Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

Selznick, Brian. Wonderstruck. New York: Scholastic. 2011.

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Now that the movie Hugo, based on Brian Selznick’s wonderful The Invention of Hugo Cabret (which I wrote about on this blog here), has apparently been nominated for more Oscars than any other movie this year, it’s time to see what the imaginative man who created that story went on to write after it. I promise you, he’s done it again. I was so afraid his new book wouldn’t be able to hold a candle to Hugo Cabret. In fact, when I first read about its plot, I was quite sure I wasn’t going to be interested, but then a friend of mine wrote a blog post about it and convinced me it would be well worth reading.

Brian Selznick is as imaginative as ever with this new tale, told, like Hugo Cabret, in both pictures and prose. Two stories become one when a young deaf girl runs away from Hoboken, NJ to live in NYC (told in pictures), and a deaf boy from Minnesota heads to NYC, in search of his father, after his mother dies (told mostly in prose). I’ve always been picky about children’s books’ illustrators, but Selznick’s solid lines and use of shading snap his characters and settings to life. Somehow, he manages to take ages-old children’s stories: orphans, children in search of parents, runaways, mysteries parents have left to their children, etc. and breathe new life into them.

Hugo Cabret was magic in what it did for Paris and silent movies. This one is magic in what it does for New York and museums. Selznick nods his head to E. L. Konigsburg who mesmerized young readers like me long before the Nights in the Museum movies were made. In a previous life, I had the pleasure, once, of going behind the scenes at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, which would inspire anyone to want to work for the museum — well, anyone with a curiosity about natural history — and Selznick captures that “museum-behind-the-museum” so well, especially from a child’s point of view.

I’m impressed by all the research that goes into Selznick’s books. Wonderstruck has an extensive bibliography that has, of course, caught my eye. The idea for this book began to germinate while he was researching silent movies for Hugo Cabret and discovered the interesting fact that before the “talkies” came into being, movies had been a form of entertainment that could be shared by both deaf and hearing people alike. That fact interested him so much that he began to do research on deaf culture.

I love the fact that this is an old-fashioned children’s book in that it doesn’t talk down to its audience. Selznick expects his young readers to be curious, to be able to understand complicated concepts, and to be interested in a multitude of ideas and situations. He also creates brave, young characters who are innovative in ways that help them survive. I can easily see kids “playing” Wonderstruck the way my siblings and friends and I played things like Harriet the Spy when we were young. I can also see kids (or librarians!) turning to the bibliography to find out more about the things in the book that interest them.

I’d argue (and have) with those who’d call Selznick’s books “graphic novels.” They’re not. I like what he calls them: novels in words and pictures. That’s a much more accurate picture. I will say he’s probably a better artist than writer. His prose isn’t anything special — not bad, just not special — but it doesn’t matter because it all comes together so very well. Enjoy this one with your children or by yourself.

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

 Lehane, Dennis. Mystic River. New York: HarperTorch, 2002.

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I’ve been meaning to read Dennis Lehane for some time now, since I’ve managed to see and really like three movies based on his books. That’s an odd turn of events for me. Typically, I like to read a book first before I see the movie.

Mystic River was the Lehane-based movie I’d seen longest ago (back when it came out), so it seemed like a good place to start. Oddly, although I remember it being one of those movies I was dragged to see by my husband that I ended up loving and that it had garnered much conversation between us, I didn’t remember much about it. Okay, I basically remembered nothing about it, if it was anything at all like the book.

My verdict? Dennis Lehane is a flat-out fantastic writer, and I must read more by him. This was much more than a mere page-turner after which you say, “Well, that was fun,” a nice bar of chocolate but nothing to sustain you. No, this was a very well-crafted, well-written novel, with plenty to chew on, and which surprises the reader (or, at least, this reader) because she finds herself sympathizing with those she tends to think of as the dregs of society.

It’s also a psychological study, although not the deepest of studies, but still more than a reader would expect from a standard thriller. Lehane has gotten inside his characters’ heads, exploring what makes them tick. How do boys become the men they become? Why do people make the choices they make? What happens to a kid who’s kidnapped by strangers and escapes, but who comes from a place and time where and when no one would think to provide him with the therapy he so obviously needs?

Finally, it’s a plain good mystery. Among the things I’d forgotten about the movie was whodunit, and for the longest time (not believing the prime suspect could possibly have done it, because I’ve read enough mysteries to know that’s rarely the case), I didn’t have a clue. I kept thinking, “Oh, I hope he doesn’t ruin this by breaking Mystery Writer Rule #1: don’t introduce some surprise character at the end of the book who ends up being the murderer.” I won’t tell you whether he did or didn’t, but I will tell you that he’s so good at what he does, whether he breaks the rule or not doesn’t matter. If you like thrillers/mysteries, read it. You won’t be disappointed.

 

Spoken from the Heart by Laura Bush

Bush, Laura. Spoken from the Heart. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010.

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Of all the first ladies there have been in my lifetime, for some reason, Laura Bush has interested me most, probably because she seemed to be so much in the background, but also because she always seemed to me to be someone who truly fell into her role. She married a man she loved having no idea she was going to be a politician’s wife. She always struck me as someone who had no desire to be in the limelight, a feeling with which I can empathize. Other reasons she interests me? I can’t imagine what it must be like to be married to a president who eventually becomes extremely unpopular with the public, how hard that must be, especially dealing with some of the out-and-out hatred people showed. Finally, she was a librarian before she married George, and I know that she was accused of A. not having been a “real” librarian, which is a ridiculous accusation, since she got her masters in library science from the University of Texas at Austin (a very prestigious library school. I wish I had been lucky enough to earn my degree there) and B. never having had a “real” job, which is also absurd, since she taught in inner-city schools and was a school librarian when she and George met. (I guess those of us who have ever been librarians or teachers don’t have real jobs. )

Some of you may remember that I surprised myself by reading and enjoying Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife, a book based on Laura Bush’s life. That was fiction, though, and I’ve been meaning to read some nonfiction about her ever since. Her autobiography seemed like the best place to start for that.

Or so I thought. By the time she’d gotten to her marriage to George, I was quite disappointed. Maybe I was wrong to have wanted more, but I did. Relatively speaking, she and George had gotten married late (they were both 31. I happen to know someone else who got married at the ripe old age of 31 — me. I’d done all kinds of things in my adult life before I got married, including  teaching and earning a library degree, so I was very interested in that part of her life). I’d wanted more details from those pre-George years, and I also wished she’d given the reader a little more passion and emotion. Most of the story up to that point was matter-of-fact. We learned a little bit about what it was like growing up in a small Texas town when she did but almost nothing at all about what it felt like.

Granted, Laura had suffered that teenage tragedy of killing a high school friend in a car accident. Her passion and feeling did shine through when she described that incident and the scars it left behind that have never completely healed. Maybe when you’ve been through something like that the rest of your life seems rather matter-of-fact until you find yourself married to a president.

You see, once she becomes the First Lady (in fact, once she becomes a governor’s wife), this book really picks up. The only other part of her life that she describes in such heartfelt ways is her struggle to have children and her joy over being a mother to her twin daughters. Reading about her career as a politician’s wife is like reading about someone who had no desire to be an actress, was forced into it somehow, and found herself winning an Oscar.

That was surprising enough, but what was even more surprising was that I found myself riveted to this part of the story, getting the inside scoop on what it was like to be on the campaign trail, to meet the world’s dignitaries, to travel to places like Burma and Afghanistan. Oh yes, and to hold your head high when people accused you of never having had a “real” job, even to be able to find that funny.

Laura Bush has always supported causes that are near and dear to her heart: literacy and education. Typically, we never heard much about what she was doing in these areas, because our media, being far more interested in cutting secret passages in closets in order to insert skeletons, doesn’t want to focus on such things. Although I was never a fan of No Child Left Behind and the horrific toll it took on children and schools, I can see where someone like Laura Bush could have supported something that (like so many things), on paper, looked like it might give every child a chance to succeed. She talks about being in favor of innovative education practices, and I’m sure she is.

She, like most of the rest of us, has been appalled by injustices, especially when it comes to women. The depths she’s gone to to support women’s causes in the Middle East are touching. I learned quite a lot from her, like how horrific it is to be an Afghan woman with breast cancer.

This very correctly and precisely written book is a wonderful reminder of how stupid it is to have knee-jerk partisan reactions (especially for someone like me who needs no encouragement when it comes to jerking her knees). Laura helps the reader see where all Americans have common ground and how we shouldn’t be so quick to judge (she’s certainly been a victim of quick judgments in her lifetime). She also reminded me (and my own biases in this area) that if women ran the world, we might be more willing to seek out that common ground.

Sad to say, my curiosity is not yet quenched. I still want to read more about the woman (who would’ve ever thought?). If you, too, are curious, I’d highly recommend reading this one.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson

Simonson, Helen. Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand. New York: Random House, 2010.

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I first discovered this book one day when I was reshelving at the library. I have to admit that the only reason I was drawn to it was the name “Pettigrew,” due to the fact that I so love both the book and the movie Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. It seems silly to assume that all books with the name “Pettigrew” in the title will be ones I love, but based on this whopping sample size of two, I can (I mean, how many books can there possibly be with the name “Pettigrew” in the title?).

Normally, I’m one to pooh-pooh any books with endorsements that compare them to Jane Austen. There was, and always will be, only one Jane Austen. However, I must give credit where credit is due and admit that this is one of the few “contemporary Jane Austens” I’ve read that actually deserves the comparison — or, at least, that makes sense to me. I can completely understand why such a comparison might be made, because Simonson has written a fine comedy of manners that is also a scathing commentary on English village life. And she’s done so in the gentle, subtle way that readers of Austen have come to recognize. Another author Simonson brings to mind is Barbara Pym — not as well known as Austen but another favorite of mine.

This is the story of Major Pettigrew, a retired English gentleman in every sense of the word, who lives in a 21st-century village. He has been a widower for a number of years, and when we first meet him, he is dealing with the death of his only brother. He is now the only living member of his respectable clan, who was headed up by his father who had been stationed in India. His life turns upside down when he finds himself, much to his amazement, falling in love with a Pakistani shop keeper in town — a woman with a sharp intelligence and a mind of her own.

Along the way, we meet all the colorful characters we expect to meet in an English village: the other gentlemen, the gentlewomen, the bigots, the gossips, the protestors, an obnoxious visiting American (or two. What’s an English village without one of those?), those who would destroy the village for a little cash, and those who would lay down their lives to preserve it. All those who know such tales know that they are England on a micro scale. We know that we can look at one village, sketched by a capable pen, and find ourselves looking upon much of the entire country.

What a treat Simonson has given us in this fresh, 21st-century update of a tale that’s been told many times. She set herself a nearly impossible task and executed it beautifully. I tip my bowler to her and hope that she’ll be writing many, many more novels.

My Reading Life by Pat Conroy

Conroy, Pat. My Reading Life. New York: Nan A. Telese/Doubleday, 2010.

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I’ve loved Pat Conroy ever since I read The Lords of Discipline during my first year of college. I couldn’t put the book down, to the detriment of my statistics homework. I never did catch up in that class and very nearly failed it, which taught me two very important lessons:

1. Recreational reading was best left for the summer months and Christmas breaks.

and

2. I am a sucker for brilliant storytelling, so much so that I’m willing to suffer any sort of consequences in order to listen to one (or to read one as the case may be with Conroy).

My Reading Life is a little gem of a book that helps fill in the colors in the line drawing those of us who’ve read Conroy’s novels have of his life. I was happy to see him address head-on the criticisms that have been hurled at him, mainly that he needs a good editor (I assure you, if you read the book, you will learn that he’s had excellent editors — including some who weren’t even paid to edit his work and who didn’t necessarily take red pencils to his manuscripts but who encouraged him in the ways good editors should by introducing him to books and writers and experiences that would shape his writing as much as good copyedits could. His own mother was one such “editor”). He’s aware people say this, and, happily, he couldn’t care less.

I agree with him that he will never be a sparse writer, and I love him for it. I’ve often proclaimed that Tolstoy and Dickens and Thackerey (all of whom have featured in Conroy’s reading life) would have had a very difficult time getting published in the 20th and 21st centuries. I’m so glad there are some editors and publishers out there who still see the value of reading the rich, sentimental-but-never-sappy, and oh-so-human works of Pat Conroy.

I’ve often said to people, “The critics [and it's only critics, because I don't personally know anyone who's actually read Conroy who doesn't like him] say Conroy needs an editor. I don’t think so, because he’s a storyteller, and his stories don’t need editing. I could listen to his Southern-fried stories forever and never want to cut a word.” Is it any wonder that so many of the books he has read and loved were written by some of our best storytellers through the ages?

Conroy tells us in this book that “storyteller” is a label critics have given him, as if it’s something to be disparaged. I’ve never read that, but if so, shame on the critics for disparaging storytellers. It takes great talent to tell a story well, to keep people’s interest, and we’d be lost without stories, which are one of the few things we have to help us understand our world and how to find our way in it. I’ve always bowed down to great storytellers and those who tell them, and I was happy to find that I’m in good company with Conroy.

In fact, I was happy to know that I agree with him on so many points. His passion for books and reading could certainly rival mine. I loved reading his confessions of how, as a young writer, he plagiarized his favorite authors (he certainly could have filed a lawsuit against me if anything I’d written in my late teens and early twenties had ever been published). He finds the same sorts of things sad that I do (the loss of a favorite bookstore in Atlanta where he spent many hours and attended fantastic parties during his early writing career; the fact that his mother, once she divorced his father, was basically given nothing by our government in the way of support despite her own special service to our country in the life she endured as the wife of a marine) and admirable (authors who don’t take advantage of adoring young fans, fathers who are good to their kids). The passion I’ve come to know and love, surely familiar to all Conroy enthusiasts, is fully on display here. If you’ve ever read and loved Pat Conroy, you must read this book.

You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You by John Ciardi

Ciardi, John. Illustrated by Edward Gorey. You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1962.

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(April is national poetry month, so I decided to check out the poetry collection at the library this month.)

All right, I admit it. I’m a sucker for anything illustrated by Edward Gorey. I will also admit that this collection is not an exhibit of some of his finer illustrations. As a matter of fact, if you’d shown some of them to me without the benefit of knowing they were drawn by him, I would have been hard-pressed to tell you they were, despite the fact that I’m convinced I could spot his distinctive work anywhere. It doesn’t matter, though, because there are plenty of oh-so-magnificent-and-brilliant-examples-of-Edward-Gorey’s-genius to make up for it.

Also, the poems are sheer delight. They bring to mind my favorite “silly” poet Edward Lear, while being wonderful, magical, imaginative, and funny in their own right. I like those who write for children without being afraid to tap into primal fears (being eaten by wild beasts) and not-so-primal fears (a father’s wrath. Then again, maybe that is primal?). Ciardi adeptly makes light of these fears, encouraging children to laugh at them. I also like those who can mix complete nonsense like a poem about the Hoo-hah and the Rinky-dink and the automatic Chugg making themselves a good, cool drink of chocolate mud and lemon ink with complete reality like a father who’s hopeless when it comes to make waffles when Mom is sleeping in.

I wish I knew a first-grader, proud of her reading accomplishments, who would climb into my lap with this book. Every other poem is written in blue, so she can read it aloud to me, while I read the ones in black to her. The blue poems are all composed of words that a first-grader can read, but that doesn’t make them any less fun or meaningful. Even better, imagine a 3-year-old who sits on your lap while you read this book to him. At 4, he still delights in dragging it from the shelf. At 5, he begs you to read again before going to bed. Finally, at 6, he delights in reading every other poem to you.

What fun! Anyone want to lend me a six-year-old? Or a three-year-old?

The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman

   Shulman, Polly. The Grimm Legacy. New York: G.P. Putnam Sons, 2010.

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(Please forgive me if I don’t seem myself. I’m still a bit giddy from the fabulous Lancaster County Library System’s author luncheon. Not only did I get to see Sarah Blake, the guest of honor, but I actually got to sit next to her. As you know, she’s a favorite of mine, and she proved to be an exceptional lunch-time companion. She’s definitely a storyteller, and a warm, thoughtful, and funny person. Believe it or not, I didn’t make a fool of myself.)

I almost gave this book three smiley faces instead of four, because it’s not terribly well written. I decided that might be a bit unfair though, because a: I don’t read tons that’s written for today’s young adult audience (and maybe this is very well-written compared to most of what’s out there) and b. I am very picky about fantasy, don’t read much of it, and when I do, it tends to be things like Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter. To compare any writer (y.a. or not, but especially y.a.) to that poetic genius and truly gifted storyteller would be unfair. Still, even if short, “sound-bite-ish” writing is all the rage for 21st-century y.a. literature; and even if this book had been a real-life take on suburban teen living, fantasy and Lord Dunsany the last things on my mind while reading it, I probably would have wished I’d had the manuscript to edit before it was published and could (kindly) have suggested that Shulman work on the areas that seemed a bit choppy to me and to rewrite some of the dialogue to make it a little less stilted.

But forget the, at times, choppy writing and stilted dialogue. It’s easy to do once you get lost in the pages of this book, because it’s so wonderfully imaginative (thus, the four smiley faces). Elizabeth Rew, our heroine, is someone to whom it’s easy to relate (and probably doubly so for the intended teen audience): an awkward teenager attending a new school and  still missing her dead mother. School isn’t much fun. She’s had to abandon the dance classes she enjoys, because her father has a new, larger family to support, and she’s feeling the need to earn a little money of her own, especially after she finds herself giving away her sneakers to a homeless woman. When her favorite teacher suggests she apply for  a job at a special library, she agrees to do so, having no idea what to expect.

Soon, enough, she discovers exactly how special this library is. It lends out objects, not books — all kinds of objects. As if that isn’t cool enough, the library is also home to a very special collection: magic objects from Grimm’s fairy tales. I liked the fact that these objects were stored in an area known as “the cage,” because once upon a time, I worked in a large public library that had a “cage” of its own, basically an area down in the basement that was locked off by a “cage” of chain-link doors and that wasn’t open to the public for browsing (nothing magical in that one, though, unless you consider archival material magical).  Imagine a place that houses such artifacts as the mirror from Snow White, flying carpets, and the twelve dancing princess’s slippers. As you might have guessed, this special collection leads to a big, magical adventure (and, like many a good fairy tale, a little romance).

One of the things I loved about this book were all the little nods to classic fairy tales. Elizabeth has two, older, annoying, stepsisters. Her stepmother isn’t wicked, but she’s not exactly nice to Elizabeth (and does seem to think of her as a built-in maid). Characters in the novel eat gingerbread. Some of them are princes and princesses. It also takes its cue from some of the scarier tales from the brothers Grimm, adding a nice touch of light, spine-tingling, suspense. How do I know it’s taking a cue from the Grimm’s brothers? The book made me pull our copy of The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales from our shelves (a book, I discovered,  that has gathered quite a bit of dust — unfortunately, not of the fairy sort). I bet it makes everyone who reads it want to refer to that, and what’s more magical than a book that leads the reader to other great books? Unless it’s a book that not only leads readers to other great books, but that also happens to end on this side of “happily ever after,” and is maybe all the more gratifying for doing so.

Give it to your 12-14-year-old daughter/niece/granddaughter/friend. She’ll love it.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

Chua, Amy. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. New York: Penguin Press, 2011.

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Okay. I admit it. I fell hook, line, and sinker for Penguin Press’s publicity. I was right there in the thick of things when Amy Chua’s Wall Street Journal article “went viral,” as they say, discussed far and wide in almost every Internet circle. (That says something, because usually I’m quite clueless when it comes to what’s going on in the hipper corners of the Internet.) But I am who I am, which is someone who believes in going to the source before judging, and who doesn’t have much tolerance for those who complain about an author or a book without having read it, so, even though my instincts were screaming “Child abuser!” my brain was reasoning, “Read the book first and then decide.”

So, now I’ve read the book, and I have to say that the brain won out. Although I don’t agree with everything Chua espouses (but, really, who am I — someone who has never had children — to judge?), I don’t think she’s a child abuser. As a matter of fact, I completely agree with her on some points. For instance, plenty of Western parents are way too permissive, and I think this encourages indecisiveness and even insecurity in their children. I also happen to agree that it’s important to instill in children the confidence that leads them to believe in themselves, not to accept that they are only second-best, to tell your child “You’re better than that. I know you are” and that parents shouldn’t automatically assume that teachers and schools are the ones at fault when their children are failing.

I don’t, however, think it’s as black and white as Chua does. For instance, a child may be failing due to the child, but the child may also be failing due to the school or a bad teacher or a need to learn in a way that’s different.  And, of course, sometimes it’s a parent’s fault that a child is failing. I also don’t think it should be up to the parent to decide what a child should pursue in life. We are given talents for a reason, and those are the talents parents ought to identify and encourage their children to develop. Ultimately, I think Chua might agree with me in this, because her younger daughter sort of proves the point for her. Chua has two daughters, and she chooses for them, while they are still preschoolers, what she wants them to become: classical musicians. In a fascinating study of nature v. nurture, one of her daughters becomes a pianist, and the other becomes a violinist. She then spends years and years fighting tooth and nail with them, and yes, they do succeed, but when her youngest daughter, at age thirteen, finally completely rebels, and Chua is forced to let her give up the violin to pursue a true passion — playing tennis — my only thought was, “What if she’d started tennis at age 7? Would we already have seen her on the courts at Wimbledon?” Because the daughter does succeed at tennis.

I say all this, because I know what I was like as a child. Contrary to Chua’s belief that (as she seems to think all Western parents do) if children are left up to their own devices, choosing to do what they want to do, they will do nothing but spend all their time on Facebook, I had a passion as a child (and I have yet to meet a child who doesn’t have at least one passion, although I’ve met many who have either had them drummed out of them or who were not encouraged to pursue them and gave them up). Back in those days, people didn’t fear Facebook; they feared television. My passion was writing. I loved to write, and I would happily forgo television in order to do so.  (I also chose to read, of course, but that’s not a talent.) I wrote a novel at the age of 12. I chose to write, even though my friends didn’t. Every one of my siblings also chose to pursue passions (my oldest sister wrote, too; my other sister played the piano and danced; my brother’s passions were cooking and playing guitar).

My parents encouraged us, of course. They loved what I wrote, but they didn’t push me. If they had, would I have become a successful, Pulitzer-prize-winning novelist by now? What if they’d had a little more Amy Chua in them, supervising my writing and making sure I practiced it much more than I did? What if they’d  gotten me into creative writing programs? Had pushed me a little more, instead of just letting it be a hobby? My guess is that they would have had to fight me some, but that they wouldn’t have had to fight me the way Chua did her kids, because I already had a love of writing; it was something that came easily to me. What I needed was to develop the discipline  a writer needs that I still find I’m lacking, as I always seem to put writing last instead of first. Perhaps my parents could have instilled that in me.

Maybe the answer to parenting isn’t Chinese v. Western, all or nothing. Maybe the real answer is a combination of the two. Find out where your child’s talents lie (Western) but then push her (Chinese) in pursuing those talents to the point of excellence.

Argue or disagree with Amy Chua’s philosophies (and I certainly did), I found the book gripping. Chua has a sense of humor that endeared me to her — and that hasn’t come out in all the publicity. She also proved herself to be someone who is self-reflective, someone willing to question herself. Even if she sometimes couldn’t see what was self-evident (for instance, some of her own extraordinary insecurities that one could only chalk up to the parenting techniques she described, which of course, had been the way  her own Chinese parents had raised her, insecurities that caused her to fail miserably at her first job interview at Yale. Or her struggles in law school, because she had been raised on an educational model that was mostly all about rote memorization and just being told what to do), I could tell she was trying.

Ultimately, I came away from the book fond of Chua and fond of her family. Really, what it all boils down to, and whether she likes it or not, has nothing to do with labels like “Chinese” or “Western.” She is a mother who loves her children, and she’s doing the best she can with what she knows and with what she’s experienced to help them succeed in life.  Even if I feel she sometimes falls short if she wants her “Chinese” children to succeed in a “Western” environment, I’d still call what’s she’s doing just plain old “human parenting.”

Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert

Gilbert, Elizabeth. Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage. New York: Viking, 2010.

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When it was first published, I had refused to read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love for the extremely profound reason that I hated the title. But then a few people whose opinions I respect began to read it, and to my surprise, liked it. I reluctantly bought a remaindered copy and loved it.

About a year after that, I read an article (I think it was in The New York Time’s Book Review) about this next book of Gilbert’s, and again, I thought, “I’m not going to read that.” The article, a description of how she had originally bitten off way more than she could chew with this follow-up to E,P,L, which had resulted in a book she didn’t like at all, and how she had delivered that manuscript but then had asked for an extension to rewrite it, made it sound rather interesting. Nonetheless, I wasn’t going to read it. You see, the one thing that had annoyed me about E,P,L was that I didn’t think she’d given herself enough time alone really to find herself. I don’t remember the exact time frame, but it seems to me she got divorced, immediately found herself in another relationship, ended that to travel the world and find herself, only to be involved with another man within three months.

I’d wanted her to go off and have real adventures, discover she didn’t need a man to be happy. You know, for two or three years or something. Then if she’d found love, well, that would have been fine. Of course, no one ever does things the way I want them to, and in reading that article, I discovered not only had she found love “too soon,” but she’d actually gone and married the guy. Granted, there’s  a reason she married him, and it isn’t the typical one. This book was all about her having to come to grips with that, she who was never going to marry again. Still. I didn’t want to read it.

But then, there it was one day on the shelf at the library. I pulled it off and started to skim through it. And there was Gilbert’s voice again, the one I’d come to enjoy so much while reading E,P,L. She’s funny. She’s self-deprecating, and she’s very, very smart. Her writing is heartfelt, without being overly dramatic or self-serving, but I wasn’t ready to commit. Then my friend Litlove wrote a very thought-provoking blog post on it, and I found myself drawn enough to return to it.

I was still a little worried that I might not like it. I was worried she would take some of the magic out of love and marriage, because one thing I’ve come to realize after fifteen years of marriage is that magic is involved. It makes absolutely no sense that human beings — a very fickle species — would choose lifelong partners, typically at a very immature age, and that this might actually work for life without some sort of magical intervention (then again, I read my fair share of fantasy, so I’m open to magic). I needn’t have worried, because I promise you. She doesn’t.

In fact, by the end of the book, she’s sort of added her own magical appeal to marriage, having looked at it from so many different angles. One thing you can say about Gilbert is that she definitely does her research (you might even say she’s a bit obsessive). Luckily, I am someone who likes that sort of thorough research (obsession), because I’m a bit thorough (obsessive) myself. I’m also a bit lazy, though, so I like it even better when someone else does all the research and synthesizes it for me, charmingly weaving it in and out of descriptions of her own experiences.

This book isn’t for everyone. Gilbert admits she’s quite progressive in her thinking, and I didn’t always agree with her. I also didn’t find it as funny as E,P,L (no laugh-out-loud moments like I had with that one), but I found it to be more substantial. She certainly made me think. That makes sense, actually. E,P,L was about searching and exploring. Committing yourself (to marriage or anything else) is always going to be more substantial than that. I would especially recommend this book to anyone who has suffered through the devastation of divorce and feels guilty about it. She is extremely comforting.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.

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(Note, books are rated from one to five smiley faces, one being a book I didn’t like very much, and five being a book  I loved.)

I have never been able to wrap my head around the Holocaust. I know genocide is as old as human history, and I know human beings have an incredible capacity for evil, but I think of Germany in the early part of the twentieth century, and I can’t imagine how one crazy man convinced a whole country to hate and to torture and to murder. I think about my own life and the people I have known, because we are not talking here about hating the unknown, hating someone we’ve never met, the way many Americans right now, say, might hate those in the Middle East, having never been there nor met anyone who lives there. That’s inexcusable (and pathetic) enough, but in Hitler’s Germany, people turned against their co-workers, their neighbors, their friends.

How could they do that? I think about all the Jewish acquaintances and friends I’ve had over the years. I can’t imagine ignoring the disappearance of even mere acquaintances. And when it comes to those who are near and dear to me? Well, I would lay my own life down for them. How can you know someone you love is being taken away to be tortured and/or killed and not do anything about it?

That’s why The Book Thief is such a remarkable book. Narrated by Death itself, it highlights how complicated humans are, that we are both capable of incredible kindness as well as incredible horror. This is a fact Death repeats (and demonstrates with examples) more than once in the book. We don’t exactly come to understand how Nazi Germany could have happened (although we are challenged to think about how incredibly powerful words are), but we certainly come to understand that it wasn’t all as one-sided as we might think, something I have always hoped, but we tend to get so few stories that provide verification for such hopes.

Imagine actually feeling sorry for a street in Germany bombed to smithereens, killing almost all its inhabitants. Most Americans (I include myself here) cheer such devastation when we hear about it. Yes, we beat them! We freed prisoners from concentration camps. Hitler’s Germany fell because of us, and that was a very good thing. And yet, here I was, feeling sorry for the Germans (at least, these particular Germans), and that is the beauty of Markus Zusak’s writing.

He helps us see another side of the story. This is a side where we meet ordinary German citizens, living in a crazy world, doing the best they can to rebel, given the circumstances. They hide a Jewish man in their basement. They get whipped for offering bread to poor souls marched through their town on their way to Dachau. They stand up to the leaders of the Hitler youth. They are amazing characters, and you come to love them, even though they are German, those you’ve always considered The Enemy (at least in this particular story, the story of World War II).

I’ve read other books that take this point of view, like Ursula Hegi’s Stones from the River, but those other books have often seemed like they were trying to convince me. None has ever struck me in the way this one did. Not only is it an original, well-conceived story with characters who are so alive you can hear their hearts beating, but it is also beautifully written. Time and again, I found myself wanting to take down quotes, both for beautiful turns of phrases as well as for the truths they held.

Don’t be stupid like I was. If you’ve been putting off reading this book, because, oh, it’s just been too popular, and, well, you’ve read enough about the horrors of the Holocaust for now, don’t. I promise you: you won’t be disappointed. It deserves every bit of high praise it’s received. What I can’t promise you? That you can remain dry-eyed while reading it.