#08

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

It took me a long while to read this book. Like the Life of Pi, it is heady. Many of the other books I’ve read recently have been so as well. Comparitively, the Janet Evanovich novels are fun and soap opera-ish. I much preferred to read those. In fact, I read the second and third installments of the Stephanie Plum novels in the middle of The Namesake. I can’t say if my hesitance to read this book was because of timing or because the book didn’t hold my interest. I’m not sure that I’ll ever be able to tell.

The Namesake is the story of an American born Bangladeshi. Due to a letter from India that was lost in the mail, his parents named him Gogol, after one of the father’s favorite Russian writers. Over time, Gogol grows up and begins to despise his name. He has it legally changed. This change and his attempts to free himself from his parent’s culture are futile. He cannot be happy for long immersed in his American-Indian life or in a more fully American life.

There is a great deal of detail about his parents early marriage and about three of Gogol’s romances. The ending, by comparison, was glossed over and encapsulated in his mother’s final Christmas Eve party for the Bangladeshi family she created for herself in the United States. It seems as though Gogol’s mother and sister finally come to terms with their lives and how their cultural identity helps to form their journeys. Gogol finds a book of his namesake’s writing in his room. The book was given to him by his father. He rescues it from being donated and begins to read the book. Does he begin his journey toward acceptance of his life and what he cannot control? That is the impression given. I’m mostly glad that I’ve not been invited to take that journey with him.

#07

The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time by Mark Haddon

This book is incredible. It is the story of a high functioning autistic teenage boy who decides to write a book about his attempt to detect who really killed his neighbors dog. The entire book was written from Christopher's perspective. His narration is poignant and is the perfect way to put you in the mind of an autistic person. Christopher does not like to be touched. To show that they love each other, they open their hands like palming a basketball and touch fingertips. When I think of all the time I spend cuddling my children, I can't fathom how big a hole parents must feel in their hearts when they can't be physically affectionate.

It is also interesting to read what non-autistic behavior is interpreted by Christopher. He goes into explanations of white lies and other commonalities of life that will first crack you up and then make you think about what you are subconsciously telling other people.

Christopher gives you full and entirely factual accounts throughout the book. His level of honesty is refreshing and heartbreaking, especially when he is talking about a subject that would tear another child up inside. He just doesn't understand. Is that good? It definitely has an impact on how Christopher looks at the world.

This book is funny, realistic, and thoroughly enjoyable. I did read quickly through the math equations he worked on to calm himself down in uncomfortable situations. Still, it was interesting that there are people for whom working out such problems makes them feel better. I wish that I knew exactly what I needed to do to relax the way that Christopher does. This book should definitely be on your "to read" list if you haven't already done so.

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#06

One for the Money by Janet Evanovich

A co-worker of mine asked me if I’ve ever read any of Janet Evanovich’s books. I told her that I hadn’t. She went on and on about how hilarious her books were. The next day, she dropped a huge Barnes & Noble’s bag full of Janet Evanovich’s books at my desk. I really had no intention of reading those books.

This all happened before I started reading Life of Pi. As wonderful as that book was, I didn’t feel like jumping back into anything heavy. “What the heck,” I thought, “It wouldn’t kill me to give it a try.” I don’t typically read detective/mystery books, but after skimming through a few pages I decided that at worst it would be a quick read. I can honestly say that I’m glad that I did.

Stephanie Plum begins working as a bounty hunter because she had been out of work for six months and didn’t have enough left to hawk to make her bills. Stephanie is a sum of Dog the Bounty Hunter and Charles Chaplin. She constantly bumbles but manages to get the guy every time. I was ready to pick up the second book in the series the second I finished.

This book is not insightful or thought provoking. It’s just damn fun. I got interested in the main characters and couldn’t pull myself away from the last few chapters. Still, I don’t feel that these books are books that I have to physically read (if that makes any sense). This book was like a paper equivalent to Guiding Light. A new “guilty” pleasure. One that I can easily enjoy listening to in mp3 format while I’m at work or in the car.

#05

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

I had been excited about reading this book for quite some time. I was worth the wait. I did find the middle two thirds of this book to be slow and boring. Upon finishing it, I’m could be convinced that this was intentional. How slow and boring would it feel to spend 225 days as a castaway in a lifeboat? It is a brilliant book.

Pi’s family is a secular family. Pi himself, on the other hand, is a Hindu, Muslim, Christian. He has incorporated many of the rituals from each tradition. It’s not so much that he is creating his own faith. He actively participates in all three. It feels perfectly natural for him to find God as He reveals Himself to other people. His views on faith, religion, and God are interesting and thought provoking.

I don’t feel that I can really say much about this book without it spoiling it for other readers. This is the story of Pi, a teenaged Indian boy, who is the son of a zookeeper. In order to make a new life for themselves, the family sells off the animals to North American zoos. They travel together with these animals on a boat that has set sail for Canada. There would begin their new life. Unfortunately, the ship sinks quickly. Only, Pi and three of the zoo animals make it on the lifeboat. The remainder of the story details how Pi survived his ordeal. As the book is told in an interview type of style, we was get glimpses of Pi’s life after reaching shore in Mexico.

After completing this book, I know that I will have to read it again at some point. I want to go back and pick up pieces that I missed or misinterpreted. It is a book that I could learn something from with each read.

#04

Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult

I love Jodi Picoult. The last time I finished one of her books I suffered withdrawal symptoms because I didn’t have another one waiting in the wings. So it was surprising to me as I began this book that I was growing tired of her. I actually was wishing I’d chosen another book. This happened a couple times before while I was in high school. I read so many Steven King and Danielle Steele books that I began to recognize patterns and just couldn’t read them anymore. At one point I swore that if I ever read another book that mentioned Carmel, CA that I would throw it against the wall. Thankfully, as I read further into the story, I got hooked and couldn’t put it down.

This is the story of a messy divorce and custody battle and its effects on an only child named Faith. Mariah, Faith’s mother, suffers from a lack of self esteem. From the moment that Colin shows interest in her in college, she allows him to mold her into the type of wife he wanted. She loses her identity. Colin’s first infidelity drove Mariah to suicide. He had her institutionalized against her will and it was in the hospital that he discovered her pregnancy. That was the only thing that kept their marriage together. The book begins when Mariah and Faith come home to retrieve a lost ballet leotard; they find Colin getting ready to take a shower with another woman. In the aftermath, Colin leaves, Mariah calls in her mother to take care of Faith while she gets herself straightened out, and Faith begins to see and talk to God.

Mariah takes Faith to psychiatrists, doctors, rabies, and even allows interviews with Catholic priests in order to get to the bottom of Faith’s visions. Faith was found by all to be mentally stable, but no one was brave enough to believe that Faith’s visions were actually contacts with the divine. That is, until her touch brings her grandmother back to life after being clinically dead for an hour. Once that story hits the press, people begin to congregate outside of Mariah’s home. The story is spread even further by an atheist televangelist name Ian. He has made it his life’s work to debunk religion and especially the miracles. When Colin returns home from his honeymoon with his pregnant wife, he discovers what is going on and decides to sue for full custody of Faith, using a renowned cutthroat lawyer. Not only does Mariah need to find the inner strength to handle the situation with Faith, she then has to fight to keep custody of her daughter.

Some of the relationships that develop seem too convenient and predictable. As with many other of Picoult’s lead female characters, Mariah is not alone for long. On the other hand, I enjoyed the way in which Mariah interacted with her mother. They have a truly special relationship. Still, the most interesting thing about this particular Picoult novel is the way in which visions, religion, faith, and God are handled by each of the characters. I believe that the book covered this topic and all sides with respect.

This was not one of my favorite Picoult books, but I would recommend the book to others. It provides the opportunity to explore your beliefs about the extraordinary. What would you do if your child began seeing visions of God?

#03

The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

I was excited to begin this book because I loved her previous novel, The Secret Lives of Bees so much. In a word, I am disappointed with this book. This book was sluggish. There were sections that I had force myself to sit down and read. There are numerous paragraphs of descriptions of food, flora, and fauna that I used speed reading to get my way through. For a while I wasn’t sure what was lacking in The Mermaid Chair. I thought perhaps it was because of my state of mind or other changes in my life. By the end, I know that it was a lack of substance and a forced narrative that made the experience of reading this book almost intolerable. Ask Danny. I even stuck my tongue out at the book last night.

This book begins with Jessie basically having a mid-life crisis. She’s married to a psychiatrist and her only daughter has moved away to college. She herself is an artist, but it has become more of a hobby and less of a vocation over the years. She doesn’t know who she is outside of her relationships, even going back to her late father. When her crazy, Roman Catholic fanatic mother chops off her right index finger, Jessie has her opportunity to escape her life, even if that means that she’ll have to come face to face with the mother she’s distanced herself from because of the lunatic Nelle evolved into after her husband’s death 33 years prior.

Her mother lives on an island off of the South Carolina coast near Charleston. Also located on this island is a Benedictine monastery whose patron saint is St. Senara, a mermaid who became human and then converted to Catholicism. One of the key tourist attractions is the Mermaid Chair that is located in the chapel. This Mermaid Chair was thought to have spiritual powers. Nelle was burying her finger next to St. Senara’s statue when Jessie arrives. While helping her dig the finger’s grave, Jessie meets Brother Thomas. From here, she is consumed with this man.

The remainder of the novel follows Jessie as she investigates why her mother mutilated herself, begins a formal separation from her husband, Hugh, explores a new relationship with Brother Thomas, and finds herself. She spends much more time and energy on the men in her life and herself than she does on her mother. The entire thing with her mother felt like a cheap narrative device. The resolution of that storyline was anticlimactic to me. It only served to make me dread finishing the novel even more.

The fact that Jessie pursues an affair with a monk did not help to endear me to either character. It’s not that I can’t let myself go and get lost in the romance of two individuals risking and giving up all that is important to them to be together. People make and break vows every day. I guess in light of the current state of the priesthood and my own experiences with trusted clergymen, I don’t find this spectacular in anyway. Perhaps older or more traditional Catholic readers would find this aspect of the storyline more interesting or thought provoking. Maybe this is why over the course of the book the reader discovers that it takes place in the late 1980s. I just believe that Whit’s (Brother Thomas) vows to the Catholic Church are no more or no less holy than Jessie’s marriage vows to Hugh. Certainly, clergy make a vow to Christ as well. According to Catholic theology, so do married couples. That makes those vows of equal import to me.

In the end, issues of self, marriage, and faith all work out exactly as I had anticipated from the beginning. I can’t help but think that it was a waste of my time to read it. Still, you can’t always read great books. Reading the duds helps you to appreciate those that you enjoy. It also helps you define the qualities of literature and other writings that make this life come alive in your imagination. Through the process or reading you become a better reader and learn things about yourself that you may not otherwise have known. That might not have all of the sex and spectacle the author added to Jessie’s journey into self, but it’s honest.

#02

Blood Orange by Drusilla Campbell

Blood Orange takes place in San Diego, CA and is the story of how a middle-class couple deals with the abduction of their young daughter, Bailey. Bailey was born with some mental deficiencies that manifest itself through late development and learning disabilities. Dana is her stay-at-home mother. She is bored and resentful of the amount of care Bailey requires. She feels that motherhood is interfering with her academic life. She can’t seem to finish her thesis. David is a former professional football player who later became a defense attorney. He is working on the defense of a man who is accused of murdering a neighbor girl. When Bailey disappears, David devotes his waking hours to his work. Dana spends every waking moment mourning her missing daughter. The couple is growing apart, but that fissure was already in place before the abduction. It grows even wider when Bailey appears on their doorstep out of no where.

This book has some interesting characters whose experiences, thoughts, and fears are similar to mine. Dana spends her life doing things of which she feels everyone else would approve. She is shocked when the assumptions she’s made about other people and how they feel about her and her family are completely off base. She doesn’t even know what she wants, making it hard to even please herself. There lives with a lot of resentment and guilt in her heart. Lexy, an Episcopalian priest, definitely has the same spiritual issues that I have. At one point in the book, she even mentions that she has trouble distinguishing God and her mother. I hear that, sister.

Although I can relate to some of the struggles faced by the main characters, I felt that there was a lot added simply for shock value. It jumped out at me because it either made a character a cliché or it went totally against the make up of the character. The two examples that I keep thinking about this morning deal with David and Marsha, the wife of the man he is defending.

David is supposed to be a super-supportive and sensitive husband and father. His belief, which could be shot down by anyone else who cared to look, that his wife had it “easy” because she only had to care for her child and work a few hours at a local bookstore was confusing. With all that was going on, he should have known better. On top of that, he never seemed to understand why their sex life was lacking. Hmm… Perhaps that is because what he really wanted was a bl@w j@b just before he fell asleep. It was difficult for me to buy him as a sympathetic character.

Marsha is one messed up woman. She’s extremely pregnant while her husband is awaiting trial. She’s a chain smoker and a heavy drinker. She’s clearly in a stressful and confusing situation, but her lack of concern for her unborn child (or much of anything else) is over the top. At one point, after telling Dana that she is carrying a daughter, she calls the baby a “poor c*nt.” Not everyone is maternal, but WTF? That goes way beyond stressed out and under the influence if you ask me. It makes you wonder if she has a soul.

I read this book in two days. I was interested in how the story ended. I just can’t tell you why. I didn’t care about any of the characters - not even Bailey - on an emotional level. It was an interesting study on how childhood affects adult lives; but I can’t say that I loved this book. I’m not even sure that I would be interested in reading another book by this author. Still, staying up until 2am this morning to finish it must say something.