The Books of May

This month in prose:

The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories — Mehvesh Murad & Jared Shurin(eds) (2017)

A col­lec­tion of  new and tra­di­tion­al tales of the Djinn. Several of these are excel­lent. One is a com­mon­ly reprint­ed bit of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods where the Djinn is a taxi dri­ver. Other sto­ries range from the tra­di­tion­al, to poet­ry, to ones set in mod­ern Islam. There are also a cou­ple of pret­ty ter­rif­ic future world/Sci-Fi sto­ries. The range of sto­ries and ver­sions of the djinn in Islamic folk­lore is amaz­ing. Happily this book is far from a bunch of white folks riff­ing on some­one else’s cul­ture. Also it has one of the high­est rations of good sto­ries to meh sto­ries in any mul­ti­ple author col­lec­tion that I have read in the last three years.
* eclec­tic can be a fab­u­lous thing. *

 

The Thirteenth Tale — Diane Setterfield (2006)

Another twins sto­ry. The writer Vida Winter has told a thou­sand and two sto­ries about her ori­gins, all untrue and most fan­tas­tic. But now at the end of her life she decides that she will tell one biog­ra­ph­er the truth. Her cho­sen biog­ra­ph­er is Margaret Lea, a ret­i­cent book­worm who lives above her father’s anti­quar­i­an book shop. At the end of their ini­tial inter­view Ms. Lea announces her only con­di­tion for the work: that Ms. Winter only the truth. The truth in this case is at least as fan­tas­tic as any of the sto­ries that the author has told to pre­vi­ous interviewers.
There are secrets on top of secrets and mis­di­rec­tions and … in spite of it all you feel for both the talk­er and the lis­ten­er while this eerie and trag­ic tale unfolds. With a whol­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry, though not quite inevitable, twist at the end. Well writ­ten enough to make the sto­ry paramount.
* good, though I think I might be done with trag­ic twins for a while *

Rabbit Cake — Annie Hartnett (2017)

“A new nov­el about the griev­ing process” is absolute­ly not a tag line that would make me pick up a book. But once in a while Amazon gets the “If you liked A you might like B” thing right and throws a book that you would oth­er­wise not con­sid­er into your pile.  So I read the sam­ple. And then I read the book. Because… what if you were an almost 12-year-old, and what is your name was Elvis, (and what of it if you’re a girl with a boy’s name,) and what if you have a weird­ly fact filled head, and what if your moth­er drown while sleep­walk­ing (actu­al­ly sleep-swiming), and what if you know that you should be griev­ing but you aren’t sure you’ve doing it right? That’s a lot of “what-ifs” to find in the first 10% — the Amazon sam­ple length — of a book. Enough what-ifs to make me want to spend time in the head of this won­der­ful­ly odd-ball 12-year-old.
* what-if you ignored the blurbs and just read the book *

Sharks in the Rivers — Ada Limon (2010)

Yes, there are sharks here. Free swim­ming, clear­ly, and decid­ed­ly out-of-place. Things in places where they don’t quite belong are the sub­jects of these poems. And often the thing that does­n’t quite belong is the writer herself.
* things that are out-of-place are more inter­est­ing that things that are where they belong *

 

This Big Fake World: A Story in Verse — Ada Limon (2006)

Stories in verse are some­thing that I would usu­al­ly run away from.  They tend to be too much about the sto­ry and not enough about the poems them­selves. These are dif­fer­ent. Each poem stands on it’s own and advances the nar­ra­tive at the same time. Prodigious work. Our pro­tag­o­nist — the man in the grey suit, the unrec­i­p­ro­cat­ing object of his affec­tions — the hard­ware store lady, his rather inco­her­ent friend Lewis and the object of Lewis’s epis­to­lary obses­sion, Ronald Reagan wan­der through the their days and inter­act — each with each oth­er and their own desires and obsessions.
* let­ters to RR maybe the odd­est thing I’ve seen in a poem recently *

The Books of April

Cutting for Stone — Abraham Verghese (2009)

The book is very long. I start­ed it in March and it took me most of April to fin­ish it.
The twins (Marion and Shiva Stone) at the cen­ter of Cutting for Stone come into the world in a messy and pecu­liar way. Their moth­er, a shy Indian nun, dies giv­ing birth to them and their father, and American doc­tor, runs off in a pan­ic. So the boys are left to be raised by the doc­tors and matron of the Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa. The two boys act and think as if they were a sin­gle enti­ty for much of their child­hoods. It is as if they were born (con­joined at the head) and then agreed to split up the world and their reac­tions to the world. Marion tak­ing on the out­go­ing, pleas­ant, social per­son­al­i­ty and Shiva tak­ing on all of the dark, moody, and anti-social bits.
I’m a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed with how it ends, I mean it had to go some­where — I get that. and… it seemed inevitable that the twins were not going to have a hap­py res­o­lu­tion. That some­how there hav­ing been two of them, sep­a­rat­ed but still act­ing as one — that in the end there could­n’t be two of them in the world. And is that their indi­vid­ual faults or the fault of being born twins? I liked the book, but I’m not sure that I am encour­aged to read oth­ers by the same author. It’s a kind of fun­ny thing when it comes to read­ing such “oth­er” expe­ri­ences — I rarely want to expe­ri­ence them a sec­ond or third time from the same point of view. I, mag­pie like, want to go on to col­lect anoth­er point of view. That is in cas­es where the writ­ing does­n’t make me swoon. And here the writ­ing does not make me swoon. It is com­pe­tent and in places quite pleas­ant but its noth­ing special.

Rules of Civility — Amor Towles (2011)

Not as nifty as The Gentleman of Moscow. But the his­toric back­ground does­n’t play near­ly as big a part. Here we have a young woman in NYC on New Year’s Eve 1937 sit­ting with her pal in a second-rate club wait­ing for some­thing to hap­pen. That some­thing is Tinker Grey. Katey Kontent (hate the last name it tripped me up every sin­gle time I read it) is an okay nar­ra­tor. She’s a bit bland around the edges but I think that’s part of the point, she’s Every Girl mak­ing her way in the big city. The peo­ple who sur­round her for the year of the sto­ry are the inter­est­ing points and in fact the writer via Katey as much as admits that it’s the case that some­times we find our­selves sur­round­ed by peo­ple and events that will catch us up in their swirl with­out actu­al­ly hav­ing much effect on our­selves. They whirl around us and then leave us to go on in anoth­er direc­tion with oth­er peo­ple. (It’s some­thing that I’ve thought about a bunch myself — how we seem to be so inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed with peo­ple as we are in a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion but so eas­i­ly lose them when the cir­cum­stances change and we are no longer thrown togeth­er by some­thing larg­er than our­selves.) The whole thing is a bit like Fitzgerald — who I don’t actu­al­ly like. I find him dry and his char­ac­ters off-puttingly shal­low. This book comes close to being that shallow.
The title is tak­en from the young George Washington’s list of Rules for him­self. And the rules are includ­ed at the end of the book. Young GW was a pris­sy lit­tle shit.

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk — Kathleen Rooney (2017)

Lillian Boxfish is 85, it’s New Year’s Eve and she’s decid­ed to take a walk across Manhattan. First to Delmonico’s and then to a par­ty host­ed by a young pho­tog­ra­ph­er that she met in the park. It’s a long walk and we are treat­ed to not only Lillian’s ver­sion of Manhattan in 1985 but along the way to her life sto­ry. And it’s a pret­ty crack­er jack sto­ry. Running from her first days in Manhattan to her reign as the high­est paid adver­tis­ing woman in America (writ­ing copy for Macy’s in its glo­ry days) through a mar­riage a birth, a break­down, a divorce, a free­lance career, and now as a woman of a cer­tain age liv­ing on her own in a city that she dear­ly loves but that has changed in unpleas­ant ways. Lillian and the book are both wit­ty, wise, and a bit wicked.

 

Everybody’s Fool — Richard Russo (2016)

Sully is back and with a mild bit of good for­tune in his wake and a not so hot report from the car­di­ol­o­gist at the VA mar­ring his future he’s not sure how the world is sup­posed to work this week. And then there’s Police Chief Raymer whose grief at the loss of his wife is tem­pered by the sus­pi­cion that she was intend­ing to leave him the day she fell down the stairs and the stray garage door remote that he found in her car. The rest of the crowd is here too. There are some snakes (both the hiss­ing kind and the human kind) and whole lot of peo­ple try­ing to make sense of their lives and cir­cum­stances. Russo writes with humor and deep insight into the ways in which we all flit­ter and flus­ter our ways through life. (Read Nobody’s Fool first.)

Books of March

Fiction:

The Bear and The Nightingale: A Novel — Katherine Arden (2017)

Best fairy tale I’ve read in a long time. I was skep­ti­cal at first. But the hero­ine is more than a pret­ty face with an inter­est­ing fate. I can’t be sure, as I am no expert, but the sto­ry seems to be more Russian than most set in that fairy tale world. The author was a Russian major in col­lege. Well writ­ten, you won’t find your­self con­stant­ly thrown out of the sto­ry by a bad turn of phrase as you are so often in fairy tales.

 

Nonfiction:

Minding the Muse — Priscilla Long (2016)

Better than the aver­age book on cre­ativ­i­ty — it allows for indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. And it’s a reminder about the need for dai­ly (near­ly) work that I need to hear.

 

 

300 Arguments — Sarah Manguso (2017)

Don’t both­er. I like books of frag­ments (99 God and Bluets are exam­ples) but this one does­n’t hang togeth­er as any sort of nuanced state­ment on the world. It got a lot of praise but I just did­n’t find the thread that was sup­posed to link the apho­risms to make them some­thing oth­er than a jum­ble. There are a few that cut to the quick though. The best being:

“There will come a time when peo­ple decide you’ve had enough of your grief, and they’ll try to take it away from you.”

Poetry:

All of this mon­th’s poet­ry books are con­cerned with the domes­tic — but what dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences of home the poets bring.

The Day Before: Poems — Dick Allen (2003)

I remem­ber lik­ing these poems while I was read­ing them but a month lat­er I don’t remem­ber any­thing spe­cif­ic about them. What’s up with that? I don’t know what to think of poems that I like but that don’t leave a sol­id mark on me. I had to go and look at them again to write this review. These poems are pedes­tri­an — in a good way — the way in which some­one with­out anoth­er des­ti­na­tion in mind wan­ders down the street in a mid­size town just look­ing and won­der­ing about every­thing they see. They are root­ed in times and places and peo­ple and above all the lit­tle bits of nature that exist for us in every set­ting. But they did­n’t stick. Hmmm.

 

 

Bright Dead Things: Poems — Ada Limón (2015)

When she writes about her expe­ri­ences of being dis­lo­cat­ed from the city to rur­al Kentucky, Limon writes with humor and appre­ci­a­tion of both envi­ron­ments . Her descrip­tions of Kentucky horse coun­try from the point of view of a non-rural, non-horsey per­son are delight­ful­ly vivid. She also brings her fresh per­spec­tive to her rela­tion­ships and the loss of her step-mother. There is a won­der­ful imme­di­a­cy and hon­esty in these poems. Very down to earth, even when she’s being man­i­cal­ly unrealistic.

 

 

 

The Nerve of It: Poems New and Selected ‑Lynn Emanuel (2015)

Lynn Emmanuel is one of my favorite poets. I am always tak­en with her bit­ing, clear-eyed look at the places and peo­ple who make up her life. This vol­ume includes a cou­ple of my favorite old poems and some new favorites as well.

The Books of February

Slade House — David Mitchell (2015)

Fans of Mitchell’s recent work will enjoy the lit­tle bumps against his Bone Clocks. I won’t spoil it by telling you how it ends but you’ll enjoy the fris­son of recog­ni­tion. Once every nine years a house appears in Slade Alley and one spe­cial per­son is allowed to enter. Except that entry might not be the best thing to hap­pen to you. Mitchel writes a tight book in four parts. Each part stand­ing alone as a nice­ly creepy short sto­ry and the whole mak­ing a part of the uni­verse estab­lished in the The Bone Clocks. Worthwhile for fans of Mitchell and the milder forms of horror.

 

Swing Time — Zadie Smith (2016)

We start with an unnamed nar­ra­tor (why that choice? and why did­n’t I notice), her self-educating moth­er and lov­ing if unam­bi­tious father. The arc of the book fol­lows the nar­ra­tor’s child­hood friend­ship with Tracey, root­ed in a love of dance and old musi­cals, through the end of the girls’ friend­ship in high school. Though they go their sep­a­rate ways there is a link between the two girls that con­tin­ues to influ­ence their lives. After col­lege our unnamed nar­ra­tor begins to work for a pop mega-star as a PA. She los­es much of her own life — sub­sumed by the require­ment that she ded­i­cate all her time and ener­gy to par­tic­i­pat­ing in the star’s life. Eventually com­ing to dis­cov­er that she has no life of her own. That rev­e­la­tion — that she has no life of her own and that she has thus not man­aged the dif­fi­cult work of matur­ing from a twenty-something free spir­it. (Was she ever real­ly free?) into the sort of direct­ed thirty-three year old that her edu­ca­tion and intel­li­gence sug­gest that she could have been. She los­es her job at thirty-three and must begin again at the stage most of us reach three or four years out of col­lege when our first jobs give way to a career.
This a book that has gar­nered mixed reviews. I did­n’t find the scene switch­ing (loca­tion and time) to be dif­fi­cult to fol­low. Smith’s writ­ing is quite clear enough to make her leaps per­fect­ly obvi­ous. And in gen­er­al I liked the writ­ing. I do wish that Smith had either come down hard­er on the ques­tion of west­ern “med­dling,” espe­cial­ly by the famous but igno­rant, in poor­er regions of the world or that she has stuck to the theme of dance and had actu­al­ly done some­thing with the title musi­cal. Swing Time.
I also thing that the book did­n’t need all that wrap­ping up. I was will­ing to let the sto­ry wind down to the denoue­ment of the nar­ra­tor being set adrift to find her­self at a late age. Rather than see­ing the mess unwinding.
Anyway — did I like the book? Yes. Did I like that char­ac­ters — sev­er­al of them no. Did I like the writ­ing — yes. So go read it and don’t be a wee­nie because the nar­ra­tor (hero­ine) isn’t a full per­son — she’s not meant to be.

A Thousand Splendid Suns — Khaled Hosseini (2007)

I liked A Thousand Splendid Suns but it was a ter­ri­ble strug­gle to deal with at moments. It is at its core the sto­ry of two women (Miriam and Laila) — a gen­er­a­tion apart — who have to deal with life shit­ting on them. And the shit is awful. There are some tru­ly awful human beings here. Not the trag­i­cal­ly flawed ones like Jalil (Miriam’s father) but the hus­band Rasheed is despi­ca­ble. Anyway — it’s a heart stop­ping book. You keep think­ing that things must work out, or that they can’t get worse and yet in a war-torn Kabul things can always get worse. Insights into the Afghan soul per­haps, but the things described are so uni­ver­sal that you nev­er feel left out or alien­at­ed. And you’ll cheer like mad when kar­ma and Rasheed final­ly run into one anoth­er head on, even if it is at great cost to all the oth­er char­ac­ters in the book.

 

The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper — Phaedra Patrick (2016)

Light weight, not too fill­ing, not even well writ­ten but if you liked Backman’s Ove and sim­i­lar grumpy old men then you may like Arthur Pepper and his predica­ment. The premise — the find­ing of a mys­te­ri­ous charm bracelet that belonged to his late wife is promis­ing and yet, the charms and their sto­ries don’t add up and the con­trivances of how Arthur man­ages to find out about most of the charms are far too “con­ve­nient.” None the less Arthur is kind of endear­ing and so you read on.

 

A Gentleman in Moscow — Amor Towles (2016)

The sto­ry of what hap­pens to an aris­to­crat, Count Alexander Rostov, who returns (you might think unwise­ly) to Russia after the rev­o­lu­tion and finds him­self not up against a wall offered a final cig­a­rette but, because of piece of rev­o­lu­tion­ary poet­ry that he wrote, turned into a Former Person and sen­tenced to house arrest in the famous Metropol hotel. Spanning more than 30 years of the Count’s life and fea­tur­ing two young ladies who inter­sect with and utter­ly alter his life, this is an engag­ing book with inter­est­ing char­ac­ters and a lot of per­son­al action on a large his­toric back­ground. Perfect beach book.

 

Daring Greatly — Brené Brown (2012)

Self help book by a researcher who is best known for her work on shame. I’ve read her before and things here stain that odd­ly mushy feel­ing. There’s real­ly noth­ing here that you haven’t heard and seen a dozen times. Though I did find her explic­it­ly call­ing out of the set of gen­der expec­ta­tions that men car­ry around to be a refresh­ing change from the usu­al focus only on wom­en’s expe­ri­ence of gen­der roles. I’m just not sure I buy that val­ue she places on vul­ner­a­ble. Bravery I get and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in rela­tion­ships I get but vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to the whole world. No — I think not. That’s how you get tak­en advan­tage of. Basically you can sum up the con­tri­bu­tion of this book as “be brave even when you’re scared.
Anyway — much of a much­ness with her oth­er books and oth­ers in the genre. I’m sor­ry I both­ered with it.

Caraval — Stephanie Garber (2017)

The pro­tag­o­nist sees col­ors to go with her emo­tions. Which gives you a pret­ty good idea of how the writ­ing is going to go. There is a fairy tale begin­ning — evil father, lov­ing sis­ters and a dia­bol­i­cal regime of con­trol and pun­ish­ment. Sisters Scarlett and Donatella must some­how escape their ter­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion. (It would­n’t be a fairy tale oth­er­wise) The girls run away (or are kid­napped it sort of depends on who you’re talk­ing to at the moment) to Caraval, a 5‑night fan­ta­sy game with an impres­sive prize at the end. It’s all a bit The Night Circus with­out the great and imag­i­na­tive writ­ing. The end works well and the twist isn’t one that I saw com­ing but once revealed it all made per­fect sense. Really if the habit of explain­ing every sin­gle one of Scarlett’s emo­tion­al respons­es (com­plete with col­or) had­n’t got­ten in the so often way I might be rec­om­mend­ing this book much more high­ly. Also the dress­es — way too much time is spent describ­ing a round of fan­ta­sy dress­es that all sound exact­ly the same except for the colors.
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Bad Feminist — Roxane Gray (2014)

The star­ring essay on nature of priv­i­lege car­ries a reminder that lack of/possession of priv­i­lege must not be used as means of silenc­ing oth­ers voic­es. A reminder that we need giv­en the hot and heavy rhetoric in the cur­rent cli­mate of resistance.
The essays on real­i­ty TV and a hand­ful of books that I haven’t read aren’t inter­est­ing. None of them makes me want to expe­ri­ence what­ev­er (TV or book) she’s talk­ing about. If cri­tique does­n’t intrigue with its insights then what is the point?
Several of her essays reflect on the need to be care­ful and pre­cise with lan­guage. Not in a pris­sy way. She’d be all for being pre­cise­ly hor­ri­ble if that was your inten­tion. As long as you are match­ing lan­guage to inten­tion it’s all good. There is some­thing to be said for an atti­tude that removes the “nice” and puts the empha­sis on con­ci­sion and inten­tion­al­i­ty. Be true, even if your truth is harsh or unpopular.
I also liked her on trig­ger warn­ings. She points out that they are in the end, point­less because the world isn’t safe, but there are places where the illu­sion of safe­ty is nec­es­sary and trig­ger warn­ings have their place in them. The argu­ment is lit­tle more nuanced that just this but it basi­cal­ly comes down to you can keep your trig­ger warn­ings in your safe spaces to pro­mote a sense of safe­ty (illu­so­ry) but don’t expect me to cre­ate safe spaces in my spaces. My spaces aren’t safe. Never will be, so don’t come here if you need an illu­sion of safety.
Isn’t that just the rub — so much safe­ty vs dan­ger. and where is the dan­ger? One won­ders. Is it nec­es­sary to use some­one else’s def­i­n­i­tion of dan­ger? Interesting ques­tion. Is it like that vol­ume of Best American Essays that I did­n’t like where the edi­tor’s main cri­te­ri­on was risk. Risk as defined by whom was the first ques­tion I want­ed to ask. Risk as the main cri­te­ri­on for judg­ing the val­ue of work seems shal­low. I think that the same applies to dan­ger­ous ideas. If the only thing that your work has going for it is dan­ger, then what have you actu­al­ly got?
(No this para­graph length aside does­n’t belong in a book review — but hey they’re my reviews for my pur­pos­es so it stays.)
Anyway — there are a cou­ple of good essays here and a whole lot of bor­ing pop-culture gush­ing. Read it or don’t. It’s not that impor­tant of a book. (Sigh — I was hop­ing that it might be.)

Books of January

More book reviews. I know you’re excit­ed about that!

Best American Essays 2016 — Jonathon Franzen ed. (2016)

Franzen’s stat­ed cri­te­ria for choos­ing the essays was whether or not the writer was tak­ing a risk. Okay — risky writ­ing is often good writ­ing but I don’t think it makes a sound cri­te­ria for choos­ing the best essays. It leaves out too much of human expe­ri­ence and rewards sen­sa­tion­al­ism. That said…
Sebastian Junger’s “The Bonds of Battle” (from Vanity Fair) on PTSD in par­tic­u­lar seems to be more con­fronta­tion­al than infor­ma­tive. . He con­tends that sol­diers return­ing from bat­tle in old­er, more con­nect­ed soci­eties did not suf­fer from PTDS. While it is inter­est­ing to pit the anthro­pol­o­gy of old­er more con­nect­ed soci­eties against our mod­ern dis­con­nect­ed soci­ety and then use that con­trast to com­ment on PTSD, he presents a lot of num­bers with­out cita­tions (I hate to be a pen­dant in a book review, but real­ly — if you’re going to chal­lenge the exist­ing nar­ra­tive around PTSD you’d bet­ter look like you’ve done some cred­i­ble back­ground research.) Yes, I will con­cede that the dis­con­nect­ed nature of much of mod­ern soci­ety makes the caus­es and “cures” for PTSD more dif­fi­cult, this essay did­n’t con­vince me that PTSD is an arti­fact sole­ly of the mod­ern age and the poor qual­i­ty of the research pre­vents this con­tribut­ing much to the dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing the issues.
The oth­er essay the par­tic­u­lar­ly struck me was Jordan Kisner’s “Thin Places.” She writes about her expe­ri­ence of OCD and the mod­els of men­tal ill­ness as they relate to the self. There are, she con­tends, thin bound­aries between the self and the ill­ness. These bound­aries are much thin­ner than are pop­u­lar­ly described in the cur­rent mod­els of men­tal ill­ness. This essay is trou­bling in a good way. I’ve had to look at my own def­i­n­i­tions of “self”, “ill­ness”, and the con­trast between claim­ing that this things is “I” and that this oth­er thing is “not‑I”. Well worth the time for the larg­er philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions that it raises.

Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy — Mark Doty (2002)

I read this because Doty is one of the poets teach­ing in Port Townsend next sum­mer. A short (80 page) essay on the nature of things and our rela­tion­ships to them. And by exten­sion on the nature of art and it’s rela­tion­ship to us. The main sub­ject is the tit­u­lar still life paint­ed by Jan Davids de Heem. Along the way he dips into and out of mem­o­ry and reflects on the objects that have inhab­it­ed his life. He touch­es on his lovers, past and present and the hous­es that he has lived in as well as his grand­moth­er’s purse and the pep­per­mint can­dy that came out of it and the objec­tive­ly ugly chipped turkey plat­ter that he keeps above the man­tel piece. He inter­ro­gates our often com­plex rela­tion­ship with objects, how they are medi­at­ed by the peo­ple, places, and events that we asso­ciate with the objects and how once that con­text is removed (or for objects for which we don’t have con­text like the items in a still life) they take on a dif­fer­ent kind of mean­ing — a more uni­ver­sal one but with­out the degree of inti­ma­cy that we can bring to the objects that we hold as our own.

Whipsmart — Melissa Febos (2010)

I had an unex­pect­ed reac­tion to this book. I don’t trust the nar­ra­tor to be telling the truth. Partly because I don’t believe that addicts ever get over the habit of telling the not-truth. And part­ly because I don’t trust the end of the book.
A lot of the book is about Febos fronting. Keeping up appear­ances. Keeping one life away from the oth­ers and con­trol­ling any over­lap with humor and brava­do. All the while hid­ing from every­one the com­plete mess that she mak­ing of her life with drugs.
In her recov­ery from her life in the sex trade (which comes after her recov­ery from her life in drugs) the insights come too eas­i­ly and stick too well. Basically I think that at the end of the book — once she’s talked about all the dis­as­ters of her life, she’s still fronting — this time with the per­fec­tion of her new life.
It’s a young book and prone to the black and white rea­son­ing of youth. And I don’t trust that.

White is for Witching — Helen Oyeyemi (2009)

I love ghost sto­ries. This is ghost sto­ry, it’s just not clear who the ghosts are.
Like many of Oyeyemi’s books this one is told by sev­er­al nar­ra­tors. It is nec­es­sary to pay atten­tion. Miri, her twin Eliot, a friend of Miri’s called Ore, and the house — haunt­ed by four gen­er­a­tions of women, all have speak­ing parts. The house in par­tic­u­lar is an impor­tant voice. The house says things that the rest of the char­ac­ters either won’t or can’t say.
There is a witch­i­ness to all of the women involved in the sto­ry. Four gen­er­a­tions of the Silver women, two house­keep­ers, (the first who runs away, and the sec­ond who stays for rea­sons of her own), even Miri’s col­lege friend Ore has some mag­ic in her.
It’s all very witchy and haunt­ed and ghost­ly and won­der­ful. (I found this book not as hard to fol­low as Mr. Fox which I reviewed in November. But this time I was bet­ter pre­pared for the task of care­ful­ly track­ing who the speak­ers are.)

Glitter in the Blood: A Poet’s Manifesto for Better, Braver Writing — Mindy Nettifee (2012)

Much of a much­ness with all the oth­er “craft” books that are real­ly about psy­chol­o­gy, unblock­ing inspi­ra­tion, etc. Nettifee writes in a kind of fun voice with lots of ran­dom asides. (She admires Kurt Vonnegut’s essay style which led me to Wampeters, Foma, and Gallafoons. A very worth­while dis­cov­ery reviewed below. )
The sec­ond half of the book claims to address the mat­ter of edit­ing. Like most books that address edit­ing it is pret­ty use­less, for me, at least. The only way that I can under­stand edit­ing is to watch the process. It’s not enough to say — look for mixed metaphors. I need to see exam­ples of the “crimes” I am sup­posed to be avoid­ing and ways to “fix” them, whether I agree or not. Perhaps it is impos­si­ble to teach revision?
It does­n’t help that I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly like Nettifee’s poet­ry. Maybe I should have read some before I bought the book. But I review most of the poet­ry craft books that pass along my notice. It’s a pub­lic ser­vice to the rest of you ;)
There is one fab­u­lous game bor­rowed from Rachel McKibbens. Make a list of ten inan­i­mate objects, then make a list of ten ani­mals, then make a list of char­ac­ter­is­tics and habits of those ani­mals. Remove the mid­dle list and apply the char­ac­ter­is­tics and habits of the ani­mals to the inan­i­mate objects Voila inter­est­ing bits of poet­ic lan­guage that you can use as jump­ing off places.

Caramelo — Sandra Cisneros (2003)

The explo­ration of the sto­ry­teller’s role in fam­i­ly life comes to the fore as the young Mexican ‑American Ceyala Reyes begins to dig into and then tell the sto­ry of her Awful Grandmother and how she came to be just that Awful, despite her grand­moth­er’s ghost­ly objec­tions. There is, as in most fam­i­ly books, a moment of redemp­tion at the end. But here it is not spoiled by being too easy. The fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships remain uneasy as all fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships do.
I love read­ing Cisneros for her descrip­tions of things. Though occa­sion­al­ly the lists of objects can get to be too long. Her descrip­tion of all the things seen on a walk down street in Mexico City, while accu­rate, goes on just enough to long to break the fab­u­lous spell of being over­whelmed. Still her abil­i­ty to inject a bit of poet­ry and invoke the emo­tion of a time and place with per­fect­ly cho­sen descrip­tive ele­ments points to her poet­’s training.

Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons — Kurt Vonnegut (1999)

Just for your information:

Wampeters–An object around which the lives of oth­er­wise unre­lat­ed peo­ple revolve, e.g., The Holy Grail.
Foma–Harmless, com­fort­ing untruths, e.g., “Prosperity is just around the corner.”
Granfalloons–A proud and mean­ing­less asso­ci­a­tion of human beings, e.g., The Veterans of Future Wars

A col­lec­tion of essays, book reviews, a cou­ple of com­mence­ment speech­es, and a longish inter­view with play­boy mag­a­zine. It’s inter­est­ing to see Vonnegut at the height of his fame look­ing back­ward and for­ward. Many peo­ple speak of the great pes­simism of these pieces but I would argue that any­one who holds to true a moral code and the belief in the pow­er of human com­mu­ni­ties (lack­ing though they may be at this moment) can­not be con­sid­ered a true blood­ed pes­simist but only a sit­u­a­tion­al one. Pieces not to miss include: Bifra: A People Betrayed, which gives back­ground to a con­flict that I was only vague­ly aware of at the time and ren­ders what is now his­to­ry heart­break­ing­ly, acute­ly clear. The Playboy Interview — wide-ranging and a fine exam­ple of why we used to read the mag­a­zine. But per­haps most impor­tant­ly — In the Manner that God Must Shame Himself. Published in Harper’s Magazine in November 1972 — in respons­es to the Republican National Convention which nom­i­nat­ed Richard Nixon. In which Vonnegut (right­ly) divides our polit­i­cal sys­tem not into Democrat and Republican but into Winners and Losers. A painful­ly accu­rate recast­ing of the polit­i­cal dis­course. It seems to me that Vonnegut owes the world (no, he does­n’t owe us shit, real­ly) to put this one out there in an eas­i­ly find­able, read­able form. Or maybe Harpers should ask for reprint rights.