Category Archives: reviews

jane’s passions

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Jane Addams was a political activist who worked toward, and spoke out, for social justice, including women’s suffrage. I had heard of her but had no idea…

In  Jane Addams: Spirit in Action by Louise W. Knight, I discovered that Jane cofounded the NAACP and the ACLU, and that she was the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

She was born in 1860 and lived until 1935. She was a writer and she loved books:

Is it the child who loves books who becomes a dreamer? Or is it the born dreamer who, inevitably, loves books? Whether cause or effect, books were Jane’s passion throughout her life. The day she died, she had a pile by her bedside she was reading.

Some of her favorite characters were Jo in Little Women and Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop. She named Leo Tolstoy’s My Religion as “the book that changed her life.”

In a speech on the Pullman Strike in 1894, she “compared George Pullman with King Lear…” And ”Need a Woman Over Fifty Feel Old” was the title of an editorial she published the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1914.

A biography of substance about a woman of substance. September 6th will be the 150th anniversary of her birth.

my name is mary sutter

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Robin Oliveira was a graduate assistant during my first residency at Vermont College. I met her only months before her first book would be published by Viking.

Mary Sutter is a midwife, and what she wants is clearly stated in dialogue in the first chapter: “I want to become a doctor.” The reader also knows the obstacles at the time of the Civil War: women are not doctors.

My Name is Mary Sutter is 364 pages and fifty-four chapters plus an epilogue. It has a strong female protagonist, lots of characters, and many different points of view. It’s historical fiction with an epic feel to it, and it’s difficult to believe it’s a first novel. It was quickly selected as an Indie Next Great Read and was on Oprah’s Summer Reading list.

The writing is skilled and lyrical. Even with all the different points of view, the reader is never lost. Listen to some of the voices:

From the omniscient voice, a metaphor:

On Amelia’s river of words, everyone was swept down the hallway to the dining room.

From Mary, authority:

The roast was delicious, but unimportant.

From Mary’s brother, Christian, a moment:

He did not know what to say, but instinct kept him there. Between them there was perfect stillness. He did not move, only breathed in silent rhythm with Bonnie’s muffled sobs. Time flickered and then flared, with its peculiar ability to alter perception. In its throes, we enter another life, one of possibility: I will overcome.

From that omniscient voice again, breadth:

The head wounds were hopeless, the abdominal wounds impossible. By then, the thirst and humidity, gunsmoke and cannon powder had rendered everyone slightly mad. It seemed to affect even the air. That’s what would be said for years afterward. Conjured our own weather that night. You remember?

Highly recommend.

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no longer what I want

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The new issue of Contrary Magazine is online with my review of Kim Wright‘s first novel, Love in Mid Air. Here’s the first paragraph of the review:

As a plane heads down a runway, a stranger reaches for the Narrator’s hand. “Here comes the dangerous part,” he says. Not terribly subtle, but such layering makes a story feel alive. Love in Mid Air, the debut novel by Kim Wright, is rich in “shadow truth” as Charles Baxter refers to subtext. “What is displayed evokes what is not displayed.”

Read more…

an equal stillness

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An Equal Stillness, the debut novel by Francesca Kay, who grew up in South-east Asia and India and now lives in Oxford, was one of the best books I read in 2009. My review of this book is now online in Contrary Magazine‘s Winter Issue. An Equal Stillness also won the 2009 Orange Award for New Writers.

I imagine that the inspiration for the UK edition’s book cover came from this passage:

“In her great painting of that time, simply called Santiago, the foreground is a block of saffron broken by a line of deepest blue, above which is a band of blue that is even darker, so dark it might be black if it were not for the light contained in it which magically shines through.”

And a big thank you to all my readers: my stories–”Frosting” and “The Empty Armchair“–were both in Contrary Magazine‘s Top Ten Most Read Stories in 2009!

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faces in the distemper

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IMG_2371When Mari Strachan was a little girl, she used to create pretend newspapers, carefully writing the stories in pencil, drawing a picture to go with them, and then sewing the pages together. She says, “I’ve always loved the physicality of books and paper and writing instruments…”

Now she is 64 years old, and has just published her first novel, The Earth Hums in B Flat.  Her first novel! Congratulations, Mari!

Mari Strachan is Welsh. She lives part of the time in Wales and part of the time in London. As early as she can remember, she has loved books and reading and words, so it makes sense that she grew up to be a librarian, a book reviewer, a researcher, a translator, a copy editor, and a web editor. And now an author.

In The Earth Hums In B Flat, the main character is 12 1/2-year-old, Gwenni Morgan. Strachan reveals Gwenni’s personality in the way Gwenni interacts with objects in the world around her.

For example, early in the novel, imaginative Gwenni sees faces in the distemper [a kind of paint] in the scullery:

“The green distemper on the walls is beginning to peel and flake, shaping faces with sly eyes and mouths tight with secrets. There are new faces there every day.” (page 6)

Gwenni is, in fact, surrounded by people with secrets. Strachan pulls this thread through the novel.

“They’re not watching me this morning. They’ve closed their eyes and grown long ears so that they can listen…” (page 43)

She uses the faces to show Gwenni’s emotions:

“You scared the faces in the distemper, Mam.” (page 92)

“Will the faces open their mouths to scream out our secrets as the new distemper washes over them like a wave and drowns them?” (page 93)

It’s Gwenni’s relationship with the world around her that makes her such a compelling character. For more on this novel, please check out my review in the summer issue of Contrary Magazine as well as this  interview with Mari Strachan at The View From Here Magazine, in which Strachan talks about where she writes, the difference between drafting and writing, and her favorite words.

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how we got here from there

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IMG_2110I don’t write memoir. But I like the way Abigail Thomas writes, the way she tells the truth. “My truth doesn’t travel in a straight line, it zigzags, detours, doubles back. Most truths I have to learn over and over again.”

I got hooked on the truth in her fiction first, Getting Over Tom, An Actual Life, and Herb’s Pajamas–the last two are little hardback squares. I loved Safekeeping, her first memoir. Its short sections are a concrete example of her life zigzagging and doubling back, the many truths of herself.

Thinking About Memoir is another little book. A rectangle instead of a square. Thomas writes, IMG_2175“Memories survive on a wisp of a fragrance, or a particular shade of blue…” Then a phrase you’re probably sick of me using, but oh, then I really knew I was in: “This is… about letting one thing lead to another. Follow the details.” She concludes the two-page preface with this,”Memoir is the story of how we got here from there.”  And this story is fascinating whether you write fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or memoir.IMG_2172

She writes, “Be sure to include what you can’t make fit neatly into your idea of yourself, or whatever it is that ruffles the smooth surface of your life story.” This may be the most important thing I’m taking from this book at this moment. Nothing is supposed to be perfect. Let the messy real show through.

The only book of hers I have not read is Three Dog Life, a memoir of her husband’s brain injury. In an article published on June 20, 2009, Marion Winik recounts a moment in that book where  Thomas writes about being accused of “stealing a memory.” “Is memory property?” Abigail Thomas asks. “If two people remember something differently, is one of them wrong?”

IMG_2174And here in this book she adds, “Memory seems to be an independent creature inspired by event, not faithful to it…” I can just imagine this little creature up in my brain somewhere, in a little cave with a kodak instamatic and a pen and a pencil, maybe some file cabinets, doing the best he can to keep track of everything, and interrupted yet again as I get a whiff of  something sweet. His long, floppy ears perk up, and off he goes, scurrying around, eventually delivering summer camp in Vermont, walking to the stables.

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the writer’s notebook

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IMG_2027The Writer’s Notebook, with its title taken from the journals of Somerset Maugham, consists of 17 essays on the craft of writing. Some, but not all, are based on craft seminars given at the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop. I did not read them in order, but read the ones first that I thought might help me with a story I was working on called “Hidden Tracks.”

I’ve been working on this story off and on for years. The language is dream-like and more complicated than my normal writing. So the first essay that jumped off the Table of Contents was “When to Keep it Simple” by Rick Bass. “Your ideas can so easily become tangled in your words….begin breaking apart the truths…What is the one thing, the main thought, the simplest thought?” So I went through the story, breaking down sentences and deleting. Keep it simple, I told myself.

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the front of my t-shirt from 2004

People who’ve read this story in workshops kept saying, Why would she do this? So the next essay I read was “Character Motivation” by Aimee Bender. “I don’t always know what a character wants. I know some things about the character, but to know what he or she wants feels like the final answer, why I’m writing in the first place.” When I began writing the story, I didn’t know where it was going, but after I wrote the ending, I knew. What I had neglected to do was then to go back and set up the beginning.

I also have to admit that this is a weird story, as in doesn’t exactly follow the rules of this world, also unusual for me. Readers complained they didn’t know how to read the story. So, I thought Kate Bernheimer’s essay, “Fairy Tale is Form, Form is Fairy Tale,” might be useful. In a fairy tale, she wrote, “The day to day is collapsed with the wondrous.” The trick, it came to me while I was reading, was to somehow signal the reader that they were reading a sort of fairy tale where the rules would be different.

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the awesome back of my t-shirt from 2004

In “Performing Surgery Without Anesthesia,” Chris Offutt wrote, “I have one story with drafts that run back eighteen years–but it’s getting better.” Well, that certainly made me feel better about having such a hard time with my weird story.

I put off Susan Bell’s “Revisioning The Great Gatsby” because well, I loved The Great Gatsby, but what does that have to do with my writing in general or this story in particular. Wrong. Best essay of the bunch. Listen. “Although Gatsby needed to be enigmatic, his mysteriousness had to suggest something precise behind it, and Fitzgerald had to figure out what that was.”

This was the problem with my story. I was leaving it up to the reader to figure out something that I myself had not yet figured out. Which was precisely why the readers couldn’t figure it out. Well, I took my story, and I took a stand. I took hold of it, and we’ll see. I just sent it out to my writing group for yet another critique.

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I’ve found a book

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IMG_2033 At the beginning of The Northern Clemency, a novel by English writer Philip Hensher, Francis is nine. His father announces that he’s found a house. “‘I’ve found a book,’ Francis wanted to say to complete everyone’s happiness.”

Late in the novel, an older Francis is packing for a trip. As I do, he spends more time on choosing what books he will take than on choosing his clothes. He has, as you will see, also become a writer, and in more ways than one. This quote mentions many of the issues in recent posts, including favorite pens, whether or not we separate the books we’ve read from the books we haven’t, as well as a unique approach to the books we have yet to read.

“Most of the books on the shelves were old ones, favourites from his childhood…But others were fat books he’d read, had always meant to read, had been saying to himself so long he had read them that he believed they had actually been read. He packed The Idiot; he packed Dead Souls…Francis took out the half-finished bulk of his own book, eight inches thick, an A4 notebook with black binding and three green Pentel pens. He’d always used those Pentel pens; he liked the flow of the ink-soaked ball under pressure.IMG_2031

The book was the third novel Francis had written. He had sent the first out; he had sent the second out; he rather thought he would finish this one and put it back into his drawer.”

The Northern Clemency is about two English families who, shortly after the novel begins, live across the street from each other in a small neighborhood outside London. It was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize.

Each of its 597 pages is compelling because of Hensher’s ability to go deep into the ways families operate:

“Everyone did their best to be cheerful, talking around rather than to Sandra, and by the time they had finished [eating], they could look directly at her.”

“She [Jane] didn’t mind being told things more than once: it was a signal that everything was all right in the world.”

At least part of the reason he’s able to go deep into the lives of these families is that he goes deep into the life of each member of the families. Also, he takes his time with each moment in the story. Notice his attention to detail.

“She [Alice] sat in the warm pool of light cast by the green-shaded Tiffany lamp over the green-topped leather desk in the spare room. With her father’s fountain pen, on the heavy embossed Italian writing paper Francis had given her last Christmas, both saved for special occasions such as a letter to Sandra, she went on writing, perseveringly.”

Philip Hensher does not have a writing room, nor does he want one. He usually writes on the arm of a sofa, in a hardback A4 notebook, just as his character Francis does.

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the vagrants

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IMG_2064At the beginning of The Vagrants, the first novel by Yiyun Li, one at a time, each of the main characters comes into contact with one of the notices being posted all over the Chinese town of Muddy Waters announcing the execution and denunciation of a counterrevolutionary. The characters revolve around these notices like the spokes of a wheel.

The next layer involves each of the characters in scene with another character. Because we have met them all, we often recognize the character entering the scene before the character does who is already there. This technique involves the reader in the story. It connects us to the characters. We become a part of the inner circle. These interactions continue to occur to build the story, which gradually opens wider and wider.

By allowing us to see each character through the many different eyes of the other characters, readers come to know the characters in all  their strengths and weaknesses. We love them despite.

Teacher Gu and Mrs. Gu, Tong, Nini, Bashi, Kai, the Huas–this is a character-rich novel. It is quiet and measured despite its political subject matter, and despite the evil forces at work in the world…

“The wheel of life, with its ruthless revolving, could be merciful at times.”

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passion and patagonia

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IMG_1718It’s often what grabs us when we are very little that becomes our passion. We can remember the moment.

For me, it was a morning in kindergarten. I must have been five. One of the kid’s mothers put on a puppet show–in French.  I was smitten. I traveled to France for the first time when I was ten. I went to a French camp in Vermont each summer for three years, beginning when I was 13. I studied in Quebec and lived in Paris. To this day, all things French sparkle for me. A year ago, I was sitting next to an 11-year-old Chinese boy, and I don’t know who was more excited as the plane flew by the Eiffel Tower.

When Bruce Chatwin was a little boy, his grandmother treasured a piece of brontosaurus. “This particular brontosaurus had lived in Patagonia…” And that was all it took for Bruce Chatwin.

In 1974, when he was 34, he set out for “the end of the world.” His book, In Patagonia, was published in 1977. It’s been called a travel book, travel writing, adventure writing, a travel journal, nonfiction. These days, it’s often referred to as memoir. The structure is 97 short sections. He appears to let himself be blown by the wind, and I often wondered why he was seeking out a certain place or person.  Then I got it–passion.

In section 14, he goes to visit “the poet.”

“The rain drummed on the tin roof. For the next two hours he was my Patagonia.”

Chatwin is a story-teller, and he gives us what we want–detailed-filled moments. The writing is strong, his sentences, in particular.

“The driver of a wool truck stopped and picked me up.  He wore a black shirt embroidered with pink roses and played Beethoven’s Fifth on his tape deck.”

“She picked her teeth with a thorn and laughed at the futility of existence.”

Patagonia is a geographic region–the tail of South America. It spreads over two countries–Chile and Argentina.  For more information on the book, check out The Quarterly Conversation‘s in-depth review of In Patagonia.

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