The Sunday Salon: Old School

With all the enticing new books being published all the time, it's easy to forget some of the great stories that have been around for years - or even decades. I was reminded of that earlier this week when a trip to the library netted me a couple oldie-but-goodie paperbacks, and got me hooked on an entire series that will keep me entertained throughout the winter. Sara Paretsky's series of mysteries featuring hard-nosed, Chicago female private investigator V. I. (for Victoria Iphegenia) Warshawski had completely escaped my attention until I read a great little book called Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading. In it, Maureen Corrigan, NPR Book Editor, wrote about some of the books that have meant the most to her during her reading life, and Paretsky's series was among them. The first book, Indemnity Only, published in 1982, introduces the fast talking, smart mouthed V.I. - or "Vic" as we soon learn to call her. Written in that inimitable Raymond Chandler/Dashiell Hammett style, with short clipped sentences and atmospheric descriptions, Paretsky quickly grabs the readers attention and pulls you right into the story.

Here's what Maureen Corrigan and I both love about Vic - she's completely her own boss, she's fearless, she says whatever she means and makes no apologies. But she still enjoys soaking in a hot bath at the end of a long day, with candles glowing and Italian opera on the radio. She takes her steak rare and her Scotch neat, promising herself an extra hour of running in the morning to prevent the pounds from creeping up. Without batting an eye, she takes on the mostly male establishments in banking, politics, labor unions, and the police force, and makes them accountable, her sharp wit and ever sharper tongue her most powerful weapons.

Vic's character is as complex as the mysteries she trying to solve, and in some ways her story is more engaging than the plot. She began her career as a Public Defender, but left because she got tired of following political rules. On page 13 of Indemnity Only, we get a interesting glimpse into her formative past.

I put on jeans and a yellow cotton top and surveyed myself in the mirror with critical approval. I look my best in the summer. I inherited my Italian mother's olive coloring, and tan beautifully. I grinned at myself. I could hear her saying, "Yes, Vic, you are pretty - but pretty is no good. Any girl can be pretty - but to take care of yourself you must have brains. And you must have a job. A profession. You must work." She had hoped I would be a singer and had trained me patiently; she certainly wouldn't have liked my being a detective. Nor would my father. He's been a policeman himself. Polish in an Irish world. He's never made it beyond sergeant, due partly to lack of ambition, but also I was sure, to his ancestry. But he'd expected great things of me...My grin went a little sour in the mirror and I turned away abruptly.

Clearly Vic feels herself to have fallen short of parental expectation, and it's poignant to see how this tough, self-confident woman can fall prey to the same emotional traps the rest of us women do.

Of course the best thing about discovering a series like this is that I'm guaranteed reading material for quite some time. Paretsky has published 14 more V.I. Warshawski novels, a good many of which I snagged at the library book sale last Saturday for 50 cents each.

So I'll be spending a lot more time with Vic this winter. I couldn't be in better company, either.

How about you? Have you ever stumbled across a book or series of books that have been around for a long time but somehow escaped your radar?

The Sunday Salon: Of Dear Life and God's Whisper

This week more than most I realize how much of my thinking comes from books, how the words of others stir my heart, turn the rusty gears of my mind, bring tears to my eyes. This week more than most I have lived vicariously through the eyes of women whose books I have read, whose visions I have shared, whose imparted wisdom I've taken to heart.

This week I've read a collection of stories by a woman I consider writing royalty for her ability to distill everyday experience and emotion into it's purest essence. A woman who has written almost countless such stories in her 80-some years, stories that span now two generations, encompassing all the great change that implies, but remaining true and relevant to human experience.

And I've read a book by a (much younger) woman who has been for some years on the trail of a dream, one that is rock-solid in some respects, but also made of gossamer wings, lending itself to flights of fancy.

First, Dear Life, Alice Munro's new collection of stories. It is not a paean to the loveliness of life. No. Every story in this collection (whose emphasis is on the decisions made by ordinary characters and they ways one small moment can alter a life forever) has a rather stern personality. Ms. Munro is not overly affectionate with her characters and their situations. This is just how it is, she tells us, this dear life we all cling to. With the fatalism common to her generation, she knows we must accept the consequences of our actions and the fickle hand of fate. We must simply play the cards that we've been dealt. That is not such a bad thing, really. Now we all expect so much, feel entitled to so much, that occasionally it seems right to have the reins pulled in just a bit.

Then, after reading Dear Life, I fell into the comforting arms of my friend Andi Cumbo's manifesto about God's Whisper, as she has christened her farmhouse and its surrounding acres (God's Whisper Manifesto, the Makings of a Dream). Andi has been incubating this dream for a long time, and I've watched vicariously through her blog and Facebook posts as she has made it come true, assisted by grace from God and her own true grit. This small book lists ten principles for life at God's Whisper farm, but of course they are really principles for life anywhere. "Love people first and hard," Andi says. "Live with intention but without pretention." "Art matters, play is good, rest is treasured."

Simple precepts, and pure. Not easy to accomplish given the complexity of this Dear Life we all live- as Munro writes about with such aching understanding in these new stories, and in the hundreds of stories she's written during her lifetime.

Story is paramount. That is Principle Number 8 at God's Whisper. "Here at God's Whisper, we know that our stories are our very lives. That we thrive and grow and fight and love because of the stories we know, the ones we live, and the ones we want to create."

This week, more than most, I have been blessed by stories and the vision of two extraordinary women who told them.

TLC Book Tours: Flight Behavior

I've been engrossed in Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel, Flight Behavior. It’s one of those books that sets your mind whirling in all different directions. There are many hearts to this book, many core stories, and one of the most interesting is the story of the monarch butterfly and it’s migratory pattern. (Yes, this really is a novel, but she manages to sneaks a lot of science in there too, rather like the way your mother used to camoflauge vegetables with cheese sauce or buttered bread crumbs.) The way I understand it is that the monarch butterfly migrates north from a warm climate (like Mexico) and then back again, but because a monarch’s lifespan is only about six weeks,  the complete journey is played out over three generations. The mating occurs in Mexico, and the birth of new butterflies a bit farther north, perhaps Texas. These newborns then fly even farther north to avoid extreme summer heat.  But then, if all goes according to plan, come autumn these brand new butterflies make their way back to Mexico.

Where they’ve never, ever been before.

Something in their DNA - remember, this is the DNA of a butterfly we’re talking about here - tells them when to make this journey and where to fly to get back to the warm Mexican forests where their “family” came from.

Today I’ve been thinking about and marveling over the inner signals in that tiny insect. The impulses that set it on its journey, the integrity of a miniscule GPS system that guides it on it’s way. The compulsion it must feel to fly at just the right time.

And the way it honors that compulsion without thinking.

If an insect can be so firmly guided by it’s genetics, I think, then how much more are we, without even being aware of it, guided by the genetic soup that sloshes in our large and cumbersome bodies. How many of our own impulses, behaviors, desires, are governed by the mysterious and ancient forces of DNA?

I suspect many more than we like to believe.

But unlike the insect - or birds or fish or other mammals - humans so often ignore the signals our inner spirit sends out. We persist in doing things that go against our grain, whether it’s work, or relationships, or ways of dealing with people. When life doesn’t feel just right, we tell ourselves to buck up and get over it.

When instead we should heed those prickling thoughts and allow them guide us to where we should be.

But so often we’re afraid.

For a long time before we moved, I had those prickling thoughts. That the place I was living wasn’t where I was supposed to be anymore. For an even longer time, I had been ignoring them, afraid to migrate, to make a dangerous journey away from everything I knew. Now that I’ve made the trip, I realize the decision was right. I feel peaceful, as if I’m where I belong.

The monarch butterflies in Kingsolver’s story have taken a wrong turn in their migration, things have happened which set them off course and changed the natural progression of their lives. This is mirrored in the book by the circumstances of its heroine, Dellarobia Turnbow, an intelligent young woman who was ready to fly from the foothills of rural Appalachia and onto college when she was derailed by her parents’ deaths and an unplanned pregnancy. She has been at odds with her world ever since, though she has done her best to buck up and get on with it. Something inside her has never felt quite right, and until the butterflies arrived on her mountain, she didn’t know what it was.

Those tiny butterflies live without fear and follow the compulsion that sends them forth, even though in this case it could mean complete extinction. I haven’t finished the book, so I don’t know if Dellarobia will heed their example, or how her story will end if she does.

Change is never without price, movement from one place to another is always fraught with a certain amount of danger. But if you can connect with your inner nature, with the primal forces that make you healthy and whole and alive, I have to believe you’re more likely to migrate successfully.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read this wonderful novel.

Flight Behavior, by Barbara Kingsolver

The Sunday Salon: Mr. Churchill’s Secretary and What’s On the Reading Horizon

You must know by now how much I enjoy historical fiction, so it’s no surprise that I was eager to dive into a new mystery series with a unique historical setting. Mr. Churchill’s Secretary is the first volume featuring the intrepid Maggie Hope, who works as a secretary in Winston Churchill’s war cabinet. Maggie’s skills extend far beyond her expertise in taking Churchill’s dictation on the silent typewriter keyboards he’s had created especially for his staff. Maggie is a gifted mathematician and code-breaker, and these skills are soon discovered and put to very good use.

Like any good historical novel, the period details are just as interesting to me as the plot of the book. Susan Elia MacNeal does a wonderful job of setting the scene and introducing all kinds of information about the period. The behind-the-scenes look at Churchill’s staff  was reminiscent of watching an episode of West Wing on TV. In a recent interview at All Things Girl, MacNeal said she was "completely and totally immersed in World War II history — books, documentaries, talking with Blitz survivors. I even had the honor of corresponding with Mrs. Elisabeth Layton Nel, one of Winston Churchill’s actual wartime secretaries. I also learned how to darn socks, make wartime recopies and sniff vintage perfume; I went to second-hand clothing stores to look at clothes, gloves, and hats. And I was lucky to be able to spend a lot of time in London at the marvelous Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms, as well as the Imperial War Museum, Bletchley Park, Chartwell, and, of course, Windsor Castle."

It paid off big time, because Mr. Churchill’s Secretary was a wonderfully drawn portrait of its era. I’m really looking forward to the next book in the series, Princess Elizabeth’s Spy, which is already on my shelf.

But before I see what Maggie’s up to next, I’ll be reading Where’d You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple and Don’t Bother Me, I’m Reading, a memoir by Maureen Corrigan, book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air series.

What’s on your reading horizon?

PS - A serendipity...Before reading Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, I read the novel Motherland, by Amy Sohn, a witty and interesting novel set in the neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn. Oddly enough, Susan Elia MacNeal lives in Park Slope, and is acquainted with Amy Sohn. I love stuff like that :)

TLC Tours for The Sunday Salon: Because You Have To: A Writing Life

I’m a writing book junkie. Sometimes, I'm one of those people who loves to read about writing more than I actually love to write. There is a mystique surrounding a writer’s life, especially for those of us who are wannabe’s, who worship at the throne of “real” writers - you know, the ones with actual books that have been printed with paper and ink.

So when TLC Tours offered me the opportunity to read/review Because You Have To: A Writing Life, by Joan Frank, I readily agreed to feed my reading-about-writing habit.

Frank contends that those who are called to write must do so, no matter what the privation. She uses herself as a prime example, discussing the ways she has supported her writing (a published body of work that include two short story collections and three novels) with mostly low-paying office jobs. She talks about co-workers who complain that she is unresponsive when she drifts into a daydream about her latest work. She relates tales of ekeing out moments to write between fielding phone calls and typing letters. “There is never enough,” she titles one of her chapters. Never enough time, money, silence, appreciation.

She talks about the isolation that writers sometimes feel, the need to “build a kind of coherent wholesome scaffolding around the essentially lonely, aberrant, and certainly unjustifiable act of writing.” She advises the writer to “be careful whom you tell,” about your writing, because “Americans tend to feel uneasy when confronted with someone professing to practice art.” She shares some “gruesome stories” about marketing and rejection.

She does not sugar coat the writer’s life, oh no she does not.

But still, this reader can sense on every page how compelled she is to put words to paper, to express ideas, to work out emotions and scenarios and possibilities on the printed page. Frank looks at the writers life -well, frankly - but in a way that makes you still want to be part of that mysterious brotherhood.

She even writes about those writing books I love to love so much.

You can collect dozens of technique books. In the end, writing that has life in it can’t issue from someone else’s formula, like dance steps painted on a plastic mat. Anyone with an instinct for the shape and sound and movement of language must somewhere in her heart recognize this lonely truth, and agree to trust herself to go forward, absorbing the advice that fits along the way, tossing the rest.

Because You Have To: A Writing Life.  Joan Frank tells it like it is in this very personal, sometimes funny, sometimes acerbic, sometimes joyous book about what keeps her coming back to the page.

We write to investigate, attend, witness. When even the biggest literary names make victorious reading tours, they often admit how unhappy they feel until they have settled into the next writing project - how hungrily they miss working on something, amid whatever aclaim. I believe them. The itch, the yearning, the glimpse of the next tantalizing, disturbing idea - how can I broach it, solve the inescapable problems? Where might I take it; more accurately, more excitingly, where might it take me? The call of the dream: getting back to it, getting it down. Product is good, but process, we learn the hard way, it the real tugging star. One following onto the next, a whole sparkling cosmos of them.