Everyday I Write the Book

Rishi Reddi, "Karma and Other Stories"

For you short story fans out there, here's a review of a new collection called Karma and Other Stories, by Rishi Reddi, which I read about in this week's Mostly Fiction newsletter.

Most of the stories are set in the suburbs of Boston, with the exceptions of one in Kansas and another in India. However, there is no cultural overload, just small but solid images of the values of the Indian culture, their importance to the elders and the willingness of younger generations to compromise and change those traditions to adjust to the American way. Each tale is uniquely woven and easy to read, yet their themes are interconnected.
            
In “Devadasi,” Uma is a 16-year-old budding beauty, struggling with how she should handle her physical and mental transformation into a young woman. On a family trip to India, she’s torn between how tradition would want her to behave and the expectations of her American boyfriend back home. Through the guidance of her wise dance instructor, Guru-ji, she gathers some insight on how to make these choices.

Lakshmi is a submissive and obedient housewife and mother. Now that her children are grown, she’s restless with living her traditional Indian life in Modern America. In “Lakshmi and the Librarian,” she befriends the local librarian, Elias Filian, who appreciates her friendship and attention, unlike her husband who seems to be taking her for granted. After flirting with the danger of a possible affair, she sees the safety and comfort in the simple life she’s chosen.

Justice Shiva Ram Murthy would like all of his friends and family to think that he’s easily adjusted to living in Boston. What he simply cannot come to terms with is that, here in America, he’s not a renowned and respected judge, but just another Indian immigrant with an accent that’s difficult to understand. In this story, titled after the main character, we see Mr. Murthy twist a simple misunderstanding out of proportion demonstrating his frustrations with living in America.

In each of the seven expertly crafted tales, Rishi keeps us balanced on the fence, where we can clearly see both sides, and feel the push and pull from the green grass of both. She provides us with gentle truths and emotional debates that open our awareness, empathy and understanding of the fear that change can bring, along with its exciting possibilities. Her Westernized characters are light headed from their fresh existence in a new world, while the ones who cling to tradition are quietly stubborn and respectfully steadfast in their cultural beliefs. You can’t dislike any of them, which creates a great struggle for the reader, and a good reason to read on. In fact, we want to handle each of them with an intimate delicacy, and in the end we want them all to find a satisfactory compromise. We root for a respectful neutrality, an ability to agree to disagree. After all, don’t we each grow up trying to beat our own path in life, rebelling against all we’ve been taught, and believing what our own minds and hearts tell us is correct?

Indian blogger Jabberwock has a long, positive review of Karma and Other Stories, and concludes:

[N]one of these stories amount to pat generalisations about a community of people. Yes, they all deal with Indians living and adjusting in the US; in fact, one can particularise this further and observe that they are mostly about members of a Telugu community in relatively less cosmopolitan places in the US (so much so that some characters recur from one story to the next; the effect is like being at a cosy fireside chat where a narrator is telling us anecdotes from the lives of people we've seen in our neighborhood). But one can also step back, look at the larger picture and observe that these are believable human beings, facing different types of conflicts and responding in different ways.

Here is an interview with Rishi Reddi from Small Spiral Notebook, and here is a downloadable interview from Harper Perennial.

"Remembering The Bones" by Frances Itani

The NYT Book Review ran a review of a new book called Remembering the Bones by Frances Itani a few weeks ago.  The novel is about Georgina, an old woman who has a car accident on her way to London to meet Queen Elizabeth. As she lies suffering at the bottom of a hill, her accident invisible to the road above, she revisits her life.

The author has chosen the human skeleton to frame her book; each chapter is named for a bone (as many of the main character's are now broken), and the chosen bone loosely triggers a memory of earlier times and people in her life.  According to the NYT:

[T]he bones provide just the right structural underpinnings, holding [the] story together from inside the narrative. Presented in loose chronological order, each fragment of memory is fascinating in its own way, moving from childhood’s elemental fears and discoveries to the conflicted joys and pains of adulthood. Itani deftly brings them together, dipping into the past to illuminate the present moment, building such emotional complexity that the novel’s ending — both inevitable and surprising — is as subtle as it is wrenching.

The NYT review compares Remembering the Bones to Carol Shields' The Stone Diaries, a book that I really enjoyed. (In fact, the review is titled "The Bone Diaries").  Both books "chronicle quiet lives from start to finish, uncovering treasure in their dark corners."

Here is a glowing review from The Indextrious Reader, who says:

I really loved the writing, so crisp and yet with so much power in the vagaries of recollection. Georgina is a strong, complex character who fully inhabits her life; even as she lays aged and hurt in a ravine, her memories of her childhood and young adulthood feel contemporaneous. Itani captures the essence of the youthful soul which remains even as the body ages. She takes her place among the constellation of writers featuring old women looking back on life, which seems to be a theme in Canadian literature, and she stakes her claim very convincingly.

The London Public Library blog says "Remembering The Bones is a beautifully written novel. Not once did I find it difficult to get through. In fact, I was eager to get to it whenever I could."

If you do decide to read Remembering The Bones, here is a downloadable podcast featuring an interview with the author.

Nine Bookstores Worth a Visit

Here's a cute article from CNN.com: "Nine Bookstores Worth a Tourist Stop".

I was happy to see three of my favorite bookstores on the list: Politics & Prose, which is right around the corner from my house; The Strand (one of my favorite spots in NY - I LOVE that store - amazing for browsing and finding bargains); and The Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle.

Here's the whole article:

A destination bookstore can make you feel like you're part of the community, whether you're grooving on the laid-back vibe at Powell's in Portland, or tuning into the Beltway buzz at Washington's Politics and Prose.

Some bookstores offer literary touchstones, like the wooden chairs signed by writers who've visited That Bookstore in Blytheville, an Arkansas institution frequented by native son John Grisham. City Lights in San Francisco, once a hangout for Beat writers like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, draws tourists from around the world.

"Each one of these stores has a unique, distinct personality and approach," said Meg Smith, chief marketing officer for the American Booksellers Association, a trade group for independent bookstores. "You really do see a snapshot of the town and the region in these kinds of fulsome independent bookstores."

And don't overlook the shopping potential. Most independent bookstores take pride in showcasing regional literature. Quirky handwritten signs with staff recommendations may direct you to writers you've never heard of. The tote bags at the Strand bookstore in Manhattan, which come in more than 30 designs, were voted the No. 1 souvenir to bring home to Japan by New York readers of Nikkei, a Japanese financial newspaper.

Any list of destination bookstores is bound to leave off some favorites. But here are nine noteworthy bookstores around the country that are definitely worth a visit.

Books & Books

265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables, Fla., http://www.booksandbooks.com

Some bookstores are crammed with serpentine rows of dusty shelves aching with books -- but that's not what you'll find at Books & Books, which has three locations in addition to its Coral Gables flagship.

"Our Coral Gables store is built around a courtyard in a Mediterranean-style building and our South Beach store is in a gorgeous Art Deco building," said owner Mitchell Kaplan. The store also has branches in an upscale mall in Bal Harbour and on Grand Cayman Island in the Caribbean.

Books & Books hosts 70 author events a month, and the stores' specialties include art, architecture and regional literature, including books about Cuba and Latin America. Both the Coral Gables and Miami Beach stores also have full-service restaurants.

City Lights Books

261 Columbus Ave., San Francisco; http://www.citylights.com/

This store, a city landmark, was co-founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who also started City Lights Publishers and was arrested on obscenity charges for publishing Ginsberg's famous poem "Howl."

The store continues to serve as a center for counterculture activities and politics. Recommendations from its "Muckraking" section, for example, include titles like "The Fall of the House of Bush" and "What Orwell Didn't Know." Tourists also like to stop in at the bar next door, Vesuvio, to have a drink where Kerouac once bellied up.

Elliott Bay Book Co.

101 S. Main St., Seattle; http://www.elliottbaybook.com/

Elliott Bay Book Co. is located in Seattle's historic Pioneer Square district, once the city's Skid Row but now known for nightclubs, galleries, sports arenas and architecture -- including the 1867 red-brick building that houses Elliott Bay.

Cedar shelves offer 150,000 new and used titles in rooms with exposed brick walls, and one or two readings are held every night. "It can be anyone from a first-time poet to Dave Sedaris returning for his 10th time," said Elliott Bay spokeswoman Tracy Taylor. "We had him here when nobody knew who he was and there were 15 people in the audience. He sang the Oscar Mayer song."

Politics and Prose

5015 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington; http://www.politics-prose.com/

Even people who've never been here feel like they know the place because many of its readings are broadcast on C-SPAN. "We have a lot of people who come here and the first thing they want to know is, 'Where does the author stand?"' said co-owner Barbara Meade. "They want to have the whole setting they see on television explained to them."

January events include the authors of titles like "The Nuclear Jihadist" and "The Speculation Economy," but don't let the "Politics" in the store's name fool you. Readers can find books here in any genre; the store's children's section is especially well-regarded.

Powell's City of Books

1005 W. Burnside, Portland, Ore.; http://www.powells.com

The Gold Room, the Rose Room, the Purple Room -- even with a color-coded map and signs, it's easy to get lost in the labyrinths of Powell's City of Books. And "it's hard to walk out with less than 10 books," said marketing coordinator Kim Sutton. She added that locals love to bring their out-of-town guests in: "They'll say, 'This is my bookstore,' and show them around with a lot of pride and ownership."

Powell's claims to be the world's largest independent used and new bookstore; its other locations include three other general bookstores and two specialty stores (Technical and Home and Garden).

Prairie Lights

15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, Iowa. http://www.prairielightsbooks.com

Thanks to the University of Iowa's famed Writers' Workshop, which has given Iowa City a vibrant literary scene, you never know who you're going to see at a Prairie Lights event. Could be a Nobel laureate like J.M. Coetzee; writer Michael Pollan promoting his new best-seller, "In Defense of Food," or even a presidential candidate like John Edwards, who was in town for the caucuses.

"Right place, right time," said Jim Harris, the store owner, when asked to explain how the store has attracted so many bigwigs over the years -- from Raymond Carver to Toni Morrison to Junot Diaz. Store events also air on WSUI, a National Public Radio affiliate.

Tattered Cover Book Store

1628 16th St., Denver; http://www.tatteredcover.com

Visitors to Denver often go to 16th Street, a mile-long outdoor mall through the heart of LoDo, historic Lower Denver. There, amid breweries and boutiques, near the arenas where Denver's major league teams play and across from the train station, you'll find the Tattered Cover.

"We get a whole lot of tourists, along with people waiting for trains and fans hanging out until game time," said spokeswoman Patty Miller. The store has two other locations, but the LoDo location is especially inviting, with cozy nooks, overstuffed chairs and a gas fireplace.

That Bookstore in Blytheville

316 W. Main, Blytheville, Ark.; http://www.tbib.com

It's located in an out-of-the-way small town, but That Bookstore in Blytheville has become famous thanks to Grisham, who grew up nearby. "He comes here all the time, every time he has a book," said Mary Gay Shipley, the store's "manager, founder, owner and janitor."

While Grisham no longer greets the public during his visits, he does sign books, and his association with the store gave Shipley the clout to get other big names in -- from Mary Higgins Clark and "Cold Mountain" author Charles Frazier to Bill and Hillary Clinton. The store is located on Interstate 55 between Memphis (an hour away) and St. Louis, so "we get a lot of customers traveling from the Midwest to Florida," Shipley said.

The Strand

Corner of 12th Street and Broadway, near Union Square, Manhattan; http://www.strandbooks.com

Founded in 1927 by the Bass family, which still owns it, The Strand is a New York legend, offering "18 miles of books," including used books for a buck, new best-sellers, rare books and collectibles in every price range, and an entire floor of art books.

It's as much a scene as it is a bookstore; customers range from Japanese tourists and East Village hipsters to New York University students and crusty intellectuals who quiz the staff on their literary knowledge. The "treasure hunt" is part of the allure, said Christina Foxley, director of store events. "Our stock is constantly changing. One hour we might have a book, one hour we don't. You never know what you might find."

Poem: "A Boy in the Bed in the Dark" by Brad Sachs

Here's a first for EDIWTB.

I get The Writer's Almanac from NPR every day via email. Each installment features a poem. I have noticed that the editors sometimes run poems that they ran the year before, which always disappoints me a little bit. But I remember this poem from last year and when it came up again a few days ago, I was glad to see it. I find it so moving.

I thought I would share it here.

Poem: "A Boy in a Bed in the Dark" by Brad Sachs, from In the Desperate Kingdom of Love: Poems 2001-2004. © Chestnut Hills Press, 2004. Reprinted with permission.

A Boy in a Bed in the Dark

Born with a cleft palate,
My two-year-old brother,
Recovering from yet another surgery,
Toddled into our bedroom
Toppled a tower of blocks
That I had patiently built
And in a five-year-old's fury
I grabbed a fallen block
And winged it at him
Ripping open his carefully reconstructed lip.
The next hours were gruesomely compressed
Ending with a boy in a bed in the dark
Mute with fear
Staring out into the hallway with horror
As the pediatrician went in and out of the bathroom
With one vast blood-soaked towel after another
Shaking his head worriedly.
My brother's howls
And my parents' cooed comfort
Became the soundtrack to this milky movie
That plays
In my darkest theatre,
The one that I sidle past each night
With a shudder
And a throb in my fist

"Flight" by Ginger Strand

Back in April 2007, I wrote a post about a book called Flight by Ginger Strand. I had read a review of it and was intrigued. Tonight, I finished it. It took me a long time to read it, not because it was a long book, but because I didn't particularly enjoy it.

The book is about a nuclear family - mom, dad, two grown daughters - who converge on the parents' home on the eve of the youngest daughter's wedding. This is not a subtle book - each of the characters is in varying degrees of fleeing from a bad relationship, whether it's a long marriage, a shorter one, or one that hasn't even taken place yet - hence the title. Also, the father is an airline pilot, and 9/11 is supposed to be looming in the background, ostensibly causing the characters to reexamine their lives amidst the realization of its frailty.

It doesn't sound so bad. But here's why I didn't like it. While I usually enjoy family dramas, I found this one suffocating. Strand's best attributes as a writer, in my opinion, worked to her disadvatange here. Her eye for detail is pretty amazing - her ability to construct wholly believable scenes and convey the layers of family relationships through realistic dialogue and precisely drawn actions is very impressive. However, I felt like I was reading this book in real time - that I was actually living this 48-hour period along with this unhappy family. I wanted out. I wanted to go somewhere else and get away from them, to shed the burden of experiencing their lives. This is not a good quality in a novel.

I also didn't like the characters. They are each frustrating and somewhat unlikeable. I just didn't care if the youngest went through with her wedding or if the parents worked out their issues. That's another fatal flaw for me - if I just don't care what happens, I have a hard time getting through the book.

I could go on - some subplots that didn't get enough attention or resolution, for example - but suffice it to say I just didn't love this book. Strand is clearly a very talented writer - as I mentioned, her gift for detail and precision is remarkable - but the plot and characters on this one just didn't do it for me. I read to escape, and this book felt like a prison.

James Collins: "Beginner's Greek"

Sometimes I receive unsolicited review copies of books from publishers. A few weeks ago, I got one in the mail called Beginner's Greek, by James Collins - I must be on Little, Brown's mailing list. I glanced at it and thought it looked interesting, but then put it away and didn't think about it until I saw a short review of it in yesterday's New York Times. Here's what it says:

James Collins’s chick lit-esque first novel takes its title from a James Merrill poem about those who fear to feel intensely (“What is/Beyond analysis/Is perilous”). Mr. Collins’s protagonist, Peter Russell, a good-looking young banker, feels but has trouble acting. When he meets Holly, the love of his life, on a plane trip from New York to Los Angeles, he gets — and loses — her number. And when she turns up, years later, as the girlfriend, then wife, of his less-than-faithful best friend, he doesn’t let on that his passion for her is as strong as ever. Many coincidences later he ... well, you know what happens.

Here is an interview with the author at the Literature Chick blog, which calls it "a kind of Greek comedy with a bit of tragedy thrown in [that] showcases the talent of a honest, sardonic writer who delivers a truly rewarding, entertaining read."

This book may be a little lightweight, but it still sounds kind of good. I will add it to the pile.

Guest Review: "The Abstinence Teacher" by Tom Perrotta

Sorry for the scarcity of posts this month. Back to back business trips have eaten up my free time, and I am still reading my current book. (Again, not a good sign). I look forward to posting more regularly very soon. In the meantime, here is a guest review of Tom Perrotta's latest novel, The Abstinence Teacher, from EDIWTB regular Nancy West.

I was in the minority of readers disappointed by Tom Perrotta’s last novel, Little Children. As a (then) stay-at-home mother of young children in an upscale suburb, I found his depiction of stay-at-home mothers of young children in an upscale suburb to be mildly offensive and generally inaccurate – on the whole, sort of a distasteful male fantasy of what our lives are really like (in a “So what do you little ladies do all day, anyway? Catfights, lesbian fantasies and extramarital affairs?”).

And yet I’m absolutely delighted with Perrotta’s brand-new novel, The Abstinence Teacher. This time he tells a story I’ve never heard before about characters who are believable, likeable and interesting.

The title character is Ruth Ramsey, a divorced mother of two teens who teaches health education at a high school in a New England suburb. Several months before the novel begins, Ruth has been raked over the coals by the rapidly growing Christian conservative church faction in her town, the implication being that many progressive intellectual communities are facing the gradual encroachment of the Christian right. But let me repeat the first six words of that sentence again: Several months before the novel begins. Kudos to Perrotta for being a novelist skilled enough to make a fulcrum event in a character’s life occur before the start of the novel; for a more plot-driven novelist like Jodi Picoult, the fight Ramsey has with the school board over her sex education program would be the focus of the novel. Perrotta uses this past event beautifully as a touchpoint in Ruth’s backstory but not as the main action of the novel, which instead hinges upon the aftermath of Ruth’s professional trauma.

Toward the beginning of the novel, Ruth attends her pre-teen daughter’s soccer game and is shocked to catch the born-again Christian coach, Tim Mason, leading the team in prayer. Appalled, Ruth drags her daughter out of the prayer circle – causing the conflicted child endless mortification – and begins threatening legal action against the soccer league. The praying dad is, after all, a member of the same group that nearly cost Ruth her job a year earlier when she made the humorously innocuous statement to a class of teens that “some people enjoy sex.” Following the soccer field confrontation, we learn what brought the coach-dad to this point in his life – he has an interesting and complex backstory and is no two-dimensional Ned Flanders – and we watch Ruth become increasingly discouraged by her attempts to hold on to a sense of her own moral righteousness, especially once both her daughters announce that they too might join the conservative Christian movement in their town.

What makes this novel so engaging is not the plot but the wonderfully interesting characters and the complicated decisions they make. But even more poignant than Ruth’s search for post-divorce romance or Tim’s ambivalence over his new marriage and relationship to his ex-wife and daughter is the governing theme of divorced parents in the suburbs trying to cope with exes, children and new families. As soccer parents ourselves, my husband and I have more than once seen the extremely emotional tableau of a kid in the midst of a Saturday morning game suddenly distracted by the parent he has not seen in several days appearing on the sidelines. At a kids’ baseball game we attended last summer, a grandfather good-naturedly teased a mom he didn’t know for hugging and kissing her 8-year-old son just before he took the pitcher’s mound. “No kissing the pitcher!” he joked. She smiled ruefully and said, “I haven’t seen the pitcher in five days.” Parents divorce, are separated from their children for days on end even while living in the same town, wrangle over rules, extracurricular activities and vacation plans with their exes, meet new spouses, start new families. This, more than anything in Perrotta’s Little Children, is a fascinating element of modern-day life in the suburbs. This time he has served up a new, interesting, engaging story.

"Keeping the House" by Ellen Baker

Sorry for the long lapse there in posting. I was in Vegas for work for a few days, and before that... I think I kept hoping I would finish my current book so that I could review it. But I am still reading it (never a good sign), and so the blog was fallow for a week.

Today's book is a Booksense pick from September 2007. It's called Keeping the House, by Ellen Baker. According to Amazon:

Baker's first novel is a long and uneven multigeneration family saga set in small town Wisconsin. In 1896, Wilma comes to the rough backwoods town of Pine Rapids as the alarmed new bride of a lumber baron's first son, John Mickelson. Wilma is already regretting her jump from college to matrimony when she gets off the train and promptly falls in love: first with her brother-in-law, Gust, and then with the beautiful home on a hill that is now hers. Counterpointing Wilma's unhappy trial by marriage and motherhood is a complementary story set in 1950, when another new bride comes to Pine Bluff. Unlike Wilma, Dolly Magnuson married the man she wanted desperately. Unable to conceive, she is determined to be the perfect housewife, a plan that morphs into an obsession with the old Mickelson house, now unlived in and uncared for. The novel expands to encompass the stories of the grown Mickelson children: as Dolly begins taking care of the house, and the Mickelsons begin entering and exiting it by way of a window. Stuffed to bursting with stories of love, loss, revenge, obsession, emotional and physical violence, and general familial mayhem, Baker's book makes readers work to sort out the fates of the most engaging characters.

Reader reviews on Amazon are very positive. My guess is: this isn't necessarily great literature, but it's a satisfying read.

From the Phildelphia Inquirer via PopMatters:

Baker has done a fine job of setting up the two narratives that first develop separately, like pieces of a quilt, and then are sewn together, part of the same fabric in the end. Her knowledge of American cultural history serves her extremely well. For example, Dolly’s chapters begin with quotes from domestic manuals of the era, such as this from a 1950 Ladies’ Home Journal article, “Making Marriage Work”:

“Married happiness can never be taken for granted. ... You expect your husband to continue his efforts to advance in his field; similarly you should continue your efforts to improve in your job as housekeeper, mother, and wife.” ...

Ellen Baker’s expertise as a former curator of a World War II museum permeates the novel. Her knowledge of the lives the soldiers led in the Pacific and European theaters is pitch-perfect. ...

Baker shows us two generations of American men mentally battered by war. Those who didn’t lose limbs or lives in one of the two world wars lost something else and, inevitably, they brought their losses back with them. She also knows what life was like for the women left at home, the grieving widows and mothers, the nurses who treated the damaged men and perhaps understood them better than anyone else.

Paradoxically, the archival data underpinning this novel is so rich that the family saga of the Mickelsons is sometimes stretched thin across the cultural background of the era. The family secrets are shocking, but so much historical material interlards them that they don’t pack the punch they might have in a shorter, tighter narrative.

Despite that caveat, Baker has scored a victory with Keeping the House. For all its length, it flows smoothly, and the prose is so assured, it’s difficult to believe this is the author’s first novel. Baker’s future as a fiction writer looks promising—as prosperous as the halcyon decades that followed World War II in America.

Anyone read this?

"Last Night at the Lobster" by Stewart O'Nan

Here's a book I am very eager to read: Last Night at the Lobster, by Stewart O'Nan. It's the story of the last night at a Connecticut Red Lobster restaurant that's going to close the next day.

EW put it on its 10 Best for 2007:

Another generous novel about work, this one set during a blizzard at a languishing Red Lobster restaurant in New England on its final day of operation. For the very last time, Manny DeLeon, Stewart O'Nan's grave hero, negotiates between his bickering waitstaff, tends to the Frialators, banters with a longtime customer, and pushes the tilapia. Without quite admitting it to himself, he is mourning the dissolution of this strange little community, however makeshift and dreary. And why shouldn't he? O'Nan turns everyday loss into poetry.

Scott Writes blog said this about the book:

Sure, it sounds pretty simple, but there’s so much below the surface of that basic plot description. O’Nan has a knack for writing some of the most thoroughly enriching portraits of small-town life you’re likely to find on bookshelves these days. Behind the last-night-at-their-job proceedings, there’s a deeply felt nostalgia and remorse for what’s become a staple in these characters’ lives. O’Nan plays it perfectly.

And from The Washington Post:

Full of regret and gentle humor, Last Night at the Lobster serves up the kind of delicate sadness that too often gets ruined by the slimy superiority that masquerades as sympathy for working-class people. It wouldn't take much longer to read this story than to polish off a large helping of hush puppies, but it's a far more nutritious meal.

Must. Read. ASAP.