Reading a book in a few short hours can mean any number of things. It can mean that the book was so damn good, you moved heaven and earth to read it, you stayed up all night, called off sick to work, took a longer lunch than you should have or read it at stoplights on the way home. Or, it can mean that there simply wasn't very much to it. In the case of Charity Girl, by Michael Lowenthal, the latter was true.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about my case of paralysis in the face of a $50 gift card, and how this book was the only one that seemed worthy of ownership. I'm contemplating taking the damn thing back, after starting it when I woke up this morning and finishing it before early afternoon.
Charity Girl is a bit of slang that crops up several times in the book without being fully, clearly explained. It's the only real mystery the book has to offer, but from what I could tell, a "charity girl" was a young woman of the early
20th century, usually independent but poor, who hangs around dance halls trying to meet men who will pay her way in. Frieda, the heroine of the novel, is one of these. She has run away from home and an arranged marriage to Boston, where she has a job at Jordan Marsh. She lives on little but hope, renting a single room, eating once a day and living for nights at the dance hall with her best friend. But never going all the way with any of her patrons, until she meets the "special" soldier who gives her VD.
From there, her life spirals out of control. She gets a visit from some sort of official woman at work, loses her job, then starts to get really sick. She tries to find her soldier to ask him for help, but instead gets arrested and detained in a special house for girls who've been infecting the soldiers with their VD and loose morals.
Historical fiction is hard to get just right. It's easy to overlook the fact that history is lived by people like you and me, who often don't pay a whole lot of attention to it. Would the average uneducated young girl of the times, caught up in such a scenario, be able to identify the larger societal forces that contributed to her misfortune? Would she rail against a system that is sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, stupidly patriotic and classist? Or would she just be more likely to express her situation as being "bullshit"?
In the end, Charity Girl doesn't yield any more in execution than it did in concept. You can learn everything the book has to share by reading its jacket. The characters are flat and archetypal, the plot line is predictable, and the whole thing feels like a simple attempt to fictionalize history, not any sort of organic story. Lowenthal also makes the same grave mistake found at the end of Kevin Baker's Dreamland where he feels the necessity to give you the rest of the character's life at a gallop (except, unlike Baker, he doesn't hedge his bets with too many maybes: "Maybe she died in the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist plant, or maybe she reunited with Sam and moved upstate just in time...") He would've done much better to give you a little hint that Frieda, post-release, wound up being just fine and leading a happy life.
This one was a real disappointment. I was at Barnes and Noble again this weekend, and picked up two new books, so hopefully these will be better.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Friday, March 7, 2008
Booking Through Friday Night
Before the panel this week:
Hero March 6, 2008
Filed under: Wordpress — --Deb @ 1:33 am
You should have seen this one coming … Who is your favorite Male lead character? And why?
Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!
(And apologies for this going up late . . . my post-dated post didn’t publish when it was supposed to this morning! It’s just a few hours late, but still–sorry about that! )
The first thing I thought of when I first read this was "Lucky Hank" from Richard Russo's Straight Man. Then I remembered Sully from my other favorite Richard Russo book, Nobody's Fool. So, fuck it, I'm writing a compare-and-contrast of the two of them.
In real life, Sully and Hank would not know each other well. Hank is a college professor, married to a high school teacher. He has two grown daughters, and is a property owner and published author. Sully, on the other hand, is divorced and rents a room from his junior high English teacher. He's been carrying on with a married woman for over twenty years, has a son he rarely sees (the first time we meet this son, he has found Sully hitchhiking on the side of the road and picked him up, and it takes Sully an absurdly long time to realize who he's riding with). Sully works odd jobs, all under the table, all manual labor. Sully, in short, is the essence of instability, whereas Hank has (at least on the surface) a pretty normal middle-class life. If Sully's path ever crossed with Hank's, it would probably be because Hank's deck needed remodeling.
But they share the same irreverant spirit. Both men land in very deep shit throughout the course of their novels. Hank gets gigged through the nose by a colleague (long story), nearly drummed out of his position as department chair, jailed for DWI (in one of the many hilarious moments in this book, he uses his one phone call to call his drinking buddy, who isn't home. He's dismayed to find the man in the next cell, who explains that he'd tried to call Hank with his one call) and at the center of a university-wide intrigue over staffing and budget. His daughter's marriage nearly falls apart, his estranged father returns to town, and his father-in-law is also thrown in jail. Sully's luck isn't much better. His landlady nearly dies, his best friend reveals that he's dying, the woman who may be his daughter gets shot at and beaten up by her abusive husband in front of his house and he, too, goes to jail for punching a cop.
Neither of them let it get the best of them, though. They both have an excellent sense of humor, even when nothing's funny.Nobody's Fool will move me to tears if I read it in the wrong mood, but it's also very funny, as is Straight Man, which I didn't even want to read at first. (The rest of Russo's books were really good, and Straight Man sounded to me like he'd essentially written about himself.) Both men revel in disrupting the status quo, messing with people, and generally being a pain in the ass. A good day to either of them would be if they'd managed to anger everyone with whom they came in contact, and come to think of it, they both had days like that. Neither one is afraid to go to extremes: Sully slips sleeping pills to his boss's Doberman in order to steal back a snowblower; Hank threatens to kill a goose a day until he gets his budget.
Yet, neither of them are malicious people. They're both their own worst enemy, and both of them often don't understand their own behavior. Russo lets you get to know both of them intimately, and when you understand their past, you understand why Sully's marriage didn't last and why he likes renting a room from his former English teacher; and why Hank struggles so hard with his fate as an academic. Both of them are great characters. Check them out.
Hero March 6, 2008
Filed under: Wordpress — --Deb @ 1:33 am
You should have seen this one coming … Who is your favorite Male lead character? And why?
Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!
(And apologies for this going up late . . . my post-dated post didn’t publish when it was supposed to this morning! It’s just a few hours late, but still–sorry about that! )
The first thing I thought of when I first read this was "Lucky Hank" from Richard Russo's Straight Man. Then I remembered Sully from my other favorite Richard Russo book, Nobody's Fool. So, fuck it, I'm writing a compare-and-contrast of the two of them.
In real life, Sully and Hank would not know each other well. Hank is a college professor, married to a high school teacher. He has two grown daughters, and is a property owner and published author. Sully, on the other hand, is divorced and rents a room from his junior high English teacher. He's been carrying on with a married woman for over twenty years, has a son he rarely sees (the first time we meet this son, he has found Sully hitchhiking on the side of the road and picked him up, and it takes Sully an absurdly long time to realize who he's riding with). Sully works odd jobs, all under the table, all manual labor. Sully, in short, is the essence of instability, whereas Hank has (at least on the surface) a pretty normal middle-class life. If Sully's path ever crossed with Hank's, it would probably be because Hank's deck needed remodeling.
But they share the same irreverant spirit. Both men land in very deep shit throughout the course of their novels. Hank gets gigged through the nose by a colleague (long story), nearly drummed out of his position as department chair, jailed for DWI (in one of the many hilarious moments in this book, he uses his one phone call to call his drinking buddy, who isn't home. He's dismayed to find the man in the next cell, who explains that he'd tried to call Hank with his one call) and at the center of a university-wide intrigue over staffing and budget. His daughter's marriage nearly falls apart, his estranged father returns to town, and his father-in-law is also thrown in jail. Sully's luck isn't much better. His landlady nearly dies, his best friend reveals that he's dying, the woman who may be his daughter gets shot at and beaten up by her abusive husband in front of his house and he, too, goes to jail for punching a cop.
Neither of them let it get the best of them, though. They both have an excellent sense of humor, even when nothing's funny.Nobody's Fool will move me to tears if I read it in the wrong mood, but it's also very funny, as is Straight Man, which I didn't even want to read at first. (The rest of Russo's books were really good, and Straight Man sounded to me like he'd essentially written about himself.) Both men revel in disrupting the status quo, messing with people, and generally being a pain in the ass. A good day to either of them would be if they'd managed to anger everyone with whom they came in contact, and come to think of it, they both had days like that. Neither one is afraid to go to extremes: Sully slips sleeping pills to his boss's Doberman in order to steal back a snowblower; Hank threatens to kill a goose a day until he gets his budget.
Yet, neither of them are malicious people. They're both their own worst enemy, and both of them often don't understand their own behavior. Russo lets you get to know both of them intimately, and when you understand their past, you understand why Sully's marriage didn't last and why he likes renting a room from his former English teacher; and why Hank struggles so hard with his fate as an academic. Both of them are great characters. Check them out.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Booking Through Thursday
The question before the panel this week:
Heroine February 28, 2008
Filed under: Wordpress — --Deb @ 1:32 am
Who is your favorite female lead character? And why? (And yes, of course, you can name more than one . . . I always have trouble narrowing down these things to one name, why should I force you to?)
For years, I have loved Eilonwy from Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles. You can say what you want about the plotline of the chronicles itself. Fans will find it classic and admire the way it draws on influences from Anglo-Saxon legend to Tolkien. Detractors will find it derivative and they may try to claim there's nothing new there, but they'll overlook the character of Eilonwy.
We first meet Eilonwy when she drops her "bauble" into the dungeon where the hero, Taran, is being held (her bauble is a spherical, glowing object that turns out to be quite important. I heard that word for the first time in these books, and it's always had that sort of magic connotation to me.) Eilonwy, it turns out, is the niece of the evil queen who is holding Taran, but decides to help him rather than remain loyal to her aunt and the rest of the creeps. She is very brave, very funny, very clever and very strong. Throughout the series, she seeks out adventure and years for opportunities to prove herself.
It's to Alexander's credit that he makes her an actual asset to Taran and the rest of the men. One very common criticism of Tolkien's books is the lack of depth of his female characters. Eilonwy is never a mere ornament. Her value is recognized by all, from Taran's father-figure enchanter Dallben to the Crown Prince Gwydion himself. Taran's occasional stupid remark about her being "just a girl" is never tolerated by the other men, and even when there's no one around to correct him, the stupidity of it is usually evidenced by subsequent events.
After saying all that, I will add that I've always been angered by the ending of the series. Eilonwy has to make a terrible choice, one that faces many women in real life (although generally in a less dramatic fashion). She has to choose between a man and her identity. I bet you can guess which she picked. Her destiny felt inevitable -- you knew that the two characters were destined to be together from the moment her bauble dropped into his cell -- but still. It would've been better if she'd found a way to use her considerable skills and ingenuity to compromise, or to avoid the choice altogether. It doesn't change my love for the character, though.
Heroine February 28, 2008
Filed under: Wordpress — --Deb @ 1:32 am
Who is your favorite female lead character? And why? (And yes, of course, you can name more than one . . . I always have trouble narrowing down these things to one name, why should I force you to?)
For years, I have loved Eilonwy from Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles. You can say what you want about the plotline of the chronicles itself. Fans will find it classic and admire the way it draws on influences from Anglo-Saxon legend to Tolkien. Detractors will find it derivative and they may try to claim there's nothing new there, but they'll overlook the character of Eilonwy.
We first meet Eilonwy when she drops her "bauble" into the dungeon where the hero, Taran, is being held (her bauble is a spherical, glowing object that turns out to be quite important. I heard that word for the first time in these books, and it's always had that sort of magic connotation to me.) Eilonwy, it turns out, is the niece of the evil queen who is holding Taran, but decides to help him rather than remain loyal to her aunt and the rest of the creeps. She is very brave, very funny, very clever and very strong. Throughout the series, she seeks out adventure and years for opportunities to prove herself.
It's to Alexander's credit that he makes her an actual asset to Taran and the rest of the men. One very common criticism of Tolkien's books is the lack of depth of his female characters. Eilonwy is never a mere ornament. Her value is recognized by all, from Taran's father-figure enchanter Dallben to the Crown Prince Gwydion himself. Taran's occasional stupid remark about her being "just a girl" is never tolerated by the other men, and even when there's no one around to correct him, the stupidity of it is usually evidenced by subsequent events.
After saying all that, I will add that I've always been angered by the ending of the series. Eilonwy has to make a terrible choice, one that faces many women in real life (although generally in a less dramatic fashion). She has to choose between a man and her identity. I bet you can guess which she picked. Her destiny felt inevitable -- you knew that the two characters were destined to be together from the moment her bauble dropped into his cell -- but still. It would've been better if she'd found a way to use her considerable skills and ingenuity to compromise, or to avoid the choice altogether. It doesn't change my love for the character, though.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Visit my new "Other Blog"
Some of you may have noticed a link to the Young Museum Professionals blog on my sidebar. I'm pleased to announce that I'm now a contributor to it! I hope to have my first post there up soon, so check it early and often!
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Paralysis
Well, I'm fresh from a trip to Barnes and Noble with my $50 gift card. I came home with one book and my relationship intact, which was more than it looked like at the time. Confession time: those things paralyze me, as much as I love getting them. I can't help but look upon them as a rare and special gift that I must spend carefully, as it's unlikely I'll ever get another chance to do so.
So I over-analyze. I've been meaning to pick up a better copy of The Secret History by Donna Tartt, but since I already have a copy, I shouldn't waste this rare and special gift on it. I want to read Bright Lights, Big Ass by Jennifer Lancaster, but will I still be glad I bought this book 30 years from now? Probably not, so I shouldn't waste this rare and precious gift on that, either. I want to read Killing Yourself to Live and The Best American Short stories of 2007, but not necessarily own them (after all, they may suck, who knows) so I can't waste this rare and precious gift on either of those. By this point, I'm starting to hate myself, but this has gotten rolling and I can't stop it, until nothing in the store is good enough and worthy enough of my gift card and my boyfriend has moved past enjoying shopping himself, right through patient, past eager to get the hell out of there, into wondering if that 50-year-old toothless lady who tried to pick him up last week is doing anything tonight.
So, after much prevaricating, I wound up with a book I'd never even heard of before today. It's called Charity Girl, and it's about a young woman who gets locked up during WWI for having VD. For some reason, this historical novel struck me as the one I'd enjoy owning the most out of everything I looked at today. It was also the one I had in my hand at the point where I couldn't deal with it anymore. I enjoy looking, but sometimes it stresses me out.
So here's a list of some other interesting things I saw (but didn't buy) today:
Helen of Troy, Margaret George. The title pretty much says it all. I liked Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles and The Autobiography of Henry VIII but couldn't get into her Cleopatra and Mary Magdalene novels, so I didn't get Helen of Troy.
Bridge of Sighs, Richard Russo. Probably very good, but still in hardback.
Slash by Slash. Yeah, that Slash. It's gotta be good, but is also still in hardback.
Killing Yourself to Live, Chuck Klosterman. I liked Fargo Rock City and this one, about death and music, is probably good too. I never went back to Fargo Rock City, though, and I know the library has this one.
People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn. I'm interested in it but not sure if I'd ever actually read it. I'm in the market for something that's fun and stimulating, not just intellectual.
Like the professor at my graduate school who died, it's always made me sad that there are so many good books in the world, and so little time -- and money -- for all of them.
So I over-analyze. I've been meaning to pick up a better copy of The Secret History by Donna Tartt, but since I already have a copy, I shouldn't waste this rare and special gift on it. I want to read Bright Lights, Big Ass by Jennifer Lancaster, but will I still be glad I bought this book 30 years from now? Probably not, so I shouldn't waste this rare and precious gift on that, either. I want to read Killing Yourself to Live and The Best American Short stories of 2007, but not necessarily own them (after all, they may suck, who knows) so I can't waste this rare and precious gift on either of those. By this point, I'm starting to hate myself, but this has gotten rolling and I can't stop it, until nothing in the store is good enough and worthy enough of my gift card and my boyfriend has moved past enjoying shopping himself, right through patient, past eager to get the hell out of there, into wondering if that 50-year-old toothless lady who tried to pick him up last week is doing anything tonight.
So, after much prevaricating, I wound up with a book I'd never even heard of before today. It's called Charity Girl, and it's about a young woman who gets locked up during WWI for having VD. For some reason, this historical novel struck me as the one I'd enjoy owning the most out of everything I looked at today. It was also the one I had in my hand at the point where I couldn't deal with it anymore. I enjoy looking, but sometimes it stresses me out.
So here's a list of some other interesting things I saw (but didn't buy) today:
Helen of Troy, Margaret George. The title pretty much says it all. I liked Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles and The Autobiography of Henry VIII but couldn't get into her Cleopatra and Mary Magdalene novels, so I didn't get Helen of Troy.
Bridge of Sighs, Richard Russo. Probably very good, but still in hardback.
Slash by Slash. Yeah, that Slash. It's gotta be good, but is also still in hardback.
Killing Yourself to Live, Chuck Klosterman. I liked Fargo Rock City and this one, about death and music, is probably good too. I never went back to Fargo Rock City, though, and I know the library has this one.
People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn. I'm interested in it but not sure if I'd ever actually read it. I'm in the market for something that's fun and stimulating, not just intellectual.
Like the professor at my graduate school who died, it's always made me sad that there are so many good books in the world, and so little time -- and money -- for all of them.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Innovation
If you decide to read Russell Banks' Trailerpark (and I suggest you do), you should know that you can't approach it like any collection of short stories. there are two general types of short story collection: those that contain stories which are totally unrelated to one another, and those with a theme or common thread. Generally, though, even the stories in the "common thread" variety can be read and understood independently of one another. Jennifer Weiner's The Guy Not Taken, for example, contains three stories about a family over a ten-year period. But you could start with any of them, or skip the middle one, or only read the first and have it make sense.
Trailerpark is not like that. The first story, "The Guinea Pig Lady", is crucial to the rest. Pay attention to the details, and don't quibble about the misrepresentation in calling an 80-page story "short". This story introduces all of the characters in the rest of the book, most of whom get their chance to stand in the spotlight, and in some cases, you won't get their backstory again.
You may guess from the tone of this post that I didn't do that. I'd intended to curl up with this one before bed and was not pleased to see that I'd barely make a dent in it. I'm also the type of reader who likes to get what she came for. I still haven't forgiven Toni Morrison for writing a book called "Jazz" which had nothing to do with jazz, so I was kind of skimming the parts that weren't about the Guinea Pig Lady. It took me most of the rest of the book to realize that wasn't the point of this story, which was rather meandering and thin compared to the rest of them.
The stories don't merely radiate out from the first. They move back and forth in time, so that you meet the retired Captain when he was a little boy doing his first bit of driving off the farm in his dad's Model A Ford on his 14th birthday. You learn how broken-down Claudel Bing once regarded himself as one of life's winners and see him on the upswing. A hippie drug dealer gets murdered by his supplier early in the book, yet you see him, ghostlike, reappear in happier days throughout the other short stories.
Banks could've taken this collection about the denizens of a New Hampshire trailer park in two obvious directions. He could have made it a funny book, filled it with "colorful characters" and taken it totally over the top, Northern Exposure-style. Or, he could've made it gritty and full of misery, adultery, drug addiction, alcoholism and poverty. To his credit, he strikes a balance. His characters are, by and large, not happy people. The book can be summed up by a passage found near the end:
It's true of trailerparks that the people who live there are generally alone at the center of their lives. They are widows and widowers, divorcees and bachelors and retired army officers, a black man in a white society, a black woman there too, a drug dealer, a solitary child of a broken home, a drunk, a homosexual in a heterosexual society -- all of them, man and woman, adult and child, basically alone in the world.
Banks can explain how they got there, what drives them, their fears and desires and demons, but he never passes judgement. Claudel Bing's alcoholism seems a reasonable response to his situation, as does Flora Pease's guinea-pig hoarding. You understand perfectly how the advances of the same man, although equally unwelcome to both, were a positive force in the life of one woman and a destructive force in the life of another. At the end of the book, when everyone's desires, fears and demons assume the focal point of a large sum of money ferreted away in one man's ice hut, it's downright heartbreaking and a little bit darkly comical at the same time. Much like life.
Trailerpark is not like that. The first story, "The Guinea Pig Lady", is crucial to the rest. Pay attention to the details, and don't quibble about the misrepresentation in calling an 80-page story "short". This story introduces all of the characters in the rest of the book, most of whom get their chance to stand in the spotlight, and in some cases, you won't get their backstory again.
You may guess from the tone of this post that I didn't do that. I'd intended to curl up with this one before bed and was not pleased to see that I'd barely make a dent in it. I'm also the type of reader who likes to get what she came for. I still haven't forgiven Toni Morrison for writing a book called "Jazz" which had nothing to do with jazz, so I was kind of skimming the parts that weren't about the Guinea Pig Lady. It took me most of the rest of the book to realize that wasn't the point of this story, which was rather meandering and thin compared to the rest of them.
The stories don't merely radiate out from the first. They move back and forth in time, so that you meet the retired Captain when he was a little boy doing his first bit of driving off the farm in his dad's Model A Ford on his 14th birthday. You learn how broken-down Claudel Bing once regarded himself as one of life's winners and see him on the upswing. A hippie drug dealer gets murdered by his supplier early in the book, yet you see him, ghostlike, reappear in happier days throughout the other short stories.
Banks could've taken this collection about the denizens of a New Hampshire trailer park in two obvious directions. He could have made it a funny book, filled it with "colorful characters" and taken it totally over the top, Northern Exposure-style. Or, he could've made it gritty and full of misery, adultery, drug addiction, alcoholism and poverty. To his credit, he strikes a balance. His characters are, by and large, not happy people. The book can be summed up by a passage found near the end:
It's true of trailerparks that the people who live there are generally alone at the center of their lives. They are widows and widowers, divorcees and bachelors and retired army officers, a black man in a white society, a black woman there too, a drug dealer, a solitary child of a broken home, a drunk, a homosexual in a heterosexual society -- all of them, man and woman, adult and child, basically alone in the world.
Banks can explain how they got there, what drives them, their fears and desires and demons, but he never passes judgement. Claudel Bing's alcoholism seems a reasonable response to his situation, as does Flora Pease's guinea-pig hoarding. You understand perfectly how the advances of the same man, although equally unwelcome to both, were a positive force in the life of one woman and a destructive force in the life of another. At the end of the book, when everyone's desires, fears and demons assume the focal point of a large sum of money ferreted away in one man's ice hut, it's downright heartbreaking and a little bit darkly comical at the same time. Much like life.
Booking Through Thursday -- Format
The question before the panel:
Format February 21, 2008
Filed under: Wordpress — --Deb @ 1:18 am
All other things (like price and storage space) being equal, given a choice in a perfect world, would you rather have paperbacks in your library? Or hardcovers? And why?
I like a mix of both. All of the Harry Potters, for example, should be in hardback. But a book like Motley Crue's ouvre, The Dirt, is great to take to the beach or into the tub, so I'm glad I have that one in softback. I never gave it much thought, and can't really separate the cost issue from whether or not I'd want all hardbacks or soft covers. I tend to think that the ones I want to keep, like the Harry Potter books, should be all hardbacks, but the ones I bought just because Ir eally wanted to read them are good in softback.
Format February 21, 2008
Filed under: Wordpress — --Deb @ 1:18 am
All other things (like price and storage space) being equal, given a choice in a perfect world, would you rather have paperbacks in your library? Or hardcovers? And why?
I like a mix of both. All of the Harry Potters, for example, should be in hardback. But a book like Motley Crue's ouvre, The Dirt, is great to take to the beach or into the tub, so I'm glad I have that one in softback. I never gave it much thought, and can't really separate the cost issue from whether or not I'd want all hardbacks or soft covers. I tend to think that the ones I want to keep, like the Harry Potter books, should be all hardbacks, but the ones I bought just because Ir eally wanted to read them are good in softback.
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