers’ darker stories. Perhaps the darkest element of the school’s past is the tragic death of Lily Eberhardt, who fell into a clove while allegedly leaving the school to run off with her lover, her body missing for weeks before anyone realized that she had never made it off the school’s grounds. Shortly after Meg and Sally arrive, a student falls into the same deep valley during one of the school’s many Pagan rituals. It does not take long before Meg and others at the school begin to wonder if this death was truly an accident.

Carol Goodman’s Arcadia Falls is reminiscent of her earlier novel, The Lake of Dead Languages, a similarly dark boarding school story in which there are mysterious recurring deaths. In this rendition, Goodman delivers a rich and fast-paced novel that moves fluidly between the history of the Arcadia School, the changeling tale written by the school’s founders, and Meg and Sally’s contemporary story. Passages from the changeling story and from Lily’s journal add depth and authenticity to the novel. Keeping the facts straight in this complex, multi-generational plot line can be difficult at times, but ultimately Goodman achieves a thought provoking comparison between the lives of female artists in the mid-twentieth century and today.

While there are numerous subplots built into the book, the overarching question Goodman asks is whether a woman can be both a mother and an artist. The Arcadia School’s founders were required to sacrifice family life for the sake of their careers, while Meg initially did just the opposite. Yet, in rebuilding her life, Meg comes to realize that if she wants to teach her daughter the virtues of being a strong, independent woman, she must find a way to juggle her responsibilities. This is a message that will resonate with many modern readers questioning whether the paths toward family and career must be mutually exclusive.

Written by: Melanie Goodman, April 8th 2011

The Girl With The Glass Feet

brittany — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Ali Shaw

Picador

I am a bit of a daydreamer, as I imagine we all are. When I read, the same rule applies; while the letters unfurl on the page, the images unwind in my mind, doing as they will, relying on my knowledge of the world. I do not like intrusions into that universe. Ali Shaw is a daydreamer as well; however, his dreams have intruded into my own. In The Girl with the Glass Feet, Shaw not only shares the story of Ida Maclaird, her feet, and Midas Crook; Shaw over-shares, too much information and not enough room for imagination. Oily rag skies and overuse of analogies lead to worn dreams.

The story revolves around the everlasting search for redemption. Each character looks to be saved from their glass feet. For some, it is a physical ailment; for others, an emotional, their Achilles heel, if you will. The book’s main character, Ida Maclaird, becomes the very metaphor of Shaw’s analogies after a while—tired and overused. It is disconcerting how helpless and wounded Ida seems. In comparison to the male characters, the women in this book are utterly dispirited.

There is an additional character, however mute and muted in this book. A mythical creature they all seek, knowingly or not, which blanches everything it looks upon. The creature is in the image of a fawn and seems to be female. In a way it assumes the faults many literary women have but not the ones in this book; it forces its will onto others indiscriminately, it enchants and beguiles. Like the glass it is the physical manifestation of a condition. This creature is the one manifestation of the absence of light.

I tend to like how men write about women. Men are kinder or harsher upon women than we are upon ourselves. In this book, Shaw is more kind. His women, while meek and dispirited, are not unreal; they are translucent like the glass that permeates the islands on which they live. Furthermore, these women are beyond redemption. The men who constantly try to save them fail. In that way, the men have no redemption either; tethered to one another they all become immovable works of intricate glass weighing down on one another. Not the islands and their latent hostility, not the mythical creature of white and the purity it enforces by turning everything white as it is, but rather the nature of the people to seek camaraderie and sink when they fail.

Written by: Elisheva Zakheim, March 25th 2011

Sub Rosa

gwen — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Amber Dawn

Arsenal Pulp Press

The story of Sub Rosa is bizarre, surreal, intensely wonderful, and horrible at the same time. You must read this with an open mind and heart. The story focuses on Little, a runaway girl who is lost in the world and herself, who gets rescued by a "daddy" and whisked away to the land of Sub Rosa, a magical street of Glories and their working families. Glories are sex workers with charms—they all have different magical powers. There's always food and sunny days on Sub Rosa—no one gets killed or cries. You're taken care of. But there is an underlying feeling of loss on Sub Rosa, too. Your real name can be forgotten, and cherished memories of your life before coming to Sub Rosa are hard to dig up. You're protected on Sub Rosa, but you still lose your identity. There's plenty of work, filled with "live ones" (johns) and some of the nights detailed in the story seem to drain all the energy and power out of the girls. They are empowered though, by the large sums of cash they receive and the ability to heal the live ones and make them "right" again.

I embraced these characters. They are decked with butterfly adornments and glitter make-up, eat pastries from a bakery called Babycakes, and wash and buy their gorgeous clothes out of the most appealing sounding laundromat I've ever heard of. They study science and marine biology. They live on a street where people make offerings to the tar patches in front of their houses. There was so much weird beauty in their existence. At the same time, I felt weighed down by their constant need for attention from the men, both the daddies (pimps) and the lives ones. I had to think about this journey again and again. Do Little and the rest of the Glories really live a life of salvation? What I realized is that I don't think that's the main point of this story. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this magical tale of prostitutes and a street where goodness prevails is showing the light and dark of sex work. It's where the grit of working streets becomes a fantasy rich with complexity. A hint of glow-in-the-dark nail polish flashes through my mind, the smell of freshly laundered dresses. Little's story and the rest of the Glories' stories continue to stay with me, a testament to Amber Dawn's vivid storytelling.

Written by: Maleka Fruean, March 24th 2011

Love, Honor, and Betray

brittany — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Kimberla Lawson Roby

Grand Central Publishing

Before I started to read it, this book held lots of promise; the cover tells of the author’s previous books being on the New York Times bestseller list. Unfortunately, I had not had the pleasure of reading any other of Kimberla Lawson Roby’s books. Since reading Love, Honor, and Betray, I have come to realize that one of its characters, the Reverend Curtis Black, was at the centre of a series of an eight books by the same author. This series forms a sort of soap opera narrative around this character and his family that has apparently had quite a bit of success. Lawson Roby is certainly a very prolific writer, having published fifteen books since 1997 and been the recipient of many prizes at the African American Literary Awards Show. Her books have a cult following.

Since reading the book, I have realized that I am perhaps not the best person to critique it. My feminist bent is too strong to not be offended by much of what the novel contains. The easy good versus evil dichotomy is maintained throughout the novel, with the main character, Charlotte, painted as a despicable woman and completely vilified by the author to suit the narrative that centers on the “good” Reverend. For example, when the Reverend’s ex-fling passes away, he wants to take in his baby daughter, Curtina, and raise her in his family. However, his wife Charlotte openly hates this child and spends the entire book treating her badly, until the end when she realizes she may lose her husband. While multiple women chase after the handsome Reverend, he stays faithful to his wife while she cheats on him with not just one stranger picked up in a bar, but with a former lover whom she reconnects with on Facebook.

The action in the novel never stops. There are naughty photos of Charlotte sent by cell phone to blackmail her into a subservient sexual relationship. There is a crazed paedophile holding teenagers hostage in a high school. There is a spectacular car crash that almost costs the Reverend his life.

All the characters are attractive one-dimensional mannequins who live an opulent way of life. This lifestyle is probably eons away from any of Lawson Roby’s readers. Charlotte gets back at her husband by maxing out his credit cards ($25,000) at the shopping centre, her son with the Reverend, Matthew drives a brand new luxury car at the age of seventeen, and they have a fulltime housekeeper. The ultimate cliché was the Obama-style fist bump the Reverend and Matthew give each other often in the novel.

Perhaps if I had read the previous novels, this would be a more interesting story; I have been known to follow soap operas in the past. But, the only thing that kept me turning the pages was the fact that I couldn’t believe that it could be any worse. Towards the end of the book, I was able to conceive of a redemptive factor through the fact that Lawson Roby’s publisher had included discussion questions for reading groups. Perhaps the purpose of the book is to discuss its transparent dichotomy and its one-dimensional characters?

Written by: Sophie M. Lavoie, March 15th 2011

Wingshooters

brittany — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Nina Revoyr

Akashic Books

By the age of nine, Michelle LeBeau has already taken more than a few knocks. Her mom has disappeared—whereabouts unknown—and her dad has unceremoniously dumped her with his aging parents in tiny Deerhorn, Wisconsin and left town. Michelle is Deerhorn's first biracial resident—half Japanese, half white—and she is not allowed to forget it.

Her only friends are a loving spaniel and her grandparents, a charismatic retiree named Charlie, and his dutiful wife, Helen. At best, the kids in town are standoffish; at worst, they're violent and mean, treating Michelle like an inferior mongrel.

Perhaps that's why she turns to adults for friendship. From her first days in Deerhorn, Michelle has gravitated toward Charlie, a real man's man, more comfortable hunting, fishing, and shooting the breeze than attending to the emotional needs of a scared little girl. Yet somehow the two bond and while both benefit from the liaison, Charlie makes no bones about his belief that people should stick to their "own kind." At the same time, his unconditional affection for the child is clear to everyone.

Life in Deerhorn settles into a calm, though tense, stasis—at least until Betty and Joe Garrett move to town, she to work in a local clinic, he to fill in for a teacher on maternity leave. The problem? The Garretts are African American.

Although the action of Wingshooters takes place in 1974, Deerhorn seems untouched by either the civil rights or anti-war movements. Residents are perplexed—and angered—by the changes that have taken place in the body politic over the last decade. Among the unsettling events: Legalized abortion and LGBTQ Pride rallies in nearby Madison and Milwaukee. They're further befuddled by media commentators who posit people of color as the moral and intellectual equivalent of whites.

To say that Deerhorn isn't ready for the Garretts is a gross understatement and residents do everything in their power to make the newcomers feel unwelcome. Even the Catholic priest does his bit, preaching against integration and racial equality.

It's ugly stuff. And it escalates when Joe Garrett accidentally discovers bruises on one of his students. Indeed, when a prime mover-and-shaker in Deerhorn—Charlie's best friend Earl—comes under scrutiny for child abuse, many of the town's most prominent denizens scurry to defend him. What ensues can only be described as tragic, a near-epic battle between good and evil.

Along the way, Revoyr addresses multiple themes, from masculinity, to women's roles, to the meaning of loyalty. They're concepts Revoyr has mined before—in The Age of Dreaming and Southland—but never with such passion.

Wingshooters chronicles the events of one particularly tumultuous year, but more than anything else, this is a novel about love, a touching, emotionally-explosive assessment of the relationship between one child and one elder. A fresh take on the politics of family ties, it eschews easy answers as it reveals the complex web binding granddad and granddaughter.

Michelle's conclusion, articulated as an adult, is insightful: "He taught me how to punch, how to block incoming blows, how to throw rocks back with accuracy and strength. These lessons made my life easier, and the irony strikes me only now: it was my grandfather, the rural, prejudiced white man... who taught me how to survive as a child of color in America."

Wingshooters is a story with jagged edges that lets readers decide if some sins—like racism—are simply too heinous to ever be completely forgiven. It's a heartbreakingly beautiful book by an astute political novelist. Read it with tissues in hand.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, March 12th 2011

Dreaming in French

barbara — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Megan McAndrew

Simon & Schuster

On the surface, Dreaming in French sounds like the type of book I would love. It’s about a strong-willed girl named Charlotte growing up in Paris during the 1970s until she and her mother are forced to move to New York. I love anything about Paris, especially during the 1970s with its yé-yé girl singers that ruled the charts, inventive fashion, and sexual freedom. I also love reading about New York during that time period, when a lot of powerful, creative music and art were coming to light.

Sadly, the book is not really about Paris or New York, but about a spoiled, pretentious girl and her equally spoiled, pretentious mother, Astrid. A teenage Charlotte can be forgiven for her self-absorption, but as we watch her grow up, she only becomes more selfish. Astrid is even more selfish than her daughter, breaking the family apart when she has an affair with a Polish dissident and, in a Kafkaesque twist, ends up in jail. Her daughters rally to Astrid’s side, but her faithful husband feels betrayed and will never forgive her. They divorce, and Astrid leaves for New York to start anew. Charlotte, who adores her mother, decides to go with her. Her sister Lea remains in Paris with their father Frank, while his Swedish secretary slowly carries out her plans to marry him.

Charlotte goes from a life of comfort to a life of… slightly less comfort. Her father provides her with some money, and she attends a private school after she and Astrid check out the local high school and find “a group of black girls…tough urban girls with knowing eyes.” This is but one of several racist statements McAndrew makes throughout the novel.

It is hard to sympathize with Charlotte’s troubles when it seems that she has everything going for her: she is thin, white, beautiful, extremely intelligent, and wealthy. She is aware of her privilege but never thinks about it extensively, providing the perfect example of how acknowledging privilege is not the same as understanding it. Rather than use her privilege to try and change the world or examine questions of inequality, Charlotte seems to take pride in how spoiled she is.

Charlotte reminded me a lot of Rory Gilmore from the TV show Gilmore Girls because she is also smart, pretty, and white, except that Rory is humble and likable, whereas Charlotte is not. No doubt due to her pedigree and upbringing, Charlotte gets into Yale, and busies herself studying post-structuralist feminism. At Yale she has a disturbing relationship with a man named Azher, who attempts to enter her almost brutally. Their forceful, violent sex and bordering-on-abusive relationship is treated with the same detached superficiality of everything else in the novel. McAndrew handles cancer, eating disorders, cross-cultural interactions, AIDS, and political uprisings with the aloof tone of one talking about the weather.

Eventually Charlotte comes into her own working for Glamour magazine and the reader is supposed to be happy for her, but Charlotte is still more of a petulant child than amiable heroine. McAndrew’s tendency to rely on clichés only exacerbates the situation. By the end of the novel Charlotte has discovered that she holds the key to her own happiness, her father has remarried a sweet widow who is also the mother of Charlotte’s childhood best friend, and her sister Lea is literally living happily ever after in a castle with her husband who’s a legitimate Prince. It’s all the stuff of an airplane book, and not a particularly good one at that.

The world really does not need another book about a privileged young woman trying to find herself through shopping and sex with men she doesn’t love. To this type of ridiculous, pointless novel, I say j’en ai marre—I’ve had enough.

Written by: Arielle Burgdorf, March 11th 2011

The Summer Without Men

brittany — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Siri Hustvedt

Picador

The basic storyline of The Summer Without Men, while not startling or original, seemed full of possibility: husband cheats, wife goes to her childhood home for a respite to recover, and along the way makes potentially hopeful discoveries about herself. I anticipated a bitter beginning, full of hurt feelings, with some healing by the end. However, either the moment of redemption never arrived, or it was obscured by the lack of clarity in the narrative.

Siri Hustvedt has given us for a protagonist Mia Fredrickson, an intellectual poet who has almost nothing good to say about anybody, except for the philosophers and poets who stream through her mind and punctuate moments of daily life. Her library of poets-at-the-mental-fingertips was the most charming thing about her, and most readers could likely relate to the way a quote or a lyric arises unbeckoned from one’s memory. Mia assails the reader with her stream of consciousness ramblings, bouncing from observations about her detestable, cheating spouse to glimpses of her mental breakdown to detached remarks about her daughter. At times, it was difficult for me to remember where she was in space or time because her ramblings were hard to follow.

To my disappointment, Mia Frederickson was not a very sympathetic protagonist. She spends time with the women in a home for the elderly where her mother lives, and one scene raised my hopes that Mia might feel some humility, some sense of connection with other women. Instead, she continues to sound bitter and superior. When she befriends a young neighbor with a troubled marriage, I thought perhaps this friendship would bring moment of real connection. Instead, after she holds the neighbor’s baby, she describes it as a “borrowed homunculus.” This variety of cold, pretentious language fills the book and makes Mia rather difficult to connect with.

Toward the very end of the book Hustvedt asks, “Who among us would deny Jane Austen her happy endings?” Perhaps I am naive and too fond of stories that show the healing rather than the bitterness. After all, Mia’s husband has cheated after a long marriage full of disappointing moments. She was the supportive wife in the background, whose intellect often propelled her husband’s achievements while her voice went unrecognized. However, throughout the novel her voice is cool and distant, and events that might contribute to healing and growth seem to create no real effect. In this way, the novel reads more like a series of jarring snapshots.

Author Siri Hustvedt is the author of five novels, and this was my first encounter with her work. It may be that one of her earlier works would suit me better.

Written by: Lisa Rand, March 6th 2011

Solo

tina — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Rana Dasgupta

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Initially, it was the synoptic descriptions of Solo that drew me in. I saw phrases like “enigmatic,” “thought-provoking,” and “demanding,” along with geographical settings such as Berlin, Bulgaria, and New York City. The cover artwork interested me as well. It depicts the white silhouette of a man against a seafoam blue background; he has a cane and his upper body is dissolving into birds. I hadn't read much fiction in recent months, so I was eager to jump back into the storytelling pool with this book.

Solo begins sadly and remains sad throughout. Ulrich, an old Bulgarian man nearing his 100th birthday, is completely blind and relies on the charity of his neighbors to exist. He has nothing to do except relive his life, one memory at a time. Ulrich was born and raised alongside the timeline of the twentieth century and each of his dreams has been thwarted by the major events of the times. Even after managing to leave Bulgaria to study chemistry in Berlin, he is called back to his home country to face its ruin at the hands of Russian Communists. Ulrich never leaves the country again.

The second half of the novel concentrates on Ulrich's “dream children,” Bulgarian siblings Khatuna, Irakli, and Boris, an orphan and violin prodigy. Each has a sad beginning in their native Bulgaria and they find their respective ways to the United States (echoing Ulrich's own frustrated attempts to leave Bulgaria). In America, their lives entangle messily. Which of them will find happiness? Khatuna, Irakli, and Boris are Ulrich's dream of the twenty-first century, where there is no need for any of the old failures of twentieth century Bulgarian life.

In an interview, author Rana Dasgupta (a British-Indian who has lived largely in the U.S. and India) referred to the “self-absorbed” nature of America and India, countries he believes behave as if they’re “the only countries in the world.” This is why the author chose Bulgaria, a small and “uninteresting” country, as the setting of his second novel. Small it may be, but the milieu is anything but uninteresting. The characters, down to those who make the briefest of appearances, are fully realized. More than once I became tearful at the transpiring events. The prose is fine, strong, and pretty. I enjoyed Solo very much and recommend it to any fan of literary fiction, history, or armchair travel.

Written by: Natalie Ballard, March 5th 2011

Give Me Liberty

beth — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Valerie Joan Connors

Give Me Liberty, by Valerie Joan Connors, is terrible. The book reads like someone narrating a Lifetime movie: one-dimensional, wooden, and worst of all, boring. You can guess what is going to happen well before it does, no characters are anything but exactly what you expect them to be, and the writing is pedestrian.

The story follows Eva Larkin from her courtship with her boyfriend to her abusive marriage in Michigan to her following her dream to write novels in New York. Getting from point A to point B happens exactly like you expect it to. Nothing interesting, new, or exciting happens—even when a possibility presents itself, Connors does not take it. For example, when Eva gets to New York, she has a disastrous first job, and then gets the job of her dreams in publishing. Her new boss loves her, promotes to columnist without reading any of her writing, and supports her without question. Everything goes her way, except for her first husband.

The characters are more than one dimensional—they have one character trait. That includes Eva. She’s saintly. Her ex-husband Leo is an alcoholic. It is hard to see why Eva ever liked him. Besides her ex-husband, the men in her life are generous. The women are supportive. All of them. Every woman she meets in New York City, all five of them, are older, rich, and willing to give Eva money, support, and love without question. And all of them have been abused, and saved by loving second husbands. She and son, Daniel, have no long-term effects of severe abuse, stalking, and assault. No one resembles a real person.

Connors’ dialogue sounds nothing like actual conversation. Characters state their feelings without subtext, or anything approaching conversational language. For example, one character asks Eva about a potential date. The question is “Is he good looking? Smart?” Eva’s response is “I guess so... He’s a little older than me.” That’s the entire explanation of him. Most of the conversations in the book sound exactly like that. No personality, no slang. Every character sounds exactly the same.

As I said, Give Me Liberty is not a good book. The characters need more depth, the writing needs to be sharpened, and the plot could use a twist somewhere. It feels like a first draft. Wait for the next one.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, March 3rd 2011

The Autobiography of Jenny X

beth — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Lisa Dierbeck

Mischief + Mayhem

The Autobiography of Jenny X is amazing. Every time you think you know what is going to happen, author Lisa Dierbeck takes the story in a different, exciting direction. Using a well-known starting off point, Dierbeck opens up a whole new world.

The book switches between three narrators: Nadia Orsini, a photographer with a beautiful family, gorgeous house, and happy marriage; Dan Orsini, her driven, doctor husband; and Christopher Benedict, the former hippie, current incarcerated convict. Dan finds letters from Christopher addressed to “Jenny X,” and in his mind, his perfect marriage falls apart. The same letters cause Nadia to go to great lengths to ensure secrets stay hidden. To Christopher, the letters give him hope for the future, and a connection to his past. The lives of the three are connected in more intimate ways than any of them are comfortable with, and mere possibility of that connection causes all three of them to act out of character. Using the turmoil of the ‘60s as the beginning and through the ostensible mystery of who Jenny X is, Dierbeck takes the story someplace unexpected.

Each of these characters is a vivid person, with deep internal lives and powerful, relatable emotions. Dan, a man so used to being in control, panics when he realizes his wife has kept secrets from him. At first, he assumes she is cheating on him, but when he finds the first Jenny X letter, he realizes it may be much worse. Christopher, in prison for the majority of the story, is a relic of the ‘60s idealism. Prison calcified him, and when he is released, judges the world and everyone he knows by the same ‘60s ideals. Dierbeck gives the reader a view of culture shock to the extreme. As their story unfolds, all three reveal hidden depth as the novel goes on. It becomes very difficult to guess what any of them are going to do.

Nadia is the most interesting character in a novel full of them. Discovering who she truly is becomes the key to the story. Parts of the story are narrated by her, but she is still a bit of a mystery. Her connection to Jenny X is not apparent at first, despite how obvious it seems to be. She never becomes a cliché, even when her emotions and actions are familiar. She reacts completely naturally, but still in surprising ways. She has depth in spades.

The Autobiography of Jenny X is an incredible book. Dierbeck took the cliché of the ‘60s and weaved a mystery that takes them to their obvious ends without making the plot line as obvious. Highly recommended.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, February 27th 2011

A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear

alicia — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Yama Yari, Sarah Maguire, Atiq Rahimi

Chatto and Windus

Set in Kabul in 1979, A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear is a surreal and beautiful account of the experiences of a young man who wakes up in the home of a widow following an altercation with checkpoint guards. Almost poetic in its descriptions, one sees the story develop through the cloudy and confused eyes of Farhad. Alternating between his lucid dreams and what actually is occurring around him, the reader is tossed into his confusion, in understanding how he ended up in the home of a widow, and why her son addresses him as ‘father’.

The structure that Rahimi uses is quite unique as it flows much like a poem, rather than a chronological story, but I felt that this technique was successful because it illustrated how confusing and simple it was for the protagonist to end up in his position, being protected by the widow, despite the danger that it would cause her.

While initially I was uneasy about the unstructured format of the novel, I eventually grew to appreciate it. However, by the time the plot began to gain momentum, the novel was finished, and I wished it were longer. The disconnected and dream-like voice of the author is effective in showing the emotions and confusion of being in the midst of political and religious unrest. We see the protagonist’s journey in trying to understand what is actually occurring around him. The lack of structure demonstrates the lack of stability that Farhad has, even as he gains consciousness.

The female characters in the novel are quite significant, as they are the ones that protect and save Farhad. The widow, in particular, is a character that I wish were developed more, and one of the main reasons why I wished that the novel were longer. She is not a romantic object for Farhad, even though he has a fleeting attraction to her. Instead, she acts as a maternal figure to him when he is recovering from his attack. In learning about her past, we learn more about the volatile atmosphere in Kabul, and eventually, how simple it was to have your life completely altered.

We eventually learn that Farhad was a university student, who had his life endangered because of an evening that involved too much drinking. Illustrating the relationship between the political and the personal, Rahimi shows how even the life of an uninvolved young man could be unravelled by the political unrest of the time. I wondered how much of Farhad’s voice reflected the experiences of Rahimi. The author exited Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion in 1979, the same year in which the novel is set. Rahimi eventually settled in France, where he is a filmmaker and writer.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, and I thought it was one of the strongest novels I have read this year. It is an easy, beautiful, and somewhat heartbreaking read.

Written by: Sara Yasin, February 7th 2011

Luka and the Fire of Life

mandy — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 16:00:00 +0000

By Salman Rushdie

Random House

The world according to Salman Rushdie post-fatwa is a very bad place. If his books from this era are anything to go by, most people are judgmental, small-minded, and intolerant. In this book, and its prequel Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Rushdie is passing that same worldview on to his sons. Buried under verbal twists and turns and puns and slapstick, Luka and the Fire of Life is about a boy undertaking a quest through a mythical world (created, it seems, by his father’s stories) to save his father’s life. He braves great challenges and finds courage he did not know he had. Ostensibly, Luka is on a quest to find his own voice, but the voice he actually finds his father’s.

While I was reading the book, I kept trying to imagine a twelve-year-old boy reading it, but I couldn’t. The references to video games are a bit sad—like a sixty-year-old father trying to appear cool by getting into what his pre-teen son likes—and wouldn’t fool any kid. The adventures were too wordy and too weighty to really pull me along, let alone a mile-a-minute boy. Luka and the Fire of Life left me with an overwhelming sense of a man desperate to prove his own relevance—to everyone, but maybe mostly to his son.

And where is Luka’s mother in all this? Soraya is a flat character, given to pronouncements about how hilarious the men in her family are, more often tut-tutting than actually speaking. She sits uselessly by Rashid’s bedside while her son goes out to save the world. I wondered what kind of quest Rushdie would think of for her if he could. She does appear in an alternate form in the fantasy world, helping Luka on his way, but she does not present any counterweight to his father or his father’s image of the world.

Rushdie was at his peak with The Satanic Verses, a book I believe was as close to genius as anything written in this generation, when Rushdie was forced into hiding. It is impossible to imagine the impact a worldwide death sentence would have on a creative mind, but if Rushdie’s books of this era are any indication, then the fatwa killed the spark built in Rushdie’s early work.

I remember the hate and the close-mindedness of the fatwa; for many in the West, it may have been one the first glimpses of the power and reach of extremist Islam. But I also remember the courage of the many who stood with Rushdie and protected him in those years. I remember rallies at University and writers and others risking their lives to stand up for Rushdie. Where is that alternate worldview in his books? Tragically for his readers, Rushdie seems yet to see this side of this momentous event.

It seems like today—when religious extremisms and hate seem to be winning the war of words, when secularism and so-called blasphemy can get even the Governor of Punjab killed—Rushdie could help us see the other realities. He could show the world beyond it and behind it, not just point us through it, as if it were the only truth and, like it or not, we have to navigate it, with just a dancing bear and a singing dog and a few words of advice from an aging storyteller. I want the Rushdie of The Satanic Verses back; he really knew how to cut the legs out from under the small-minded power of intolerance.

Written by: Khadijah Fancy, February 5th 2011

Old Photographs

gwen — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

By Sherie Posesorski

Second Story Press

Old Photographs by Sherie Posesorski is the story of Phoebe Hecht, a teenage girl who is struggling through most boring summer of her life. Originally from the small town of Barrie, Phoebe moved to Toronto about a year ago when her mother married Greg, a very rich, very serious doctor. While her mother is excited about all the changes in their life, Phoebe is less than thrilled. Her only friend, Yuri, is spending the summer in Tokyo and her current crush, Colin, doesn't seem to know she's alive. Added to that is the fact that she misses her extended family back in Barrie, while her mother seems determined to erase any evidence of their old life, including forbidding any old family photos to be displayed.

Things don't seem like they're ever going to get any better until Phoebe comes across a garage sale being held by Mrs. Tomblin, an elderly neighbor. The two become fast friends and Phoebe soon discovers two things about Mrs. Tomblin. The first is that she suffers from Alzheimer's disease and is selling the majority of her belongings because her son is moving her to an assisted living facility. The other is that Mrs. Tomblin is in possession of a series of photographs taken by her aunt, a world famous photographer. Shortly after their first meeting, Mrs. Tomblin becomes the victim of a brutal assault and burglary. The police are baffled by the crime but Phoebe suspects it has something to do with Mrs. Tomblin's old photographs and vows to solve the case herself.

The characters are the strongest part of this book. Phoebe comes across as a normal teenager. She's very outspoken and hot-tempered but is completely tongue-tied around her crush. She argues with her parents but is never so disrespectful as to come off bratty or annoying. Colin, the object of Phoebe's affection, is smart and hard-working, spending his summer stocking groceries. He genuinely cares about both Phoebe and Mrs. Tomblin and his friendship with Phoebe naturally progresses into a believable relationship. Phoebe's mother is a conflicted woman. She loves her daughter and wants the best for her but has the misguided notion that the only way to achieve that is to ignore everything that happened in their past. The interactions between Phoebe and her mother are full of both friction and love, making for a very real mother/daughter relationship.

My only complaint is that we don't get to see enough of Phoebe's best friend Yuri, who serves as her sounding board for all things mystery-related. Since Yuri is overseas for the majority of the book, she and Phoebe mostly communicate via text messages and e-mails, which has the effect of making the interaction between the two girls pretty dull and lifeless until the end of the novel, when Yuri comes back from her vacation. For those last few chapters, the girls exchange such witty, natural dialogue that you wish that Posesorski had brought Yuri back a whole lot earlier.

The biggest problem in Old Photographs is that it is a mystery novel that lacks a mystery. The reader knows almost immediately what the burglars were looking for in Mrs. Tomblin's house and the only suspects that Phoebe comes up with turn out to be the guilty parties. There are no surprises, no suspense, and the entire novel comes across more as a coming-of-age story than a whodunit. The characters are so engaging, though, that I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel, albeit with a better mystery this time around.

Written by: Victoria Granado, February 2nd 2011

Tales from the Yoga Studio

mandy — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

By Rain Mitchell

Plume

Tales from the Yoga Studio is, in many ways, the typical story of White women who discover Eastern philosophy (in this case, yoga) and learn how to breathe deeply. Though the women weren’t all from White, upper class society (there was a token Latina and some women who couldn’t afford the yoga class), it essentially contains the trials and tribulations of upper class Angelenos: Which yoga studio to go to today? What to wear to yoga class?

I have had experience attending a wide variety of yoga classes and peeking into the world in which yoga is a competitive sport. I dislike the commodification of yoga, which has become, in this context, devoid of the union of body and mind. In spite of this, I was looking forward to reading a potentially fun drama about a yoga studio.

While there were a few lines that I almost marked to look at later, for the most part I was annoyed with the characters, found the writing lacking a strong voice, and felt slightly impatient to finish the 297 pages. I continued as a result of a sense of wonder that there might be a hidden point that would illuminate itself in the last few pages and make everything seem worthwhile. No such luck.

It could be that, as a woman of color recently returning to the United States from India, the characters of Tales from the Yoga Studio were too preoccupied with their own world. For this reason, I am explicitly exposing my potential bias. There may very well be people out there who would enjoy this novel precisely because of its simplicity. In retrospect, perhaps my expectations were too high.

Tales from the Yoga Studio was clearly not my favorite novel, but for someone who does yoga in LA, may be right up your alley.

Written by: Lakshmi Saracino, January 20th 2011