On These Violent Reminders

Sometimes the world is just too much. Too beautiful, too big, too brutal, too small.

After the massacre at Newtown, I tried to think that this was just the world's nudge to remember to slow down. (To those of us who were lucky enough to watch the tragedy unfold at a distance anyway.) It was a reminder to pay attention. To appreciate, to love. But now, just a few months later, that nudge feels like a shove. Like something violent. Like a message. (Did you know that the last mile of yesterday's marathon was dedicated to the Newtown families? God. It feels like a stampede of tragedies, one upon another upon another.)

As a writer, I feel like I am constantly trying to contain the world with my words, to control it. In my photography, I am simply trying to capture it. To slow it down. To savor it in gorgeous delicate increments. It seems I have made a career of this impulse to just hold on. I am consumed by it. But sometimes the world is too much and too loud with its reminders that no matter what I do, I can't contain it, control it. I can't protect the people I love (no matter how hard I try), and worse, I can never ever, ever appreciate it enough.

I don't know what the remedy is for this feeling. It's daunting. And awful. I feel sometimes as though I am always anticipating the next tragedy. Expecting it. Imagined grief haunting so many moments.

I can only imagine what the families, all those families so similar to my own yet now so profoundly different, must feel. Wishing they had slowed down, paid closer attention, loved more. As if there is some magic spell that might have kept them safe if they did.

The responsibility of holding onto something as ephemeral as life, of cherishing each fleeting moment, is too big. If this is, indeed the message to be taken by those of us who, once again are the lucky ones, then how on earth are we supposed to heed it?

The Dinner by Herman Koch: A Review

The Dinner by Herman Koch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3 1/2 stars?

I'm beginning to think I am just a sucker for an unreliable narrator. This book, like SCHRODER (Amity Gage) and DEFENDING JACOB (William Landay), unfolds via a first person narrator who first establishes our sympathy and then systematically undoes every bit of this trust.

The premise is clever (though, perhaps, a bit too clever): two couples, both parents of a fifteen year old boy, meet for dinner at an upscale Amsterdam restaurant. The two men are brothers, and one of the brothers (not the narrator), is in the running to become the next Prime Minister. However, they have come together this night to discuss something their two boys have done. I won't spoil this by going into detail, but rather leave the grisly discovery to you.

I loved the way the mystery unfolded, and all the little twists and turns along the way. I do think there were some significant plausibility problems: would someone of Serge Lohman's stature choose such a public venue for this discussion? Would Claire really, really do this? What is this mysterious mental illness that can be detected via amniocentesis? And had no one but Paul really discovered that youtube video??

Regardless, I found it really riveting. It is flawed, but worth the read.

The Love Song of Jonny Valentine by Teddy Wayne: A Review

The Love Song of Jonny Valentine by Teddy Wayne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4 1/2 stars. What a smart and topical book.

THE LOVE SONG OF JONNY VALENTINE about an eleven year old pop-star (a la Bieber) is actually (underneath the biting cultural commentary) a tender story about a boy in search of his father. We follow Jonny on his cross-country mega-tour and on his quest to reconnect with his dad.

The first-person voice is pitch-perfect (sorry)...Jonny is simultaneously media savvy, jaded, and somehow still wonderfully naive. At times, this incongruity is positively heart-breaking. I think the characters were exquisitely drawn as well.

Heart Like Mine by Amy Hatvany: A Review

Heart Like Mine by Amy Hatvany
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It seems like every time I pick up one of Amy's books, I am reluctant to put it down without finishing, and there are few books I can say this about. I think this is due to a magical combination of readability (though certainly not sacrificing complexity of character) and Amy's tremendous empathy for the people who live within her pages.

Grace has never wanted children. But when she meets Victor (who has two children of his own), she reluctantly accepts the position of part-time step-mother. However, when Victor's ex dies suddenly and mysteriously, she is thrust into the very role she never wanted to fill.

The novel is told in alternating chapters between Grace, Ava (Victor's 13 year old daughter), and Kelli (the ex). There's a nice mystery at the heart of the story which keeps the pages turning. I found myself sympathetic to all three characters due to the sensitivity with which they were treated by their author.

Really looking forward to her next one as well (there's a sneak peek at the back of this book).

Hold Still by Nina LaCour: A Review

Hold Still by Nina LaCour
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a story about a particular kind of grief, set in the aftermath of a suicide. Pretty grim subject matter, I know. But LaCour's handling of it is deft. The novel is wonderfully raw and authentic, without ever becoming maudlin.

After Ingrid kills herself, her best friend, Caitlin, is left with a few precious (and dangerous) artifacts: a diary, and the photos that Ingrid, an aspiring photographer, left behind. And by studying these entries and images, Caitlin comes to understand everything she didn't know (and perhaps couldn't know) about her friend when she was alive. Over the course of the following year, Caitlin struggles to make sense of what has happened and to redefine herself in Ingrid's absence. The other characters in the book are complex, and their responses to Caitlin (and her nearly debilitating grief) are credible and heart-breaking.

There is both photography and a tree house, which is pretty much all it takes for me to love a book, but this is a good one. And I would recommend it to both teens and adults alike, particularly to anyone who has lost someone to suicide.

Schroder by Amity Gaige: A Review

Schroder by Amity Gaige
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel opens in a familiar way, "What follows is a record of where Meadow and I have been since our disappearance." For anyone who has read Lolita, the parallels (between this "confession," between these characters -- Humbert Humbert and Erik Schroder, between the two kidnappings) are obvious. However, Schroder is not a pedophile, but a desperate father who has abducted his own daughter. He is also a liar. His entire life a fiction. The novel, written in the epistolary form to his ex-wife, Laura, slowly unravels the elaborate construct of his life.

There was so much I loved about this novel. I think that Gaige has done an incredible job with the unreliable narrator. I found myself both captivated and disturbed by him. I longed to trust him, only to have that trust undermined. The writing is gorgeous, and the scenes vivid.

Shroder's "research" on pausology (or the power and nature of pauses and silence) was interesting, but I wonder if it might have resonated more near the end of the novel. (I kept waiting for his research to somehow come to fruition...but it didn't, for me anyway.)

As a native Vermonter, I would be remiss if I didn't point out a couple of glitches. 1. There are no billboards in Vermont. 2. The depiction of the "public academy" in St. Johnsbury (and the image of the bedraggled parents waiting to pick up their children) rang false. St. Johnsbury Academy is a private high school, with a huge population of dorm students, and I couldn't understand why a) parents of teens would be picking them up from school, this presumes the parents are not working b) there were so many "visibly pregnant" mothers...really? Women with teenage kids? Anyway...probably only fellow Vermonters would take issue with this.

I also wonder (and hoping someone might chime in here) about the shift from the epistolary form of the novel to a second person near the end (where Schroder appears to be speaking to himself)...and then the several pages of what seems to be an apology (I let you down.) Because of the earlier shift in who "you" is, I didn't know whether to read this as directed toward Laura or toward himself...or perhaps, this is intentional. Regardless, it was the only moment (other than the two moments mentioned above) where I felt pulled away from the fictional dream.

I definitely recommend this book. I really, really enjoyed it.

Goblin Secrets by William Alexander: A Review

Goblin Secrets by William Alexander
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this to my daughter's 3rd grade class, selecting it because of its NBA win. Though while the story was an interesting one (a child searching for his lost brother becomes involved with a troupe of performing goblins), I found it to be, in some ways inaccessible to the nine year old set (and sometimes, even to me). I never felt I had a full grasp on the rules of this world. It seemed I was always trying to process some new and strange detail about the fictional Zombay and its inhabitants (creatures made of gears, masks that replicate rivers and cities, pigeons inhabited by the cruel matriarch from whom Rownie has escaped). This took away from the genuine thrill of Rownie's search for his brother.

I don't typically read fantasy novels, so please take these comments with that in mind. This might prove to be just magical to some readers. (And certainly, some children in the class to seemed to enjoy it more than others.)