#93: Ten Thousand Saints

Ten Thousand Saints, by Eleanor Henderson

(New York: Ecco, 2011)

Summary:
"Adopted by a pair of diehard hippies, restless, marginal Jude Keffy-Horn spends much of his youth getting high with his best friend, Teddy, in their bucolic and deeply numbing Vermont town. But when Teddy dies of an overdose on the last day of 1987, Jude's relationship with drugs and with his parents devolves to new extremes. Sent to live with his pot-dealing father in New York City's East Village, Jude stumbles upon straight edge, an underground youth culture powered by the paradoxical aggression of hardcore punk and a righteous intolerance for drugs, meat, and sex. With Teddy's half brother, Johnny, and their new friend, Eliza, Jude tries to honor Teddy's memory through his militantly clean lifestyle. But his addiction to straight edge has its own dangerous consequences. While these teenagers battle to discover themselves, their parents struggle with this new generation's radical reinterpretation of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll and their grown-up awareness of nature and nurture, brotherhood and loss.

"Moving back and forth between Vermont and New York City, Ten Thousand Saints is an emphatically observed story of a frayed tangle of family members brought painfully together by a death, then carried along in anticipation of a new and unexpected life. With empathy and masterful skill, Eleanor Henderson has conjured a rich portrait of the modern age and the struggles that unite and divide generations."

 Opening Lines:
"'Is it dreamed?' Jude asks Teddy. 'Or dreamt?'"

My Take:
Perhaps I was feeling unusually uncharitable here, as I read this one right after Imperial Bedrooms and had had it up to here with drug-addled adolescents before I tackled the first chapter. That said, Ten Thousand Saints didn't overwhelm me. It wasn't repugnant the way IB was, and the characters here were rather more sympathetic -- partly because it's set in the '80s and definitely conveys that this was a different time, and partly because it's easier to excuse adolescent behavior when it actually comes from adolescents.

And perhaps I just bring too much of my own baggage to the story. Jude and Teddy are of my generation, a mere two years older than I am, which means I should be able to relate to their world ... but I really can't. Sure, I grew up 30 miles from the NYC where much of the story is set, but that may as well have been another universe, and my suburban adolescence was probably more sheltered than most. Mine wasn't a drugging or even hard drinking crowd, if the motley handful of not-yet-cool nerds I occasionally socialized with constituted a "crowd" at all. I never had any burning desire to fit in either with the stoners who make up Jude & Teddy's clique at the beginning, and I don't think I knew such a thing as straight-edge existed at the time. Punk, yes, but much as I loved the music, I was well aware a big-haired teeny bopper from the 'burbs would have been eaten alive in that environment. Instead, I contented myself with volunteering at a crisis line throughout high school and growing vicariously wise through the lives that touched me there.

It's interesting, too, to look back on the '80s with enough distance and perspective that you're aware of the hallmarks of the era. As a middle and high schooler, I knew something about the culture and history of the 1920s or '40s or '60s -- enough to reference an era convincingly in a term paper, or make guesses about how my grandparents' adolescence differed from my parents' or my own. But I couldn't articulate what made the '80s the '80s or what future generations would see as the hallmarks of my decade, any more than my daughter can define the 2010s or a particularly conscious fish could tell you what it's like to breathe water rather than air. Ten Thousand Saints depicts the era as a very long, unglamorous morning after the hedonistic '70s, with the principals' parents as the clueless hung over guests you just know will spend the next week bragging about how awesome the party was and how wasted they were, and Jude, Johnny, and Eliza the housemates who get stuck cleaning up all the spilled food and broken glass. Jude's mom, Harriet, is the canonical leftover hippie, naming her kids after Beatles songs (Jude's sister is Prudence), selling handblown glass in a small town in Vermont, and earning the bulk of her income selling bongs; his father, Lester, is a successful Manhattan pot grower who takes pride in being a cool, approachable pseudo-stepdad to his girlfriend's daughter Eliza but hasn't bothered to contact his own kids in who knows how long. After Teddy's death, Jude and Eliza's guilt leads them (with Johnny's help) to discover the no-drugs, no-drinking, no-sex world of straight edge, drawing spiritual sustenance from a Hare Krisha temple whose connection to the former is never exactly clear.

Henderson's writing is clear, understated, and sad, and the setting an interesting, unusual one. I only wish the characters (yes, this is always a sticking point for me) felt big or complex enough to live up to it. The book was OK, and I finished it -- but it felt more like a duty than a pleasure to get through (although it did get somewhat better in the latter part).

#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).

#79: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski

(New York: Ecco, 2008)

Summary:
"David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle explores the silent world of the novel’s protagonist, Edgar Sawtelle. Edgar lives in Wisconsin during the middle of the twentieth century. Born mute, he is a teenager who seems to prefer the language of dogs more than the words of the adults around him. From his earliest memories, his favorite job on the farm was to name the new puppies that were born there. He chooses names randomly from a dictionary. As he grows older, his connection with the dogs becomes more profound. He helps to train them through sign language.

"Wroblewski begins his novel with Edgar’s grandfather, telling readers about how the dog farm began. When Edgar’s father, Gar, dies suspiciously, Edgar blames his uncle Claude, his father’s younger brother, who has meant nothing but trouble for the family. When Claude makes romantic overtures to Edgar’s mother, Trudy, Edgar is outraged.

"The story is filled with loving family memories until Claude arrives. Claude spends most of his time in the barn or at the local bar. The details of Claude’s life are sketchy at best and Edgar finds Claude to be two-faced. The man presents his best side to Edgar’s mother. She falls for him, allowing him to fill in the vacant spaces left behind from her husband’s death. Edgar sees the other side of Claude, a side that Edgar finds dangerous.

"When tensions become too strong between Edgar and Claude, Edgar takes his favorite dogs and runs away from home. For the story itself, this tension raises the level of curiosity for the reader. It is at this point that the novel takes on the form of a mystery or a sort of detective story. Edgar fears the police are looking for him because of an accidental death that he played a part in. Readers worry that Edgar might be caught because Claude is suggesting to local officials that Edgar committed murder. In the end, it is Edgar versus Claude—a fight to the finish. Unfortunately, there are no winners."

Opening Line:
"In the year 1919, Edgar's grandfather, who was born with an extra share of whimsy, bought their land and all the buildings on it from a man he'd never met, a man named Schultz, who in his turn had walked away from a logging team half a decade earlier after seeing the chains on a fully loaded timber sled let go."

My Take: 
OK, this one I liked. For a change, I actually preferred the first, oh, two-thirds or so to the end (suffice it to say that I have a low tolerance for characters speaking or otherwise interacting with the dead) but it was still an engaging story with deep characters and an unusual setting.

#77: The Life Before Us

The Life Before Us (Madame Rosa), 

by Romain Gary (Emile Ajar), translated by Ralph Manheim

(New York: New Directions Pub. Corp., 1986)

Summary:
"The Life Before Us is the story of an orphaned Arab boy, Momo, and his devotion to Madame Rosa, a dying 68-year-old, 220 lb. survivor of Auschwitz and retired “lady of the night.” Momo has been one of the ever-changing rag-bag of whore’s children at Madame Rosa’s boarding-house in Paris ever since he can remember. But when the check that pays for his keep no longer arrives and Madame Rosa becomes too ill to climb the stairs to their apartment, he determines to support her any way he can.

"This sensitive, slightly macabre love story has a supporting cast of transvestites, pimps, and witch doctors. Published by Romain Gary under the pseudonym of Émile Ajar, this novel won France’s premier literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, in 1975, making Gary the only author to have won the Goncourt twice (illicitly). The Life Before Us breaks many other rules, as well as the reader’s heart."

Opening Line:
"The first thing I have to tell you is that we lived on the seventh-floor walk-up, so you can take my word for it that Madame Rosa, with all the pounds  she had to lug around with her, had more than her share of daily life with all its sorrows and cares."

My Take:
This is my hometown's (and our biggest college's) community read this year, so I thought I'd give it a try even though there was little chance I'd be home enough to attend any of the community events (which I've never done in the past even when I was home, anyway). Turned out to be better and more engaging at the end, but still didn't really speak to me. This may be partly a function of the translation, but I found the stream-of-consciousness, wise-beyond-his-years-but-still-prone-to-frequent-malapropisms style in which Momo narrates the novel off-putting. Rare is the author who can make a child or adolescent narrator both engaging and authentic, and I don't think Gary pulls it off here. The book seems a surprising choice for a community read, and I can't help skeptically wondering if it was selected more because a) it reminds us that the lines between different religions, ethnicities, and genders can be quite blurry, and b) depicts strong friendships, even love, across the lines, albeit among those who live somewhat outside the margins of French society. Perhaps I'd have enjoyed the novel more if I were reading and discussing it with a group, but as it was, I don't think I fully appreciated it on my own.

#69: The False Friend

The False Friend, by Myla Goldberg

(New York: Doubleday, 2010)

Summary:

"Twenty years after Celia’s best friend, Djuna, went missing, memories of that terrible day come rushing back—including the lie Celia remembers having told to conceal her role in Djuna’s disappearance. But when Celia returns to her hometown to confess the truth, her family and childhood friends recall that day very differently. As Celia learns more about what may or may not have happened, she becomes increasingly uncertain whom she should trust.

"In The False Friend, Myla Goldberg -- bestselling author of Bee Season -- brilliantly explores the cruelty of children, the unreliability of memory, and the unpredictable forces that shape our adult selves."

Opening Line:
"The sight of a vintage VW bug dredged Djuna Pearson from memory."

My Take: 
Not sure I ever quite bought the book's main premise -- that Djuna wasn't taken away in a strange car, but fell into a hole in the woods, and Celia's been lying about it all these years -- but it still made for an interesting story about our memories of childhood and its friendships, our growing awareness of our parents' imperfections, and how our hometowns look from a distance.

#66: Winter's Bone

Winter's Bone, by Daniel Woodrell

(New York: Back Bay Books, 2007)

 Summary:
"The sheriff's deputy at the front door brings hard news to Ree Dolly. Her father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date.

"Ree's father has disappeared before. The Dolly clan has worked the shadowy side of the law for generations, and arrests (and attempts to avoid them) are part of life in Rathlin Valley. But the house is all they have, and Ree's father would never forfeit it to the bond company unless something awful happened. With two young brothers depending on her and a mother who's entered a kind of second childhood, Ree knows she has to bring her father back, dead or alive, or else see her family turned out into the unforgiving cold.

"Sixteen-year-old Ree, who has grown up in the harsh poverty of the Ozarks, learns quickly that asking questions of the rough Dolly clan can be a fatal mistake. She perseveres past obstacles of every kind and finally confronts the top figures in the family's hierarchy.

"Along the way to a shocking revelation, Ree discovers unexpected depths in herself and in a family network that protects its own at any cost."

Opening Line:
"Ree Dolly stood at break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries and saw meat. "

My Take:
This was a Winter's Bone day. It's a short book, and I read it all on my Kindle today -- part in my apartment after polishing off the less-than-satisfying An Inconvenient Woman, and most at the Summer Arts Festival in Copley Square while waiting for the Low Anthem set. (I'd hoped to stick around for Suzanne Vega but the weather had other plans.)

Another review I found online while looking for a synopsis to steal called Woodrell's use of language "spare and judicious," which seems pretty accurate. If you've seen the acclaimed indie movie, it actually follows the book pretty closely (except for having changed Ree's youngest sibling to a sister, which hardly matters). If anything, the movie depicts a slightly-less-hardscrabble home for Ree and her family than I'd envisioned, though the relatives' homes are pretty much as I'd pictured them. I'm not sure whether to think depiction of the rural, southern Missouri Ozarks setting is too over-the-top (again, in a spare and judicious way), or if I'm just too sheltered here on the east coast, and there really is that big a difference between central New York-style Appalachia and the Central South/ Ozark variety.

Then again, I remember driving a short 20 minutes into the backcountry with Mr. Hazel a few years ago for a hike in a state forest, and being stunned just at the shanties I could see from the road and the fact that this particular flavor of poverty existed so close to my own, smug-college-town backyard. In other words, strike the question about whether there are really Ozark communities this poor and off-grid, because there probably are.

Anyway, a good book and a good movie. I'd recommend both, if you're up for something more than a little on the dark and gritty side and aren't looking for a magical happy ending.

#60: A Slipping-Down Life

A Slipping-Down Life, by Anne Tyler

(New York: Ivy Books, 1992, c1970)

Summary:

"The story is based on a young girl called Evie Decker who we are told in the first page of the novel is not musical. She develops an attachment however for a rock and roll singer who is called Drumstrings Casey. She begins to follow him around to all the places where he sings. He pays no attention to her and so she decides to do something dramatic.

"We are told how one night while he is playing in a club she appears with the name Casey etched on her forehead. As a result he begins to notice her, but he despises her ... . He is egotistic and concerned with furthering his own career. He plays with one man who is a drummer and who decides to act as his manager. This man is called David and he offers Evie the chance to help Drumstrings in his singing career by attending all the concerts and showing to the crowd what one woman will do for a singer. ..."


Opening Lines:
"Evie Decker was not musical. You could tell that just from the way she looked -- short and wide, heavy-footed."


My Take:
This one's a first:  the first book I read on my new, early birthday present Kindle. (Thanks, Mom.) Honestly, I think I still prefer the feel of an old-fashioned paper-and-ink novel, but the Kindle does have its place. When traveling, for example. (Though I do remember hearing some airplane neighbors on a recent flight commiserating about how hard-core readers still need to bring a non-electronic book on flights, for that takeoff and landing period when no electronic devices at all are allowed, period, the end.) 


Anyway, I read Slipping-Down Life on the train to and from Providence last weekend, and knew without checking the publication date that it must have been an early Tyler novel. There's not the depth and complexity of, say, Noah's Compass or Digging to America. It's also notably shorter than most of the Tyler books I've read, though I didn't have any pages to hold and compare so part of that may have been a function of the simpler story line needing less time and attention. Nonetheless, there are moments when Tyler even here captures small details just perfectly: the awkwardness of Evie and Violet's first trip to a rock show, for example, or the thoughtless cruelty of how Drum speaks to Evie in a key scene later (details deliberately vague to avoid spoilage). 


All in all, glad I checked this out of the library rather than buying it, as I don't think it merits repeat readings, but it was about what I wanted for an hour-long, not very scenic train ride on an overcast day. 

#56: House Lights

House Lights, by Leah Hager Cohen 

(New York: W. W. Norton, 2007)

 Summary:
"A poignant novel about how secrets threaten the stability of a family. Late in her twentieth year, Beatrice mails a letter on the sly, sparking events that will change her life forever. The addressee is her grandmother, a legendary stage actress long estranged from her daughter, Bea's mother. Though Bea wants to become an actress herself, it is the desire to understand the old family rift that drives her to work her way into her grandmother's graces. But just as she establishes a precarious foothold in her grandmother's world, Bea's elite Boston home life begins to crumble. Her beloved father is accused of harassment by one of his graduate students; her usually composed mother shows vulnerabilities and doubt. And Bea is falling in love with someone many would consider inappropriate. Powerfully written and psychologically complex, House Lights illuminates the corrosive power of family secrets, and the redemptive struggle to find truth, forgiveness, and love."
 
Opening Line:
"Near the end of the time that I still thought the world of him, my father and I took a walk along Memorial Drive."

My Take:
Interesting book to read in Boston, as the author's attractive but slightly ramshackle childhood home in Cambridge and her grandmother's museum-perfect Beacon Hill residence are very much characters in themselves. A more thorough review (Kathryn Harrison's from The New York Times) is here, but my own quick opinion:  The story of Beatrice's family falling apart as she grows up and flees the nest at the same time it becomes impossible to ignore her father's history of sexual misconduct is gentle, compelling, and heartbreaking. The thread that follows her desire to be an actress and sudden habit of spending every spare moment at her practically-a-stranger grandmother is less so, at least for me.

#47: Dedication

Dedication, by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus (New York: Atria Books, 2007)

Summary:
"What if your first love left town, without a word to anyone, days before graduation?

"What if he went on to become one of the biggest recording stars on the planet and every song he’s famous for is about you? What if, after thirteen years of getting on with your life – walking past his face on newsstands, flipping past his image on TV, tuning him out on the radio – you get the call that he has landed back in your hometown for an MTV special two days before Christmas?  What if you finally had the chance to confront him?  What would you do?


"Kate Hollis finds herself on the threshold of her thirtieth birthday, about to discover that the only way to embrace life as a fully-fledged, well-adjusted adult is to re-visit seventeen."

Opening Lines:
"'He's here.'
 "'Laura?' I ask into the phone, disoriented, voice sandy with sleep."

My Take:
Saturday of my first weekend in Boston was wet, wet, wet. As in, the 40 days and 40 nights kind of rain. OK, maybe it was closer to 4 hours, but I still don't think I could have gotten any soggier even if there had been an ark instead of just a parade of duck boats swimming by. It only hit me that morning that I'd left both my raincoat and all my umbrellas back home in NY.

About 5 minutes later, it dawned on me that I might would get wet if I went out anyway, but I was about as certain to get weepy and fragile and withdrawn if I just sat here alone in my conveniently-located but poorly lit apartment, and ... well, wet stuff dries. So I set off down Charles Street with an adventurous spring in my step, snapping artful pictures of puddles and park benches with my iPhone. I fueled up for my trek beneath the tin-punched ceilings of Panifico and vowed to walk off my delicious but generous plate o' hash before I went back home. I fell in love with Commonwealth Avenue and its memorials on every corner, flanked by the hundred-year-old townhouses with their curved fronts and indecorous flower boxes who seem to be Boston's true grandes dames. I stumbled across a Marshall's incongruously planted between a Talbot's and a La Perla, finally brought an umbrella after I was drenched enough for my hair and jacket to drip a path through the store, and told myself the funny looks I imagined getting from the Back Bay Brahmins (well, any who'd wandered into Marshall's by mistake on their way to the Kate Spade in the next block) would make for a colorful story.

And since I was right there on Boylston Street anyway, and it was a rainy day, I found myself in Copley Square across from the Boston Public Library, which just happened to be having a book sale that day. You can guess where this is going. For a dollar or in some cases (i.e., if you ain't too proud to read anything from the paperback romance boxes) a quarter apiece, I could stock up on fun reads aplenty. Most are still in the apartment unread, but I did read Dedication (you knew I'd get there eventually, right?) a few weeks ago.

Decent, but I fear McLaughlin and Kraus may always suffer from the fact that they'll never write another Nanny Diaries. Dedication was pretty good, a fun read ... but I felt like I was meant to empathize with Kate a lot more than I did. Wondering about an old flame, especially if he's gone off and become famous? No personal experience but I can imagine how it might work. But the degree to which it's become an obsession, and to which it's been The Only Thing Jake seems to have written about over the years? Not feeling it. Worth what I paid for it, I guess, but not really funny or moving enough to keep it on my shelf long-term.

#38: Bed

Bed, by David Whitehouse (New York: Scribner, 2011)


Summary:
"Mal Ede. a child of untamed manners and unbounded curiosity, is the eccentric eldest son of an otherwise typical middle-class family. But as the wonders of childhood fade into the responsibilities of adulthood, Mal's spirits fade too. On his twenty-fifth birthday, disillusioned, Mal goes to bed -- back to his childhood bed -- and never emerges again.


"Narrated by Mal's shy, diligent younger brother, Bed details Mal's subsequent extreme and increasingly grotesque transformation: immobility and a gargantuan appetite combine, over the course of two decades, to make him the fattest man in the world. Despite his seclusion and his refusal to explain his motivations, Mal's condition earns him worldwide notoriety and a cult of followers convinced he is making an important statement about modern life. But Mal's actions will also change the lives of his haunted parents, his brother and the woman they both love, Lou.


"In Bed, David Whitehouse has put a magnifying glass on contemporary society. Hailed as a 'momentous' (The Bookseller) debut in the UK, Bed is a mordantly funny and ultimately redemptive parable about mortality, obesity, celebrity, depression, and the broken promises of adulthood. It is one of the most audacious debut novels in years."

Opening Line:
"Asleep he sounds like a pig hunting truffles in soot."

My Take:
OK but a bit on the underwhelming side. I seem to be saying this a lot, but it was hard to get a good grasp on the characters and their motives. Mal comes off as a spoiled brat (if a deeply troubled one), and both the brother/ narrator (who never does get a name of his own) and their servile, enabling mother are ciphers. I also didn't see a lot of humor here, probably because so much of the description of Mal's condition was so horrifyingly grotesque. Heft was, in my mind, a much stronger book on similar themes.