What I’m Reading – Page 13 – Ann S. Epstein Writer

What I’m Reading: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

My Amazon and Goodreads review of A Visit From the Goon Squad (Rating 4) – A Crazy Quilt of Tattered Patches. It’s not a spoiler to say that in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, time is the “goon” of the title. Her inventive book ranges from several decades in the past to the almost-here future. Although two main protagonists are at the center, readers encounter the relationships and careers of a dozen characters whose lives are potholed by disappointments followed by regrets — or shrugs; lost love; tattered dreams crazily quilted by rare comebacks; and always the sound of encroaching youth eager to trample over their elders. Despite this bleak summary, the book is filled with humor, imagination, spot-on social skewering, and radiant shafts of beauty. Egan has empathy for her characters. They are flawed, some seriously, yet evoke sympathy if not affection. The narrative is alternatively presented as linked stories or a novel, it’s only problem. If, like me, you prefer to read each story in a collection independently, taking breaks between them, you may lose track of the characters, even the two main ones. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for the coherence of a novel, you may be frustrated by the dropped stitches and loose threads. Perhaps the book should be read twice, once each way. Reader’s choice whether the story mode or novel mode comes first. Either way, this complex and masterful book justifies a second reading.

What I’m Reading: Clock Dance by Anne Tyler

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Clock Dance (Rating 3) – Pleasant But Not Memorable. Like Willa née Drake, the protagonist of Anne Tyler’s Clock Dance, the novel meanders through years, relationships, and places. Readers follow along willingly enough, but more from a sense of obligation than anticipation or caring. Although the pace ticks up near the end, like an overwound clock, even that awkward incident proves too inconsequential to justify the uneventful minutes in the book’s preceding pages. The novel is pleasant and well-intentioned, like Willa herself, but ultimately not memorable.

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” (Stephen King)

What I’m Reading: The Library Book by Susan Orleans

My Amazon and Goodreads review of The Library Book (Rating 5) – Ablaze With Affection, Awe, and Archives. If you love to crack open a book, you will consume this attempt to crack open the case of the conflagration that consumed the Los Angeles Central Library in 1986. In Susan Orlean’s entertaining and absorbing The Library Book, the story of the fire is interwoven with the library’s history, its diverse patrons and their sprawling city, the impressive past and creative hope of tomorrow’s libraries, a cast of dedicated and endearingly eccentric librarians, the science of book burning and salvage, and the author’s early memories of visiting the library with her beloved mother. Orlean’s usual talent for empathy, imagination, and solid research glows here, luring you inside a subject you never thought you’d be curious about but are delighted to have discovered.

What I’m Reading: The Overstory by Richard Powers

My Amazon and Goodreads review of The Overstory (Rating 4) – The Disappearing Story in Overstory. We read in The Overstory by Richard Powers that “The best argument in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.” So does this novel succeed as a story, or is it a polemic about saving the environment leafed out as fiction? Powers intertwines his story of the life of trees with that of nine individuals whose parallel journeys intersect. Both plants and people possess the traits we see outside (aboveground) and complex networks hidden within (belowground). Unfortunately, what begins as a very good story indeed gets overwhelmed by Powers’ urge to tell us everything he knows about trees. The story alas submerged, does the book succeed as an environmental tract? Do we learn what we can do to halt or even reverse the destruction? The disheartening conclusion I drew from The Overstory is that humans should do nothing other than observe and listen (gather data), leaving it to the trees themselves to speak and act. Some may find this solution satisfying, even uplifting. But, while I will never again regard trees without reverence, I ultimately found the book disappointing — neither a good story nor a good path through the world’s forests and jungles.

What I’m Reading: The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner

My Amazon and Goodreads review of The Mars Room (Rating 5) – No One is a Zero. Rachel Kushner’s novel The Mars Room, set in a bleak women’s prison, is unexpectedly life-affirming. The story of Romy Hall, serving a life sentence without parole, focuses less on external prison conditions, although Kushner paints a nitty-gritty portrait, than on the family created by the inmates. Inevitable animosities arise, but so does genuine affection between inmates in a sterile environment that nevertheless teems with hope. Sharing Romy’s regret that she didn’t appreciate small pleasures while she had the chance, readers vow not to take their own daily existence for granted. We thrill to Romy’s brief brush with freedom and inhale the awareness that neither she, nor we, are zero.

What I’m Reading: Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Educated: A Memoir (Rating 5) – Breaking Free of the Ties that Bind. In Educated: A Memoir, Tara Westover recounts an isolated and ultra conservative Mormon upbringing that most of us would find bizarre. She nevertheless makes her story universally relatable by focusing on her deep attachment to family. Readers understand why it was so hard for her to break free of her towering, conspiracy-fueled father; resourceful yet compliant mother; and smart but abusive brother. Westover survives nearly insurmountable setbacks, or “pullbacks,” to home by facing the disappointments and embodying the strengths of those who raised her: her father’s determination, her mother’s faith, and her brother’s resolve. That the unschooled girl emerges as an intelligent and above all empathic woman is a testimony to the resilience of love and the power of truth. As a fiction writer who welcomes the challenge of making an unlikable character sympathetic (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I applaud Westover’s success in accomplishing this feat with her family.

What I’m Reading: Transcription: A Novel by Kate Atkinson

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Transcription: A Novel (Rating 3) – Slapstick When Sincerity is Wanted. Kate Atkinson seamlessly blends fact and fiction in Transcription: A Novel, a WW II tale of innocence and espionage. As a writer of historical fiction myself (see my Amazon author page and my Goodreads author page), I appreciate the deftness with which she blurs the two. At first, the wry humor of the young narrator, Julia Armstrong, is engaging. The cast of absurd characters makes one relish the folly of their treasonous and/or patriotic endeavors. However, the frivolous tone fails when events turn truly grim. After her unrelenting flippancy, Julia’s claims of distress or anxiety ring hollow. She remains too distant from the horrors she has wrought. Even when she herself is in danger, she appears to be narrating a spy movie for her own and the readers’ entertainment, rather than recounting an authentic drama. What the reader wants is sincerity, not slapstick.

What I’m Reading: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

My Amazon and Goodreads review of My Year of Rest and Relaxation (Rating 2) – Zzzzz. Critical accolades woke me to read Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation. As a writer, I relish making unlikable characters interesting, if not sympathetic, and eagerly anticipated this challenge as a reader. Alas, Moshfegh’s privileged narrator has none of the above mentioned virtues. Nor does she offer unique or redeeming insights into the everyday beauty that ameliorates life’s pain. She’s as trite and tedious as the mindless state of unconsciousness rendered by her Rite Aid warehouse of medications. The reader’s boredom is not even relieved by complex secondary characters; their nastiness wallows in stereotype. While Moshfegh has a good eye for detail and is in command of her craft, the elaborate shell she creates here is hollow. Emerging from the slumber induced by this novel won’t leave readers feeling refreshed, but with a sour taste best relieved by vigorous tooth brushing and starting the new day with a more worthy book.

What I’m Reading: Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (Rating 3): Exhaustive but Exhausting. Defying the adage that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, Andrew Solomon explores families in which a child lands yards away. Given that all children fall at least some distance from the parental trunk, the book is also valuable to a general readership. Balancing skepticism with openness and compassion, Solomon asks whether differences should be seen as illnesses or identities, curses or blessings, limitations or spurs to growth. When, if ever, is treatment warranted? There are no easy answers for individuals or a diverse society as a whole. The book’s main drawback is that it should have been edited down. A lot. By relating each of the hundreds of stories he collected, Solomon blurs them into an indistinguishable mass. Better to have chosen a few or crafted composites. By contrast, Solomon’s last chapter, about the creation of one family — his — is the most memorable. Although he is telling his own story, it is the least self-indulgent writing in the book.

What I’m Reading: White Houses by Amy Bloom

My Amazon and Goodreads review of White Houses (Rating 5): A Smooth Puree of Fact and Fiction. Fact #1 is that Eleanor Roosevelt is the famous person, dead or alive, with whom I most want to have dinner. (Although if she were setting the menu, I would follow the advice given to visitors when she was First Lady and eat beforehand.) Fact #2 is that Amy Bloom has concocted a gourmet meal in White Houses, a smooth purée blending truth and imagination that is both tender and raw, and intriguing and intrigue-filled. Eleanor’s portrayal matches the idealized figure of my dream dinner companion. The humanitarian champion comes across as authentic, compassionate, wise, and a lot looser than her elegant posture suggests. But Lorena Hickok is the star of the book. The talented journalist and First Lady’s purported lover is sharp-tongued, self-aware, and devoted, a scrappy woman who knows what it means to scrape bottom. As a writer of historical fiction myself, I urge readers on social media to “learn history through fiction.” I am also delighted if, when I finish creating a manuscript, I have forgotten what is and is not true. As a reader of White Houses, I can attest that Amy Bloom accomplishes both in this fine book.