Everyday I Write the Book

"An Accidental Mother" by Kate Kindred

An Accidental Mother is a memoir by Katherine (Kate) Kindred about becoming a mother, unexpectedly, in her 40s. Kindred, a divorced woman without kids, meets and falls in love with a man named Jim at age 40. Jim has two kids - a two year-old boy whom he didn't even know about until the boy's mother was deemed unfit to parent, and a younger daughter (with an ex-wife). Jim takes on full custody of his son, Michael, and shares custody of his daughter Elizabeth with his ex. When he gets involved with Kindred, he and Michael move into her house, and she quickly learns how, and what it takes, to be a mother.

An Accidental Mother is about Kindred's love for Michael and their lives together over the next 6 years, until he is 8. Kate falls in love with Michael, and the two bond deeply and strongly. She is, for all intents and purposes, his mother, as evidenced by the cards and letters he writes her every year on Mother's Day. She even asks Jim if she can adopt Michael, but Jim stalls, citing the stress he is under from the custody fight with Elizabeth's mother.

I especially liked the short vignette chapters interspersed throughout the book, where Kindred would share short, funny/poignant memories about Michael and Elizabeth. They reminded me of the things I write on my own blog about my kids - little sayings, events, and observations that are easy to forget in the big picture but which collectively provide a wonderful snapshot of living with kids.

An Accidental Mother has a very sad ending. Jim and Kindred break up, and Jim refuses to let Kindred spend time with Michael. She doesn't delve deeply into the reasons for it, nor does she unduly bash Jim in the book (as well she could). Instead, she simply discusses her sadness over losing Michael. The book clearly serves two purposes - it's a therapuetic expression of her grief, and it's also a letter to Michael, one that she must hope that he will read when he is older so that he can understand why she disappeared from his life.

An Accidental Mother is a short read. It's heartbreaking and compelling and worth the few hours it took to get through.

Thank you to Unbridled Books for the review copy.

"Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later" by Francine Pascal

If you've never heard of Sweet Valley, CA, and the names Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield mean nothing to you, then I recommend you stop reading right now.

I just finished the audio version of Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later, the (most recent) sequel to the Sweet Valley High series that was very popular in the late 80s. Now, I was never a Sweet Valley fanatic. I read maybe 10 or 15 of the books. I didn't know all of the characters. I didn't read the prequel series, nor the prequel to the prequel series, nor the first sequel series. I was a casual fan who read enough to know the main players and some of the outlandish storylines Pascal presented in her addictive, cliche-ridden, but totally enjoyable books.

When I was at BEA last May, I came across a display that featured the audio version of Pascal's widely-panned recent release, Sweet Valley Confidential and I just couldn't help asking if I could have it. I must have been the only person that day who expressed even recognition of what the book was, much less interest in it, and the guy at the display gladly handed it over to me. It sat in my "BEA box" for several months until recently, when I decided that I was in the mood for it and popped in the first disc.

Yes, it's totally silly and overwrought. Yes, it's full of cliches. Yes, the emotions felt by the characters are extreme and over-the-top and yet totally transient. BUT... I will say this: the book was very enjoyable. It was fun to check in on Elizabeth and Jessica as adults, and to learn that Jessica has stolen Elizabeth's longterm boyfriend Todd, that the couple is now engaged, and that the inseparable identical twins are no longer on speaking terms. (The horror!). There are other scandalous twists and turns that have befallen Sweet Valley's most memorable residents, and Pascal at least attempts to "keep things real" by making her some of her characters dotcom millionaires, giving them cancer, and having them come out of the closet.

I've read a few reviews of Sweet Valley Confidential that complain that there are inaccuracies throughout the book, as well as several names and plot points that directly contradict things that happened in the high school series. Whatever. I didn't notice them, and they didn't bother me. Other people complain that the book is dumb and unrealistic. Yeah, I can see that. But for the last few weeks, my commute has been unusually enjoyable. And for that, I thank the generous folks at Macmillan Audio. (Hi FTC!)

A word about the audio: it's fine, except that whenever the narrator voices a male character, she makes him sound like a moron.

I just read on Amazon (where the book got a whopping 2 stars on average) that there is a Diablo Cody movie version of Sweet Valley High coming out. Really?

Next post, I promise to return to the kind of fare that I - and you -wouldn't be embarrassed to admit to reading.

"Wench" by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is about a particularly ugly time of American history - pre-Civil War - and the atrocities and human right violations that took place all over the South. Specifically, Wench is about a resort in Ohio that catered to Southern slaveholders who vacationed there with their female slaves. Every summer, four slaves - Lizzie, Reenie, Sweet and Mawu - accompany their masters to Ohio and spend a few weeks together in relative normalcy. I am borrowing a description from Amazon:

In her debut, Perkins-Valdez eloquently plunges into a dark period of American history, chronicling the lives of four slave women—Lizzie, Reenie, Sweet and Mawu—who are their masters' mistresses. The women meet when their owners vacation at the same summer resort in Ohio. There, they see free blacks for the first time and hear rumors of abolition, sparking their own desires to be free. For everyone but Lizzie, that is, who believes she is really in love with her master, and he with her. An extended flashback in the middle of the novel delves into Lizzie's life and vividly explores the complicated psychological dynamic between master and slave. Jumping back to the final summer in Ohio, the women all have a decision to make—will they run?

This is a tough book because of the subject matter. These women are forced into sexual relationships with men they may detest, men who treat them inhumanely, as property. Lizzie's feelings about her master are complicated - she thinks she loves him, even though she is entirely dependent on him and his generosity toward their children. Perkins-Valdez describes the way white masters felt about their children with slaves:

But they also knew that for white men there was no such thing as separating the two. They were his children, yes. But they were also his property. And like most property they could be replaced. This was the women's deepest fear. That a white man would feel his slave children could easily be replaced with new ones, as if it were an exchange at a dry goods store.

There were times throughout the book where I had to remind myself that yes, this was America, and it wasn't even that long ago, and that people were considered the property of others. Intellectually, of course, I understand what slavery was about, but Perkins-Valdez brings it into emotional, immediate relief by presenting it in its simple horror through the lives of these four women. The writing was simple and powerful, the pace urgent and foreboding.

My complaint about Wench is that I don't think Perkins-Valdez went far enough. I wanted Lizzie to rebel, to shake with fury, to take dramatic action. Instead, she, unlike the other three women, accepted her place and thought she loved her master until the end. I wanted an ending, a transformation, and instead the book just... stopped. It was unsatisying, and I felt that the book lacked the punch that it could have had.

I recommend Wench - I think it's an important book that sheds light on a period of our history that we should understand and process despite its ugliness. But I wanted a little more from it.

"The Book Club Play" at Arena Stage

Last night, I went to see "The Book Club Play" by Karen Zacarias at Arena Stage. "The Book Club Play" is about a longstanding book club of five people who are being filmed for a documentary about book clubs. The club meets every two weeks during the course of the filming, and the play is about how the filming of the documentary  - and the stepped-up meeting frequency - affect the group and ultimately cause its demise.

"The Book Club Play" was enjoyable. While it focused less on the book discussions and more on the relationships between the book club members, I did like the parts when they actually discussed the books and how the books affected them. The members end up reading two bestseller type books among the five selections - Twilight and The Da Vinci Code - much to the dismay of two members who are more focused on serious literature like The Age of Innocence and Moby Dick. Their distaste for popular fiction becomes a point of contention among the group, which I found interesting. I have avoided both of those books and liked hearing what the group thought of them.

The acting was pretty good, and while the unraveling of the book club's main organizer, Ana, was a little hard to watch, there were funny moments, and anyone who has been in a book club will recognize some familiar conversations and personalities.

There were some interstitial videos that played during set changes, in which rather unexpected people talked about the importance of books and reading and how books can change people's lives. I particularly liked the faux interview with the Wal-Mart book manager, green vest and all, who, when asked what his favorite book was, cited mine: Lolita. When asked why he picked a book with such a distasteful topic, he said what I always say: "It's the writing. How he could make such a horrid topic so entertaining is brilliant."

I wished that the play had gone a little deeper into the book discussions - it was long on action and lighter on analysis - but I think the point wasn't so much to talk about these books, but to examine the social phenomena of book clubs and the role that they play in many people's lives.

If you're in the DC area, "The Book Club Play" will be in town at Arena until November 6. Tickets are available here.

This was fun: When we walked in, we were asked to write our favorite book on a sticker and post it on a bulletin board. Arena is supposed to post a picture of the board on its Stage Banter blog, but it's not up yet. I will keep checking. (I wrote Lolita.)

 

"The Book Club Play" at Arena Stage

Tomorrow night, I am seeing a play called "The Book Club Play" here in DC. Here's what it's about:

Ana lives in a letter-perfect world with an adoring husband, perfect job and her greatest passion: Book Club. But when bizarre circumstances put her life under a magnifying glass, things begin to heat up and more truths are told than anyone bargained for. Arena Stage is proud to bring the latest chapter of Zacarías' (Legacy of Light) "delightful, fresh comedy" (TalkinBroadway.com) about life, love and literature.

A play about books and book clubs? Sounds good to me. The publicist for the play even sent me a list of books that the fictional book club in this play has read.

I will report back after I've seen it!

"Talking to Girls About Duran Duran" by Rob Sheffield

In theory, I should have loved Talking to Girls About Duran Duran. It's about rock journalist Rob Sheffield's relationships with various 80s songs and bands, and the role that they played in his teen and early adult years. 80s music and its role in one's formative years? Sign me up!! OK, so maybe I didn't really like Sheffield's first book, Love is a Mix Tape (reviewed here), but I thought that I'd give him another chance, give the subject matter.

Each chapter of Talking to Girls about Duran Duran focuses on a different song. But with the exception of the last chapter, there was often almost no nexus between the song and the subject matter of the chapter. In fact, it was often hard to figure out the subject matter of the chapters, period. Sheffield's writing meanders from topic to topic with little rhyme or reason. It's like he took a whole list of random memories from his teen years and grouped them roughly by year and then wrote about them in stream-of-consciousness. Occasionally, he'd mention the song in the chapter title, but sometimes only briefly and not until the end of the chapter.

The last chapter gave me a glimpse of what this book could have been. In that chapter, Sheffield focuses on Duran Duran and explores the reasons for the band's unexpected longevity. (Here's a hint - girls love them, even when those girls are my age.) I wish the whole book had been like that. I guess I wanted to hear less about Sheffield's life in Boston with his sisters and random crushes and more about the bands that loosely inspired the book. He is clearly a knowledgeable music critic - I would rather read his criticism than his memoirs.

I really wanted to like Talking to Girls about Duran Duran. Sadly, I didn't. Thankfully, it was a library copy, and it will be returned tomorrow.

"The Lake Shore Limited" by Sue Miller

Sue Miller is one of those authors where you know what kind of book you're going to get before you open the first page: lots of character and relationship analysis; sharp, descriptive writing; and realistic if not always memorable plots. The Lake Shore Limited is no exception.

The Lake Shore Limited is told from 4 characters' point of view: Leslie, a Vermont woman approaching 60 who lost her beloved younger brother Gus on 9/11 when his plane crashed into the WTC; Billy, Gus's girlfriend at the time, who has written a play that's basically about 9/11; Rafe, one of the actors in the play; and Sam, an old friend of Leslie who she tries to set up with Billy. The chapters alternate among these four interconnected characters, all of whom interact on opening night of Billy's play in Boston. Each character gets one long chapter and then a shorter, followup chapter.

The Lake Shore Limited is really a book about ambivalence. There are three characters who experience deep ambivalence about the loss of their partners - conflicting feelings of guilt, sadness, and relief. Billy's play is about her own complicated feelings on 9/11, as she wasn't in love with Gus and had planned to leave him before she lost him in that terrible, violent way. Rafe, who plays the character in the play that parallels Billy, has a wife with a degenerative disease and lives every day playing the role of dutiful caretaker husband while his mind cycles through feelings of guilt, sadness and thoughts about other women. And Sam, who lost his own wife to cancer many years earlier, finds his own emotions from that time dredged up when he goes to see the play. Leslie, it seems, is the purest of heart, but the most tied to the past and the loss of her brother.

I enjoyed The Lake Shore Limited, and appreciated as always Miller's ability to create realistic and flawed, yet sympathetic, characters that act like people in real life. I also liked that the people in this book were between 45 and 60 (perhaps because it didn't make me feel old!). I listened to this one on audio, and it was performed by Sue Miller herself, which I loved. (I always enjoy author narration because I trust the inflections and interpretations of tone more than an actor's.) She's a very good narrator. I wasn't crazy about her depiction of Billy, though, a prickly character who got a breezy treatment from Miller that I didn't think she deserved.

This was just a good vs. a great read for me, though. First, these characters lacked passion. Billy, in particular, was very dispassionate and almost mechanical about her attractions and partnerships. She held back emotionally from the men with which she got involved, which ultimately made the relationships she did form unrealistic. I also wasn't convinced of Sam's attractions either to Leslie or to Billy - Miller reiterated many times how he felt, but it never really felt that convincing to me. I wanted these characters to feel that "can't live without you" passion that at least characterizes early relationships; instead, everything felt a little tepid.

The most successful character was Rafe. His story was heartbreaking (though he too felt ambivalence toward his wife even before her diagnosis) and I thought Miller did an excellent job with him.

There's a LOT of detail and backstory in this book, and kind of like Courntey Sullivan's Maine, not a whole lot of action. That was fine with me.

Overall, I liked this one. Listening to it on audio drew the reading experience out for a long time - I wonder if I'd have found it a little snappier if I'd read it instead (it's not that long). I was kind of glad to finish it, even though I liked it.

(Audio was from the library and paper version from a used book sale. No review copies here, FTC.)

 

"Domestic Violets" by Matthew Norman

The September-October EDIWTB online book club pick was Domestic Violets, by Matthew Norman. I picked this book in part because of the stellar reviews I had read of Domestic Violets around the blogosphere by people I trust (such as this one and this one). The synopsis sounded good too: Tom Violet, a corporate copywriter in his mid-thirties, is fighting crises on many levels. His wife may be having an affiar, while he himself is having inappropriate thoughts about a young female co-worker. His father, a famous novelist, has just won a Pulitzer, while Tom, himself a novelist, has a manuscript that he has only shared with a few people. And he hates his job.

Domestic Violets is funny and insightful. Norman lampoons corporate life, especially within companies that don't actually produce anything, other than "management services". He also nicely captures a moment in time - the dark ages of the late Bush administration and the financial collapse. The Obama administration is around the corner, with the hope and optimism it promised, but those days aren't here yet and people are intensely feeling the desperation and fear of economic instability.

Norman also did a nice job with describing Tom's marriage to his wife Anna, and what childraising and years of domesticity have done to their relationship. I enjoyed his dialogue and the details with which he infuses the scenes that took place in the Violets' Georgetown home.

I found Norman's depiction of Tom's father, Curtis, and their complicated relationship, to be less successful. Curtis verged on caricature, and the chapters that focused on him weakened the book for me. I expected something a little weightier, overall, and the scenes where Curtis was totally over the top (like when he sent Tom to pick up his clothes) alienated me. Those parts reminded me that Domestic Violets was a book, rather than allowing me to lose myself in the story.

I also had an issue with the ending and what it says about artistic intergrity. It seemed very unrealistic, and also pretty out of character. For a book that was otherwise so grounded in real life, the Curtis-Tom subplot stuck out to me as being pretty inconsistent and a bit hasty.

I expected to enjoy Domestic Violets more than I did, based on the reviews I read. It was enjoyable, and certainly funny in places, but I think it fell short in the end. It could have been something more. I seem to be in the minority on this one, though.

OK, EDIWTB readers, what did you think of Domestic Violets? Did it fall short for you or were you big fans? I can't wait to read your comments. Please post below!

And a special thank you, again, to Harper Perennial for facilitating the September/October book club!