Everyday I Write the Book

Book vs Movie: "The Namesake"

I saw "The Namesake" tonight, which is based on Jumpa Lahiri's book The Namesake. Great book, very good movie.

For those of you who haven't read it, it's about an Indian couple who have an arranged marriage and move to the U.S., where they have two children and settle outside New York City.  Their children grow up torn between their parents' traditional Indian lifestyles and their wholly American sensibilities. The book is a poignant story about the push and pull of generations, tradition, and the need to forge one's own identity.

So which is better? The book, of course, has the benefit of detail and eloquence. The movie, however, is faithful to the book, retaining the most important plot points and some of the details that made the book so memorable. (Though as I sit here now, flipping through the book, I am discovering a lot of little insights and plot developments that the movie, by necessity, left out). So while the book is perhaps more nuanced and certainly fuller than the movie, the movie admirably captures the bittersweet themes of the book.  Given the challenges of cramming 291 pages into 117 minutes, the adapted screenplay did about as good a job as it could have. Advantage: Tie.

Even if you haven't read the book, go see the movie. Definitely the best I have seen this year, with the possible exception of "The Queen."

Anyone care to weigh in on the merits of Book vs. Movie, "Namesake" edition?

"I Don't Know How She Does It"

When I Don't Know How She Does It, by Allison Pearson, came out in 2003, I wasn't interested in reading it. Here's why:

1) I was sick (even then) of the working mom-stay home mom debate;

2) it seemed depressing - if it weren't hard to "have it all," then no one would write about it; and

3) it sounded exhausting - who wants to hear about someone else's stress?

Then I came across a copy of I Don't Know How She Does It at a used book sale a year ago, and on a whim, I picked it up, mostly because my friend Jean, one of the best readers I know, had casually mentioned to me a while ago that she had read it and liked it.

Somehow, it catapulted ahead of all of other books I want to read, and I read it.

The good:  First, it's very well-written. If you don't know already, it's the story of Kate, a working mother in London who has a high-powered job at a stodgy British investment bank, as well as 5 year-old and a toddler.  Most of the book details her struggle to balance motherhood with her intense career.  Pearson is an excellent writer, and she's very, very funny. Laugh out loud funny.

Second, speaking from the vantage point of someone trying a similar juggling act, I found some kernels of absolute truth in the book. She hits the nail on the head multiple times in describing Kate's conflicting feelings toward motherhood and her career. For most of the book, she's incredibly realistic; instead of glorifying or simplifying motherhood, she examines it in all of its messy imperfection.

And now the bad:

Sometimes the book is startlingly unsubtle. When Kate complains about the double standard that requires her to stay at work late at her children's expense, yet celebrates the dads who leave meetings early for their children's school events, it sounds like more like a policy paper than a novel. We get it. There's a double standard and it's unfair. 

I also find it hard to believe that her employer is typical of real-life investment banks. Come on, it's the twenty-first century, not the early 80s. Are things really that bad? Maybe they are, in London - but I doubt it.

Finally, and this is a big one - the ending was a huge disappointment. I won't give away too much here, but it was pure Hollywood, both in the way it resolved Kate's inner conflict and in the way she "stuck it" to the male-dominated society that she had suffered under.  And, to be honest, I felt betrayed. Here I thought I had a compadre in Allison Pearson - someone who understood me - and then she abandoned me.

All of that said, I liked the book. I'd recommend it. Definitely a fun and compelling read. If this post has scared you off - just wait for the movie. I am sure it's due out at some point soon.

"Flight"

I receive an e-newsletter from Mostly Fiction every week or two, which contains links to a number of recent reviews.  This week, a book called Flight, by Ginger Strand, caught my eye. Here is the whole review:

Author Ginger Strand dissects the subtle dynamics of family life in her debut novel Flight. While a daughter’s marriage heralds a fundamental structural change in any family, the Gruens are at a crisis point in their lives—they just don’t realize it. Father--Will—is almost 60—and as a commercial airline pilot that means mandatory retirement. But he’s not ready to retire, and with a past history of not consulting his wife in important family decisions, he’s secretly applied for a job in Hong Kong with Cathay Pacific Airlines. Meanwhile, Carol, his wife, has plans of her own and is determined to turn their rural Michigan home into a bed and breakfast.

The novel begins on a Wednesday, and it’s the day that married daughter Margaret, her husband David and their small child are due to arrive to celebrate younger sister, Leanne’s wedding. Leanne and her filmmaker fiancé Kit are flying in from New York for the small wedding scheduled to take place on Saturday. Both daughters arrive with a set of problems that they try to keep to themselves amid the strain and the hustle and bustle of last minute wedding arrangements.

Author Strand deftly explores each of her main characters’ secret thoughts and fears over the course of the days leading up to the wedding. In the case of Will and Carol, there’s almost 40 years worth of resentments and unspoken negotiation simmering under the surface of their marriage, and Will has yet to deal with his experiences as a pilot in Vietnam—a period that left a much deeper mark than he is willing to admit.  As a pilot for a passenger airline, the events of 9-11 have opened some old wounds. He finds himself suddenly aware of the transient nature of life and sees threats of danger at every turn. He dismisses Carol’s imminent plans to open a bed and breakfast as yet another fantasy in her series of ambitions—she’s had plenty of those during their marriage, and Will doesn’t stop to consider the factors behind her many aborted plans. Rather than confront Carol about the fact that he doesn’t want his home invaded by paying guests, he chooses to ignore the signs that her plans are surging ahead.

Strand’s characters are extremely well defined and subtly nuanced. Sisters Margaret and Leanne are effectively portrayed as polar opposites. Margaret, a professor, has always managed to achieve the goals she’s set for herself, and on the surface, her life seems perfect. She has an excellent job at a prestigious university, but her "open" marriage is about to explode with disastrous consequences. Leanne is not as focused as Margaret, and is not particularly ambitious. In many ways, Leanne’s tendency to drift “caught in a slipstream, pulled forward in the wake of others” most resembles her mother’s habit of dreaming up ideas and never completing anything. Oddly enough, though, Carol is most proud of Margaret and her drive to accomplish, and yet Carol finds it easier to communicate with Leanne. Will, on the other hand, finds it easier to talk to Margaret—in spite of her tendency to sourness.

When it comes to analyzing family dynamics, the author is spot on. Carefully detailed scenes depict the subtly of the things not said, the trigger points, and the discreet implications of the long history these characters share with one another. In one marvelous scene, Margaret commandeers the cooking of shrimp, and while she effectively trumps her mother’s hostess efforts, her mother plays her ace card when she mentions Margaret’s old beau. These well-placed jabs—along with the occasional dropped informational bombshell capture the complicated interpersonal relationships of this very normal family at a highpoint of their collective lives.

Here is an interview with Ginger Strand from Princeton Alumni Weekly (she's a year younger than I am - depressing).

Please let me know if any of you decide to read this book - I am intrigued.

Article on A.M. Homes

If the recent post on A.M. Homes piqued your interest, you might enjoy this article from The Washington Post about her, which appeared in yesterday's paper.

Guest Review: "The Birthday Party"

Here is another guest review from EDIWTB reader Nancy West, this time of The Birthday Party by Stanley N. Alpert. Thanks, Nancy!

Every few months, I receive a chain e-mail detailing survival tips to observe if you happen to be mugged, carjacked, kidnapped, or held at gunpoint in any other form. (Throw your purse at a distance rather than handing it over; kick out the taillights if you are locked in a trunk, etc.) I have to admit, I always find those lists intriguing -- not because I expect to ever need to use the pointers but because I find myself thinking, "Hmmm, would I have thought of that?"

Toward the end of The Birthday Party, Stanley N. Alpert's memoir of his 1998 kidnapping and 27-hour internment in the Brooklyn apartment of his gun-wielding teenage captors, Alpert himself receives a list of tips like the ones I'm referring to. By this time, it is months after the ordeal took place. Alpert reviews the list to see how well he "scored" and discovers that with a couple of exceptions, his instincts served him well. Merely by virtue of the fact that Alpert was around to write the book, we readers know that Alpert's experience had a safe and happy outcome.

The first half of this account is devoted to the events of the January night in 1998 when Alpert was snatched off the street in his Manhattan neighborhood and held captive for the next 27 hours. (The length of captivity is directly related to how many withdrawals the captors can make using his ATM card on any one calendar day.) Alpert's narrative documents every thought, fear, reflection and misgiving to pass through his mind throughout this harrowing experience while also recording the sometimes bizarre events going on around him in the squalid apartment in which he is held. Meanwhile, Alpert alternately reflects internally on the childhood, family life, social life and professional choices that have led up to this point and creates complicated analyses in his head as to how to improve his chances for survival.

The second half of the book relates the events after Alpert's release. He reunites with his friends, talks to his parents, aids the police, and then for fifty pages relates the verbatim testimonies of each of the seven suspects. That's fifty pages of talk from people we already know are guilty. Not compelling text, to put it mildly. Moreover, Alpert seems to be channeling the voice of Raymond Chandler with paragraphs like the one that includes the phrases "diming out," "sing like a canary," "sweet song" (in reference to snitching), and "supper of 8-10 years" (to describe an abbreviated prison sentence).

Though some readers have disparaged Alpert's self-congratulatory style, I was honestly impressed by the intellectual survival instincts that made him hyper-aware of every detail and comment he took in while blindfolded -- the color of the floor tiles, the amount one of the girls paid for cab fare, the name of the deli where they bought lunch, the plans one kidnapper makes to visit his grandmother in Virginia. By absorbing all of these micro-details, Alpert accrues a bank of information to help the police apprehend the perpetrators, and I found that aspect genuinely interesting.

That said, Alpert did not need to spend nearly so much time trying to convince readers of why it shouldn't have happened to HIM, a self-professed brilliant and righteous lawyer, super-popular guy among Manhattan's best and brightest, great son, desirable date, and so on. Being terrorized, robbed and held at gunpoint shouldn't have happened to anyone – no need to justify your undeservingness.

My other quibble is that in these post-James Frey times, memoirists are expected to be vigilant about qualifying their recollections. Like many other nonfiction accounts published since the Frey imbroglio, Alpert makes mention in his foreword of his priority on accuracy. However, he then goes out on a limb in describing scenes he didn't witness, particularly concerning the actions of his friends. At times, the descriptions are simply superfluous, given that we know he’s just guessing: his quasi-girlfriend Darcy “stands up and wraps a large wool scarf around her small neck.” Quite likely Alpert can picture this gesture of Darcy’s even without being there, but why bother to include it at all when we know he’s just synthesizing? At other times, his assumptions about what went on in his absence really stretch credibility. A bunch of male thirtysomething Manhattan lawyers sat around "with red and tearstained faces" as they awaited word of their friend's fate? I do not at all mean to suggest that Alpert's friends were not terribly upset by his disappearance, but my guess is that they were more likely to be making phone calls, asking questions, and demanding information than weeping on each other's shoulders.

Glad I read it; glad I'm done with it. Alpert deserves credit for coping so intelligently amidst extremely adverse conditions. He also deserves a more critical editor who knows how to cut text and weed out cliches.

A.M. Homes - Worth It?

Author A.M. Homes has a new memoir out called The Mistress' Daughter, about confronting her biological parents after being raised by loving adoptive parents. The book is based on a 2004 New Yorker essay she wrote on the same topic.

15 years ago, I read another book by A.M. Homes called In a Country of Mothers. It's a novel about a Manhattan psychiatrist who believes that one of her patients is the daughter she gave up for adoption many years earlier. It's been a long time since I read the book, but I remember it being suspenseful and a good read - a psychological drama with some compelling (if a bit obesssive) characters. I have been wondering recently whether I would enjoy this book now as much as I did then - I was a lot younger and presumably not as critical a reader at that time.

I passed on Homes' best-known books, Music for Torching (2000), about decaying suburbanites, The End of Alice (1997), about the correspondence between a pedophile in prison and a 19-year old girl.

Then last year, a book club that I was in chose This Book Will Save Your Life, a dark moral fable about a man in L.A. confronting the deficiencies in his life. I hated it. I read about 40 pages, and then put it down and never picked it up again. (And I wasn't the only one).

Here's what I think about A.M. Homes: she's good at setting up complex characters with dark impulses, and she's clearly adept at identifying the pressures and realities in society that move us in not always positive ways. The New York Times says that she "has made a minor speciality of luridness." But her books are disturbing and, in the case of This Book Will Save Your Life, sometimes unreadable.

So I am skeptical about her new memoir.  Here's what The New York Times had to say:

In many ways, this book is really about a wild goose chase. There is no epiphany here. In all the moments when some shimmering self might rise intact from the detritus, it does not. In the cardboard boxes with her mother’s possessions (which Homes labels with a characteristic lack of euphemism, “Dead Ellen 1-4”) she finds nothing to provide some unaccustomed comfort in the world, nothing that will save her — only containers filled with sheet music, unopened bills, phone messages and receipts, some of which she puts in ministorage.

And then, as if an active part of this psychological spectacle, the second half of the book falls to pieces. Homes begins an obsessive search on the Internet for her antecedents, even hiring two researchers to help her. What follows is a random, frantic amassing of detail. She uncovers biographical fragments about people who are related to her, and some who are not. She muses on the general difficulties of her relatives’ immigrant experience. But somehow in this wild quest for identity she loses focus, and in the process, any remnant of narrative control. Where, one begins to feel along with her, is A. M. Homes?

Still, if “The Mistress’s Daughter” is not entirely satisfying, if it loses some of its furious precision — its perverse, artful inquisition into the motives of its principals — as a document of a flawed, incoherent self, it remains fierce and eloquent. And even some of its messier sections are gripping.

Here is an excerpt from The Mistress' Daughter as well as an interview with A.M. Homes from NPR.

Anyone thinking about reading this? Any other thoughts on A.M. Homes?

"Second Honeymoon"

My mom has been complaining that my blog is too focused on books about my demographic: people (mostly women) in their 30s. I do take issue with that -- see recent posts on This Boy's Life, The Crimson Portrait, Lost City Radio -- but I admit that I tend to be drawn to books about people like me. Don't we all?

So here's a book about empty nesters: Second Honeymoon, by Joanna Trollope. Trollope is one of those writers I've seen in stores and in reviews, but I haven't read anything by her before. This book looks good, though. I first learned of it from The Island Bookstore's newsletter. Here's what the newsletter said:

Now that her third and last child has left the nest, Edie Boyd's life turns suddenly and uncomfortably silent. She begins to yearn for the maternal intimacy that now seems lost to her forever. Be careful what you wish for...Before long, a mother-and-child reunion is in full swing: life away from the nest has proven to be unexpectedly daunting to the children, who one-by-one return home, bringing their troubles. With an unannounced new phase of parenthood suddenly stretching ahead of her, Edie finds her home more crowded than ever. In this touching, artful novel, Joanna Trollope has created a family drama for the ages, a moving story of work, love and eternal parenthood.

From The Seattle Times:

For baby-boomer parents with young-adult children, the parents' conflicting emotions about the kids moving out are powerfully portrayed here, in scenes that will ring true to readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Finally, Edie comes to realize that her desire to "keep everything safe ... to make everything all right for all of them" and "to be back in control of things" can never be fulfilled. But she and Russell (as well as their children) find a new way to go forward.... Sharply detailed subsidiary characters make this a richly imagined novel about family relationships, almost the equal of Trollope's earlier, searing Other People's Children.

Not everyone likes this book, though. From A Book a Week Blog:

This book put me in a bad mood. I had to force myself to finish it. There's nothing wrong with how it's written: The story moves along in a straightforward way, the characters are fully formed, the events plausible, and the resolution logical. It's the story of a couple whose three children have grown and moved out, and then bounce back home, then move out again. Character traits include pathetic (Edie, the mother), spoiled (Rosa, the daughter), clueless (Ben, the younger son), hostile (Matt, the older son), disconnected (Russell, the father), angry (Viv, the aunt), and ridiculous (Max, the uncle). Only the cat, Arsie, is at all likable. Yuck. What a disappointment. I usually like Joanna Trollope because she is so skilled at creating truly realistic families. I guess this family is realistic. They're just not people I would like to spend any time with.

But then there's this from Bookpage:

Joanna Trollope's Second Honeymoon is another wonderful dispatch from the British novelist, who reports from the front line of home and family like no one else. Trollope manages, book after book, to keep her unique take on modern living not just fresh, but intriguing. She is at her most sublime when writing about the most conventional details of and musings on daily life. Consider Edie's meditation on, of all things, eating breakfast: "He ate like Ben, with that peculiar combination of indifference and absorption that seemed to characterize hungry young men, consuming two bowls of cereal and a banana and four slices of toast as if they were simultaneously vital and of no consequence at all."

Second Honeymoon is Trollope at her very best: precise and engaging. In true Trollope fashion, she crafts a story filled with surprises, nothing like what you'd hoped it would be. Somehow, it's better.

Has anyone out there read this book?