TLC Book Tour: The New Republic

There's no doubt that Lionel Shriver can write. I enjoyed her clever wit and acerbic humor in The Post Birthday World. I was riveted to the painfully dramatic and timely saga of We Need to Talk About Kevin.

But while I appreciated Shriver's writerly talent in The New Republic -  a part parody, part social satire featuring an attorney who re-creates himself as an investigative journalist - I wasn't completely sold on the premise or plot of this novel.

The novel takes on mythic proportions when Edgar Kellogg, a disgruntled corporate attorney with a larger than life chip on his shoulder, tosses in his lucrative law career and agrees to a suspect foreign assignment in which he will replace the enigmatic but hugely popular journalist Barrington Saddler who has mysteriously disappeared.  Edgar finds himself in a (fictional) Portugese backwater, awash with other journalists trying to make a name for themselves, but mostly living the high life and seeking excitement wherever they can find it. He gets quickly caught up in the spirit of the adventure as he investigates the turn of events surrounding Saddler's disappearance and how it's related to the terrorist activities of the so-called Sons of Barba.

The New Republic was written in 1998 (but published in 2012), and so the satiric, almost playful portrait of a terrorist culture seems almost unseemly in light of 21st century events. Shriver's coverage of current events, i.e., the topic of school shootings in We Need to Talk About Kevin, was highly personal but thoughtfully and carefully scripted.  What interested me most in The New Republic was Edgar Kellogg himself. Ostracized as a child because of his weight, Edgar's one goal has been social popularity.

Edgar had verified in childhood what the New Testament only hints at...Edgar's personal Apocrypha: that people will exonerate sadists, braggarts, liars, and even slack-jawed morons before they'll pardon eyesores. If you're attractive, people need a reason to dislike you; if you're ugly, people need a reason to like you. They don't usually find one. In his tubby school days, Edgar had learned the hard way that every vulgar slob on the block was an aesthete.

So, Edgar has attached himself to popular people throughout his life, becoming the perennial sidekick for the "rich and famous" among the cliques that threaten to ignore him. And he's madder than hell about that. But now, finally slim but still smarting from years of rejection, Edgar has the opportunity to literally replace the "absentee paragon," Barrington Saddler, about whom "no one from New York to Cinziero can stop talking for more than ten minutes using a stopwatch." As he channels Saddler's persona, he is forced to reevaluate his desires for promotion from sidekick to leader.

And how does that work out for him? What's better - to be the admired or the admirer?

Shriver takes the reader on a long and meandering path before Edgar comes to this final conclusion.

Edgar considered his life long position of second-in-command. Sure, constitutionally Edgar was a sidekick. But there was nothing disgraceful about lieutenancy should your captain be splendid. ... As Edgar reviewed the short list of his idols...he concluded that in every case he himself may have got the better end of the deal. It was probably more interesting to adore than be adored, more transporting, more engrossing, and in any event much less creepy. What the hell, given a choice, Edgar might rather revere a hero than be one.

The New Republic is an interesting look at two very large personalities and invites the reader to consider what it is that make people popular.  It's exploration of international terrorism was less successful for this reader, but some with a more political bent might find it of keener interest.

Thanks to TLC Tours for the opportunity to read this book.

The author's Facebook page.

The Sunday Salon: Of Wind (and Windbags); Closets; and Special Places

Blustery. That's the best word to describe the general state of our weather this winter, and it seems to be carrying over into this makeshift of a spring season. This morning the wind whipped around the north side of the house like a twister, rattling the very window panes like the angriest of March lions.

But wait - it's APRIL.

I wonder what the climate change experts are making of these prevailing winds?  Perhaps we should be investing in wind turbines after all.

Today's temperatures are somewhat seasonable, but yesterday was winter redux. Thirty-seven blustery degrees for a high, with not a whimper of sunshine in sight. Nevertheless, I took a leap of faith yesterday and flipped my closet, meaning I transferred all the winter clothes to the the winter closet, discarding an entire 30 gallon plastic sackful in the process. Haven't worn it all year? Gone. Worn it but unhappy whilst wearing it? Into the sack.

Then I did the same with my spring clothes.  The remaining pieces are now hanging, color coordinated, in my closet. And if I have a moment's panic that there are only half a dozen t-shirts left instead of three dozen, I remember that for most of the winter I wore the same four shirts over and over again.

I have become ruthless - RUTHLESS, I tell you -  when it comes to paring down. I do believe my husband and dogs are frightened of me when I get into "pitch it" mode. They huddle up together on the couch, trying to disappear as if afraid they too will get tossed into the nearest bin.

Of course they're safe, but I really have completely embraced the concept of less-is-more, especially since moving into this house. We have lived here over six months now, and I figure that anything I haven't missed yet I'm not going to miss. Yes I only have one set of dishes, but that's really all I need. Instead of 30 different coffee mugs stacked precariously in the cupboard, I have six and that has been plenty. I feel lighter all over without so much stuff taking up space in every corner of my house. (Yes, Deb Smouse, you are spot-on again!)

There are two things that I have trouble tossing - one is books (although I give A LOT of books to our local library book sale) and the other is pictures. Even though nearly all of our new photographs are stored digitally, I have hundreds of old printed ones that I can't bring myself to throw away. I know I could have them digitized, but I like having them in their original format. Happily, they've all found a home inside a wicker storage chest in the basement.

As for books..well, even thought I have plenty of empty shelf space in the "library," there are some books I won't have any qualms about consigning to the book sale. I am reading one right now (well, I was reading it until I finally said 'enough') in which the "hero" is such a slimy, self-serving windbag that I can hardly wait to drop it into the big wooden bin for donations at the library. "Pitch it" mode, indeed.

Now I'm cleansing my mind's palate with the latest Peter Robinson mystery, featuring DI Alan Banks. If you've never read this series, I highly recommend. My husband and I both enjoy these books (which is a rare occurrence - usually our reading tastes never intersect). Watching the Dark is the 20th volume, and it's starting out to be just as well-written and compelling as the rest. Robinson masterfully weaves a lot of stories together in his books, and the narrative of Banks, his family, and his colleagues carries through from book to book which I always enjoy. Plus, they're all set in Robinson's native England - another plus for this closet Anglophile.

The thought of England brings me to thoughts of special places, which I've been contemplating this morning at the behest of my friend Bella Cirovic, and her lovely online group 30 Days in April. "Where is the place that you go outside of your home that is your special spot?" Last year that questions was easier to answer - our home in Florida was always a retreat from the world, a place where everything was pretty and clean and new. And even though I couldn't get there every day (or even every week!), just knowing it was waiting for me got me through some rough times.

Bella's right -we need "special spots" to go when the winds get too blustery and life is too cluttered. Spots where the air is calm and clean, and there is space to stretch your arms out wide and breath deeply. I've claimed that kind of space inside my house by clearing away clutter and making room to be still.

But there is value in having a place outside and away to retreat and renew, because those concepts work in tandem. And so I am on a quest now for a new place that fills my spirit with calm and peace and hope. Maybe it will be as close as the pond behind the house, or as far away as the undulating green hills of southern England.

Maybe the wind will take me there.

The Sunday Salon: Patchwork

My reading over the past few days has been something of a crazy quilt -a bit of this, another bit of that. After reading a book with the scope and style of The Orchardist, it's difficult for me to settle into something else. One of the things I'm really enjoying about my new local library are the daily bins of used books. Their trade paperbacks are only 50 cents, and I've already picked up several things to add to my library. Earlier this week I found a copy of Dakota, A Spiritual Geography, by Kathleen Norris. This was one of the first creative nonfiction books I ever read, (back in the mid-1990's) and it helped me fall in love with the genre. So I was happy to grab it up, especially at that price.

So I've been poking around in it this week, and today I opened to these words:

If there's anything worth calling theology, it is listening to people's stories, listening to them and cherishing them.

This quote, from Mary Pellauer, a feminist author and scholar, heads a chapter entitled The Holy Use of Gossip, in which Norris writes about the role of  gossip which seems pervasive in small town life. "Gossip done well," she contends, "strengthens communal bonds."

Norris' definition of gossip is different than the way most of us have come to think of it - the whispered rumors of a marriage on the rocks or a husband's out-of-control drinking, even the titillating headlines on celebrity magazines we peek at while on line at the checkout counter. The word "gossip" actually derives from the words that mean God and sibling, and originally meant "akin to God." In fact, a "gossip" was used to describe someone who acted as a sponsor at a person's baptism, someone who "helped give a name" to another. Antecedents of the word are "gospel," "godspell," and "sabha" (a village community). Gossip then (if used correctly) can be a way of sharing our human story, of giving a name to the things that define us. And these stories, by Pellauer's definition, can be called part of the wisdom and study of God's precepts in the real world.

Notice also that Pellauer talks about not only listening to people's stories, but cherishing them. I talk a lot about the importance of story - our individual stories, and our collective story as a nation, a gender, a vocational group. I read memoir upon memoir as a way of hearing all kinds of stories, and cherish each one for the impression it leaves in my mind and heart.

But I think cherishing one another's stories has a real life application as well, beyond the effect of words on a page. Norris talks about this so well in Dakota, how the folks in her small town of Lemmon, South Dakota, express their solidarity through gossip or shared story. The plight of a young family with a seriously ill child spreads quickly - but so does the response of people bringing food, sitting with the other children in the family, gathering in prayer circles. The stories of the town drunk who either undergoes a miraculous conversion OR loses everything are equally morally instructive. "Gossip - or Story - is theology translated into experience."

In the patchwork of stories that make up the crazy quilt of our lives, there is something almost sacred about the tales we share with one another and take into our hearts.

TLC Book Tour: The Orchardist

The Orchardist is such a rare and beautiful specimen of a book, I barely know where to begin in my praise of it. Should I write about the sweeping breadth of the Washington landscape that becomes as important as another character?

Should I tell you of the achingly beautiful prose that describes every event in the most perfectly chosen details?

Should I warn you that there are moments so painful your breath will catch, so haunting your eyes will not close in sleep?

Perhaps I should write of Talmadge, the quiet and introspective Orchardist for whom the book is named, and the way he cares with such deep intensity for his land, his product, and the people he loves. The way he sees so clearly into the soul of everything and everyone - except perhaps himself.

Or maybe you'd like to know about Jane and Della, two frightened young girls, heavy with child, who appear at the outskirts of Talmdige's orchard, fleeing an unspeakable evil,  and work their way bit by bit into his heart, stirring within him every ounce of protectiveness he can muster.

And I must not forget Angelene, Jane's daughter, whom Talmadge raises and instills with a feminine version of his unique quiet intelligence and intensity.

The Orchardist is stunning, almost Biblical in the epic span of its story about determination and loneliness and loyalty and hope. It takes the reader into a far-away place - the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the century - a time when a man's land governed his life and his choices, when people worked hard from dawn until dark because their very living depended on it. A time when distractions were less, and simple pleasures enjoyed more.

But still there was darkness...there was evil and loss and destruction. Talmadge is no stranger to it, even before Jane and Della with their heavy baby-laden bellies, arrive. His father has died in a mining accident, his mother has died a few years later, leaving he and his younger sister- neither of them barely more than children -alone to run the orchard. And then his sister Elspeth disappeared one day, goes out to gather herbs and never returns. Talmadge is nearly crushed by this loss. Forty years later, it fuels his obsession with Jane and Della, and his desire to protect them from the evil they have fled.

Readers and writers alike will savor The Orchardist, for its story, its characters, its maturity of style and prose. A novel eight years in the writing, begun when its young author was only 24 years old, The Orchardist is an amazing tour de force and should become part of the canon of modern American literature.

Link to the author's website and Facebook page.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the privilege of reading this book.

Reading Revisited

A few weeks ago when I finished arranging all the book on my new bookshelves, my husband asked me how many of them I had read. "Well, all of them, of course!" I answered, somewhat surprised that he even had to ask. I do have a separate shelf for library books and review books, and I've been doing a great job of keeping that under control (yes, that's me patting myself on the back). I might have a huge TBR list in my mind, but  everything placed on my shelves right now has been read - at least once, and often more than once.

I'm a big re-reader. In fact, as I was unpacking books and organizing them, I started getting all kinds of urges to re-read this one, and then that one, and then this other one...

It all started me thinking about re-reading, and thinking led to writing, and   - well, here's the result, in an essay at All Things Girl today. Here's a snippet to get you started. Read it, and maybe you'll be inspired to revisit an old friend from your bookshelves too.

Why shouldn’t we return to those wonderful stories we loved the first time we read them? Would we consign a Monet painting to a dark closet after seeing it once? Would we leave the concert hall after hearing a Beethoven Symphony and say “I know how that sounds so I need never listen to it again”? Of course we return to the music and works of art that move our spirits, bringing fresh eyes and ears to the familiar melodies and images. Why shouldn’t we do the same with literature?