Read This Book #4

I splurged and bought a hardcover of this book. I wanted a good, sprawling, multi-generational family novel to take with me on our trip to northern Michigan. Despite what the cover suggests, this is not a "beach read," but is in fact a complex, richly layered and character-driven novel. I'm so glad I splurged.

First of all, the title: Maine. There's something about the state that holds mystique, allure. What is it exactly? I've only been there once for a week's vacation when my daughter, Lily, was just a toddler and my son, Hudson, was five. We rented a small house on the ocean, and did a lot of chasing after the kids but the real highlight was celebrating my birthday by eating my very own huge lobster on our picnic table, complete with melted butter and bib. Still, Sullivan's Maine is much different here: it's the kind of old-money, family camp style Maine that you want to cozy up in and never leave.

But all is not happy and bucolic, of course. When the three generations of Kelleher women meet at the property one summer, negativity, hushed secrets, sibling rivalry and other tensions abound. Alice, the octogenarian matriarch, drinks far too much and is hatching a plan that will surprise and sadden the whole family. Maggie, Alice's granddaughter, is pregnant and thirty-two with no real prospects on the horizon; Maggie's mother, Kathleen, the black sheep of the family, has moved to California and now operates an organic worm farm. Ann Marie, related to the family through marriage, is the quintessential suburban wife and mother with a crush on her husband's good friend. They all compete, argue, one up, blame, and guilt trip one another as they realize the old and easy days are gone.

What I love about the novel is the way that each character is deeply grounded in particularizing details. Ann Marie is obsessed with dollhouses, and so we get a firsthand look at the culture of miniatures. I was intrigued by the organic composting with worms Kathleen is engaged in, and I was equally taken by the subtle way Alice's Irish Catholic background informs her present decision making.

Idiosyncrasies: Four revolving narrators spanning three generations; the dollhouse convention Ann Marie attends (fascinating look at peoples' obsession with "the small"), the way readers are privy to the novel's "secret," but that three of the four narrators aren't

Favorite line: "Minnie's Minis from Staffordshire made the most gorgeous little cakes, with frosting that looked like real marzipan, and tiny ceramic strawberries on top, each berry no bigger than the head of a pin. A slice of cake could be removed to show the chocolate and raspberry filling inside."

Bottom line: A rich and elegant novel with the beautiful setting of Maine that invokes a longing for the past and questions the durability of family ties

Read This Book #3

Desperate for a new book to read, I bought this novel by Martha McPhee, thinking: I wonder if she's the daughter of the famous writer, John McPhee, which indeed she is. Clearly, literary talent runs strongly in the family.

Though some reviews call this book a Pygmalion story, a social satire, or even a “morality tale of the early 21^st century greed and fall,” I found it quite simply a captivating read. The basic plot line revolves around India Palmer, a well-published but cash-strapped novelist living in New York City with her artist husband, Theodor, and their two children. When she finds herself living far beyond their means and trying to keep up with the “Joneses,” she meets, at a cocktail party, Win Johns, a Wall Street millionaire who makes a bet with her that if she’s willing to give it a go on Wall Street, he’ll make her a “world-class bond trader” within eighteen months. What follows—her resistance gradually corroded by her desperate desire (and need) for money—is oddly gripping. Will she make it? you ask yourself. And if she does, at what cost?

Favorite Line:

“At Bergdorf’s, I bought a new dress, a rich brown macramé for fall. The price: $775. A tax deduction, I thought. I just had to have it to wear to my book party. I shared my strategy with Lily, and we both laughed about the deduction. ‘An absolute expense,’ she said. 'I’ll serve as witness if the IRS comes after you. Kind sirs, she only wore it that once. She had to look like a million bucks, otherwise who’d buy her book?’”

Idiosyncrasies:

Surprisingly original “good guy- bad guy” characters, such as Lily Starr, her long time writer friend who makes it big and flaunts it in her face, and Snake, a young cut-throat bond trader from Calcutta who befriends her; a hamburger eating contest that will make you nearly vomit; an inside look at what exactly happens on Wall Street and how it works (I found this fascinating).

Bottom Line:

A great story about art versus corporate America right before the banking bubble is about to burst. Gripping, sly, funny, and thought-provoking. Also, I was surprised by how fervently I (a writer) found myself rooting for her to succeed on Wall Street.

Read This Book #2

I must admit I don't read a lot of British fiction, contemporary or otherwise. I'm small-minded that way. I find it too stuffy, too cold, and yes, those British idiosyncrasies like single quotation marks for dialogue, Old World spellings and idioms (tyre, flat, lift, storeys) and the constant drinking of tea and biscuits with "Mum," are too precious for my taste. But when good crime fiction meets "literary" fiction, I'm helpless against it.

The novel opens with the protagonist Beatrice getting a call that her younger sister Tess is missing, and so she boards the first flight she can get from New York to London. Already I love the idea, since I'm a big fan of missing persons fiction, but as the story unfolds, strange surprises keep cropping up about her sister. One of the things I love is the way the author plays off opposites; Beatrice is the sensible, responsible sister while Tess is a bit of a Bohemian, but instead of treating this dichotomy in a simplistic fashion, Lupton shows the complexity and difficulty of the relationship.

Favorite line: "When I saw your strand of hair I knew that grief is love turned into an eternal missing."

Idiosyncrasies: The entire novel is written in an epistolary fashion, that is, as a letter written from Beatrice to her younger sister, Tess. At first this felt a bit awkward, but then I relaxed into it and saw how perfectly it gave the book shape and structure. There is also intrigue involving medical ethics that gives the novel an even broader social reach.

Bottom Line: One of the most gripping climaxes I've read in a long time. The mystery of what happened to her sister, and the lengths to which Beatrice is willing to go to find out, had me hooked. I sacrificed sleep to finish this one.

Hometown: Revised

Recently I flew home to Minnesota because I missed my siblings and needed to be among them. I'm also working on a memoir set there, so I needed to see and feel and touch all the things I was writing about. I wanted to tour the trailer court in Arlington where I had spent the majority of my childhood. I wanted to drive down Main Street and check out my dad's old barber shop. I wanted to place flowers and a note on my parents' gravestone. I wanted to check on the status of their old Victorian house.

I did all these things and more, thanks to my sister, Amy, and her husband, Dan, who drove me around in their minivan. They were patient as I popped out of the van to take photographs, jot down notes, and sometimes asked for a second, or even a third, cruise-by of something that caught my eye.

I'd like to report feelings of nostalgia and a deep connection to the place, but the fact is, it was complicated. Without my parents, without a single relative drawing me back there, Arlington had become exactly that: just a place. Sure, there were sweet spots of memory. "Over there," I told Amy and Dan's kids as we drove by the high school, "is where I had my first kiss with Tony O'Brien. Right by that dumpster. Fourth grade."

But as we drove out of town, I wondered: when would I ever be back here again? I'd long since gotten everything I wanted from my parents' house. Most of my old friends had moved away. Without a single family member left in Arlington, there would be very little reason to come back, and the thought filled me with sadness.

* * * *


Back at Amy's house in Montgomery, Minnesota, I had an epiphany: this had become my new "hometown." Each time I visited, new habits had emerged, little traditions that I looked forward to each time:

1. Buying teriyaki turkey jerky at Edel's Meat Market (Monty boasted 3 different meat markets!)
2. Going out for "the best Blood Marys in 17 Counties" at Neaner's White Front Bar
3. Shopping for clothes at Bargain Betty's consignment shop (actually in New Prague, one town over, but still a constant for us)
4. Getting a kolacky (fruit-filled Czech pastry) and coffee at Franke's Bakery
5. Going to see Dan at Fransden Bank and getting a free pen
6. Shopping the dollar aisle of Herman Drug (scored a cool Mood necklace for Lily)
7. Doing a photo shoot with Amy in her studio (she could get me to smile without looking one bit fakey she was so good)
8. Drinking wine on Amy and Dan's deck overlooking undulating hills, a pond, and a horse farm all glowing in the buttery Midwestern light

* * * *

I still dream about Arlington sometimes at night: the long windows of my bedroom curlicued with intricate ice patterns, my mother's kitchen and its apple wallpaper border, the mint green water tower rising up over corn fields, the Christmas lights hung year-round on the feed mill, the diagonal parking on Main Street. These things will never leave me.

As Ray Gonzalez writes: "I do not believe in the loss of home...You can celebrate or mourn the area where you grew up, but you have earned them and can't abandon them completely."

Happy Birthday, Lilypalooza!

Seven years ago today I had a baby in what was called a "precipitous" birth, i.e. so insanely fast there wasn't even time to get a doctor in my room at the hospital. One minute I was eating an apple on the couch at home, and less than an hour later, I was holding a baby in my arms in the hospital that was a 30 minute drive way. I was still in the red t-shirt I'd been wearing. My hair wasn't messed up; my eyeglasses weren't askew. Aside from looking a little stunned, I look as I normally did on any regular day.

We already had a son and desperately wanted a girl since this would be our last child. When Mark said, "It's a girl!" I said, "Are you sure? Check again because you HAVE to be sure!" He checked again. "It really is a girl," he said. "Annie, we got a girl!"


We had a girl's name all picked out: Lucy. It wasn't even a question, until I held her in my arms and something shifted. "I don't know," I said to Mark. "I'm not sure what we should name her." Then Lily popped into my head. It was deep and fragrant spring; everything was in bloom, and lilies had always struck me as elegant but sturdy flowers. I decided I wanted a daughter who was elegant but sturdy. Mark took no convincing. He wrote her name on the dry erase board in my room: Lily Kahala Rice Panning. And it was decided. For several weeks afterward, I accidentally called her Lucy. She likes to hear this story now. "Can you even imagine me as a Lucy?" she'll say. I cannot.


Below are photos as follows, 1) Lily on a regular old day in our sun room, 2) Lily with her new purple soccer ball from Hudson, 3) Lily in her new GIRLS ROCK t-shirt from Auntie Amy, 4) Lily trying out the bongo drums from Mark, 5) Lily and I after our first run together this past Mother's Day.

How grateful I am for this feisty energetic girl. I know one thing: holding onto her unwavering confidence in herself is going to be my life's mission all the years ahead. We can do it, Lily. GIRLS ROCK.

Read This Book! #1

Driving With Dead People: A Memoir by Monica Holloway (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2007).

I found this book in my local thrift store, hardback, for $1.00. I remember when it had come out, and thinking that it looked good, if a bit gimmicky. But for one dollar, who cared? The gimmick factor was there to some extent: the young narrator had spent time with a childhood friend whose family owned a mortuary. She and her friend would lie in the coffins for fun and pretend they were dead. Later, she would actually witness dead bodies being embalmed and drive around in the family’s hearse.

That’s interesting, I thought, as I began to read, but I wondered how far you could really go with something like that. But that’s exactly it: the mortuary/dead people aspect of the book—though it does serve as a loose through-line—is never the focus of the memoir. Instead, it’s the narrator’s relationship with her family, particularly her father (who drives all over their small Ohio town videotaping car wrecks and gruesome accidents) that cranks up the book’s tension. There’s also a family betrayal that Holloway gradually uncovers that makes the book a true page-turner right up until the last page. As the author's website puts it: "This is ultimately a memoir detailing her bizarre, often funny and ultimately terrifying life growing up in a small Midwestern town." But it's so much more than that.

Favorite Line:

“Dad had pulled some horrendous stunts, but when he fucked with Mom’s love of the Great Smoky Mountains, he’d gone too far.”

Idiosyncrasies:

the narrator’s acting career in L.A., her little blue motorcycle, the many 1970s pop culture references (The Carpenters, Mrs. Beasley, The Beverly Hillbillies, Polaroid Instamatic), her sister's memories presented in italics as her own

Bottom Line:

I fell in love with this narrator. She’s funny and strong and ‘effed up and I want her to be my friend.

Announcement!

I read voraciously. I read at least a book a week. I steal from sleep to read. I get antsy and desperate and unhappy when I don’t have a good book to read. Therefore, I’ve decided, now that it’s summer and I’m relieved of my teaching duties, that every week (or so) I’m going to recommend a good book on my blog. Mostly the books will be contemporary and American, but not always. Mostly they’ll be fiction and creative nonfiction, but not always. So many times people tell me they really want to read but when they go into a bookstore, they feel lost. They don’t know what’s a good book and what isn’t. I often recommend books to my friends, and have a sort of personal “lending library,” but I thought my blog would be a good place to share with the public lots of good books out there just waiting to be read.

•Each entry will be titled, Read This Book!

•I’m not going to use any sort of star rating system since I'll only recommend books that I think are wonderful and definitely worth reading.

•I’m going to give a quick review plus a non-spoiler summary, as well as three mini features for each book:

1. Favorite Line

2. Idiosyncrasies

3. Bottom Line

Look for the first one very soon!