friendship

Wingshooters

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

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

Connected: The Suprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives — How Your Friends' Friends' Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do

payal — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Nicholas A. Christakis, James H. Fowler

Little, Brown and Company

Connected is firstly an enjoyable read. There is something compelling about seeing the familiar, mundane details of our every day social life studied from a completely different perspective. Social networks are huge and for the most part we have no idea where we fit into them or just how far they reach. In a way this is Christakis and Fowler's point. What most of us think of as our social network are the people we know and see on a regular basis. In fact, the people who may have the most influence on us, the authors argue, are the people three degrees away in our network: friends of friends. And after three degrees the influence peters out. You are more likely to be happy if your friend's friends are happy than if you win the lottery!

Connected has been criticized for stating the obvious: we are more likely to be around people similar to us (“homophily” if you're a sociologist). But the argument the authors make is that we're not aware of the extent to which these relationships affect us, and most importantly how this impact could be used to better the world. If we are more likely to quit smoking because other people in our network have quit smoking than for any other reason, this is where anti-smoking resources should be directed. Similarly, politicians should focus on encouraging their supporters to recruit people in their networks to get involved rather than trying to reach out to individuals (and the authors argue Obama did this in the federal election).

The results of studies in this book are also sometimes unexpected, especially on the largely unstudied subject of social media. For example, a study was done on a small American town where sixty percent of the residents were given free wi-fi, and the other forty percent went internet free. After two years it was discovered that the households with internet developed deeper and broader connections to other residents, with more neighbourhood ties. Contrary to popular belief this suggests online communication might augment and improve real life relationships, not replace them.

The only issue I had with the social media chapter was that it already seemed a little dated, referring to sites like MySpace and iLike that have been mostly phased out. If anything this is a testament to how quickly changing our modern social networks are, as this book was only published in 2009. If you're ready to take a serious look at the influences that affect your life, most of which are probably beyond your control, read this book and prepare to have a whole new perspective.

Written by: Jennifer Burgess, February 2nd 2011

Stranger Here Below

tina — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Joyce Hinnefeld

Unbridled Books

Stranger Here Below tells the stories of three generations of women whose lives are connected by a single institution and a changing America.

Amazing Grace “Maze” Jansen and Mary Elizabeth “M. E.” Cox meet at Berea College in Kentucky in 1961. Maze is a poor white mountain girl and M. E. is one of just a few African American students at the college. The young women come from difficult backgrounds and both have mothers who have struggled. Hinnefeld tells the stories of the four women, mothers and daughters, and a fifth woman named Sister Georgia. Sister Georgia went to Berea College decades earlier and is now the last surviving Shaker in Pleasant Hill, a Shaker community near Berea College.

Maze and M. E. are college roommates and scholarship students, but they are not necessarily fast friends. M. E. was raised by a stern preacher father and by Sarah, a mother who retreats into a strange world where she is incapable of simple communication. Both her race and her family background make M. E. unsure of her place in the world and she seems unable to enjoy her musical talents or her friendship with Maze. Still, Maze pursues their friendship doggedly, inviting M. E. to spend time with her at her mother's home. Maze's mother Vista raised Maze on her own, her husband having abandoned her after one night of marriage. Vista is now Sister Georgia's caretaker and the two young women stay with Vista in Sister Georgia's home.

Together the girls watch Sister Georgia perform her Shaker rituals, her dancing, and her shaking and they go through a Shaker ledger from a century ago that contains herbal remedies and recipes. Sister Georgia is old, alone, and the last member of a religion of celibates. What the two young women do not know about Sister Georgia is that when she was in college she fell in love with a black man, but her father, an abolitionist, forbade her to marry him. Her life, like and Sarah’s, is one marked by loss.

Mary Elizabeth is a talented pianist who was courted by the university for her musical abilities. School officials seemed to imply that it was unusual to see such talent in an African American. M. E. is confused by their attentions and turns away from her music. But in the early 1960’s, Maze imagines a different kind of America. She dreams of a twentieth century communal living experience that would nurture people like the five women of this book.

It's a grand scheme, and this book covers a lot of territory in few pages. Hinnefeld begins in 1968, with Maze writing a letter to her missing friend Mary Elizabeth. The next chapter takes us back to 1872 and the birth of Sister Georgia. The lives of all five women unfold in a nonlinear fashion, in isolated sections, and these sections weave in and out of the book's present and deep into the past. Perhaps this weaving back and forth in time reflects the fractured nature of these women's lives. Sometimes it's hard to put the pieces together, just as it's hard for the women to keep their own lives in order. As readers we have to work for it, but in the end I think it's worth the effort. I cared about these women and the pressures they stood up to in their struggles to make themselves whole.

Written by: Natasha Bauman, November 23rd 2010

With Friends Like These

caitlin — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Sally Koslow

Ballantine Books

Sally Koslow’s With Friends Like These is mostly predictable. The main characters—a group of four women who are each others’ best friends—are often caricatures, and there is nothing terribly new or innovative about the story. Still, I didn’t dislike the book (except for the ending, which was terribly trite) and may even read it again.

Why, you may ask, would I reread a book I just called trite and predictable? What Koslow's book does manage to show, if imperfectly, and not always believably, is a group of girlfriends who forge friendships that span young adulthood to real grown-up-hood. Moreover, these women hurt each other. They fail to respond to each others’ needs. They mess up. They even have a hard time forgiving one another.

We need more stories about friendships that are imperfect, that do not meet all of our needs all the time, and that grow and wane and shift and stretch and learn to accommodate. As girls and women, we need stories about friendships with women that are resilient enough to bear criticism, pain, and cruelty—as well as happiness, praise, and kindness. Although Koslow’s characters sometimes appear to have been pulled from some bin of clichés, Koslow does not shy away from depicting anger, disappointment, hurt feelings, and grudge-holding. Although the ending is too neat and slightly purple, the mere fact that Koslow points to reconciliations that do not depend upon forgetting a hurtful past should earn her points for trying.

As feminists, and inheritors to pro-woman social action, it can be very difficult for women to develop healthy ways of being critical of one another. Being critical of women is often (mis)interpreted as not supporting women, as not supporting women’s choices, as being anti-woman, anti-feminist, or anti-equality. It can be easier to quietly drop a friendship than to tell a friend, “You really screwed things up between us and I am really, really angry and hurt by your actions.” Telling a woman she’s screwed up doesn’t fit into certain conceptions of feminism (as I am learning), or perhaps it is better to say that it rests in a panicked tension with certain conceptions of feminism.

This is why I enjoyed With Friends Like These. It shows women who aren’t afraid to screw up, who are afraid to admit they’ve screwed up, who are held responsible but don’t want to be held responsible, and who eventually learn that being a grown-up and being a real friend both entail confidence, vulnerability, humility, and compromise. I hope that one day I can have friends as “fake” as these—who will tell me I messed up when I mess up and who will, eventually, love me anyway.

Written by: kristina grob, October 21st 2010

The Romantics

caitlin — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Galt Niederhoffer

Paramount

Walking in to watch The Romantics, I feared it might be a movie that relies on star power to get by. Valentine’s Day is what came to mind, and even though the level of celebrity of the stars of The Romantics isn’t exactly the same (Katie Holmes and Anna Paquin aren’t quite Julia Roberts and Jessica Alba), I was nonetheless worried. As it turns out, I didn’t have much to worry about on that front, though I still struggled a bit with this movie.

The Romantics is about a group of college friends who got this nickname because of, in the words of Katie Holmes’ character, their “incestuous” dating history. At the center of this group are Laura (Katie Holmes) and Lila (Anna Paquin), who were roommates and best friends. The group has reunited for Lila’s wedding, with Laura as her maid of honor. The problem is that Lila is marrying the one man Laura loves, Tom (Josh Duhamel). Everyone – the Romantics, Lila’s family, and even Lila herself – knows that Laura’s still in love with Tom.

I want to start by saying that the main thing I didn’t like about this movie is the sense that it is trying too hard. The characters are completely unlikable, references to their days as undergrads seem forced, and the ending is somewhat unsatisfying. Any of these things on their own would simply make this a different kind of movie, but all of them together gave me the impression that the film is trying to be different, which I don’t generally like. As I thought about the film moments, even hours, after, I was disappointed.

But for some reason, I got over it. When I looked back on the film the next day, I realized that it didn’t matter if it tries too hard, because it's still very refreshing.

The characters are unlikable, but they’re also familiar. I may not be best friends with the girl who's with a guy she knows doesn’t want to be with her, but I’ve certainly known that girl. I also know the couple that just can’t make it work, no matter how much they seem right for each other.

And while my friends and I don’t constantly start sentences with, “Remember that English paper junior year,” we do randomly bring up our all-nighters or the class that kicked all of our butts. It isn’t farfetched to think that if we all got together and were reminiscing, these memories would come to us much more quickly.

So maybe the film is trying too hard, but the fact is that I still really enjoyed it. The acting was great, and the main characters had very good chemistry as an ensemble. There were some uncomfortable moments, some sad moments, and some really funny moments. Then there was the music, which I completely loved and was carefully weaved through the film to help tell the story.

In the end, I was pleasantly surprised and looked back at The Romantics as a good story told by the right people in just the right way.

Written by: frau sally benz, September 26th 2010

Cheap Cabernet: A Friendship

kristin — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 02:00:00 +0000

By Cathie Beck

Voice Trade Publishing

My daughter has a t-shirt that reads “Friends are Forever, Boys are…Whatever”. It always gets a laugh, especially from her female teachers. And while most of us know that friends are not always forever, we do realize the importance of girlfriends. Every girl needs a girlfriend. That one person we can go to with our secrets and our neuroses who will commiserate when we find that enormous zit emerging or the first hair on our chin.

Cheap Cabernet reminds us that there are different girlfriends for different stages of our lives as well. Maybe that one go-to friend in high school isn’t the same one you run to with questions about parenting when you find yourself alone and wondering if your child is going to be a serial killer. Cathie Beck’s story recounts the years of friendship with an unlikely best friend when she finds herself an empty nester. She seems truly surprised to have found this irreverent wild woman with whom to share adventures, but considering that she herself started the ball rolling by putting an ad in the personals seeking “Women on the Way” (WOW) when she was really just casting about for some companionship, maybe her audacity was simply rewarded with this woman in a very fitting way.

Cathie was a very young single mother, with two kids by the age of twenty, who worked hard to get by and these years after her kids have gained independence are truly hers. The unlikely scenarios in which she finds herself seem to be a fair payoff for the years of struggle. Like many of us, Cathie finds herself inspired to do things she would not have dreamed of otherwise thanks to her new found friend. The book is a testament to the power of friendships between women, complete with ups and downs, fights and dressing room hilarity.

It is clear from chapter one, however, where this friendship will end up and, if I have a complaint about the book itself, that would be it. In every single chapter, there is some foreshadowing of the eventual outcome, to the point where I could be heard muttering to myself, “Okay, I get it. Message received.” Overall, however, Cheap Cabernet was a book that reminded me to cultivate my friendships with the lovely women in my life and gave me hope for those days when my daughters aren’t nearly so cavalier about boys and I’m stuck at home alone on a Saturday night. Maybe I’ll pop open a bottle of wine and call a friend who will come make me laugh.

Written by: Kari O’Driscoll, September 17th 2010

Not that Kind of Girl

admin — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Siobhan Vivian

Push

Painting people into camps is really easy to do: either they’re good or bad, respected or mocked, smart or silly. For Natalie, high school—and life—is a pretty simple game of either/or. And she knows what she is: she’s a senior. She’s student council president. She’s going places. There’s no room for the other side, and definitely no room for the myriad shades of gray that make up the vast middle. Not That Kind Of Girl opens up with Natalie recounting a story that’s become legend at her private school, Ross Academy.

It’s a story about a freshman girl who started dating a senior boy, and when she wasn’t ready for anything too physical, he ruined her reputation, and changed her life. Natalie uses that true story as one of the reasons why she has chosen to just opt out completely. After all, if she doesn’t play the game, there’s no chance at losing it. And she’s got her eye on the future—even if that means missing out on some of the present.

Natalie’s steadfast resolve is threatened by the new crop of freshmen girls, though, who are led by her former babysitting charge. Spencer is brazen, overtly sexual, and totally in charge of her life. But when her antics get her in trouble, Natalie decides to take her under her wing and show her—and the rest of the so-called Rosstitutes—what self-respect means. Natalie was sure she was going to teach the freshman girls a thing or two about how to thrive at Ross Academy, and how to rise above the misogyny and sexism that run rampant through the hallways. But instead, they start teaching her lessons—the hard way.

Throw in a deep attraction to one of the very boys Natalie is railing against, and you’ve got yourself a classic high school story with a feminist twist. I loved this book. Siobhan Vivian is a master at the contemporary high school scene (see her other works, like Same Difference, to understand) and this latest release further demonstrates her skills at depicting the blacks, whites, and grays of teenage life.

I’ve been Natalie—in both the good and the bad ways—and I was pleasantly surprised to see how she grew and changed throughout the story. Her thinking about high school relationships feels simplistic, but is actually quite nuanced, and the differences between her and Spencer, and her and her best friend, illustrate how complicated male-female dynamics are, especially in a contemporary high school, where the playing field is never level and the responses are never entirely fair.

The supporting cast of characters feel like they were handpicked from my own high school memories—the entitled, demeaning jock; the young teacher eager to leave her mark; the best friend who turns out to be different from what you thought—and I found myself gripped by the fast-moving plot, which spanned a year in the life of Ross Academy. There are no mermaids, sirens, vampires, or ghosts in this book. But there is a striking, gorgeous high school reality—straight up and dirty. Embrace it.

Written by: Morgan @ yaReads, September 1st 2010

The Switch

admin — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:31:00 +0000

Directed by Josh Gordon

Bona Fide Productions

The Switch is getting a lukewarm reception, unless of course you count Capone's review over at AintItCoolNews.com, which makes the film sound like the culprit behind most major World Wars. Others found it sweet but lacking depth, and as usual in the case of movies that don't land with mainstream audiences, I loved it.

I liked the fact that The Switch wasn't all about gross-out sperm humor, which is what the marketing campaign made it seem like it was going to be, focusing entirely on the moment in question of the actual titular switch. The marketing campaign made it seem like the movie was going to be a Farrelly Brothers movie or something more akin to, The Back-Up Plan. But it wasn't.

This is a movie about what happens after a wacky mishap, the human fallout. It's more about the resulting child and less about the night he was conceived. Maybe it's because of the age I'm at, 28, and my thinking about having a family of my own soon that made The Switch the kind of story I could really grasp onto.

The film operates under what Ebert calls, "an idiot plot," where the entire film hinges around one secret that, if revealed, would essentially fix everything or ruin it forever. But unlike the frustration that typically comes with movies like this, as an audience member, I was rooting for the secret keeper and not wanting to ring his neck like I so often do. What's the difference this time? It's not really a secret. The two main characters already love each other, and we know that early on. They are simply too afraid of messing up their friendship and too frustrated with each other to say anything about it. Sounds less and less like the movie that was advertised, doesn't it? That's because this felt like a small film, maybe even an independent. But it was marketed to mass audiences.

Usually, movies like this play relationships oh-so-very-coy, and the main character seems totally oblivious to the fact that her male best friend is in love with her. I hate that. So, Aniston's portrayal of a character with mixed emotions, in love with her best friend but believing she deserves someone who will actually speak up for her and behave in a mature way, is refreshingly different. It helped me keep my patience with Bateman, who plays quirky and verklempt very well—so well that if it weren't for Aniston's more down-to-Earth portrayal, he would've driven me crazy. It's as if we have a romantic comedy where the woman is unwilling to participate in the traditional structure, refusing to wait on the man to resolve his feelings before moving forward in her own life without him. The trouble is, there's still that pesky problem of being in love. Yes, every romantic comedy is the same.

If you've been on the fence and you like movies about what happens after the seemingly "happily ever after," then give The Switch a try, eventually. Yes, there's a happy ending. Yes, at it's core, it's a populist movie about family and how we have to overcome the mistakes of the families we were raised in to build our own. But every once in a while, and with a cast like this, what's so wrong with that?

Excerpted from Born for Geekdom

Written by: Audrey M. Brown, August 25th 2010

Blame

admin — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

By Michelle Huneven

Picador

Michelle Huneven’s Blame spans twenty years in fewer than 300 pages but avoids any frantic pacing or strange leaps. Patsy MacLemoore, the main character, is an alcoholic. A young academic, her scholarly accomplishments initially help to balance negative effects of her alcoholism. Huneven’s protagonist has a professorship at a at a small liberal arts college. She had a small but sunny house, friends, family nearby, and was pretty, with long blonde hair, long tanned legs and a dazzling smile. At the county jail, the regular inmates call her “Professor” when she wakes up there after having had too much to drink.

When Patsy wakes up in jail—again—she assumes she’d simply had too much to drink; perhaps she’d driven even though her license had been revoked. She tries joking with the officers, the lawyers. She’d blacked out—again—and doesn’t know what she’d done to land in jail. “What is it?” she asks, “I really don’t remember. Did I kill someone?” She’s joking. Then they read her the police report. A mother and daughter, killed in her driveway, hit by a car.

Patsy pleads guilty and goes to prison. Huneven’s depiction of prison is sobering and not heavy-handed. She doesn’t romanticize Patsy’s prison experience, but neither does she withhold from her readers the moments of grace Patsy does experience there. In prison, Patsy sobers up, leaves prison and returns to town.

Patsy loses many friends, but miraculously (isn’t friendship and forgiveness always a miracle?), she is not left completely alone. Her ex-boyfriend visits her every week, becoming one of her most faithful and loyal friends. Her parents are gentle with her. Her brother looks out for her. When she leaves prison, she comes home to an apartment lovingly appointed by her best friend and his boyfriend. She meets an older man in AA and remains sober, gets married. Many years later, Patsy learns what happened when she blacked out in the car that night. That new information changes Patsy’s new and hard-won self-perception.

I didn’t want this book to end. The story isn’t incomplete, not by any means. Huneven’s feel for just the right bit of detail was wonderfully effective. I felt attached to these characters, their lives and stories, their back-stories, and their private moments very early on and simply wanted even more by the time the book ended. I loved them. I loved the depth with which Huneven wrote them. I am a sucker for stories depicting people who are deeply flawed but who are nevertheless very much loved. This was one of those stories and I hope to find another one like it again.

Written by: kristina grob, August 8th 2010

Get Him to the Greek

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:00:00 +0000

Directed by Nicholas Stoller

Universal Studios

Aldous Snow (Russell Brand)—the uber-sexual, tongue-in-cheek (and anywhere else you’ll let him stick it) Brit-rocker introduced to audiences in 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall—is back in the latest film from yet another member of the Apatow Film Club for Boys. Based on characters created by Jason Segel, and written and directed by Nicholas Stoller, Get Him to the Greek is an often-comical, always offensive satire of the music industry, rock ‘n’ roll culture, and America’s reverence for all things celebrity.

Capitalizing on the fervor ignited by Brand, Get Him to the Greek succeeds in blurring the line between reality and fiction through inclusion of an original soundtrack and videos (performed by Brand and co-star Rose Byrne) and cameos by more than one recognizable pop artist and media outlet. Brand is refreshingly genuine as a privileged star struggling to gain control of his life, while Byrne offers hilarious support as Snow’s ex-wife and musical partner, Jackie Q. Effortlessly, she rivals Brand with her own sincere wit as she admits on Showbiz Tonight how bored she is with her husband’s sobriety.

I expected to like this film—and I did. Stoller bravely explores intimacy among men and, similar to I Love You, Man, his manuscript explores the complex dynamics of male relationships by offering glimpses of sincerity, vulnerability, and affection, elements often ignored in favor of more acceptably masculine attributes. However, as is often the case in Hollywood, without being well-versed in feminist values, what is meant to be ironic instead reinforces stereotypes and makes it that much harder for girls to be in on the joke.

Some attempts at humor are more problematic than others. While attempting to wrangle Snow in Vegas and escort him to New York City, music intern Aaron (Jonah Hill) is ordered by his boss Sergio (Sean “P Diddy” Combs) to have sex with a woman he’s just met, Destiny. Actually, Sergio commands Destiny to “[t]ake this man into the bedroom and have sex with him," and she readily complies. What follows is a pointless scene in which the petite Destiny forces the hefty Aaron to have sex with her. He says, “No.” He “protests.” (In reality, he could have easily tossed her off him.) Finally, he returns to his friends and announces, “I think I was just raped.” They laugh, and so does the audience. Gross.

In a perfect world, we can laugh about anything. Considering the world we live in, however, perhaps the more appropriate question is "who is allowed to laugh about rape?" When victims speak out with humor about their own lived experience, they are ridiculed or shamed, but when white men in Hollywood poke fun, its satire. Satire, by definition, is an exaggeration that is so far from reality that it is ridiculous to even consider. (The punchline to this joke being how ridiculous and non-threatening rape is for men – that men can’t be raped.) Unfortunately, this moment in Get Him to the Greek reinforces cultural myths surrounding the acceptance of rape. Instead of calling attention to the cultural, systemic, powerful epidemic of sexual violence, the "joke" nullifies its severity by applying it to the most powerful social group (white men).

The film industry is a site where creative potential can be harnessed to provoke meaningful change, and this band of brothers has the ability to lead the way for other Freaks and Geeks. But if we don’t start getting some feminist minds in on the action, these bright men are headed straight for the John Mayer Celebrity School of Shame.

Written by: Alicia Sowisdral, June 15th 2010

Le Code a Changé

admin — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Directed by Danièle Thompson

IFC Films

The French comedy of manners conjures up for me, an Anglophone, a bitchy Restoration drama rather than Molière. Jean Renoir’s heavy 1939 film The Rules of the Game, the iconic update of the genre, greatly dilutes the comic elements. Now, Le Code a Changé (Change of Plans) offers a lighter brew with only a dash of melancholy. The aristocracy is replaced by the bourgeoisie, the country house and servants disappear as a more modest yet comfortable life appears, a weekend becomes a dinner party, and women (and men) have real jobs. Nobody gets murdered, though there is an “accident” and a death from cancer. Importantly, the central characters—and there are quite a few of them—emerge relatively unscathed, as do the “rules” underlying the genre. In short, as director Danièle Thompson wished, I went away happy.

Because I tend to upend rules rather than deftly observing them, life has taken me, thankfully, to almost as few dinner parties as on full-fledged dates. This film might change my mind, since this dinner party includes a surreptitious kiss by the bathroom door rather than a strained date. A dinner has functioned before as a plot device for getting things moving (think David Hare’s Wetherby). In the current film, the characters knew each other at school and do not roll around on a stair landing, at least not on camera. Here, the dinner sets off quite a display of romantic fireworks, though miraculously only one divorce.

ML, a high-powered divorce lawyer, has people over partly to show off her new kitchen. Six of her guests are married couples, and her sister and the sister’s older co-worker are another, though ML doesn’t know it. Besides the kitchen designer, the other single guest is ML’s flamenco dance instructor, invited at the last minute because ML is down a woman. (No gay couples at this soiree.)

During the year after the dinner, ML’s unemployed husband—who makes bigos, a Polish meat stew, for the meal—starts working with the kitchen designer. A gynecologist-oncologist couple is headed toward the marital rocks way before the get-together. The wife is already having an affair and her irritation with her Jewish husband, the archetypal mensch, takes an ethnic turn in a conversation with the host, who drives her home from the party. Lucas, another attorney, who has driven his wife to dysfunction, comes to the party to recruit ML into his firm to beef up its divorce practice, and ends up “changing plans” for the good of all.

Some viewers will take away the message that innate humanity that can still emerge in capitalist relations, traditional marriage, and the economy’s privileged class, here more professional and managerial than haut. For me, the fun of this film comes from guessing which of the relationships survive and how this comes to pass. Just enjoy the mash up of professional discretion, romantic relationships, white lies, and intergenerational conflict.

I could have done with less self-referential film industry stuff—Roman Polanski’s recipe for bigos appears in the film credits. The film’s director, daughter of film director Gérard Oury and actress Jacqueline Roma, wrote the screenplay with her son Christopher Thompson (who plays Lucas), so maybe they are entitled. And, the film fulfills the critic Kenneth Burke’s criteria for the “comic frame,” which tells the viewer: “What he should try to get, how he should try to get it, and how he should ‘resign himself’ to a renunciation of the things he can’t get.”

Written by: Frances Chapman, June 13th 2010

Lahore with Love: Growing Up with Girlfriends, Pakistani-Style

admin — Mon, 10 May 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Fawzia Afzal-Khan

Syracuse University Press

A poet’s power lies not only in her well-crafted images but in the rhythm of her recitation. As I read Lahore With Love, the memoir of Fawzia Afzal-Khan, I longed to hear her read the volume aloud. Many parts of her story poured out in a stream of consciousness, and her anecdotes deftly wove between youth and adulthood, lighthearted desires and the pain of loss, politics and the laughter of girlfriends.

Afzal-Khan interweaves her personal story with key elements in the history of the establishment of Pakistan, her homeland, which was formed just ten years before her birth. The painful string of military dictatorships running her country creates a mirror for the tragic experiences endured by her girlfriends. As she writes, with foreboding, “I have sensed disaster coming their way, my way, my country’s way.” In some ways, Afzal-Khan escaped disaster: she is a professor in the English Department at Montclair State University (New Jersey), a scholar of postcolonial studies, a poet, and an actress. Yet while she lives a successful life in the United States, she carries with her a complicated sorrow and relief, a pain of loss that is aggravated each time she visits Pakistan and sees some new wounds inflicted upon her home and her loved ones.

Lahore With Love gives us vignettes of upper middle class life in a culture where propriety called for gender-segregated social gatherings, but someone was always ready to break rules. The line between acceptable “colonial” habits (Catholic school) and the dangerous “Western decadence” (art school) was at times thin and slippery. As the author forges her own self-identity, the nation also seeks a shape; she heads to the U.S. to obtain her PhD, and Pakistan begins to undergo Islamization, with new layers of reactionary rules added to the old. There is nothing dry about the presentation of material; in one bloody chapter, the story of Shia martyrs is juxtaposed with bullfighting in Spain.

At times I would have enjoyed seeing the vignettes fleshed out more fully, and I suspect some readers will want a volume of Pakistani history by their side to read further about incidents to which the author refers. However, any changes to the unique narrative structure would detract from the author’s intense style. Her voice is the one we use when we long for a reunion with dear friends who are now gone, or hunger to return to the past to stop tragedy from striking, or barely restrain our anger at the callousness of our fellow humans.

Afzal-Khan asks, “Are we doomed to inhabit this binary universe or can we challenge the system that turns us into the roles we wear like selves?” She sets for the reader a powerful mold-breaking example when she self-identifies as “actorsingerpoetactivistmemoirist.”

Written by: Lisa Rand, May 10th 2010

Molly Fox's Birthday

admin — Sat, 01 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Deirdre Madden

Picador

The fact that Deirdre Madden's tale takes place all in one day, as a calm reflection of the narrator’s relationships, does not take away from the fantastic insights to human nature that the author reveals. It may be Molly Fox’s birthday, but the real gift is for the playwright who hangs out in Molly’s house in Dublin while the eponymous character is away.

Molly Fox’s Birthday is told from the point of the view of the playwright, who revisits the memories of how she met Molly and their careers. She later expresses her feelings for another character, Andrew. The playwright is very good at pinpointing the motivations behind the actions of people she associates with; however, she comes to discover that maybe she doesn’t really know Molly at all. Madden puts into words what is universal to the human psyche.

One of the more interesting aspects of Molly Fox’s Birthday is how the playwright's brother, a Northern Ireland raised priest, maneuvers his way through cosmopolitan Dublin and London, maintaining a rather secretive relationship with Molly. He appears to be much more self-accepting and tolerant than our storyteller, who lies to others when she feels insecure.

Denial opens up to truth as the book winds down, not that it ever moves at a fast pace. It is, instead, rather tranquil. The narrator mentions and revisits one small memory from her relationship with one of the male characters, which she has lied to Molly about. It only takes a knock at the door to bring emotions from twenty years ago back into the front of her focus. Time can’t erase what she still feels, and tries to bury under silent hemming and hawing.

The ho-hum nature of describing what a wonderful actress Molly is, and how beautiful her belongings are could be replaced with more detail about the two women's undergrad years at Trinity, since this is the time that forms the foundation of all of the relationships in the book. Another aspect that should have been further explored was the behind-the-scenes details of life behind the stage (the actors, writers, directors), a life about which we only get hints.

One of the struggles that is universal to the human experience is the choice of whether to conform to family and community expectations or step into the role of the black sheep. Madden explores this through the narrator, who has trouble returning to the embrace of the family. She also makes a point of inserting the tensions between Molly and her mother. These examples, like the other memories, further the view that the past directs our present. Molly Fox’s Birthday is a nice, short, quiet trip.

Written by: Nicolette Westfall, April 30th 2010

The Spare Room

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Helen Garner

Picador

Many of us love our friends just as much as our family members. We often believe we would go to great lengths to protect them, as does Helen, the narrator of The Spare Room. Garner's novel is the story of a fifteen-year-old friendship between two women in their sixties, a period that is perhaps the busiest in a woman’s life with competing familial, social, and in many cases, professional demands.

Nicola, an artsy bohemian who turned her back on mainstream culture in the 1970s, goes to stay with Helen in her spare room in Melbourne so that she can undergo alternative Vitamin C treatments for her stage-four cancer. Selfless Helen, who initially does whatever is necessary to accommodate her friend, quickly butts heads with Nicola’s coping method of choice: denial. As Helen puts her life on hold caring for Nicola for a mere "fortnight," which turns into three weeks, she quickly becomes overcome with fatigue. Her exhaustion stems not only from the constant care she feels her friend needs, but also from having to hold her tongue in the face of money-grubbing charlatans and her much-loved friend’s magical thinking regarding her disease.

It may be difficult to imagine this as light reading. However, Garner is a master of concision, and it is difficult to find even a single superfluous sentence in her 175 pages. In addition to shedding light on the limits of friendship, she also celebrates key aspects of friendship between women: the validation of thoughts and feelings, the understanding, and the laughter. In fact, it is Garner’s use of rich, dark humour that knocks the stuffing out of death and illness in this book and keeps the narrative rolling.

Although many young women will feel this scenario is still a long way off, Nicola’s harsh look back on what she made of her life will cause some to realize just how insidious and powerful mainstream culture is. Our strong and seemingly invincible bohemian mothers and aunts who chose their counterculture lives in the 1970s have not always been immune to the pervasiveness of the status quo and how it still manages to creep in and colour their basic personal views. The Spare Room gives us all a much needed reminder of the work that we as women still have ahead of us, not only in striving for equality in material terms, but also in acknowledging and validating our own personal struggles with mainstream culture as we head down the road less traveled.

In short, The Spare Room should be read not only for the quality of the writing but also for the situation that everyone will be pushed one day to consider. This is a perfect book for an intergenerational book club.

Written by: Heather Leighton, April 29th 2010

The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship

admin — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Jeffrey Zaslow

Gotham Books

As I became immersed in The Girls from Ames, I started to view it as a collective memoir of eleven women who have been friends since they were young girls in Ames, Iowa. While I expected to find the book a worthwhile read, I was pleasantly surprised to find how much I could relate to in this book. I found the story of these women both touching and humorous as I read it, prompting a reflection on my own female friendships over the years. The older I get, the less I take my friendships for granted, and I felt somewhat envious that these women, who were all born in the early 1960s, had maintained such a strong bond of friendship throughout marriage (sometimes more than one), children, cross-country moves, joy, heartache, and tragedy.

What takes this book beyond the memoir genre is that Zaslow has approached the topic of female friendship with the zeal of a journalist and sociologist, and the heart of a father of three daughters. In addition to telling the story of the way the friendships evolved over decades, he provides added context in the form of research that has been done on the struggles women face at different stages in their life (i.e., teen and college years, young mothers, mothers of teenagers, divorce, midlife changes, and stages of grief) and how female friendship can be an antidote to the trials and tribulations we all encounter as we progress through life. Some of the women reflect on their own "mean girl" tendencies as teenagers now that they see their teenage daughters dealing with mean girls and other complexities young girls face in today’s world.

At the end of chapter one, Jenny, whose father was an insurance executive who pored over actuarial tables and statistics on a daily basis, recalls how he warned her as she was about to leave for the University of South Carolina not to be surprised if her friendships didn’t survive the passage of time: “My guess is in fifteen years, one of you will be estranged from the group. Two of you will be divorced. One of you will still be single, one of you may be dead. You have to expect that. Because that’s how life works.” Zaslow writes that Jenny and her father still remember that conversation “where they were sitting, how her dad’s words hung in the air in the darkness, and how she sat there thinking he had to be wrong.”

I understand why The Girls from Ames has become a national bestseller and inspired women to form reading groups to discuss the book with their friends. Female friendship has the potential to be powerful, healing, and transformative. Zaslow has captured that sentiment in this book.

Written by: Gita Tewari, April 26th 2010