The Sunday Salon: Summer Time

Summertime, and the livin' is easy...

It is, isn't it? Anyone who has ever been a slave to the school year (student, parent, teacher) has a special affinity for those precious three months of freedom. Days are loooonnng, creating a seemingly infinite number of possibilities. When I was a child, it meant staying outside until 9:00 at night, it meant hours riding my bicycle side by side with a girlfriend, not going anywhere particular,  just riding around talking and gossiping companionably. It meant queuing up for the Good Humor truck, slurping rainbow popsicles or Nutty Buddies. It meant slathering on Coppertone suntan lotion and jumping into the neighbor's pool or running through the backyard sprinkler.

But even as a child, reading was an important part of my summer fun. I always joined the library summer reading program, and usually cajoled several of my friends into joining me. We made weekly trips to the library, our carefully completed summer reading logs in hand, and picked out even more books which we'd bring home and pile up next to our chaise loungers under a shade tree. I would carry my reading on far into the night (or as far as my sleepy eyes would let me), my book propped surreptitiously under my pillow with only a tiny flashlight to guide me along its pages.

I noticed our local library has started a summer reading program for adults, in addition to their programs for children and teens. Reading is usually a solitary activity, but it's human nature to be drawn toward a group so there's something enticing about the idea of sharing this pastime with other readers. Probably why we like book clubs and readalongs, why I can so easily start conversations with strangers if they've got a book in hand. We recognize our compatriots and gravitate toward them.

Sometimes I make plans for my summer reading, but this year I'm winging it - whatever takes my fancy on trips to the library or bookstore. Right now I'm engrossed in Wild, Cheryl Strayed's breathtaking memoir about finding herself on the Pacific Crest Trail. It's an inspiring allegory for  life in general, and I highly recommend it if you haven't yet read it.

How about you? Do you read more in the summer? What's on your reading list?

The Sunday Salon: The Woman Upstairs - Finding Friends Between the Covers

Novelist Claire Messud was in the news recently when her testy reply to an interviewer from Publisher's Weekly provoked some debate among the literati. The interviewer commented  something to the effect that she "wouldn't want to be friends with Nora (the main character in Messud's new novel, The Woman Upstairs) because her "outlook was unbearably grim." Messud's response was thought provoking: "If  you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble," she told the interviewer. "We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn’t ‘Is this a potential friend for me?’ but ‘Is this character alive?’ ” The question seems to have taken Messud aback, but I know where the interviewer was coming from. I recently finished this novel which I found quite brilliant. I actually could see myself being friends- or at least friendly - with Nora. Most women I know can relate to Messud's concept of the The Woman Upstairs - the one who quietly takes care of others, follows the rules, puts her own needs on hold for the greater good of her family, her colleagues, her friends. Nora is angry about the way her life has turned out, and she is very outspoken about her anger. "My anger is prodigious," she says in the last pages of the book. "My anger is a colossus. I’m angry enough, at last, to stop being afraid of life, and angry enough … before I die to fucking well live. Just watch me.”

So while I  don't read to find friends per se, I do want to find someone in every book with whom I can be sympathetic, someone I understand on some level, someone who is relatable enough that I can picture myself sharing coffee and conversation with them on some imaginary occasion. Perhaps that part of what Messud was trying to get across? If an author can make their characters come alive, make them three-dimensional so that the reader relates to them on a myriad of life levels, then the relationship between writer-character-reader is much more complete.

I wonder if this isn't all part of a necessary schism between writer and reader. The writer wants to create characters with something to say, with something to demonstrate about life; while the reader tends to gravitate toward characters with whom they can relate, that make them feel - if not comfortable - than at least comparable.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that - the writer and reader have separate roles in this thing we call The Reading LIfe, and they usually join together quite nicely for a satisfactory experience all round.

TLC Book Tours: A Dual Inheritance

My favorite novels explore the legacy of families across generations, and how a family history is played out from one generation to the next. Joanna Herson's new novel, A Dual Inheritance, does all this and more. Beginning in 1963, when two young men first become acquainted during their senior year at Harvard, and throughout the intervening decades until the present, their paths and lives cross in interesting and sometimes heartbreaking ways. The book centers on the somewhat surprising friendship between Ed, a Jewish kid on scholarship who is unapologetically ambitious and girl-crazy, and Hugh, a Boston Brahmin who seems ambivalent about everything except Helen, his first and only love. Their friendship burns brightly and intensely, until one night when something happens which causes it to end just as abruptly. The two men diverge into different paths, but remain connected through and current of relationships unbeknowst to them.

Hershon's engaging story deftly examines the contrasting worlds of a rich Boston WASP, and a scrabbling Jewish boy eager to make a name for himself. Her characters are complex and interesting, and provide some rich insight into human relationships and class differences.

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

Buy A Dual Inheritance from Amazon.

The Sunday Salon: A Tale of Two Zeldas

 

I haven't seen the remake of The Great Gatsby, and I'm not sure I want to.

The trailer scares me a little.

I cut my cinematic Gatsby teeth on the 1974 version, with Robert Redford/Mia Farrow, all shimmery pastels and brooding looks accompanied by Nelson Riddle's score. I loved everything about that movie - I was 18 after all, and it was so romantic.  Baz Lurman's remake, with all it cinematic special effects and hopped up score frightens me.

Until I make a choice, I'm indulging my long standing interest in everything pertaining to the Fitzgeralds, and reading two recently published books about Zelda Fitzgerald, the fascinating woman who lived with F. Scott during his tumultuous and reckless writing career.

Z, A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, by Therese Fowler, is straightforward bio-fic (biographical fiction), imagining Zelda and Scott's courtship and early years of marriage. I raced through it, getting a great photographic portrait of this couple's marriage.

Ericka Robuck's Call Me Zelda comes at the subject from a slightly different angle. Robuck introduces a fictional psychiatric nurse who is Zelda's caretaker at the mental hospital in Baltimore. I love this approach, because the novel gives the reader a two-for-one story as we meet this very interesting character who has a story of her own to tell, one that seems to intersect in interesting ways with Zelda's.

I'm glad I decided to read them in the order I did  (Z first, followed by Call me Zelda), because I have the background on Zelda's entire life from Fowler's book to illuminate all the corners of Robuck's novel, which focuses on a briefer span of time.

Both books are great ways to satisfy an interest in this fascinating woman.

What are you reading this Sunday?

The Sunday Salon: Reflection

A sure sign the blog has been fallow for too long - a rash of spam comments on very old posts. Those things magically appear  like dust bunnies under the bed at the first sign of neglect. Like most people I've been a little pre-occupied this week,  mulling over the events in Boston and Texas and being quietly thankful to have spent an entirely uneventful week in my little corner of the world. But mindful that it could change any second, as it did for the people in Boston, and Watertown, and West.

It's all combined to make me feel a little melancholy.

My spirits were lifted Friday evening as I gathered with a group of bookish ladies for a lively discussion of The Orchardist. If you recall, I waxed rhapsodic about the book a few weeks ago. And while the general consensus among the group was to praise the writing, several people found the story simply too bleak to call enjoyable.

As much as I loved  The Orchardist, I could never call it a "feel good" book. It's rather like the events of the past week - it's a book that forces you to contemplate evil and sadness. It's a book that uncovers isolation and hopelessness and unfulfilled dreams. As we sat around the table and talked about these things, it occurred to me how often I gravitate to books like that, how I almost relish that kind of literary atmosphere. Of course there's sadness and pain and disillusionment and misunderstanding. I take it for granted in my books, like I've come to take it for granted in my world.

Having lived a lot "in my head" I know my own penchant toward the melancholy. My book choices reflect that - the memoirs and novels I read often focus on people who suffer, who seek spiritual and emotional sustenance. I don't like violence or cruelty - won't read a book that has any of that in it - but I do hunker into those books that delve into the depths of the human experience.

Of course this week I haven't had to read about it in fiction...it's been all over the news.

I wonder if other readers find themselves drawn to books that reflect their emotional temperature? Do you?