Hilary Mantel wins again with “Wolf Hall”
March 11, 2010
The National Book Critics Circle tonight gave their 2009 fiction award to Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. The historical novel set in 1520s England about Thomas Cromwell won Britain’s coveted Booker Prize last fall.
I’m disappointed Bonnie Jo Campbell didn’t win for American Salvage (Wayne State University Press), but what great praise to have been a finalist not only for this award in fiction but also the 2009 National Book Award. As posted on TLC last November: “…American Salvage seemed to come out of nowhere. And so I discovered the work of a talented writer who can take readers into jobless, drug-addicted fictional lives with narrative intimacy and beauty without ignoring or simplifying the ugliness.”
Here are the National Book Critics Circle award winners in all the categories.
- The fiction award went to Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall (Henry Holt).
- The nonfiction award went to Richard Holmes for The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (Pantheon).
- The autobiography award went to Diana Athill for Somewhere Towards the End (W. W. Norton). See the March 8 TLC post.
- The biography award went to Blake Bailey for Cheever: A Life (Alfred A. Knopf).
- The criticism award went to Eula Biss for Notes From No Man’s Land: American Essays (Graywolf Press).
- The poetry award went to Rae Armantrout for Versed (Wesleyan University Press).
Athill’s “Somewhere Towards the End”
March 8, 2010
Here’s a memoir by an author who was 89 at the time of its writing in 2007. It’s not about her life, but her old age. “Book after book has been written about being young … but there is not much on record about falling away,” Diana Athill writes. And so she picked up her pen, giving us a book that neither rages at nor complains about old age, rather looks it squarely in the face to live its unwanted challenges as best as possible.
Athill is not unfamiliar to me. I read her previous memoir Stet several years ago, about her career as a book editor with a London publishing house. Over five decades, Athill worked with such distinguished authors as V. S. Naipaul and Jean Rhys. I found her writing starched and the stories lacking an insider’s flare. The writing in Somewhere Towards the End again is starched, but this time her thoughts resonate an engaging warmth and vulnerability. Her musings range among topics that include past romantic affairs, children, atheism, gardening, the ebbing of sexual desire and caring for a longtime friend through illness. They also include regrets, of which Athill has two: her selfishness, and her never having had the guts to escape the narrowness of her life, lacking courage and energy.
Athill doesn’t offer advice, which is refreshing. The focus is on her experience, the personal scenery of her life’s last passage, not any preaching or grand sense of wisdom from the perch of high age digits. Even when she tells us what’s required to live old age well — a positive outlook and an active mind — she says, with her usual frankness that’s also refreshing, either you have it or you don’t. “Those able to draw on such qualities will be doing so already,” she writes.
Somewhere Towards the End is a small book at 182 pages. It was first published in Britain in 2008 and won that year’s Costa prize for biography. The United States published the memoir in 2009, and it’s a finalist for a 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award, to be announced this Thursday.
Huneven’s novel about guilt and forgiveness
March 3, 2010
Michelle Huneven’s new novel gets off to a great start. It’s one of those beginnings that suggests we’ll be haunted up to the last page with questions about the truth. As it relates to Huneven’s young protagonist, a history professor, that question would be: “What really happened to Patsy MacLemoore the night she suffered an alcoholic blackout and killed two people with her car?”
Patsy shouldn’t even have been driving, what with her license having been suspended. She’s a frequent blackout drinker, but nothing this horrific has happened before. Nevertheless, she’s the one found at the steering wheel of the car that killed two Jehovah’s Witnesses, a mother and her daughter.
From here on we get a gentle story about how Patsy gets sober in prison, gets her old job back, discusses her guilt with a therapist and finds an older, fatherly man to marry. He’s rich, too, so she gets to live in a house with a to-die-for Southern California view. Meanwhile, the husband/father of the victims befriends Patsy, and she’s able to experience his forgiveness.
Occasionally, Patsy tells someone she doesn’t remember much about the accident or that night. Also, when she describes what the victims were wearing, she’s off by a designer mile. It’s a no-brainer to recognize these moments as hints of some shocker to come, only they’re not intense enough to haunt and the surprise takes too long to manifest. It’s also unimagined and so hits with a mild thud, far from what the dust jacket promises: “For the reader, it is an electrifying moment, a joyous, fall-off-the-couch-with-surprise moment.” (Not really.)
Despite this let-down, Blame is enjoyable to read; it’s successfully written with a faultless, engaging style. The choices Patsy makes for her resurrected, post-prison, sober life are meaningful. Also, Patsy is a companionable protagonist whose moments — even the moment – evoke a sense of comfortable normal as she learns to live guilt-ridden but content.
Blame is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction to be announced March 11. It’s not the high-calibre fiction of Wolf Hall and American Salvage, among the contenders. It’s a decent enough story, but I’m baffled by its nomination.
My Reading Table gets a make-over
February 27, 2010
A friend recently e-mailed me about a shake-up of her reading shelf. Her explanation for the change hit home, describing so well what can happen with a book that loses its glamour. She wrote: “I’ve been wading through my to-be-read shelves, moving out books that were a good idea at the time and starting [and then]discarding books that just aren’t worth the effort.”
And so, a reality check for My Reading Table, which I’ve been ignoring. Some of the books once were a good idea (Pete Dexter’s Paris Trout) and some aren’t worth the effort right now (Katherine Mansfield Notebooks: Complete Edition edited by Margaret Scott). They’ll likely get a spot on the table at another time, when the hunger for them returns. Meanwhile, my reading table now holds a smaller, more realistic stack of new and old books and will see action.
Below are the books moved off the reading table. They are now considered the “hopefuls,” among other unread books in my library.
- Along with Paris Trout, others once a good idea include Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, The Rains Came: A Novel of Modern India by Louis Bromfield and Dracula by Bram Stoker, which hit the table during Halloween last year.
- Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living by Declan Kiberd, One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner by Jay Parini, Loneliness as a Way of Life by Thomas Dunn and Prague in Danger: The Years of German Occupation, 1939-45 by Peter Demetz aren’t worth the effort right now.
- Parallel Play: Growing Up With Undiagnosed Asperger’s by Tim Page got returned unread to the lender, who wanted to lend it to someone else. I ran out of time.
- Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro, Generosity by Richard Powers, The Glass Room by Simon Mawer, and The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters are new books published in 2009 that I simply have to leave behind because there are — to paraphrase a popular saying, so many new books to consider in a year, so little time. They are all highly recommended. Ones to check out if you’re searching for a good book.
- About Grace by Anthony Doer and The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger are novels that need beach or patio time (i.e., undisturbed, long, warm sunny afternoons).
- For all the others, including Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited by Vladimir Nabokov and 1940 by Jay Neugeboren, it’s just not a time.
Click on the photo above to get the list of books on My Reading Table, or go here.
Good stories: “Something Is Out There”
February 23, 2010
Richard Bausch published a new collection of short stories this month. He’s recognized among the best when it comes to this form, and I’m a long-time fan.
My favorite story in his new book is “Trophy.” It concerns four co-workers and their boss who golf together one foggy Sunday morning. The boss is always down on his luck, including the recent IRS take-over of his car dealership, where they all work. “And through it all,” one co-worker says, “he was interested in how we were doing.”
That co-worker taps the boss’s golf ball into the cup on the 16th green. He blackmails another co-worker to go along with him in pretending the boss hit a hole in one. From then on, the boss’s luck turns around. “Trophy” is my favorite because it so powerfully captures the sudden, difficult and hard-to-control impulse to lie in order to do good.
The collection’s other stories are similarly deep in meaning and populated by characters flinching at the rough edges of their relationships. They take place for the most part in Tennessee and Virginia, and they are written with sagacious insight concerning themes of fear and trust, individual identity within marriage and bravery in the face of loss. While they are not depressing stories, they disturb the premise that we can rest assured in our loved ones.
In the story “Son and Heir,” the son of a prominent college president and wife is expelled from three universities and drifts through jobs and relationships. He lives in defiance of his parents’ expectations and their phony life. Eventually, his father cuts him off financially and says, “‘You’re going to want to blame somebody or something. It’s human nature. When life comes down on you, you’ll want to point at something.’” He also says, “‘I want you to know, I’m not taking the blame for you.’”
If not our husbands, wives, parents, friends or children, then who can we be assured of? Bausch plays with that question in the last story, “Sixty-five Million Years.” The main character is a priest bored by his duties and the pettiness of his parishioners’ troubles. One day, a very knowledgeable teen-aged boy enters the confession box and states that dinosaurs lived for millions of years and human existence compared to that is only a fraction of a second. “‘What was God thinking?’” he asks.
I’m not an avid short-story reader, but I was drawn to read this collection daily until it was finished. Even the book’s enticing jacket design, thick paper and Janson typeface — noted at the back of the book to be “of the influential sturdy Dutch types” – conspired to make me want to keep this book in hand.
Trial lawyer walking
February 2, 2010
U.S. edition
Joshua Ferris’ first novel was laugh-out-loud funny, let alone a perfect cynical take on the downsizing of corporate America. I eagerly anticipated his second novel, and I wasn’t disappointed. Still, I don’t think it’s for every reader. The Unnamed explores an interesting premise of how sickness can ruin a life, and it’s captivating for its inventiveness. But it’s not an involving story because we’re not called to care about what’s going on, only to observe it.
The protagonist is a successful Manhattan trial lawyer, Tim Farnsworth, suffering from a bizarre condition of involuntary walking. His feet mechanically march him through city streets, across bridges, along highways and through good and bad neighborhoods without letting him stop. Twice this condition kidnaps Tim in the middle of his life and twice he goes into remission. Each time he successfully hides the weirdness from his fellow law partners by taking time off with fake excuses about his wife’s health. When the novel opens, the condition has returned a third time. The reality hits hard. With the medical community stumped and no treatment or cure available, Tim and his wife know their lives will forever be held hostage.
U.K. edition
While this is a dramatically tragic plotline, Ferris keeps us above compassion by writing to the situation’s insanity. For example, Tim carries a survival back pack wherever he goes at the office because he could start walking at any moment. Also, as a test procedure — their last hope, actually – a doctor prescribes the daily wear of a helmet wired to capture brain activity. And Tim’s every walk ends with a tidal wave of exhaustion dropping him into a deep sleep in odd locations. One time it’s in the cab of a potato chip truck.
No longer wanting to burden his family, Tim eventually surrenders to the condition and takes off across the United States, willingly walking himself into physical and mental ruin. His endless motion becomes as relentless in the reading as the walking itself, but Ferris nevertheless keeps us traveling with his protagonist by fueling us with fresh prose. In the end, Tim learns his wife is battling cancer, and he walks home from the West Coast to be with her. Of any emotion in this unique and very sad story, it is their spousal romance that creates spark and purpose amidst all that doesn’t make sense.
Grodstein’s “A Friend of the Family”
January 29, 2010
Here’s a good book. A novel about family, friendship and a successful man making bad decisions. There is mystery, too, with questions that don’t get answered until the end, propelling the narrative forward.
Indeed, Lauren Grodstein’s engaging new novel absorbs with the convincing narration of Dr. Pete Dizinoff, a 50ish internist who’s facing malpractice and the rejection of his wife and son. Ostracized, he lives above the garage of their impressive Victorian home in a wealthy New Jersey suburb called Round Hill.
Up to now Dr. Pete has lived a successful, respected life. His college best friend Joe Stern, an ob-gyn specialist, and wife Iris live in the same suburb. It is not exclusiveness that defines these happy, self-assured couples, rather their down-to-earth desires to live the good life in secure suburbia and share the joy of raising their kids. As Dr. Pete looks back over the years from his fallen state, Grodstein deftly keeps us wondering what exactly he did wrong.
The build-up of events includes a crime of neonaticide. Laura, the Stern’s oldest daughter, hides a teen-aged pregnancy and then delivers the baby and kills it in a library bathroom. It’s a horrendous act that Dr. Pete can never forgive. Thirteen years later, his son Alec has dropped out of college and the beautiful Laura returns to Round Hill from California. She’s 30, Alec is 20, and they hook up. The overprotective father, Dr. Pete, makes it his personal mission to derail the romance.
To reveal much more would risk giving away the story’s conclusion, and it’s too good to allow that. But I will say, the arrogant, blinding wish to “get it right” with his son reveals Dr. Pete’s warped sense of parenting. He regards Alec as his legacy into the future. That is why Alec should go to a prestigious university, sign up for an impressive career, get married and have kids. In the end, thankfully, Grodstein doesn’t let her narrator off the hook with a brilliant, subtle touch arrived at by this fallen man’s inability to see outside of himself.
National Book Critics Circle finalists
January 23, 2010
The annual list of National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) award finalists is almost always inspiring. Typically, I recognize books on the list I’ve read and loved the previous year as well as bought and left calling to me from the reading table. The best part is the ones I’m not familiar with that excite me. The 2010 list is terrific. Ah! So many good books, so little time.
Here they are — five candidates in six categories — announced this Saturday night. Flannery already sits on my reading table. I’ll be heading to the library and/or bookstore for Blame and Enemies of the People. They, too, will likely sit on my reading table for a while, but so be it. They sound too good to miss.
The winners will be announced in March.
Fiction
-Blame by Michelle Huneven
-American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell
-The Book of Night Women by Marlon James
-Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
-Lark & Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips
Nonfiction
-The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
-The Hindus: An Alternative History by Wendy Doniger
-Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
-Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness by Tracy Kidder
-Imperial by William T. Vollmann
Autobiography
-Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir by Diana Athill
-Live Through This: A Mother’s Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love by Debra Gwartney
-Lit by Mary Karr
-Enemies of the People: My Family’s Journey to America by Kati Marton
-City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and ’70s by Edmund White
Biography
-Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch
-Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey
-Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector by Benjamin Moser
-Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone by Stanislao G. Pugliese
-Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line by Martha A. Sandweiss
Poetry
-A Village Life by Louise Gluck
-Versed by Rae Armantrout
-Chronic by D.A. Powell
-Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems, 1960-2008 by Eleanor Ross Taylor
-Museum of Accidents by Rachel Zucker
Criticism
-Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression by Morris Dickstein
-Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays by Eula Biss
-Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry by Stephen Burt
-Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu
-Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music by Greg Milner
