Poor Neglected BTT and Blog

Is there anyone left who still checks in? Sadly, I've not had much time to write this lately. I guess for one thing, working full-time at a writing job will do that to you. I spend all day at the computer, writing stories about high school musicals and town board meetings, and the thought of writing more at home is a little wearying.

Except I discovered the other day that I actually still enjoy it. It's different, writing on a topic that can be anything, that doesn't have to be super-timely and happen within my town and still be something no one else has written before. So I'm going to get back into it, probably not as much as I had been, but a little bit.

I picked out a BTT from a couple of weeks ago that I really liked:

Favorite Unknown January 21, 2010
Filed under: Wordpress — --Deb @ 1:39 am



Who’s your favorite author that other people are NOT reading? The one you want to evangelize for, the one you would run popularity campaigns for? The author that, so far as you’re concerned, everyone should be reading–but that nobody seems to have heard of. You know, not JK Rowling, not Jane Austen, not Hemingway–everybody’s heard of them. The author that you think should be that famous and can’t understand why they’re not…

I think this is a GREAT question, personally. I enjoy seeking out the offbeat in all aspects of my life. I'm one of those people who will often deliberately avoid what everyone else is watching/wearing/reading/listening to.

I guess my main "unsung author" would have to be Tawni O'Dell. O'Dell only has three books, and they were all terrific. She writes about coal towns in Pennsylvania, about life in the lower-middle class, often on the edge of poverty. Her books are filled with humor, with brutality, and with wonderful, believeable characters. I thought Sister Mine might be a breakthrough for her, with the interesting surrogate mother angle. It seemed to be displayed prominently in several places that summer. I guess it doesn't help that she hasn't had anything out since, although her web site shows that she's got something coming out in March. So maybe you'll hear more from her. But remember: you heard about her here first!

Sucks in the City

Last night, I just finished Candace Bushnell's One Fifth Avenue. I'd had such a hard time getting it at the library that I put it on my Christmas list. I sort of regret that now, as I'm stuck with it.

Candace Bushnell reminds me a great deal of Edith Wharton, and that resemblance was only cemented for me by this book. Both write about high society and women in New York City. And both are intellectual enough that one need never feel ashamed to bring their books to work, but trashy enough to be a good escape (although Bushnell's sex scenes are much more graphic than Wharton's).

The conceit of One Fifth Avenue is a simple, classic one. It's about neighbors. What better way to talk about a broad spectrum of society? They are all ensconced within the title building, a character in its own right. You have somewhat of a clash of the old and the new in this book. Gossip columnist Enid Merle lives there. She's about 80. Her nephew, screenwriter Phillip Oakland, also has an apartment in the building, as does his old flame, actress Schiffer Diamond, who has recently changed coasts back to New York. At the beginning of the book, society grande dame Louise Houghton lives there, too, but dies almost immediately.

That's the old guard. The upstarts consist of hedge-fund manager Paul Rice and his wife Annalise, who buy Louise Houghton's fabulous penthouse apartment; Lola Fabrikant, who is Phillip Oakland's 22-year-old girlfriend; and the Gooches, Mindy and James.

The new guard is the most interesting, and depressing. Face it, don't you guys know already how Schiffer and Phillip turn out? But Mindy, it's hard to know where her character will lead. Mindy is probably the most depressing image of a modern woman I've ever seen. She's every cliche that the anti-feminist movement warned us about come to life in a miserable, aging bag. Mindy is married, but not happily, to an underachieving writer. She has a job that most people would consider quite decent, but she finds it unfulfilling in every way. She has a son, but doesn't seem to spend much time with him. But hey, they own an apartment in One Fifth, right? And she's the president of the condo board! Doesn't that count for something?

Not really. Not to Mindy. As Mindy is all too acutely aware, they have the worst apartment in the building, cobbled together during a previous recession out of luggage rooms. It's dark and cramped. And while she's president of the condo board, it seems that she got the position more out of sheer pushiness than because she was liked and respected. Mindy confesses that she doesn't even have sex with her husband (apparently it hurts too much).

Then there's Lola, the anti-Mindy, if you will. Lola, as I mentioned, is 22 years old, and a real striver. She comes from a wealthy family in Atlanta. Her mother's name is Beetelle, which is perfect. She kind of is a beetle, or some other predatory insect. Her father's name is Cem, which is also perfect. Cem? How do you pronounce that anyway? Like "chem class"? "Sem?" Is that supposed to be short for something? Who knows and who cares, he supplies the money and that's that. Lola's mother pushes her relentlessly, not academically, but in the realms of fashion, beauty and popularity. Lola's been denied nothing and told she was special all her life. She has a nose job, a boob job, and designer clothers. Her hobbies include Facebook, YouTube and "The Hills." Now she's been turned loose on New York to get a man.

Lola reminded me a great deal of Lily in The House of Mirth. Both sort of played a trick on the reader. When you first meet Lola -- and Lily -- they are arrogant, entitled, vapid and silly, and you long for them to get theirs. But when their inevitable downfall comes, it's so tragic, so vicious, and so awful that you wind up rooting for them --but never fully escaping that voice in your head reminding you that you'd lusted for this from the beginning.

The characters in this book are really brilliantly done, and for having so many separate plots, the book has a brisk momentum and never bogs down. But the thing about it is that it's not fun. No one in this book is really happy. Everyone's looking over their shoulder. When Phillip and Lola have sex, Phillip feels slightly ashamed, while Lola's mostly "closing her eyes and thinking of England", or her future status, rather. The Rices have an absolutely obscene amount of money, but it doesn't buy them any kind of happiness, either. I've already covered the misery of the Gooches.

I always thought part of the fun of reading a book like this was the fantasy aspect. Imagining, for a moment, what it must be like to be able to go shopping for new purses every day, to get your hair done someplace where it costs $400, to be featured regularly in "Women's Wear Daily." But apparently, it's no fun at all. It's just anxiety-inducing. And it made me grateful to know that I'm free to enjoy the salon I visit every couple of months without worrying who else goes there, that I appreciate my $35 Kohl's purse even if it didn't come from one of the 'right' stores, and that if I'm ever fortunate enough to get an expensive piece of jewelry as a gift from my boyfriend, I can be secure in knowing that he chose it himself and his motives were pure. And seriously, that's more than anyone over at One Fifth Avenue can say for themselves.

Captured!

I just finished I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I'd heard of the book before, and the jacket gushed how it was one of the most beloved books ever, that it was finally back in print, that it was a delightful read. I took the bait.

I enjoyed it well enough, but I think this is one of those books that has its strongest appeal for girls of a certain age, maybe 10 to 17 or so. Something in its tone and tenor reminded me very much of L.M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle. I've probably read that book several hundred times during my life, to the point where I scarcely need the book to re-read it. But if I came across it now, I probably wouldn't like it as much, even though I'm closer to Valancy's age now than I was then (in fact, now I'm older than Valancy. I believe she was 26 or 27 in the book).

I Capture The Castleis the tale of the Mortmain family, as told by 17-year old Cassandra. To me, the best part of the book was the opening, when it was just them. Cassandra's mother is dead. Her dad wrote a very, very famous book that redefined the boundaries of literature and philosophy -- but that was well over a decade ago, the money's gone, and he hadn't written anything since. Her older sister Rose, dreams of finer things. Their young stepmother, Topaz, is a nudist and artist's model who views herself as a helpmate to Mr. Mortmain's genius. They have a younger brother, Thomas, and a boy named Stephen who does chores in exchange for his board (such as it is). They live in an old ruined castle, with literally no money at all.

Technically, they rent, but at the start of the book, their landlord has died and they haven't heard anything from his estate. That changes when his grandsons come crashing in from America.

Neil and Simon never really captured my imagination, but they sure did that of the girls. The rest of the book revolves around their confused love affairs with the boys.

I think I had a hard time with this book because few of the mains seemed to emerge as characters in their own right. I had a hard time picturing any of them, or predicting how they might act. The middle of the book dragged to me, as Rose prepared to marry the same one that Cassandra had fallen for. The ending was as sharp, surprising and heartbreaking as the beginning. But sadly, I feel that for me, I missed this one. Had I read it as a teenager, I probably would have loved it as much as Susan Issacs and several other prominent authors proclaim that they do on the dust-jacket. But as it is, I thought it was just OK.

Wanna Be a Member?

Image from Amazon.com

In carrying forth my solemn vow to read everything Carson McCullers has written, I nabbed The Member of the Wedding at the library right before Christmas. I finished it the other day -- it's very short -- and enjoyed it.

One of my favorite scenes from the movie "Stranger than Fiction" is where Dustin Hoffman advises Will Farrell's character to spend a day alone in his apartment doing nothing, absolutely nothing at all, in order to determine whether his story is plot-driven or character-driven. Those who have seen the movie remember that while he's earnestly doing nothing (having fallen asleep on the couch the night before to a television channel he'd pre-selected as one he could stand to watch all day), a bulldozer takes out the exterior wall of his apartment before the crew could realize that they were demolishing the wrong building. The Member of the Wedding is as aggressively character-driven as Farrell's story was plot-driven.

The story concerns three people in the World War II-era South. Frankie, who has recently adopted the appelation F. Jasmine, is a white twelve-year-old girl. Berenice is about 40. She's black, she's the survivor of one wonderful marriage and three abusive ones, and she is the housekeeper for Frankie and her dad. John Henry is Frankie's six-year-old cousin.

Just from the thumbnail descriptions, it's obvious that these three are not terribly appropriate companions for one another. Berenice is too old to be hanging out with a bunch of little kids, and I'm not sure I'd exactly call her a mother figure. Frankie and John Henry, too, should be with kids their own age instead of hanging out inside all summer with the housekeeper.

But there is the real crux of the story. Like many of the characters in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, these three fit in nowhere, not really even with one another. This is where the title of the story comes from. Frankie has a much-older brother who had returned home from Alaska to get married. Frankie, like Mick, is a dreamer and a seeker, with an active fantasy life. Seeking her place in the world, or "the we of me," as she so beautifully puts it, she decides that she will run away with her brother and his new bride. A member of no club, no friendship, and not particularly noticed by her own family, Frankie seeks to become...a member of the wedding.

That's it. That's really the entire plot. I enjoyed this book a lot, though not as much as The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. It, too, is unlike anything much you see written today. It's extremely short, which is a good thing as I'm not sure it would have held up if it were stretched out. Frankie is a little hard to take. She can be mean. In fact, the 'girls' club' in her neighborhood turfed her out for being too mean. She's difficult to get a handle on, girly in some aspects, tomboyish in others.

One amazon.com reviewer was inclined to take a psychological approach to the story, noting the death (in childbirth) of Frankie's mom, the fact that she had slept in the same bed as her father for most of her life, and that her cousin spends the night in Frankie's bed during the course of the book. I don't agree with that, personally. For much of American history, and in varying subsets of American culture, sharing a bed wasn't anything even remotely sexual. Poor families did it when there was only one bed. Pioneer families did it when there was only one room. Guests to the home did it as most people didn't have the means to provide a separate sleeping space. It may look weird or pervy today, but it wasn't sixty years ago.

For me, this book brought back vividly what it was like to be that age. A twelve-year-old may fancy herself a mature adult, but no one else does. It's not an easy time. McCullers brings it to life vividly. Read the book, if nothing else, you'll remember too.

Fearful is Right!

Image Courtesy of Amazon.com

After the popularity of The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger's next novel was hotly anticipated by many. I went into it knowing nothing more about it than what The New Yorker had to say. I finished it last night and am still not sure what to think.

I may have been my own worst enemy in reading this book, which is about two sets of twins. I had a hard time getting a handle on the older twin, Elspeth, whose death sets in motion the events of the book. Elspeth was a rare book dealer who lived in London. Because of these facts, and her name, I pictured her as an old woman. Yet, she had a lover, a fondness for spiky-heeled shoes, and a twin whose own twin daughters are 20.

I also had a hard time getting a handle on the younger twins, Julia and Valentina. I kept picturing a set of twins I saw on that show, "Intervention." Those twins (one of whom was also called Julia) had a bizarre, unhealthy dependence on one another and a serious shared eating disorder. They had dropped out of college and spent all of their time hanging out together, sleeping in the same bed, eating the exact same number of calories and moving the same amount of steps. Setting aside the eating disorder, Julia and Valentina seemed to me to have a similarly unhealthy relationship. Julia was the "dominant" twin who made all of the decisions. Valentina merely goes along with them, always.

Elspeth, for reasons never explained, decides to leave all of her worldly possessions to her nieces, who have never met her. Elspeth and her twin, Edie, parted ways over 20 years ago when Edie stole her fiance and moved to America with him. There are strings attached to Elspeth's mysterious gift: the girls have to live in her flat for one year, and their parents aren't allowed to set foot inside of it.

The girls decide to go. There, they meet Elspeth's lover, Robert, who's writing a dissertation on the famous Highgate Cemetery nearby. They also meet Martin, who suffers from severe OCD and sets crossword puzzles. I thought the book started to get creepy here, when Valentina and Robert start to become attracted to one another (especially the scene where Valentina shows up for a date dressed in Elspeth's clothes) and Julia and Martin also develop an attachment, despite the fact that Martin has a son Julia's age and is still devoted to the wife who left him earlier that year.

The book takes a bizarre turn when Elspeth explodes back into the story, as a ghost. Of all the visions of the afterlife I've ever read about, Niffenegger's has to be the most depressing. Elspeth is trapped in her old flat, but powerless at first to do much of anything. With no body, she can't read books, watch TV, or engage in any other diversion. As the book goes one, she gets more powerful, able to write messages in the dust and engage in using a Ouija board. Many writers throughout human history have imagined the afterlife to be beautiful or terrifying. It's a bit depressing to see it represented mostly like being stuck in a waiting room for all eternity.

It just gets weirder from there, though. I won't say too much more about the plot for fear of spoiling it for anyone who wants to read the book. I'm still not sure how I felt about it. The reviews on amazon.com are very mixed and seem to be written mostly by people who enjoyed her first book. Many felt confused or gypped by the ending, and I guess I did too.

Although I didn't hate the book, I can't entirely side with those who found it to be wonderful. The first half of it really dragged. The second half was creepy, and not in a good way. It had a lot of unpleasant elements, but they weren't unpleasant in any interesting or poignant way. They didn't challenge you like Lolita or make you feel deeply like The Memory of Running. They were just garden-variety unpleasant, like mold on bread or a bald dude in a thong or something. It's certainly an unusual book, but I had such a hard time buying into it that I guess I can't really reccomend it, although it did instill in me a desire to return to London to tour Highgate Cemetery.

Lisa Jewell: Why I Love Her

In the shower, I was reflecting on my promised "Year End Review" post. I didn't want a mere list of the ones I really liked and disliked, so I was trying to make up categories. Funniest. Most engrossing. Stuff like that. For my best new-to-me author, I decided it had to be Lisa Jewell, and that got me thinking as to why.

My first encounter with Lisa Jewell was One-Hit Wonder, many years ago. I came across another one of her books earlier this year, her new one, in fact, and started off reading the rest of them.

They're not terribly original in plot. Many of them are a variation on the standard twisted romance that people like Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts have built film careers on. But the characters are stand-outs. They're always interesting people, with a strong point of view. You root for them, you get to know them, you ultimately rejoice in seeing them walk happily off into the sunset of their own making.

But another reason I really like Lisa Jewell is that her characters are in sync with me, and the point in my life that I'm at. I'm too old to relate to the young women in The Devil Wears Prada and their ilk. But I'm not really interested yet in reading books about women having families and all settled down. That's not me yet, either. I always thought it would be. It is a lot of my Facebook friends. Whenever I log on, I see tons of status updates about people's babies and home renovation projects. Over the summer, one woman that I went to high school with posted pictures of an obviously professionally landscaped garden at her home. I'm still renting, still figuring out what I want.

Jewell's characters are, too. Maybe, like Siobhan of Ralph's Party, their promising twenties have fizzled somewhat: she was laid off from her job at a fashion college and never found another one, unsure of what sort of work she might be suited for, unable by biology to simply become a stay-at-home mom, and unclear as to what was next for her. Or maybe, like Joy and Vince of their self-titled novel or Tony of Friend of the Family, they have whole unsuccessful lives behind them already. Perhaps, like Dig and Deen of Thirtynothing, Toby of Roomates Wanted, or Sean of Friend of the Family, they're just merely slower bloomers, still living the same lifestyle they led right out of college except maybe with a tad more money.

But still, it's neat to see them undertake their journeys towards the rest of their lives. It's nice to get the message that people don't magically "settle" at a certain age, and that there's nothing necessarily wrong with you if you don't have it figured out yet when all of your friends are married with kids, homes and careers. It's nice to know that there are other people out there wrestling with the questions of who they are and how much of the stereotypical white-picket-fencce lifestyle they want for themselves, if any. Even if those people are fictional.

Like, OMG! Sweet Valley High Comes to the Silver Screen

So, I guess I tend to live under a rock a bit. In the break room at my *new job* are old Entertainment Weekly magazines. I picked up one from September, and fucking hell, I actually learned something from it. Diablo Cody, of "Juno" fame, has acquired the rights to film the Sweet Valley High series by Francine Pascal.

Like all good children of the 80s, I read these books. Who didn't? As Cody pointed out in her article, it had all the elements. Warm California climate, with the movie-star glamour of California, too. Identical twins, which always seem to fascinate kids for some reason. But the main point she hit on was that the books were about high school students.

I'll be honest, I can't recall the books very clearly in terms of plot or anything. Elizabeth was the smart, goody-two-shoes one who wrote the gossip column for the school paper. Jessica was the bad one, although I'm not sure why. She had glamourous, bitchy friends. It was implied that she was slutty and bitchy, too, although you didn't see a whole lot of that from her. But I don't think that these books were targeted as Jessica and Elizabeth's age peers. Rather, they were for little girls that wanted to be grown up, and to be seen as grown up. By the time you were Jessica and Elizabeth's age, you'd realize just how unglamorous high school can be. Not all of your friends will have Porsches or be cheerleaders.

It makes me wonder, too, who will see this movie and how Cody will pull it off. To me, the most obvious audience is women my age, who remember the books. But let's be honest: won't it be more of a guilty pleasure for most of us than a movie we sincerely want to see? Are we supposed to be taking our daughters? Are tweens supposed to want to go alone? And, do tweens even know Sweet Valley High? I tried to find out more information about the series on the web. I turned up the most complete wikipedia article you'd ever want to see (OMG, remember when Regina Morrow died of a coke overdose? So sad.) I found numerous fan sites devoted to cataloging all things Sweet Valley (there were at least seven different series, including a university one). I learned that during the 90s, someone had made a stab at producing a television show for a couple of seasons. I failed to turn up the one piece of information that I wanted: whether these books are still being churned out, and if not, when they stopped.

Will I go see this movie? Probably not. But when it comes to RedBox, I'll definitely be there!