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A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

This one is going to stay with me a long time. 

As with Kate Grenville's The Secret River, this novel tackles a subject about which I was woefully ignorant, the wars between the Russian state and Chechen rebels in the decades following the break-up of the Soviet Union. Maybe because the horrors related in this book are not something out of the distant past, but took place during my unbelievably unaware adulthood, the effect on me was far more profound. 

Or maybe that effect is due to the memorable characters Marra creates, and the ways they make you think about what you might do faced with unthinkable circumstances; how you would define loyalty and love and family, and the notion of survival itself. Or maybe it's the way he describes small moments and details that stick with you, how he injects humor into the horror because, after all, that is what people do when trying to hold on to their humanity. In that last respect, this novel reminded me of City of Thieves, although Marra's book is by far the more serious of the two. 

This was one of those books that I simultaneously wanted to devour and read very slowly, both because I didn't want it to end, and because I couldn't bear the thought of losing characters to the violence of war. Amazing to think that this haunting novel is Marra's first.

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I would say I found this book to be pretty good, but not like the spate of really good reads I've been immersed in lately. The Secret River follows the life of William Thornhill, a Thames bargeman, who is caught stealing and, rather than being hanged, is sent to the penal colony in New South Wales. Knowing next to nothing about the English settlement of Australia, but knowing a fair amount about the European conquest of the Americas, I was interested in Kate Grenville's take on the brutality of colonialism, life on the frontier, and the fluidity of social and economic status in a "new world".

I think Grenville does a good job vividly depicting the horrific conditions of the penal colony and the shocking violence of the colonizers against the aboriginal inhabitants of the land and the land itself. Where I think the book doesn't reach great heights is in the characterizations of Thornhill and his wife.  Their relationship is too-good-to-be-true in the first half of the book and hollows out as Thornhill's quest for power and domination turn him from an honorable man into a tyrant.

While the story was enlightening (and disturbing), the writing itself didn't elevate this novel from good to great. Overall, I'm glad to have read it, but it wasn't a favorite.

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I picked up this book for two reasons. First, I read a great review in The New Yorker. Second, Jenny Offill was an acquaintance of mine in college, and I though it was so cool that this person who was on the literary magazine at school, and just beginning to write seriously at the time, had actually become a bonafide big-time author.

Anyway, regardless of the reasons, I'm glad I picked this book up. The novel is constructed in a series of discrete prose fragments that illuminate the life of a writer, wife, and mother. The unnamed narrator is revealed to us in tantalizing little flashes, as we observe her observations on the importance of work and ambition, the nature of motherhood and how it changes you, and the difficult and grace-giving state of being we call marriage.

I found myself catching my breath at times at how close to the bone some of Offill's observations cut. The language and fragmentary structure work together wonderfully to create less of a narrative (although there definitely is one) than an extended psychological portrait and meditation on marriage, parenthood, and the joys and tragedies of both.

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I enjoyed this one for a few reasons. A lot of the writing and observations are very good. The protagonist is compelling - not perfect, not a hero, but a complex young woman figuring out her way in a world that feels slightly beyond her control or even understanding. I liked some of the ideas Kushner examines - life as authentically lived or as performance, explorations of loyalty and betrayal, what is and isn't art. And she put me into worlds I knew nothing about, which was interesting (left-wing militants in Italy in the 1970s, speed-demons on the Bonneville Salt Flats). I'm not sold on the ending, which seemed to me a little like running out of steam. I don't mind leaving things unresolved, but this felt a little too loose. Overall, though, a good read.

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The Wheel on the School is a book I have loved ever since it was read to me as a child. I have read it many times since then, completely taken in by its quiet story and the the way DeJong narrates the complex lives of children. The brushed ink drawings by Maurice Sendak also add to the book's charm.

My older son has reread The Wheel on the School a number of times, and I just read it with my younger son, who seems to be another convert. It is funny to me that this book, set in an era before computers and cars, about some children in a Dutch fishing village trying to find a wheel to put on their school to attract a pair of nesting storks, should hold their attention like it does. But I'm glad they feel moved by this story about the importance of imagination and courage and community. I'm glad we can share a little visit to this world with each other.

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I used to be someone who had to finish a book once I started it. Then I realized life is too short to spend my precious free time reading something I don't want to be reading. I am really glad I had this epiphany before picking up David Foster Wallace's The Pale King.

I knew nothing about the book before I started it, and as I began reading I thought, "hmmmm, this is really kind of dull." Then I started thinking, "Okay, it's clear this guy is writing a dull book on purpose. Interesting in a conceptual way, I suppose, but I hope this picks up, because reading a dull book isn't really that much fun." Then I got pissed off because it started feeling hostile to me that someone would write over 500 pages of dullness for readers to have to slog through. Then I said "fuck this" and put the book down.

Shortly after my attempted slog, I watched a video made from part of a commencement speech Wallace gave at Kenyon College in 2005, and realized I was right in thinking Wallace inflicted this boredom on us on purpose. As he (quite engagingly, I must say) lays out in the speech, life is generally one long, hard, boring slog, and how we respond to those moments of dullness and disconnection is what's going to save us (or not, in Wallace's case). But the thing is, I don't want a novel to be a boring object lesson. I get enough tedium in my real life, not to want to invite more of it in. I don't need the books I read to serve as an escape, necessarily, but I also don't want them to be a needlessly difficult struggle, simply so I can say I made it through to the other side and some sort of artificial grace.

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At over 750 pages, The Goldfinch requires a significant investment of time and effort. Fortunately, it is more than worth it. Donna Tartt's first novel in more than a decade is a meditation on friendship, loss, loyalty, family, and the intoxicating power of art. It is also a gripping story of a young man trying to make his way in the world after the death of his mother. And it is beautifully written. I mean stop-in your-tracks to reread sentences, beautifully written.

Thanks to my husband for getting me this one for Christmas.

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I loved reading the Grimm's fairy tales as a kid, and went back to them over and over again. They are deeply weird little stories, nothing at all like the Disney versions.  Plus, when you read them to an eight-year-old, you get great questions like, "Why do the parents want to kill all the kids?"  Why indeed, little man, why indeed.

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Who would think a novel about the siege of Leningrad and the various horrors of war could be so damn funny? Still not sure about the framing device, but overall I really liked this one.

Fun facts about the author, David Benioff:

1. He is the co-creator and co-writer of the Game of Thrones TV series (which I would have never guessed from this novel).

2. He is married to actress Amanda Peet.