#107: San Miguel

San Miguel, by T. C. Boyle

(New York: Viking, 2012)

 Summary:
"This latest novel from Boyle (The Women; When the Killing's Done) portrays two families living and working on barren San Miguel Island off the coast of California. In 1888 Marantha Waters leaves her comfortable life on mainland California and moves out to San Miguel with her adopted daughter and husband, a steely Civil War veteran convinced that he'll have success sheep ranching on the island. Marantha is seriously ill, but instead of breathing the clean, restorative air she expected, she must live in a drafty, moldy shack in a damp environment where the sun rarely shines. Years later, in 1930, Elise Lester, newly wed at 38, moves to San Miguel with her husband, Herbie, a World War I veteran. Though Herbie has his highs and lows, they are happy, and they have two daughters. The outside world learns of their pioneering ways, and they achieve a celebrity Herbie hopes will translate into additional income. Then World War II arrives, and with war in the Pacific, their insular island location may no longer be a refuge"

Opening Line:
"She was coughing, always coughing, and sometimes she coughed up blood."

My Take:
I don't think I'll ever be quite as transported by another of Boyle's books as I was by The Tortilla Curtain, but I know that's my problem. He's a fascinating writer, very skilled technically and with recurring themes (humans vs. nature, government vs. the civilian everyman or -woman, and with the addition of this to When the Killing's Done, apparently the Channel Islands) I enjoy. Intriguing characters here, especially if they were based on real people ... which would explain why the story seems not to have much of a real ending.

#104: Daughter of Fortune

Daughter of Fortune, by Isabel Allende 

(translated by Margaret Sayers Peden)

(New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008)

Summary: 
"An orphan raised in Valparaiso, Chile, by a Victorian spinster and her rigid brother, vivacious young Eliza Sommers follows her lover to California during the Gold Rush of 1849. Entering a rough-and-tumble world of new arrivals driven mad by gold fever, Eliza moves in a society of single men and prostitutes with the help of her good friend and savior, the Chinese doctor Tao Chi'en. California opens the door to a new life of freedom and independence to the young Chilean, and her search for her elusive lover gradually turns into another kind of journey. By the time she finally hears news of him, Eliza must decide who her true love really is"

Opening Line: 
"Everyone is born with some special talent, and Eliza Sommers discovered early on that she had two: a good sense of smell and a good memory."

My Take:
Maybe it's because I'm now getting into the more recent parts of my backlog, or maybe it's just that Isabel Allende is a brilliant writer, but when I decided it was time for a Latin American-themed flight of books, this was what I had in mind. (The fact that the protagonist's name is Eliza doesn't hurt, but I'd have loved Daughter of Fortune anyway.) Exciting adventure story with just enough twists and turns, and great characters. Just blogging about it and remembering how much I enjoyed it is almost enough to make me look forward to my long commute tomorrow and listening to Ines of My Soul. Almost.
 

#92: Imperial Bedrooms

Imperial Bedrooms, by Bret Easton Ellis

(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010)

Summary:
"Bret Easton Ellis's debut, Less Than Zero, is one of the signal novels of the last thirty years, and he now follows those infamous teenagers into a more desperate middle age.


"Clay, a successful screenwriter, has returned from New York to Los Angeles to help cast his new movie, and he's soon drifting through a long-familiar circle. Blair, his former girlfriend, is married to Trent, an influential manager who's still a bisexual philanderer, and their Beverly Hills parties attract various levels of fame, fortune, and power. Then there's Clay's childhood friend Julian, a recovering addict, and their old dealer, Rip, face-lifted beyond recognition and seemingly even more sinister than in his notorious past.

"But Clay's own demons emerge once he meets a gorgeous young actress determined to win a role in his movie. And when his life careens completely out of control, he has no choice but to plumb the darkest recesses of his character and come to terms with his proclivity for betrayal."

Opening Lines:
"They had made a movie about us. The movie was based on a book written by someone we knew."


My Take:
I've never read Less Than Zero, nor have I seen the movie it inspired. And frankly, after finishing Imperial Bedrooms, I'm not particularly inclined to do so. I've read and enjoyed books with unlikeable characters, even anti-heroes, before, but this ain't one of 'em.

The good, only because I feel compelled to say something positive about a novel heralded with such fanfare: Ellis's run-on sentences do succeed in creating the fast-paced, disorienting mood he seems to be striving for. An example, chosen purely by opening the book at random, is as follows:

"At Dan Tana's we're seated in the front room next to a booth of young actors and Rain tries to engage me, her foot rubbing against my ankle, and after a few drinks I mellow into acceptance even though a guy at the bar keeps glancing at Rain and for some reason I keep thinking he's the guy I saw her with in the parking lot at Bristol Farms, his arm in a sling, and then I realize I passed him on the bridge at the Hotel Bel-Air when I went to see Blair, and Rain's talking about the best way to approach the producer and director of The Listeners in terms of hiring her and how we need to do this carefully and that it's 'superimportant' she gets the part because so much is riding on this for her and I'm zoning out on other things but I keep glancing back at the guy leaning against the bar and he's with a friend and they both look like they stepped out of a soap opera and then I suddenly have to interrupt her."

I wish I could say that's exceptional but it's not. Annoying sometimes, yes, but I'll allow it as a deliberate literary technique.

What I can't get past, though, is the sheer, shallow, repulsiveness of the characters. Perhaps if I'd read Less Than Zero I'd feel some attachment to someone here, know some back story to make me care who lives or dies ... but I hadn't, and I didn't. I've said many times that any self-respecting sequel needs to work as a stand-alone novel, even if you know nothing about its predecessor, and Imperial Bedrooms fails on that score (if, indeed, LTZ was more engaging or the characters more likeable than I found them here). That, plus the fact that Clay is a sadistic rapist without even enough motive or complexity to be compelling in a Hannibal Lechter sort of way ... well, let's just say I'm glad the book was fast-paced and not all that long.

#82: The Reeducation of Cherry Truong

The Reeducation of Cherry Truong, by Aimee Phan

New York: St. Martin's Press, 2012

 Summary:
"Cherry Truong’s parents have exiled her wayward older brother from their Southern California home, sending him to Vietnam to live with distant relatives.  Determined to bring him back, twenty-one-year-old Cherry travels to their homeland and finds herself on a journey to uncover her family’s decades-old secrets—hidden loves, desperate choices, and lives ripped apart by the march of war and currents of history.

"The Reeducation of Cherry Truong tells the story of two fierce and unforgettable families, the Truongs and the Vos: their harrowing escape from Vietnam after the war, the betrayal that divided them, and the stubborn memories that continue to bind them years later, even as they come to terms with their hidden sacrifices and bitter mistakes. Kim-Ly, Cherry’s grandmother, once wealthy and powerful in Vietnam, now struggles to survive in Little Saigon, California without English or a driver’s license. Cherry’s other grandmother Hoa, whose domineering husband has developed dementia, discovers a cache of letters from a woman she thought had been left behind. As Cherry pieces their stories together, she uncovers the burden of her family’s love and the consequences of their choices.

"Set in Vietnam, France, and the United States, Aimee Phan’s sweeping debut novel reveals a family still yearning for reconciliation, redemption, and a place to call home."

Opening Line:
"Cherry releases the grip around her brother, steadying her trembling feet onto the hot, bright concrete."

My Take:
A decent immigrant saga and family story, but would have been better if the title character hadn't been so much of a cipher. All we know is that she's a good student and curious about her family history, but we don't ever get much insight into what she's thinking and feeling as the events of the book unfold (or as she discovers what and how events unfolded in the past).

#71: The Cookbook Collector

The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman

(New York: The Dial Press, 2010)

Summary:

"Heralded as 'a modern-day Jane Austen' by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare book collecting in a delicious novel about appetite, temptation, and fulfullment.

"Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposited in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, twenty-three-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily's boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantastically successful. Jess's boyfriends, not so much -- as her employer George points out in what he hopes is a completely disinterested way.

"Passionate, surprising, rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can't find what we're looking for: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding onto what is real in a virtual world: love that stays."

Opening Lines:
"Rain at last. Much-needed rain, the weathermen called it."


My Take:
A good read -- perfect blend of being interesting enough to keep me turning pages, but substantial enough for me to care about the characters. Not big on weighty matters while I was home last week, or, for that matter, since I've come back to work (and soul-sucking travel) this week. 

#65: An Inconvenient Woman

An Inconvenient Woman, by Dominick Dunne

(New York: Bantam Books, 1991 c1990)

Summary:

"Wealth. Beverly Hills billionaire, banker, and art collector Jules Mendelson and his elegant, aristocratic wife, Pauline, reign as the king and queen of West Coast high society. From their lavish mountaintop estate they preside over intimate dinner parties for ambassadors and art dealers, business tycoons and film stars. But L.A.'s royal couple is about to be dethroned.

"Murder. He's a smooth dancer with Latin charm, a member of an old Spanish Land Grant family that helped found the city, and Pauline's good friend. But when Hector Paradiso dies under the most sordid and distasteful circumstances, it's Jules who takes charge -- and takes steps to make Hector's murder look like suicide.

"Justice. Philip Quennell isn't part of their world. A young writer new to L.A., he finds observing the lives of the rich and famous fascinating. Until he discovers that the wealthy live by a different set of rules, rules that say if you have enough cash and connections you can stop a murder investigation cold. Now Quennell vows to expose those who'd let a killer go free.

"Passion. Flo March is Jules's enchanting young mistress. But between pillow talk and her own unquenchable curiosity, this beautiful redhead knows far too much about Hector's death -- and Jules's life. Soon, as intrigue threatens Jules's marriage, business, and reputation, events conspire to make Flo An Inconvenient Woman."

Opening Line:
"Later he was vilified and disgraced; Archbishop Cooning denounced him from the pulpit of Saint Vibiana's as a corruptor, and the archbishop's words spread throughout the land."

My Take:
I certainly haven't given up on Rise and Shine; truth be told, it'll probably be the more satisfying of the two, though Inconvenient Woman does promise to be guilty, Klondike-in-the-freezer, glass-of-wine-on-the-coffee-table fun for a small town homebody on her own in the big city. But I'm still not fully Kindle-ized yet, and can't quite bring myself to lie in bed with an e-reader when I want to flip through a quick chapter or 2 before going to sleep. Ergo, I'm breaking out one of the paperbacks I've had stacked on my desk for a month or so (can you tell this was one of my 25-cent finds at the library book sale) for bedtime reading. 

(tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock)

Sometimes you do get what you pay for. Inconvenient Woman wasn't bad enough for me not to finish -- it's the kind of fluffy, insubstantial thing that's perfect for reading at bedtime. The chapters are short enough that you can always make it through 1 or 2, the storyline doesn't require particularly close attention, and it's not compelling enough that you find yourself starting "just one more" chapter over and over till it's suddenly 2 am. 

And that's about all I can say for it. Perhaps its a period piece, but it seems something that would have been dated even in the early 1990s (though I didn't exactly move in LA high society at the time, so what do I know?) Sure, it was 20 years ago, but would the fact of Hector's being gay really have been so scandalous that no one acknowledged it? (His penchant for barely-legal PYTs and sex for money, OK.) It also doesn't help that few of the characters are especially interesting. Make that "one." Philip Quennell has potential, but we never really get under his skin enough to feel like we know what makes him tick. Yes, he's a recovering alcoholic; yes, he wrote an expose of a book before IW opens that made him some powerful enemies; yes, he's the only person in the novel who won't back down on questioning how and why Hector's death came to be labeled a suicide. (BTW, Dunne never fully clears up who did it, either, as the never-convicted killer identified at the book's end has an alibi that's never addressed.) Flo March is a runner-up, though her beautiful-but-naive working class waitress character seems a bit dated and predictable. But as for Jules and Pauline? Not just not likeable, but not particularly dislikeable or loathsome, either. He's a rich guy with powerful connections who can pull strings the rest of us can't imagine. She's a rich guy's wife with impeccable taste (of course, her bottomless bank account doesn't hurt) who initially seems more sympathetic but ultimately reveals that she's not above pulling a few strings of her own to retain her position of privilege. All in all, the book wasn't so bad that I'd be unwilling to give Dunne's take on the rich and famous another shot, especially for a quarter -- but The Nanny Diaries or a juicy, trashy Olivia Goldsmith romp it ain't.

#53: The Interruption of Everything

The Interruption of Everything, by Terry McMillan  

(New York: Viking, 2005)

 

Summary:

Since Terry McMillan’s breakout novel Waiting to Exhale surged onto the bestseller lists, critics and readers alike have been captivated by her irreverent, hilarious, pitch-perfect tales of women’s lives and contemporary issues. With The Interruption of Everything, her sixth novel, McMillan takes on the fault lines of midlife and family life, reminds us once again of the redeeming power of friendship, and turns her eye toward the dilemma of how a woman starts to put her own needs higher on the to-do list while not shortchanging everyone else.

"Marilyn Grimes, wife and mother of three, has made a career of deferring her dreams to build a suburban California home and lifestyle with her husband, Leon. She troubleshoots for her grown kids, cares for her live-in mother-in-law, Arthurine (and elderly poodle, Snuffy); keeps tabs on her girlfriends Paulette and Bunny and her own aging mother and foster sister—all the while holding down a part-time job. But at forty-four, Marilyn’s got too much on her plate and nothing to feed her passion. She feels like she’s about ready to jump. She’s just not sure where.

Highly entertaining, deeply human, a page-turner full of heart and soul, The Interruption of Everything is vintage Terry McMillan—and a triumphant testament to the fact that the detour is the path, and living life 'by the numbers' never quite adds up."

Opening Line:
"The only reason I'm sitting on a toilet seat in the handicapped stall of the ladies' room is because I'm hiding."

My Take:
One of my more expensive finds from the May booksale at the Boston Public Library (think I paid a dollar for it), and a highly entertaining read. Things do tend to wrap up a bit too neatly and quickly at the end, which is often a peeve of mine, but it wasn't necessarily a bad ending -- just one that might have benefited from a loose end or 2.

 

#101: Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later

And speaking of not being ashamed of who you are ...

Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later, by Francine Pascal (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2011)

Summary:
"Anyone who grew up reading the Sweet Valley High series (that would be basically every girl born in the late 70s/early 80s) has been waiting for this -- Sweet Valley Confidential: 10 Years Later came out on Friday.

Make any mention of SVH to a 20 or 30-something woman and you’re likely to be bombarded with stories of childhood obsession, followed by a ranking of said woman’s favorite characters–for some reason most people liked goody-two-shoes Elizabeth, which is mystifying; c’mon, without saucy Jessica there never would have been any action! So really it’s no surprise that people have been eagerly waiting for this book. But how does it stack up to the originals?

Well, let’s just say this book wasn’t written to attract new fans. Even before the book was released it was apparent that it wasn’t meant for young readers the way the series was, but was instead written for fans of the original books. Readers who are now, like Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, adults. Readers who are thrilled by the fact that Sweet Valley-ites now drink! And use Facebook! And have sex!

Which is lucky, because honestly, without the emotional attachment to the characters (I’m emotionally attached to the Wakefields–that doesn’t sound weird, right? Right?) there isn’t much draw to Sweet Valley Confidential.

The story reads like a bad romance novel (and not the so-bad-it’s-good kind), starting with the plot: Jessica, who now works in public relations, has broken the cardinal rule of friendship and shattered her relationship with her beloved twin sister, who is now a writer in New York. The book centers on what Jessica’s offense was (I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s quite obvious) and whether or not Elizabeth will forgive her (I won’t spoil that one either). Then there’s the dialogue and first person narration, which is pretty laughable–especially Jessica’s habit of adding “so” and “like” to every sentence. In fact, even the third-person narration (the book swings between both) is questionable at times, as it’s occasionally peppered with profanity that comes out of nowhere.

The thing is, it doesn’t really matter how bad the book is. If you were a fan back then, you’re going to appreciate it. How can you not? It’s Sweet Valley! It’s the Wakefields and Lila Fowler and Bruce Patman and Caroline Pierce all grown up! It’s almost like going to your own high school reunion and being able to judge everyone’s life choices (Seriously, girl? You married that guy?) without having to worry about anyone questioning your own decisions.

Maybe that’s a stretch, but still — this book is a good time, as long as you can tap into your girlhood fandom." -Megan Gibson, from Time Magazine

Opening Line:

"Elizabeth had turned the key in the Fox lock, releasing a heavy metal bar that scraped across the inside of the front door with an impressive prison-gate sound, and was about to attack the Segal lock when the phone in the apartment started to ring."

My Take:

Yes, it was as dopey as you'd expect. Next.

#63: When the Killing's Done

When the Killing's Done, by T. Coraghessan Boyle (New York: Viking, 2011)

Summary:
"Principally set on the wild and sparsely inhabited Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara -- the Galapagos of North America -- T. C. Boyle's powerful new novel combines action-packed adventure with a socially conscious, richly humane tale regarding the dominion we attempt to exert, for better or worse, over the natural world."

Alma Boyd Takesue is a National Park Service biologist who is spearheading the efforts to save the islands' endangered native creatures from invasive species such as rats and feral pigs, which, in her view, must be eliminated. Her antagonist, Dave LaJoy, is a muscular, dredlocked local businessman who, along with his inamorata, the folk singer Anise Reed, is fiercely opposed to the killing of any species whatsoever, and will go to any lengths to subvert the plans of Alma and her colleagues.

"Their confrontation plays out in a series of escalating scenes in which these characters violently confront one another, contemplate acts of sabotage, court danger and tempt the awesome destructive power of nature itself. Boyle deepens his story by going back in time to relate the harrowing tale of Alma's grandmother, Beverly, who was the sole survivor of a 1946 shipwreck in the channel, as well as the tragic story of Anise's mother, Rita, who in the late 1970s lived and worked on a sheep ranch on Santa Cruz Island.

"In dramatizing this collision between protectors of the environment and animal rights activists, Boyle is, in his characteristic fashion, examining one of the essential questions of our time: who has the right of possession of the land, the waters, the very lives and breath and souls of all the creatures who share this planet with us? When the Killing's Done offers no transparent answers, but like The Tortilla Curtain, Boyle's classic take on illegal immigration, it will touch you deeply and put you in the position to decide."

Opening Line:
"Picture her there in the pinched little galley where you could barely stand up without cracking your head, her right hand raw and stinging still from the scald of the coffee she'd dutifully -- and foolishly -- tried to make so they could have something to keep them going, a good sport, always a good sport, though she'd woken up vomiting in her berth not half an hour ago."

My Take:
Liked it a lot -- I'm usually a big Boyle fan, ever since The Tortilla Curtain, and this one didn't disappoint. Complex, interesting characters; decent story line; no pretty red bow to wrap everything up at the end.

My main critique (and perhaps this is with the dust jacket writer and not with Boyle himself) is that there wasn't quite as much conflict or tension in the plot as I might have hoped for. As this Onion A.V. Club review suggests, the author's portrayal of animal rights activist Dave LaJoy isn't exactly balanced or sympathetic; he owns a chain of high-end electronics stores he's never seen actually managing or working in, holds everyone except maybe his trophy girlfriend Anise in open contempt, and (in a recalled scene of his one and only long-ago date with Alma) has no qualms about ordering bottle after bottle of a restaurant's priciest wine, only to proclaim each one unacceptable after it's opened and send it back. Nice guy. He is fun to roll your eyes at, though, and does indeed eventually get a suitably dramatic comeuppance. (As Barbara Kingsolver's New York Times review reminds us, "Boyle has elsewhere dispatched characters by the likes of meteor strike and bear consumption.")

Alma's character is far more subtly rendered, though I still might have preferred to hear a bit more about how she herself thinks and feels rather than just who her parents and grandmother were. And while it's not really a tidy red bow, or even close, her own resolution seems a wee bit too clean -- perfunctory, perhaps.

Still, an excellent book, and one I'd highly recommend to others.

#51: My Hollywood

My Hollywood, by Mona Simpson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010)

Summary:
"A wonderfully provocative and appealing novel, from the much-loved author of Anywhere But Here and A Regular Guy, her first in ten years. It tells the story of two women whose lives entwine and unfold behind the glittery surface of Hollywood. Claire, a composer and a new mother, comes to LA so her husband can follow his passion for writing television comedy. Suddenly the marriage -- once a genuine 50/50 arrangement --changes, with Paul working long hours and Claire left at home with a baby, William, whom she adores but has no idea how to care for. Lola, a fifty-two-year-old mother of five who is working in America to pay for her own children's higher education back in the Philippines, becomes their nanny. Lola stabilizes the rocky household and soon other parents try to lure her away. What she sacrifices to stay with Claire and 'Williamo' remains her own closely guarded secret. In a novel at turns satirical and heartbreaking, where mothers' modern ideas are given practical overhauls by nannies, we meet Lola's vast network of fellow caregivers, each with her own story to tell. We see the upstairs competition for the best nanny and the downstairs competition for the best deal, and are forced to ask whether it is possible to buy love for our children and what that transaction costs us all. We look into two contemporary marriages -- one in America and one in the Philippines -- and witness their endangerment, despite the best of intentions. My Hollywood is a tender, witty, and resonant novel that provides the profound pleasures readers have come to expect from Mona Simpson, here writing at the height of her powers."

My Take:
Here I'd hoped for a variation on some of the same themes from The Madonnas of Echo Park -- rather a California-style Nanny Diaries with a bit more racial frisson thrown in. I didn't get it. In short, I found My Hollywood plodding and disappointing, with characters I just couldn't bring myself to care about. If this is Simpson at the height of her powers, I won't be seeking her earlier books out any time soon.

#50: The Madonnas of Echo Park

The Madonnas of Echo Park, by Brando Skyhorse (New York: Free Press, 2010).

Summary:
"'We slipped into this country like thieves, onto the land that once was ours.' With these words, spoken by an illegal Mexican day laborer, The Madonnas of Echo Park takes us into the unseen world of Los Angeles, following the men and women who cook the meals, clean the homes, and struggle to lose their ethnic identity in the pursuit of the American dream. When a dozen or so girls and mothers gather on an Echo Park street corner to act out a scene from a Madonna music video, they find themselves caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting. In the aftermath, Aurora Esperanza grows distant from her mother, Felicia, who as a housekeeper in the Hollywood Hills establishes a unique relationship with a detached housewife. The Esperanzas' shifting lives connect with those of various members of their neighborhood. A day laborer trolls the streets for work with men half his age and witnesses a murder that pits his morality against his illegal status; a religious hypocrite gets her comeuppance when she meets the Virgin Mary at a bus stop on Sunset Boulevard; a typical bus route turns violent when cultures and egos collide in the night, with devastating results; and Aurora goes on a journey through her gentrified childhood neighborhood in a quest to discover her own history and her place in the land that all Mexican Americans dream of, 'the land that belongs to us again.' Like the Academy Award-winning film Crash, The Madonnas of Echo Park follows the intersections of its characters and cultures in Los Angeles. In the footsteps of Junot Díaz and Sherman Alexie, Brando Skyhorse in his debut novel gives voice to one neighborhood in Los Angeles with an astonishing-- and unforgettable--lyrical power."

My Take:
A solid, intriguing book - very enjoyable, and I'll even buy the Junot Diaz parallels. Highly recommended.

#14 - Mary Ann in Autumn

#14, last week, was Mary Ann in Autumn: A Tales of the City Novel, by none other than Armistead Maupin (New York: HarperCollins, 2010).

Summary: "A hilarious and touching new installment of Armistead Maupin's beloved Tales of the City series. Twenty years have passed since Mary Ann Singleton left her husband and child in San Francisco to pursue her dream of a television career in New York. Now a pair of personal calamities has driven her back to the city of her youth and into the arms of her oldest friend, Michael 'Mouse' Tolliver, a gardener happily ensconced with his much-younger husband. Mary Ann finds temporary refuge in the couple's backyard cottage, where, at the unnerving age of fifty-seven, she licks her wounds and takes stock of her mistakes. Soon, with the help of Facebook and a few old friends, she begins to reengage with live, only to confront fresh terrors when her checkered past comes back to haunt her in a way she could never have imagined. After the intimate first-person narratives of Maupin's last novel, Michael Tolliver Lives, Mary Ann in Autumn marks the author's return to the multicharacter plotlines and darkly comic themes of his earlier work. Among those caught in Mary Ann's orbit are her estranged daughter, Shawna, a popular sex blogger; Jake Greenleaf, Michael's transgendered gardening assistant; socialite DeDe Halcyon-Wilson; and the indefatigable Anna Madrigal, Mary Ann's former landlady at 28 Barbary Lane. More than three decades in the making, Armistead Maupin's legendary Tales of the City series rolls into a new age, still sassy, irreverent, and curious, and still exploring the boundaries of the human experience with insight, compassion, and mordant wit."

Opening Line: "There should be a rabbit hole was what she was thinking."

My Take: Read this one in a single sitting last week, one night when I was both bored and restless and just didn't have enough brainpower to slog through another chapter of Yellow. While not the strongest of the Tales series, this much-later sequel certainly stands solidly among them. The return of two characters from Mary Ann's checkered past was an intriguing, if not fully credible touch; I won't spoil the details save to say dead ain't dead until you've seen the body. And I really enjoyed seeing Maupin's take on the San Francisco of the early 21st century: DeDe and D'or now grandmothers, but still bickering or living and letting live over certain matters of taste; Jake and Ben's latter-day take on queer life and culture; the funky Gen X/ Gen Yer Shawna turns out to be. The one character I particularly missed seeing was Brian, who we learn is now RVing from national park to national park somewhere ... but I suppose what makes the story fairly plausible is that characters do grow, change, and move away from time to time. In short, I don't know if this book by itself would draw me into the series if I hadn't read the others ... but it was a decent evening's entertainment, and a fitting continuation of some old favorite characters' stories.

#5: The Black Girl Next Door

The Black Girl Next Door: A Memoir, by Jennifer Baszile (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009).

Jacket Summary: "A powerful, beautifully-written memoir about coming of age as a black girl in an exclusive white suburb in 'integrated,' post-Civil Rights California in the 1970s and 1980s. At six years of age, after winning a foot race against a white classmate, Jennifer Baszile was humiliated to hear her classmate explain that black people 'have something in their feet to make them run faster than white people.' When she asked her teacher about it, it was confirmed as true. The next morning, Jennifer's father accompanied her to school, careful to 'assert himself as an informed and concerned parent and not simply a big, black, dangerous man in a first-grade classroom.' This was the first of many skirmishes in Jennifer's childhood-long struggle to define herself as 'the black girl next door' while living out her parents' dreams. Success for her was being the smartest and achieving the most, with the consequence that much of her girlhood did not seem like her own but more like the 'family project.' But integration took a toll on everyone in the family when strain in her parents' marriage emerged in her teenage years, and the struggle to be the perfect black family became an unbearable burden. A deeply personal view of a significant period of American history, The Black Girl Next Door deftly balances childhood experiences with adult observations, creating an illuminating and poignant look at a unique time in our country's history."

Opening Line: "On an early autumn morning in 1975, as fog rolled off the Pacific Ocean and covered the Vista Grande School playground, my first-grade girlfriends and I decided to squeeze in a quick foot race before school began."

My Take: Liked this one a lot. As I've tried to articulate why, I couldn't help but remember a poem by Pat Parker that I came across about a gazillion years ago, entitled "For the white person who wants to know how to be my friend." It begins,

"the first thing you do is to forget that i'm Black.
Second, you must never forget that i'm Black."

Sounds contradictory, of course, but after reading Baszile's memoir, I think I understand better what Parker meant. On one hand, The Black Girl Next Door has wide appeal; it tells the story of the author's childhood, from age six through the end of high school, through a series of vignettes. Many of these will resonate with anyone who grew up in the 1970s and '80s, particularly in a well-off suburb like Palos Verdes Estates: the pains our mothers took to make us presentable for picture day; the unscripted summer evenings playing Kick the Can until the streetlights came on; the excruciating self-consciousness of attending your first middle school dance; the endless pre-DVD-era road trips to spend holidays in a house crammed with relatives you barely knew.

On the other hand, for every forty-something who smiles knowingly and nods at these memories, the experience was just a little bit different. In Baszile's case, that difference often hinged upon being the only black family in her neighborhood, and close to it at school. For a well-intentioned white liberal like me, this makes her book a kaleidoscope, at once familiar and new. Baszile's second-grade picture captures a disheveled braid and a torn shirt, courtesy of the young thugs-in-training who insisted on fighting the [racial epithet] on the playground. One night of street games takes an unexpected and disturbing turn when the kids go inside, get into some old clothes in the attic, and Jennifer finds herself mimicking a poor, rural, Southern black woman she claims is her grandmother. And the middle school dance marks a fork in the road for Baszile and her (until then) similarly gangly and gawky best friend Amy. Before the dance, the girls hit the mall for makeovers, but only Amy is transformed; Jennifer, who slowly remembers that her own mother always needs to go out of town for makeup, comes away looking more like a kabuki dancer. Perhaps the most poignant illustration, though, comes with the Christmas visit to Mr. Baszile's tiny, rural home town of Elton, Louisiana. From their arrival, when Grandmother compliments (?) Jennifer and her sister by pronouncing them "perfect little white girls," the Louisiana Basziles seem both wonderfully exotic and alien:

"For all of the Christmas cheer, Dad was sullen and again stayed outside on the porch. He talked to everyone, but his nerves seemed flimsy like tinsel. Whenever he saw one of his cousins, he called Natalie and me outside to meet them. He held us up like shields to these people and put us on display. I knew Dad was proud of us, but it felt to me like a distraction even more than pride. When I wasn't being paraded out to meet people, I mostly sat on the edge of the bed where I had slept, out of the way; I didn't want to met anyone else. I didn't want another kiss on the cheek, another stranger's hug, or another person's comment about my 'funny' California speech."

Later, when an argument between Jen's father and his brother Sunny gets a bit heated, she observes:

"No one cheered for Dad, even though we were related to nearly everyone there and he was right to defend me. I couldn't figure out why. ... Suddenly I felt the way I often did in California, like it was the four of us against everyone else. I didn't expect to feel such a thing among all these relatives. ... I stayed on the porch, afraid of what I wanted to do to them. The magic had disappeared for me. This had been a strange and terrible Christmas, maybe the worst one ever. I wanted to go to bed and then back to California."

If this makes it sound like The Black Girl Next Door is one complaint after another about how racism traumatized Baszile, it's not. Like anyone's childhood, Baszile's had its ups and downs; some of these were related to her ethnicity, but some weren't. Readers of all hues can cheer Jennifer on when she makes lemons out of lemonade at the dance. When Amy abandons her to dance with a boy, she remembers her mother telling her that she went there to dance, not to get a boyfriend -- and asks one male wallflower after another to join her on the dance floor until someone accepts. What young woman hasn't had a welcome-to-the-club trip to the beauty parlor that didn't quite go as she'd expected (even if she decided in the end that it looked pretty good anyway)? And I'm sure I'm not alone in cringing and wanting to shut my eyes when Jen and her dad have their climactic fight towards the book's end.

One criticism Dwight Garner raises in his New York Times review is that Baszile's memoir lacks "adult wit and complexity," and that her decision "to write almost entirely from the necessarily blinkered perspective of herself as a girl" proves detrimental to the narrative. I can see his point -- I, too, would have liked to know more about where Mr. Baszile went on Friday nights and why Mrs. Baszile seemed so cut off from her family in Detroit -- but saw this as a reasonable choice on Baszile's part. There are memoirs aplenty on the shelves whose authors retell their stories from an older, wiser adult's perspective; I found it a refreshing change to read one that felt more like I was there beside the 6-, 9-, and 12-year-old Baszile, without a grown-up narrator looking over our shoulders.

The author's own web site indicates that her next book will pick up her story at Columbia, just after this one leaves off. I, for one, will be eagerly waiting.

#60 - Beverly Hills Adjacent

Beverly Hills Adjacent, by Jennifer Steinhauer and Jessica Hendra (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2009).

Jacket summary: "During TV pilot season, June Dietz's husband, Mitch Gold, becomes another man -- a distracted man who doesn't notice her delicious Farmer's Market homemade dinners, who mumbles responses around the tooth-whitening trays in his mouth, who is consumed with envy for his fellow television actors, who pants for a return phone call from his agent. Does June want to be married to an abject, paranoid, oblivious mess? Possibly not. June's job as a poetry professor at UCLA makes her in but not of Los Angeles, with its illogical pecking order and relentless tribal customs. Even their daughter Nora's allegedly innocent world isn't immune from oneupmanship: While Mitch is bested for acting jobs by the casually confident (and so very L.A.) Willie Dermott, June is tormented by Willie's insufferably uptight wife, Larissa, and the other stay-at-home exercisers in the preschool.

"Could Rich Friend be the answer? Smart, age-appropriate, bookish -- and a wildly successful television producer -- Rich focuses on June the way nobody has since she moved to Los Angeles, and there's nothing for June to do but wallow in what she's been missing. But what's the next step? How does a regular person decide between husband and lover, family and fantasy?

"Set in a Los Angeles you haven't read about before, Beverly Hills Adjacent is that rare thing: a laugh-out-loud novel with heart."

Opening line: "The trouble with starring in a network television show about a bipolar dentist who is looking for love on the internet is that no matter how deft the flossing puns, or how diverting the high jinks with your Puerto Rican hygenist, it all comes down to the time slot."

My take: High literature it ain't, but BHA has a lot more substance and is a lot more entertaining than it had any right to be.

Probably the most surprising thing about this book for me is that it's not the West Coast-style Danielle Steele, lifestyles-of-the-rich and famous cupcake I expected. And this is a good thing. While rich and famous secondary characters abound, principals Mitch and June are transplants to Tinseltown who really do seem to have lives, neuroses, and crises more or less like anyone else. OK, the authors had me at the scene where Mitch, a sweet-if-preoccupied, moderately successful character actor, tries to brag on his academic wife at a show biz party:

"'Hey, did June tell you that she won the William Parker Riley Prize? It's a huge honor in the academic community. And she's up for a big grant this year, too.' Mitch was immensely proud of June's professional accomplishments, which were many, though she rarely spoke about them. Two years ago, her students had nominated her for a teaching award at UCLA -- something she never mentioned, even though she had come in second.

"Larissa clucked. 'Oh, I could never have time to fill out papers for stuff like that. I have so much to do at home. You know, that's why I left the business when Chloe was born. It's just so hard to work and be the kind of mom I want to be. And now I'm busy looking at schools, which is a major execution, because, as you know, Chloe's very gifted.'

"June nodded, remembering that the last time she saw very-gifted Chloe she was chowing down on a dollop of past. 'Yes, that must be quite an execution.'

"June thought about trying to activate that feature which makes your own cell phone ring and reached inside her bag to grab it, and a soggy wooden stirrer fell out onto the table. Larissa looked repulsed and June quickly stowed the stick back in her purse."

In short, this is fluff, but it's satisfying fluff -- probably because it's in a slightly different setting than I'm used to. We tend to expect that stories set in Beverly Hills and/or about professional actors will be in the lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous vein, and, well ... like everyone else everywhere else, sometimes they're just people trying to make a living. Whether or not you think you'll like this book, you're probably right.