Plays Well With Others, by Alan Gurganus

This is a narrator who needs Valium. The frenetic pace of his prose matches that of the striving, hard-scrabble, tumbling lives of the friends he loves so fiercely.  In the club world of 1980's New York there are a lot of drugs going around, but tranquilizers are not among them.

An account of the burgeoning gay arts scene, this book is a paean to the young men who briefly lived and died, mothlike, during an epidemic that rivaled the Black Plague. Hartley Mims is an exile, escaped from his homophobic southern roots to the mecca of artists, performers, scholars, and egotists. He and his friends are close in a way that may be possible only for expats who never even felt at home at home. Their passion for one another is matched only by their competition to be the best artist, the most beloved, the first at everything. Hartley misses first by a hair, and suffers from the great good luck of being the last. Happy, and wondering if that's a decent substitute for genius.

This book made me a little bit tired with its relentless pace, but I liked it a lot. It's fun to read a voice that's so entirely unlike your own. I could never keep up with the young Hartley and his muses, but I wouldn't mind hanging out with the middle-aged version.

Mink River, by Brian Doyle

Did you ever want to live in Cicely, Alaska? The town, the setting for the TV series Northern Exposure, was full of quirky individuals of vastly different types who somehow all came together to give their town and one another an incredible sense of community. Neawanaka, Oregon is just this kind of town. The inhabitants are mostly scraping by, some with luck and joy, others in more dire circumstances.

The dozen characters we get to know intimately (among them a jaded bar owner, an opera-loving police officer, and a beloved sculptress), weave around one another in a way that is possible only in small towns. Ultimately there is something safe and lovely about being known by everyone you encounter, even if it means you are forever categorized by your parent's bad behavior, loose grasp on reality, or saintliness.

Mink River is almost stream of consciousness, with the dialogue unindicated by anything as distracting as quotation marks. Although that can be hard to follow, in this case it mostly isn't. I liked that the difference between a character's thoughts and spoken words was sometimes hard to distinguish. There are a lot of people doing a lot of heavy thinking in this book, though they go about their lives as though they were unburdened by philosophy.

The touch of magical realism the author injects is in keeping with the slightly otherworldy sense of the place and people. In a town where the Department of Public Works considers its main objective to be the happiness of the inhabitants, a talking crow is no big thing. There's a gentle balance of gritty realism and fanciful possibility that keeps this book both grounded and delightful.

Finally, Brian Doyle's lovely use of language. There is a lot of old world in the flow of words across the page; Irish and Native American DNA are intertwined in what is essentially a long, unmetered ballad. I love an author who will create the word he needs if it doesn't already exist.


In the end, the only real problem I had with Mink River was keeping some of the characters straight. The author has a penchant for nicknames and descriptors, which can take a little while to sort out. The main issue for me, however, was that I kept mixing up the two main couples in the story, one the daughter and husband of the other. These relationships were so similar that I'd forget if I was encountering the older or the younger generation. Call me a cynic, but it is, sadly, hard for me to believe in such marital bliss striking the same spot twice.

November

November has caught me reading several books at a time, which is always tricky - once I divert my attention it's hard to say whether it will ever return. 


I started An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England: A Novel, by Brock Clark, but only got through about half. The tone charmed me at first, but soon grated. He's sort of a modern-day Vonnegut, and his novel would benefit from Vonnegut-like brevity. 



I'm mid-way through Chang and Eng, by Darin Strauss, which I'm enjoying but seem to have put down for a little while. More about that one in the future.



We the Animals, by Justin Torres, is a first novel and a truly wonderful book, which always bodes well for the future. It's very short, which lets you gulp it down in a sitting or two; just the way it should be experienced. This story of the youngest of three bear-cub brothers and their very young parents is emotionally charged, to say the least. It's one of those very visceral novels, with no real dialogue, and a compelling immediacy. Highly recommended. It really deserves a post of its own, but may not get one.


I read two kid's books this month:


The Liberation of Gabriel King, by K.L. Going, is a good story, well-told, about a fearful boy and his best friend in the just-starting-to-segregate South of the 60's. 

I Am the Ice Worm, by Maryann Easly was so-so; interestingly set in the Arctic, but spotty in terms of plot and character. My book-obsessed 10-year-old liked it.

Now we're into December, and I'm reading yet another great book. Stay tuned... 

My Lousiana Sky, by Kimberly Willi Holt

This is the kind of book I devoured by the dozen when I was a middle-schooler. On the young end of the YA spectrum, it features a misunderstood heroine on the brink of adolescence, struggling with issues that are just a little harder than average.

This charming novel has an interesting twist on the outcast theme: 12-year-old Tiger's parents are what is currently called developmentally disabled. In 1957, when the book takes place, they were referred to as retarded, or worse. When Tiger's grandmother dies, she's invited to move to the city to live with her glamorous aunt. But there's the question of who will take care of her parents, especially now that her grief-stricken mother refuses to bathe or leave the house.

Tiger is a red-headed tomboy, which is probably reason enough for her to be ignored by the popular girls. Add her embarrassing parents, and you can just imagine the catty comments. Her mother, however, is sweet and kind, her father hard-working and gentle. This is a classic don't-judge-a-book-by-its-cover story, with the good and pure ultimately winning out over the mean and incompetent. Oh, that life could mirror formulaic children's literature!

I'd recommend this to girls in the 10-13 age group. It's thought-provoking in a quick-read kind of way, with a very satisfying it's-okay-to-be-yourself message.

The Condition, by Jennifer Haigh

This is possibly the most unredemptive book I've read this year. I am of the general belief that people don't intrinsically change, that they really embody their original characters until the end. But still. Jeez. This family is completely mummified; none of them are going to change an iota over the next several millenia.

Okay, in fact there are a few moments of almost enlightenment, but they don't seem to help the enlightenees in any noticeable way. Lifelong grudges and misunderstandings are left intact, feelings of helplessness and inadequacy persist.

And the attitude about aging! Ms. Haigh was born 3 years after me, putting her at 43. Here is the term she uses to describe the older generation of the family, now ensconced in their late 50's: aged. And then there's this, from a character just turned 60:

Was this old age, then: the end of all wanting? ... Whatever he'd desired from life had
been gotten, or not; his wishes satisfied, or not. His wishes - Paulette's too - were       exhausted.

It's not that this book is bad; it's pretty well-written, and is an interesting examination of how a family can break down under a combination of bad news and rigid personalities. Ultimately, my issue with the book is that I didn't really like any of the characters. I felt empathy for all of them, and I rooted for each one as they seemed on the verge of breaking away from their iron-clad trajectories. But I'd hate to be trapped in the back seat with any one of them.

Ninth Ward, by Jewell Parker Rhodes

This book was recommended to me by my thirteen year old daughter, possibly because she wanted help with the paper she had to write about it. It's a very charming story that touches on some difficult topics. It's girl power at its finest, which I always like.

Lanesha is an orphan being raised by the elderly midwife who birthed her moments before her teen aged mother died. Mama Yaya is a seer, and an equally feared and revered caretaker of the entire neighborhood. Lanesha is an outsider, an odd, brainy, watchful girl who has never had a friend. As Hurricane Katrina threatens the Gulf Coast, her life becomes as tumultuous as the approaching storm. This is a story about overcoming your ideas about your place in the world, as well as celebrating your own untapped strength.

My daughter didn't like the ending, which does rather leave you guessing about the ultimate fate of both Lanesha and her new friends. I kind of liked it, because the aftermath of heroics, like storms, seems a lot less interesting than the acts of bravery themselves. I finished the book with the feeling that Lanesha will manage pretty much anything that comes her way.

Chilling satellite images of Hurricane Katrina.

Room, by Emma Donoghue

For a long time I was scared to read this book. The premise seemed so horrifying that I couldn't bear to open it, despite its fabulous reviews. I'm so glad I changed my mind.

I do a fair amount of reading, and I am constantly amazed by authors who reimagine the world in totally new ways. This is a family story unlike any I have ever read; despite the odd circumstances, Emma Donoghue tells of a an existence that is as measured and predictable as any other. She gets at the truth of our relationships to one another, and at the broad range of reactions to trauma  among different people.

The basic story is that of Jack and Ma. They live in an 11'x11' room. Ma has been held prisoner here for seven years, since the age of nineteen, but to Jack, Room is the world. It's filled with all the things they want and need, and the rest of the world is relegated to to being "only tv." The story is told by Jack, and opens on his fifth birthday. So here we have two really incredible authorial feats: making this situation seem believable, and telling a complex story using the diction of a pretty literate five year old. Emma Donoghue pulls it off on both counts.


I really love the manner in which the author tracks reactions to this odd and terrible situation. Ma is an exemplary parent, whose ability to create a very normal life for her child, despite their situation, is admirable.  She's damaged, though; how could she avoid it? As the story progresses, we see the ripple effect of the one incredible central fact of the story, namely that a monster trapped a child, then that child's child, in a tiny room, indefinitely.

I absolutley refuse to spoil a moment of this book for any future readers, so I will just tell you to read it, read it, read it. You will be amazed.

This is a 3D image of Room, which will give you an idea of the scope of Jack and Ma's world. Wow. Tiny. Here is a short interview with the author, in which she explains how she created Jack, and gave him his extraordinary voice.