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.

Requiem, Mass. by John Dufresne

I wish I knew how to describe John Dufresne's style, because it is my favorite kind of writing. It's fast and furious, and a little disjointed, sort of like a busy Saturday morning with lots of coffee. I devoured this book, both because I loved it, and because I felt like I had to read really fast to keep up.

Where I heard about this book: I found it on the library shelves. With a name like that, who could resist?

What I thought of this book: Terrific. 4 1/2 stars.

What this book is about: Wow. Hard to distill. It's told from the point of view of a middle-aged author, who originally writes the story as fiction, then is convinced to take the plunge, admit it's a memoir, and use real names, places and events. It follows his childhood in a wildly dysfunctional but entertaining extended family. This story is interspersed with segments of the protagonist's adult life. I must admit that I considered a few of these me-as-an-adult sections to be unwelcome distractions from the more compelling story of his childhood. My only other complaint about the novel is that there were so many characters that I had trouble keeping them all straight, particularly the family whose names are all colors. Otherwise this was a thoroughly enjoyable book.

I discovered that the main character in Requiem, Mass., Johnny, bears more than a passing resemblance to John Dufresne. I love the way the author talks, in interviews, about memoir and fiction. I'm paraphrasing here, but in essence he says that memoir is always half-truth, as memory is unreliable at best, and always biased. Fiction, he maintains, is in many respects more truthful; an author knows his characters better than he can ever know himself, and events are crisply imagined, not dulled by hazy recollection.

Here is an interview transcript I really enjoyed - John Dufresne sounds like someone who is easy to talk to; a serious writer who describes his profession in terms the rest of us can understand.

Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout

It's annoying to dislike a book because of the way it has been marketed, but there you go. I liked several of these stories, but I really hated the conceit of stringing them together by including the title character in each. Olive Kitteredge is tangential, to say the least, in quite a few of the stories, set in a coastal town in Maine. I'm not sure why the author chose to use her as the thread - the location itself seems to me to be a much more reasonable point of connection.

So I disliked the structure, and could have done without a few of the stories. What I really liked about this book, though, was the depiction of life in a small northern town. A native of the upper reaches of New England, I am drawn to literature that describes the gritty, spectacular landscape, as well as the quirky mentality of its residents. Russell Banks does a really terrific job depicting New England in all its beauty and ugliness, as does Carolyn Chute. In Olive Kitteredge, Elizabeth Strout gives us a realistic picture of year-round life in small-town Maine.



Where I heard about this book: It won the Pulitzer last year.

What I thought of this book: Good. 3 stars.


What this book is about: A collection of short stories in which the prickly, usually unpleasant Olive Kitteredge either features or makes an appearance.

I like the subjects of love and lust as seen from the point of view of the beyond-middle-age set. There are several happy but not really all that great marriages at the heart of these stories, a topic which I always find fascinating.