It's Monday and I'm not ready for September!!

Hello there, my fellow bibliophiles! How are things going?

I thought this week would be a bit calmer. But that didn't exactly happen. We took a family trip to see the Planes movie, my best friend came to visit, and I ended up filling in for the church pianist for a second Sunday. We also got all of David's information for kindergarten. We have the name of his teacher and orientation is scheduled for next week. If you need me this week, I will be the one looking at his baby pictures and trying to figure out where the time went...


Read This Week:

The Bookman's Tale
By Charlie Lovett


A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
By Anthony Marra


Posts from this Past Week:
It's Monday
Reviews of The Illusion of Separateness and The World of the End


Reading Now:

Fin and Lady
By Cathleen Schine

Up Next:

The Light in the Ruins
By Chris Bohjalian

What are you reading this week?

Review: The World of the End

The World of the End

By Ofir Touche Gafla

Tor Books June 2013

368 pages

From the library

Ben Mendelssohn is used to thinking about endings. He works as an epilogist, crafting the perfect endings for stories. But when his beloved wife Marian dies in an accident, Ben finds an ending that he cannot bear. Instead of continuing to grieve, Ben decides to join his wife in the afterlife. He finds himself in the Other World, a place that defies every notion that he held about the afterlife. While acclimating to his new surroundings. Ben sets out to find Marian with the help of a quirky private investigator. Their search is more complicated than Ben ever imagined - does Marian not want to be found or is she not in the Other World at all?

This is the sort of book that you really have to pay attention to while reading. The narrative begins with Ben, but several other characters take over at various points. We also meet a reclusive pair of brothers, a slightly unhinged nurse, and a couple who meet online as fans of an author. As with many dual narratives, we are left waiting until the last moment to find the connections between these characters. 

The World of the End raises a lot of interesting questions about life and death. How do we deal with losing someone we love? What is there after death? Is everyone happy after they die and what kind of existence will we have? In this version of the afterlife, there are a lot of rules and a lot of surprises. To start with, Ben discovers that everyone is naked. Each person is assigned an apartment based on the date and time they died and everyone communicates via godgets around their necks. A video of your entire life is provided, so that the residents of the Other World can relive the best (or worst) moments whenever they wish. 

At first glance, this story sounds sort of familiar but Gafla has done some very inventive things in his tale of life after death. While the intertwining storylines could be confusing. I was very interested by the ways that the characters and events connected. At its heart, though, this is a love story. Ben is relentless in his quest to find his wife, regardless of the consequences. While there were many twists and detours on his journey to find Marian, the ending felt somewhat trite and predictable to me.

This book was published almost a decade ago in Israel, but it is just now available to those of us reading in English. While it deals with serious issues, it always examines them through the lenses of grace and humor. The World of the End is a meditation on life and death, a zany mystery, and a love story all wrapped up in one. 

Review: The Illusion of Separateness

The Illusion of Separateness

By Simon Van Booy

Harper Collins June 2013

208 pages

From the library

Thank you, Simon Van Booy for restoring my faith in literary criticism. Several times this year, I have picked up a book that was "written by the greatest writer since sliced bread" or "the long awaited new story from the greatest writer of our age" and was terribly unimpressed. I was starting to think that either I was missing something or the literary vanguards and I were reading very different books. But then I read your newest book, The Illusion of Separateness, which has been heralded as "masterful" and "poetic." And they are so very right.

The Illusion of Separateness is a slim, quiet novel that reminds us that our decisions can have far-reaching consequences and that none of us are quite as alone as we might imagine. In this book, we meet a man who works at a retirement home while wondering about his past, a young soldier about to go to war, and a blind woman who has a special bond with her grandfather. Each of them come to a moment when their decision will change the course of their lives forever. Some of them are aware of the importance and others are not. Their choices reverberate through their lives, the lives of the people they love, and people they will never meet. 

Van Booy's writing is sparse, but it manages to convey so much. He beautifully captures the glories of love and the depths of fear and grief. It is evident that he views writing not as a job or a hobby, but as a craft. He finds the nuance and grace in each word and sentence to create a book that is so heartfelt and striking that you find yourself reading the same passages over and over again.

For example:

"He must die and come back to life. He would recite the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud by simply declaring the name of someone he loved. He would trap the contents of his life in the safety of a single word, like a bubble in the sea."

"He stood over the small boy and touched his hair. But the boy did not move - could not feel that he was being remembered.
Danny sat on the bed and traced the outline of cartoon shapes on the duvet. He stared at the plain sleeping face and felt the churn of dreams within.
And then Danny felt a sensation he had never before known, an intense pity that relieved him of an incredible weight. And the boy he reached for in the half dark, the head he touched was not his - but the soft, wispy hair of his sleeping father, as a child, alone, suffering, desperate, and afraid."

"I went to sleep thinking about it. I wondered who would live in our house now if I hadn't been born? I wondered who would have my seat on the bus every day into the city, who would sit next to Philip in his truck on long drives?
One day Philip and I will be old - and this flight home to New York will be a silent flickering, something half imagined. Grandpa John will have been dead for many years.
After Philip and I die, there will be no one left to remember Grandpa John and then no one left to remember us. None of this will have happened, except that it's happening right now.
There will be no Amelia, yet here I am.
I wonder how our bodies will change as we get old. I wonder how we'll feel about things that haven't happened to us yet."

In a lesser writer's hands, this idea would feel stale and overdone. We have all read many books where people have hidden connections, spanning generations and continents. But The Illusion of Separateness reminds us of these connections with gorgeous prose and unforgettable characters.

This is the sort of book that you want to gently slip into the hands of everyone you know and love so that they too can see this beautiful and painful life we all share through a new lens. The Illusion of Separateness is a novel that will be finding a home on my bookshelves and I look forward to reading the backlist of this truly talented writer. 

It's Monday and life is calming down?

I hesitate to title this post like that because I worry that the second I hit publish, things will get crazy again. Oh well. The husband and I got away for a few days to the fair state of Wisconsin where we learned that the people are incredibly friendly. Even going through airport security was a lovely experience. Who knew? Husband spent a lot of time in conferences and I spent a lot of time catching up on my reading and getting some work done. Also, Wisconsin looks like this sometimes:

After filling in for the pianist at church this Sunday, I am ready to breathe a bit and take in a week with no traveling and no frantic practicing. It sounds good right now...I will let you know how it turns out!

Read This Week:

The World of the End
By Ofir Touche Gafla


The History of Love
By Nicole Krauss


The Well of Lost Plots
By Jasper Fforde


Half The Church
By Carolyn Curtis James


Posts from this Past Week:
It's Monday
Reviews of Spell It Out, The Dark Road and The Shining Girls


Reading Now:

The Bookman's Tale
By Charlie Lovett

Up Next:

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
By Anthony Marra


What are you reading this week?

Review: The Shining Girls

The Shining Girls

By Lauren Beukes

Mullholland Books June 2014

375 pages

From the library 

Harper Curtis believes that he has a mission. He must kill each of the shining girls, young women whose eyes hold a special spark. But Curtis is not your run of the mill serial killer. He can travel through time to find each one of his victims. Kirby Mazrachi was not supposed to survive his vicious attack. But her faithful dog and determination kept her alive...barely. Now Kirby is using her tenacity and burgeoning journalistic skills to track down the man who tried to murder her. 

This book is obviously fiction. The idea of someone traveling through time via a magical, seemingly living house seems preposterous. But it also gives Kirby's story an added layer of terror: if your stalker can travel through time, how will you find him? And how can you ever escape him?

Lauren Beukes has a skill for writing multiple time periods well. The "shining girls" are a diverse group of women, each talented in a certain way. One of them is a brilliant scientist, another is a woman who literally shines as she dances, and another is an African American mother who is shattering racial stereotypes. We really get to know each of these women, although we know that none of them will have a happy ending. Beukes is an author who excels at writing historical fiction or writing a thriller and by mixing them seamlessly, we readers get the best of both worlds.

In the midst of the craziness, we get a small, quiet story of a friendship becoming something more. As Kirby searches for answers, she becomes an intern at a newspaper under the tutelage of Dan. He was the reporter who covered her case, but he now works at the sports desk because he went too far trying to figure out what happened to her. These two characters seem incredibly real - Kirby has been wounded both physically and mentally by her attack and she is simultaneously tough and extremely vulnerable. Dan begins as a sort of big brother figure, guiding her through the ins and outs of reporting and trying to keep her out of trouble. Of course, he eventually realizes that his motives are much different from those of a big brother, but he cares enough to not want to cause her more pain. Their tentative relationship is one of the highlights of a carefully created story.

There are a lot of "whys" that are not explained in this book, which can be a positive for some readers and a negative or others. Curtis stumbles upon this magical house and never really finds out why it works the way that it does, why he is the one the house has chosen, or who or what is behind the magic of time travel. The why is not necessarily the point of the story, but having so much time from Curtis' point of view without any real explanations can become frustrating.

The Shining Girls is a hybrid of all the stories you love best - friendship becoming something more, a meticulously detailed historical story, and a creepy thriller that makes you keep the lights on when you go to bed. Lauren Beuekes is a very talented writer and Kirby's story is one that I will not soon forget. 

Review: The Dark Road

The Dark Road

By Ma Jian

Translated by Flora Drew

Penguin June 2013

375 pages

From the library

Meili is pregnant with her second child. What should be a time of celebration is overshadowed by danger. Meili and her husband Kongzi live in China and they don't have a permit to have a second child. Kongzi is determined to have a son and continue the proud line of Confucius. When family planning officials start to close in on their village, the couple flee with their daughter Nannan. They travel down the Yangtze River, living in deplorable circumstances and always looking over their shoulders for the authorities who will rip their family apart. 

This is the first book in a long time that I actually had to convince myself to keep reading. This book is incredibly graphic and dark. The knowledge while that Meili may be fictional, her plight is not makes it even more difficult to stomach. Family planning officials have the ability to take you off the street to sterilize you, insert an IUD, or perform a late term abortion. They will then send you on your way...with the bill, of course. 

Meili is caught between two forces - her husband's determination to have a son and the government's determination to control their family. While the government may be cruel, her husband is equally so as he puts his desire to have a son over the safety of the family he already has. "When she met him at seventeen, she believed marriage was for ever, that the government protects and cares for the people, and that husbands protect and care for their wives. But as soon as she got married, these naive beliefs were shattered. She discovered that women don't own their bodies: their wombs and genitals are battle zones over which their husband and the state fight for control - territories their husbands invade for sexual gratification and to produce male heirs, and which the state probes, monitors, guards and scrapes so as to assert its power and spread fear. These continual intrusions into her body's most intimate parts have made her lose her sense of who she is. All she is certain of is that she is a legal wife and an illegal mother."

Throughout the book, Jian changes the point of view from Meili to the spirit of her unborn child. This gives him the opportunity to have some omniscient narration alongside Meili's version of events. This technique is jarring and I was often tempted to skip over it in order to get back to the main narrative. However, I can see how Jian thought using the infant spirit would both give a voice to the fetus whose fate is the focus of this book and illustrate the reverence that many Chinese people (such as Kongzi) have for the spirits and their ancestors.

The Dark River truly exhibits the dissonance of life in rural China. While Meili talks about becoming a businesswoman and longs for certain high-end purses and shoes, she also makes dinner by scraping the skins of potatoes with a shard of glass. The contrast between what she sees and the little that she has makes her story all the more heartbreaking. In some instances, modern China looks just like the modern US. But in the darkest moments of this book, readers are reminded of the horrors that are feared daily by Chinese women. The Dark Road is not a book you will soon forget. "If a panda gets pregnant, the entire nation celebrates, but if a woman gets pregnant she's treated like a criminal. What kind of country is this?" 

Review: Spell It Out

Spell It Out: The Curious, Enthralling and Extraordinary Story of English Spelling

By David Crystal

St. Martin's Press June 2013

292 pages

From the library 

Sit tight, beloved readers. I am about to show the full extent of my nerdiness because I found this book fascinating. 

Everyone remembers the importance of spelling in elementary school. We lined up in front of the wall, ready to face the gauntlet known as the spelling bee. One by one, we mixed up some letters or forgot one entirely. Finally, one student was left standing and won the designation of spelling bee champion...at least for that week.

Spelling is important to us. Writing words correctly indicates some level of education as well as competence at your job. But spelling in the English language is notoriously difficult. Because the origin of English words are from so many different countries, rules in our language are almost always (frequently) broken. If words came from Latin, they maintained some of their rules while words from the French language tended to stay close to their original spellings as well. 

In his newest book, Spell It Out, linguistics professor David Crystal argues that spelling is difficult for us because we are studying it the wrong way. "Why don't rules work? Partly because history has produced so many exceptions, but also because spelling has been viewed in isolation from the rest of language. Spelling, however, is an integral part of language, and its forms can be understood only if we see the way they interact with the forces that come from pronunciation, grammar and word-building. We cannot solve the problem of spelling without knowing something about how the rest of language works." 

Crystal takes his readers way back into time to meet the early monks who puzzled over the best way to write down this emerging new language. Writing words phonetically proved to be very difficult, especially when words from all over the world became part of the vernacular. In short chapters, Crystal explains the history of our language and the basics of linguistics. He also utilizes examples from poetry and literature about the difficulties of spelling. 

This author is not content to look at the history of spelling. He speculates about the future as well. One of the most interesting developments is the way computers and the internet are changing the way we spell. Obviously the frequent use of spell check has negated our need to really learn spelling. Perhaps more interesting is the way internet searches are normalizing alternative spellings. If a large number of people "vote with their fingers," as Crystal puts it, and type something incorrectly into a search engine, does it become an accepted spelling? 

Crystal argues that we do a disservice to children and those attempting to learn English spelling for the first time when we present them with long lists of words or columns of words that follow the rules contrasted with those that are exceptions. Instead, if we teach new spellers the way that our spelling evolved, spelling will become more intuitive and less of a confusing chore. This is a great resource for anyone who teaches spelling, either to children or to people learning English as another language. 

This delightful author manages to be both light and in-depth as he explores what is obviously one of his favorite topics. This book is often chuckle-out-loud funny. (I know - you don't want to explain that you are laughing about spelling...but you will.) If you have any interest in the way English spelling came to be and how it has evolved, this is a book you won't want to miss.