Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

Somewhere along the way, I've missed out on reading certain books that it seems everyone else has read. For example, on my reading list right now is "anything by Jane Austin or a Bronte sister" because that covers a class of books from which (embarrassingly) I have not read anything. Angela's Ashes is another example. In retrospect I may have skipped this book intentionally: every once in a while there is a book that is passed around as a must-read and sometimes it is good (Kite Runner, Life of Pi) but usually it is indicative of how little America reads (Da Vinci Code). Don't get me wrong, I liked the Da Vinci Code and I read most of Oprah's picks, but I don't always find the most hyped books (even the more serious-looking "trade paperbacks") to be the best. I think I had categorized Angela's Ashes as such, obviously incorrectly. Maybe the Pulizter Prize should have tipped me off.

Angela's Ashes is a memoir about growing up in abject poverty in Ireland. McCourt's family begins in America and then as economic and family pressures build, they move back to Ireland when McCourt is five. He chronicles different events in his life through age nineteen; at that point he returns to the U.S., where he lives now. (His story continues in Tis, which is now on my reading list.)

I was shocked by the conditions under which he lived. In a world of antibacterial soap and Tupperware and "use by" dates, it is hard to internalize what his life was like, although he describes it in detail. There are heartbreaking scenes throughout the book such as his licking the newsprint that fish and chips were brought home in, and flipping a mattress to confuse the fleas. Thus, I was shocked at how much humor he found in his childhood. As a narrator, his trustworthiness is reasonably confirmed by his self-depricating style. As Frank in the story gets older, McCourt writes with an increasing amount of self-awareness and humor. For example, this passage is from the night before his first day at work:

"The next worse thing is to be out in the backyard filling the kettle from the tap with the moon beaming away and Kathleen Purcell from next door perched up on the wall looking for her cat. God, Frankie McCourt, what are you doin' in your grandmother's dress? and you have to stand there in the dress with the kettle in your hand and explain how you washed your clothes which are hanging there on the line for all to see and you were so cold in the bed you put on your grandmother's dress and your uncle Pat, The Abbot, fell down and was brought home by Aunt Aggie and her husband, Pa Keating, and she drove you in to the backyard to fill this kettle and you'll take off this dress as soon as ever your clothes are dry because you never had nay desire to go through life in your dead grandmother's dress."

Alcohol played a very prevalent role in the lives of the characters he wrote about. This aspect of the story reminded me of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, where Francie's father is an alcoholic who can't hold down a job. The similarities between the themes in the two books was strong; despite TGiB being fiction, the two books bridge the geographical distance between the U.S. and Ireland to tell a single narrative of poverty and culture. At the beginning of Angela's Ashes, McCourt summarizes the story of the Irish:

"People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless, loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years."

Indeed, McCourt tells the story of an entire demographic just by telling his own life story. Recommended.

Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading by Maureen Corrigan

I picked up this book at Barnes and Noble on New Year's Day because the title was the story of my life. The first line of the book was also familiar: "It's not that I don't like people. It's just that when I'm in the company of others - even my nearest and dearest - there always comes a moment when I'd rather be reading a book." so I bought it.

Corrigan is the book critic for NPR's Fresh Air. I hadn't heard her on the radio before reading this book, although I have my ears open now. In this book, Corrigan weaves autobiographical pieces of her life with three genres of books: "female extreme adventures", detective novels, and secular Catholic martyr tales. She recommends several books (of these genres and others) throughout the narrative and provides an extensive booklist in the back. What I liked most about these recommendations was that she didn't have any shame in what she enjoyed, beach reading and classics alike.

This book inspired me to engage more with the books that I read. I envied the fact that she was able to place her life through books. For example, she discussed her preoccupation with detective novels immediately following 9/11. I might be able to figure out what I was reading then but I've never thought that much about the significance of it. I guess I've always viewed reading as something that I treated myself to, that nobody questioned my interest in (because reading is noble, right?), and thus something I didn't bother to assign significance to.

Reading Corrigan's book, however, I was struck by having lost the opportunity for introspection offered by deeper engagement with the books I so addictively read. The last time I felt this type of "book envy" was when a college roommate showed me a book list she had kept since childhood with titles in her book journal like, "Books read during the summer of 1990."

Recently I read Kim Chernin's The Hungry Self, although I left it out of the blog with a handful of other "body image books" because I thought they would seem repetitive. However, Chernin's book includes the following passage about reading:

"I find that there was a book, written by a woman, that helped me greatly during a difficult summer in my early twenties. As it happens, it was not a book about women and food. It did not come right out and tell me that an eating disorder was a serious form of identity crisis. But it scattered seeds, it turned my thinking in a particular direction, it set me dreaming and musing as I made my way through its pages. Reading it changed me in ways I would not then have been able to specify. But that is the way with reading. it gets in under the skin, and there, in darkness, it begins to prepare the work of fully conscious understanding. At the time, one reads and loses oneself in the reading and forgets to look up when the telephone rings, and one is transformed beyond one's wildest hopes and imaginings by this act of slipping into the aching silences of oneself, brought there by another woman's words."

There is something that Chernin is doing with books, that Corrigan is doing with books, that I am missing out on.

I also liked Corrigan's book (err, probably "I also liked Corrigan") because she was feminist in her behavior but not in rhetoric. Like certain professors and coworkers I've had, she was feminist in that she was a woman "doing her thing" and doing it well, not because she strived to be "a woman doing her thing". She had no shame in her identification with female heroines and themes. I definitely struggle with feeling like my reading list (or my behavior or my appearance or my...) is sometimes "too female."

Finally, I liked Corrigan because she had made her love of books her life. Here I will replace the ever-so-refined "envious" with the punchy "jealous." There are plenty of reasons why I ended up with books as a pastime rather than a career, but I don't always things they're good ones. By her own admission Corrigan is incredibly lucky to have built a career around books and it gives me (again) inspiration to engage more with books. "I have a great job--or, to be more accurate, cluster of jobs--for a bookworm," says Corrigan.

Recommended for fellow bookworms.

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

This is a remarkable book.

It's hard for me to separate the quality of the book itself from the history surrounding its publishing, so I won't try. Nemirovsky was an accomplished novelist living in France during WWII. She was also a Russian Jew by birth, so before finishing the book, she was deported to Auschwitz and killed. Her daughters, not yet in their teens, had the presence of mind to pack her notebook in their suitcase when they were hidden to live out the duration of the war. It was not until the late 1990's that it was further examined, and archivists realized that two-thirds of a book (as well as notes on the rest of it) was among its contents.

That book was published, with few changes, as Suite Francaise. I have no opinion about whether I would have liked the book without the history, but as it stands I really enjoyed reading it. The first half of it describes the journeys of various Parisians who leave Paris - on foot, bicycle, horseback, car - as the Germans begin to occupy France. The characters are representative of a wide spectrum of classes within France and the time, and the human spirit, from generosity to selfishness, is well-depicted.

Reading this part of the book reminded me somewhat of reading Huck Finn. I hazily remember an excellent high school English teacher trying to get us to understand the journey that Huck takes by drawing the river on the blackboard. I didn't really "get" what he was trying to teach us at the time, but I wish I had paid more attention, because this book's "journey" story surely had some shape that I did not pick up on.

The second part of the book was about a small French village that was occupied by German soldiers. The story follows a few of the complex relationships arising from the occupation. I had never thought about what it meant for a village to be occupied, so I enjoyed reading this half too.

There are two other gems to be found in this book as well. One is the author's personal notes on what she had written so far and what she planned to do with the rest of the book. She saw in her book all the flaws that frustrated me when I was reading (e.g., too many disconnected characters, missing connections between parts one and two). She also suggested continuations for the book that I did not even begin to imagine. As such a book lover, I was delighted with the chance to read an author's work-in-progress and accompanying notes.

The final part of the book is quite sad. Many people have compared the experience of reading this book with reading Anne Frank's diary, and I did not have that feeling while I was reading it. There was very little talk of Hitler or Aryans or Jews within the book; mostly it was about the French's reactions to occupation. However, the last part of the book chronicles dozens of letters between Nemirovsky, her husband, her publisher, and various other people in her life as the situation for Jews gets progressively worse. I worked hard on beginning to grasp how much potential had really been lost when people like Nemirovsky were deported and killed. Here was one woman's unfinished manuscript and personal story, and she is just one of millions.

Needless to say, recommended.

Every Secret Thing by Paricia Campbell Hearst

I bought this book a while ago, used, and it's been sitting on my "to be read" shelf for at least a year now. It came without a jacket, so it's navy with gold writing and smells like an old book. A few years ago I read a good book by Gillian Slovo by the same name about her life as the daughter of anti-apartheid activists.

This book is Hearst's account of her 1974 kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a radical political group. She tells of living as a member for the SLA for 18 months, committing several crimes under duress, and then the trial that followed. I liked how she began the book with a short history of her childhood before describing the kidnapping.

I was very conflicted about this book. One part of me was very sympathetic to Patty Hearst. She describes being a victim of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse as a prisoner. The other part, however, went into "skeptic mode" and found pieces of her story unbelievable or at the very least lacking support from within the story.

I checked with someone who was in his 20s when Patty Hearst was kidnapped since it happened before I was born. He says that once she was rescued and interviewed, the general feeling in the country (and in the psychological community) was that she was forcibly kidnapped and brainwashed into doing these things against her will. The book jacket suggests that the book will answer the "why" behind her behavior and subsequent trial, but I think it was poorly edited. Hearst did not come across as a sympathetic character. There was something about the style of writing that was very emotionally disconnected and journalistic, despite its obviously being a personal memoir. This distant treatment of the subject matter made it hard to connect to the content.

My "source" and I also talked about how much the media and the FBI/law enforcement had changed from that era to now (imagine, e.g., heiress Paris Hilton being kidnapped and held for 18 months!).

Now here is where I would like to trade in my mathematics degree for some language around feminist theory. This book was written in 1982 about events occurring in 1974. Putting the main subject material aside, this book represents a very specific state of women during these time periods.

Hearst goes from her father's house to her husband's house. The Hearst who is kidnapped does not seem to be fully actualized as a person, rather she is a wife with half a degree. Her description of her doubts about her fiance is that of a woman rejecting the housewife lifestyle of the 1950s but unsure of what models to consult for her life. Kidnapped, Hearst is a "damsel in distress" from the outside. And the loose activity around sexuality within the SLA is a sad commentary on both men and women. I wonder if Hearst's narrative seemed detached and un-emotional because that was her attempt to seem strong as a woman.

All in all, I like knowing a little about another piece of our country's history, but I am not sure this is the only book I would have liked to read on the events surrounding the SLA.

The Friend who Got Away edited by Jenny Offill and Elissa Schappell

This book had been on my booklist for a while. The first time I went to Barnes and Noble for it, I thought the name was, The One who Got Away and lost a couple hours tracking down all the books with that title. The second time I went, it was out of stock (although, interestingly, the hardcover had found its way into Self-Help while the softcover had found its way into Women's Studies) so I found it at the library.

This is a collection of twenty essays written by women about friendships that somehow ended. The subtitle of the book says it is about friendships that "blew up, burned out, or faded away." As the subtitle suggests, in some cases, the endings were a surprise to the authors, while in other cases they were obvious fallings-out. In some cases, the author left the friendship, and in others it was the friend who pulled away.

Not unsurprisingly, boyfriends, lesbians, and abortions play roles in many of the stories. However, each friendship described was incredibly complex. Two of the essays detail opposite sides of the same friendship, which was unique to read. My only criticism is that, with the exception of a handful of pieces, the editors may have homogenized the "voice" of the pieces too much.

However, what I felt most strongly when reading this book was relief. I, too, have lost friends along the way. In some cases, I know the reasons, and in others I don't. Reading this book made me understand that not all my lost friendships were my fault. It also made me realize that not all the explanations I've chosen to craft for each ended friendship are accurate. One day maybe I will write my own essays about my friends who got away.

There were many passages and phrases that stood out to me as special or well-written or familiar, and during reading Heather Abel's piece, "Emily," I dog-eared the section that I connected to most:

In describing her relationship with Emily and why it was not initially competitive, she writes:

"I would decide that certain things were mine and that I alone could claim them. In return I'd abstain from other things. Early on, the color red was mind. Blue was my sister's, even though I quite liked it, so I would not choose the sweet blue sweater at the store. Later, Nicaragua was mine. Marxism was also mine. Doc Martens were mine. Having best friends was mind. Having boyfriends was not mine. (This got confusing because I actually had a boyfriend through much of high school and into college, but I still didn't identify as someone with a boyfriend.) Discussing was mine. Making out was not mine. Apartheid was mine. Athleticism was not mine. Deep, difficult things were mine; I wasn't actually depressed but I liked to talk animatedly about depression. Drinking games, TV, and one-liners were not mine. The environment was mine, both the outdoors (yes, I claimed the wide world) and the defense of the outdoors.

This is the thinking, I can say in retrospect, of a scared girl."

I loved that passage and the type of person it suggested Abel is/was. I once (when it was in vogue to listen to Billy Joel's Greatest Hits I & II ad infinitum) stated that "She's Always a Woman" was about me and "She's Got a Way" was about someone else in particular. I guarded my less-desirable but unique image fiercely. I once asked the other girl not to wear a particular dress to a formal dance because it was too similar to mine and I didn't feel special enough. I, like Abel, was a scared girl.

In any case, I'd recommend this book if you're interested in the interpersonal interactions within women's friendships.

Rise and Shine by Anna Quindlen

I started off the year with the newest book by Anna Quindlen, one of my favorite authors. A critic writing about Quindlen's former column in the New York Times commented that she was the sort of author you liked even when you did not agree with her. I've always liked that comment about her columns, and have read all of her novels as well.

Certain of her novels (e.g., Black and Blue, and One True Thing) have gotten a lot of press but my favorite has always been her first novel, Object Lessons. In fact, Object Lessons is one of my all-time favorites, along with Starring Sally J. Freedman by Judy Blume and A Tree Grown in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. All Bildungsromans about lonely girls that felt like my life just taking place at a different place or time.

What I loved about Object Lessons, and what I have not quite found in any of her more recent books, was certain passages of writing were just plain perfect. For example, "He realized that she was the closest he would ever get to not being alone. His parents would die, and the children would change and leave, and there the two of them would be, in their living room, perspiring and talking in fragments."

Rise and Shine did not have those small perfect passages, but it was a good book. It followed the story of sisters, one of whom worked in a homeless shelter and other of whom was a morning show personality. The morning show sister accidentally says something terrible on air and this changes her life pretty drastically. I thought it had some good commentary on the role the media plays in our lives, although I like that Quindlen is moving away from "issue" novels and towards good stories. It was definitely a book that kept my attention. But please, Anna, Please, write me something as good as Object Lessons.