Book #113: Brian's Song

Book #113: Brian's Song by William Blinn

August 29, 2014

I finished this book last night in about an hour. It's actually the screenplay for the famous TV movie from the 1970s starring James Caan (love him) and Billy Dee Williams. Now, I never would have selected the book myself, and was a little appalled when one of my veteran colleagues suggested having it as a common text between our LA classes. I only understood the story as a sappy interracial bromance between two football players, in which one dies. Essentially a chick flick for guys. But if looked at in the appropriate historical context, and keeping in mind that the story of Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo is a true one, it's more than that. And I'm not at all surprised to hear accounts from self-proclaimed "non-readers" who say that they enjoyed reading the screenplay...when asked to do so for school!

So I gotta hand it to my colleague, this will be a good one to use. I would want to examine the contrasting "characters" (Piccolo, boisterous but friendly; Gale, shy and seemingly surly), and look at the meaning of the title. It might refer to when Brian would sing the fight song of his alma mater, Wake Forest. But of course it has a deeper meaning. From Gale's perspective, Brian made him the best of himself. He helped him overcome his shyness, and worked with him to get back in shape after a knee injury. And Brian just wanted Gale's friendship in return, even as they vied for the same offensive position (running back? The fuck I know...). The respect that they had for each other as teammates and competitors gave their relationship such complexity. If it weren't for the times, race definitely wouldn't have been a factor.

It wasn't a huge focus, but it was significant that the Chicago Bears were the first team to desegregate their players in training and on the road. Brian and Gale both catch heat for it, yet it doesn't even touch their friendship. In fact, it becomes a joke to them. When Brian calls Gale the "n-word" to push him to work his healing knee harder, Gale just laughs at him. Brian explains that the slur "wop" pisses him hard enough to really push it. They laugh over the racist letters sent to them, criticizing them for rooming together. They're so above it, and too busy pushing each other to focus on it, like, at all. Pretty cool.

Of course, Brian Piccolo got sick from cancer, and died after two unsuccessful operations on his lungs. It's pretty sad that a genuinely decent man, with a good heart and good morals, and so full of life, would go down like that. Of course since then, there have been countless films if varying quality, fictional or true, that have show people dying of cancer. Brian's Song told a true story, and told it well.

So of course I need to watch the film. Apparently there was a remake like 15 years ago, I don't know. I wonder if the music for it will be cheesy; that would kind of ruin it for me, dopey dramatic music. Yuck. But I'm pretty sure my students would like the screenplay. I am looking forward to this year, having "survived" the first week. 

Book #112: Someday, Someday, Maybe

Book #112: Someday, Someday, Maybe by Lauren Graham

 

August 27, 2014

 

 

When I was going through the new releases on my library’s ebook site, the cover of this book caught my attention for a couple of reasons. First off, I must say now that I hate the cover picture because it makes no sense. It shows a young woman riding a bike on a bridge in New York (perhaps the Brooklyn Bridge, since that’s where much of the book is set), when Franny doesn’t even own a bike. A picture of a woman walking the “wrong way” under a “one way street” sign would make a hell of a lot more sense. Secondly, I had to smile at the author’s name. Didn’t she know that if you share a name with someone who is famous, you’re supposed to put in the middle initial? Like director Morgan J. Freeman, and famous veteran actor Morgan Freeman? But when I read the description, I saw that Lorelei Gilmore really had written a book.

 

I’ve already written on this blog about how much I love Gilmore Girls, and how my dog’s name is Rory, blah blah blah. So of course I had to read this book, though I didn’t go into it with the highest of expectations. I guess it’s a bias that I have about a person getting to publish a book just because they’re famous. I mean, fucking Snooki. Come on. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this book was a pleasant surprise (because obviously Lauren Graham is a much wittier lady than Nicole Polizzi), I will say that, while I’d classify this book as a “beach read,” I found it very entertaining, like above average “beach read” material.

 

So the story clearly reflects much of Graham’s own life and experiences. Her character reminded me of Lorelei Gilmore in some ways, in that she was often unorganized, silly, self-indulgent when she could afford it and justify it, yet hard-working and driven. The book overall had a light-hearted tone, and the word that comes to my head is delightful. This book is delightful. Franny is a fun character. She is very likable, just the right amount of insecure. Not an entirely original character, to be sure, and the story itself (struggling actress becoming successful…well, sort of) isn’t entirely original, either, and yet it flowed pretty well and kept me entertained. Having grown up in the ‘90s, I enjoyed the setting as well.

 

I guess there isn’t a whole lot to say about the book overall. I would say, if you are a fan of Lauren Graham’s work, it’s a must-read. And if you like light-hearted yet well-written characters, it’s worth reading. I haven’t really watched Graham’s newest show, Parenthood, but my borrowed ebook edition featured a random interview between Graham and a costar on the show, Mayonegg…oops, I mean Mae Whitman (her?). Didn’t get the point of that, but again, delightful nonetheless. I’m determined to read many serious, life-altering sort of books as I plow on, but sometimes, it’s okay to have a little fluff, like cheese puffs, in your diet. If Graham published another book, I’d read it as a break from heavier books. It’s much less of a “guilty pleasure” than most other “beach reads,” that’s for sure.

Book #111: 101 Places Not to See Before You Die

Book #111: 101 Places Not to See Before You Die by Catherine Price

August 26, 2014

I actually finished this book a couple of days ago. I’ll probably finish the book that I’m currently on tomorrow, or Thursday at the latest. But I’ve been very busy since then, and while I can read while at the gym, a blog post actually requires some sitting down. So I’m getting this done while my laundry dries.

So this book is meant to be a parody of books that have a certain number of things to something before you die: places to see, books to read, and the author even named off some more ridiculous titles as well. So this book isn’t meant to be taken seriously. I found some of the entries to be entertaining for different reasons, but overall I wasn’t really into the structure of the book. Some of the locations were places in times long past, which would be impossible to visit anyway, such as the islands of northern Europe during a wicked storm in the 14^th century. A couple of locations were completely fictional. Many of these seemed to reflect the author’s own taste and personality; some people might find the conditions at Burning Man to be enjoyable, and others may find Mount Rushmore to still be a place worth seeing, in spite of the author’s critique. My parents were actually supposed to visit Rushmore on a recent road trip, but had to hurry home when one of the dogs go sick…according to Price, they weren’t missing much. And I know a few people who have seen the famous gum wall in Seattle and think it’s pretty damn cool; it’s something I’d like to see and contribute to, just because. The author was very grossed out by it…hello, wear latex gloves, then.

My favorite entries either talked about a personal travel experience (Price’s own, or those of guest authors whose entries were supplemental to, and did not count as, the 101 places themselves), or had interesting information. For example, Price writes about how she got her first period while on a family trip in China. They were traveling on a train with out-of-order bathrooms and cramped quarters. The author includes a note that train travel in China has gotten better. I can say from experience that it has…sort of. I’m very glad that I wasn’t on my period at any point when I visited China…the three weeks I was there weren’t  that week, thank God, and yes, if you’re a Westerner there, people will gawk at you in post places, though maybe not so much in Beijing. That particular chapter in this book was one of my favorites, because the author had really  been there. The differences between the chapters written from her own experience, and those based on research, were significant.

I found the chapter on  buzkashi, a very strange and dangerous-sounding sport in Afghanistan, to be fascinating. The chapter on Carry Nation and her tour of pubs with her hatchet was really random (it wasn’t the only chapter based more on a person or thing, rather than an actual place), but also interesting. I also appreciated the chapter about Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Everything assumes that it’s a great place to spend the New Year, but it really sounds awful. I could imagine myself, drunk with friends and so desperate to pee that I would squat at a building and get arrested or something. No  bathrooms and no booze for sale…on New Year’s. Are you goddamn kidding me?

I don’t get why Fucking, Austria would make this list. The name is unfortunate, depending on your taste and sense of decency, but otherwise there’s nothing said about why this would be a terrible place to go. So that’s one example of an entry that is simply thrown in for humor.  At least the very short chapters for “your boss’s bedroom” and “your college campus four months after graduation” made some sense, and were pointless and humorous.

With how very loosely the author compiled this list, there are actually infinite places that you wouldn’t want to go before you die. A Nazi concentration camp, for one. The spaceship in the  Alien movies. Cosmo Kramer’s apartment (that’s one that would be according to taste, too, of course). For the format to work, I feel like she should have stuck to actual places that people visit, like Euro Disney and Wall Drug. Or, it should have dropped the whole format, and been a book about bad traveling experiences; that would have been funny. In spite of my annoyance at the format at the book, however, most of the chapters were entertaining. This book didn’t quite work, but it’s an entertaining and interesting read nonetheless, and I did enjoy learning little tidbits (some quite disgusting, though) about other countries and cultures.

Book #110: Painter of Silence

Book #110: Painter of Silence by Georgina Harding

August 21, 2014

Well, I am back in the full swing of things at work. School starts next Tuesday, and this week I’ve attended meetings (oh so many meetings, and more to come tomorrow), and have had time to set my classroom back up and continue outlining curriculum. Some of the language arts specific meetings that I’ve attended have given me some insight into how I might approach the teaching of certain novels, at least, and I’ll continue to read potential picks as part of this “challenge” as well as my planning.

Okay, so I must say that I hate the title of this book. Mainly because the character that it refers to, Augustin, is not a painter at all, though he is an artist of sorts. Augustin was born deaf in the 1920s in Romania. His mother was an unmarried cook at a large manor house, and he grows up alongside the wealthy children. Safta, the oldest child and only daughter of the prominent family, is his friend in earlier childhood, though they grow apart in later years. I do wonder if they would have grown apart if he weren’t deaf; as children, she seemed to find a way around that in communicating with him. There is some half-hearted attempts, by the children’s governess, to teach Augustin to sigh and to speak, but she thinks its impossible and so he never really learns to communicate. Except through his drawings…although only Safta is able to derive much meaning from them, and that’s only years later, after the war and the Communist takeover of Romania, when they’re reunited.

I found the setting to be very interesting, although I did have to look up some supplementary information in order to put the whole thing into context. Romania waffled during World War II, the same way that Italy did in World War I, I guess. First they were neutral; then a coup brought in a new government that supported the Nazis; then another coup by the king brought them on the Allies’ side; then yet another coup after the war brought it under the power of the USSR. The story mainly takes place after the war, though the reader does see Safta and Augustin’s memories of before and during the war itself.

I thought Augustin was a fascinating character with his artwork. While he drew rooms and landscapes of places that he’d been and remembered or was at right at that moment with realistic skill, he would sometimes include fantastic elements. And it was years before he drew a realistic-looking person. Instead, he created paper cutouts of people; the way it was described, they kind of sounded like Terrance and Philip fromSouth Park, with the rectangular bodies and whatnot. I thought maybe this was because of Augustin’s disconnect from other people, being deaf in a time and place where there were not many resources for deaf people. The people closest to him, even Safta, just assumed that there was so much that he couldn’t possibly understand due to his disability. But as the book continues on, you see that this is not the case.

I personally did not feel totally connected with the characters. I found myself always wanting to know more, see more, especially with Safta. I realize that from Augustin’s perspective, some things about his experiences during and after the war are going to be a bit unclear, because of his being deaf, of course. But I still don’t totally get how Safta’s miscarriage led to her wanting to be a nurse, and to stay in Romania when she had the chance to escape to England with her family. She expresses disgust, when she first begins attending college and attending social gatherings in Bucharest, at the decadence and vapidity of people in her social class. But what triggered this, really? The man she loved, Andrei, was just as privileged as she was. Had he been a Communist or a sympathizer or something, and had passed his beliefs on to her, then I might get it. I almost feel like Safta is pro-Communist, that she feels proud of the little that she has now…almost. And yet…I can’t be too sure, because I just don’t know this character.

How Augustin goes from a Communist work camp back to the manor is unclear. The book starts with him leaving his home village, with some information written down by the local priest, and traveling to find Safta. His reason for this is that he has to tell her, somehow, about Andrei’s death, though you don’t really figure this out until closer to the end of the book. He uses his drawings to communicate these ideas with her; he can’t read or write, he can’t sign or speak, so that’s the only form of communication that he has. For the first time, it seems, his pictures have a clear meaning to them.

I liked the end of the book, and I found the details about Safta and Augustin’s lives to be very interesting…and I really wanted more of that. I always have an appreciation for books that put me in a time and place that I don’t know much about. Books about World War II are abundant, of course, but mainly you get the perspective of Holocaust victims. Which is a good thing, of course. I mean, it’s important to honor those experiences. But there was more going on during the war, and in this case, it seems that the Russians were causing more trouble for the characters in this book than the Nazis themselves; the words “Nazi,” “Holocaust,” and “Hitler” are never even referenced. I’ll admit that there’s much that I don’t know about the USSR, and I would really like to read more books set in that time and place.

Book #109: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Book #109: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

August 18, 2014

Another “first” for this list: this is a book that I’ve read previously.

Well, actually, I think that may not necessary be true. Let me explain. So when I was in the 5^th grade (I’m pretty sure it was 5^th grade), I read this book for school. Now, since I’m reading it as a possible text to use for my high school students, and I have some trepidation with how some of them may be able to handle it, I don’t think it’s real likely that a class of 5^th graders would be assigned this book. Either I read it with an advanced reading group (I would have been in the top reading track, of course), or maybe the class studied a condensed version. Either way, certainly nothing wrong with my rereading it, especially after such a long time.

I’ve read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn more recently, and have even used it with students. It’s such a great book, and it dismayed me that my teaching of it didn’t go well at that. That may be due to my inexperience at the time; I have a much better idea of what I can do to make Tom Sawyer work for my students. It may be that I only use it with one language arts section, and that would be okay. I feel like my more advanced students would definitely appreciate it.

Tom Sawyer is a delightful and timeless book. It doesn’t tackle as many social issues as Huck Finn, and it certainly isn’t as controversial; only a handful of times is the “n-word” used, compared to hundreds of times in the latter, for one thing. There are some poignant points made about the inhumanity of slavery and racism, such as the note about how a dog owned by a white man would be called by the family’s last name (like for my dog, she’d be Rory Brown), but a slave would be called in the possessive (the Widow Douglas’s Jim, for instance). Mr. Clemens also points out issues with the education of children, and pokes fun at overly preachy writing. While he has a message to get across, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are far from preachers; the reader is supposed to know better than they do, and their ignorance is at times touching (like not knowing what an “orgy” is, though Tom Sawyer speaks of them with such authority), and at times heartbreaking (like Huck acknowledging that a local slave is very kind to him, so he “condescends” to sit and eat with him, though he doesn’t really want to).

Even with some of the serious issues addressed, the book is mostly light-hearted. Tom Sawyer is a fun character. He’s your average little shit, a mischievous child who really doesn’t mean any harm. He’s more whimsical and destructive in Huck Finn, though in his own story he comes off as being more accident-prone than anything else, I guess. He is rather thoughtless, as his Aunt Polly repeatedly points out. Some scenes, like when he’s trying to fake sick from school or languishing in the boring classroom, are so relatable.

When I teach this book, I don’t think I’ll have my students plow through it. I may assign one (maybe two, if there’s a short one) chapter per night, two on weekends. It would take a little while to get through, but there’s a lot that could be discussed: fun topics and serious ones, too. Obviously Mark Twain wanted to send a message in his writing, without being boring or preachy. He does this more in Huck Finn: it’s still a really fun book (in spite of what any of my former students may have to say about it), but has a more serious message to it, especially with the character Jim. Tom Sawyer, satirical itself, doesn’t have such a strong message. I think that’s why Huck Finn is the better of the two, though I enjoy both for pretty much the same reasons.

Book #108: Carrie

Book #108: Carrie by Stephen King

August 15, 2014

Since I started this whole “reading challenge,” I’d had this kind of unofficial rule in my head, that I wouldn’t read a book by the same author twice in the same year. I kind of read two books credited to Dennis Lehane this year, though he technically edited and contributed to one, and authored the other. With my reading of Carrie, I’m officially broken the unofficial rule. Oh, well. No more rules; I always enjoy my reading best when I just read whatever the hell I want to, anyway.

So Carrie was King’s debut novel. It’s the book that gave him international attention and fame, and because of the film starring Sissy Spacek, it’s a well-known story, particularly the prom scene (which actually went down differently than how it’s portrayed in the film). I think King was my age when the book was published, in fact. I can definitely see how this first novel would get a lot of attention, but I can also see how King’s writing has evolved since then. I usually find King’s work to be very character-driven, but in this case, I was reading to see how the whole prom night thing went down. See, even if I had never seen or heard of the movie, I would have had some idea that disaster was going to strike, as the narrative also includes fictional news clips, exerts from books about Carrie White, and transcripts of interviews with witnesses and survivors of what happened on prom night.

In his memoir On Writing, King admits that he didn’t like the character Carrie very much. He wrote her based on either outcast girls he witnessed when he was a teacher, or outcast girls from when he was in school, something like that. Every school has at least one girl, I think, who is the odd one out for some reason. Nowadays, it’d be most likely that she’s obese, and/or poor. In this case, of course, Carrie is an outcast because of her mother’s really really psychotic religious beliefs. She stands out in her homemade, modest clothing, and has stood out since the first day of kindergarten, when she went to her knees in the cafeteria to pray at lunch. Since then, her life at school has been a nightmare. She takes on the victim mentality of her against the world, and in such a hostile environment, why wouldn’t she?

I think most people can think of a time when they’ve been left out, or picked on. It doesn’t feel good at all. It would be awful to feel that way all the time. And most of the time, those kids who are ostracized don’t have any power in the situation. Nowadays, may schools are touting “anti-bullying” policies and even education programs. That may result in these outcasts being picked on in stealthier ways, or maybe just being ignored, period. Bullying is a really complex topic. Human beings are pack animals, and I think in some ways it’s instinctual to pick on the perceived weakest link. Does that excuse it? Absolutely not. But if adults are susceptible to this (and trust me, bullying happens in the “adult world,” too), then certainly children have a harder time reining this in.

I don’t necessarily think that bullying is inevitable. I’d like to think that we can all just get along, but adults have to set the example first. Anyway, Carrie, of course, is not such a powerless victim to her peers, because, of course, she has powers of telepathy. It’s repeatedly referred to the TK phenomena in the book. The news clips and book exerts and interviews are mostly from after Carrie’s death. It’s been acknowledged that Carrie possessed such powers, and used them to kill hundreds of people at her high school and throughout her small Maine community. The exerts from the book The Shadow Exploded, which questions the official investigation around Carrie White, points out that the TK phenomena (in King’s world) is genetic; in fact, at one point Carrie’s mother reflects on the fact that her own grandmother had “devil powers.” Another situation described at the end of the book makes it seem like the TK phenomena would skip two generations of women, so that a girl would have it if her great-grandmother did.

Carrie’s powers have been triggered in stressful situations, but the things that happened weren’t really in her control. When she was three, and had wandered into a neighbor’s backyard and talked to a girl in a small bikini, her mother had freaked out and taken a knife, threatening to cut her daughter’s eyes out. Little Carrie was so terrified that hail rained from the sky onto the White bungalow, then the furniture flew all over the house, and then rocks fell from the sky, destroying the roof. That’s the one big thing that Carrie did with her powers, before prom night. Obviously, the little girl was under major duress.

Then, when Carrie got her period (a major biological event for every young woman), and was traumatized when her classmates pelted her with tampons and pads and screamed at her in the showers, she suddenly had more strength than ever. She was now able to control things, and she started to train her powers. She had nothing sinister in mind, not at first. Any violent thoughts that she had about Them (how she thought of her classmates who ostracized her) would be kind of normal for an angry young outcast; I didn’t think she was going to use her powers for harm. No, it was after the cruel prom night prank that she reminded herself that she had powers…then, keeping control of her mind, she herself got out of control, consumed by the years of anger and hurt that she’d felt.

Here’s an interesting difference between the original movie and the book. In the movie, as soon as everyone starts reacting to the spilled blood (shocked laughter, etc), Carrie does her bug-eyed thing and starts hurting people, flinging them into walls, and setting the place on fire as she stands up on the stage, then walks out amidst the construction she has caused. In the book, it’s quite different. When she’s drenched in blood and being laughed at, she flees. When she falls down in the front lawn of the school, that’s when she remembers her powers. She’s safely outside the auditorium doors when she starts the electrical fire, which would eventually lead to the school’s explosion. She then goes through the streets and leaks out gasoline from the gas stations, which eventually start fires of there own. That’s just a few things that she did to cause the deaths of maybe 500 people in her small town.

The scene with her mother is different, too. Her mother does stab her; Carrie (almost calmly) gets her mother’s heart to stop, killing her. But she doesn’t express her regret at killing her mother right away; she doesn’t mentally cause the house to collapse around them. It is consumed in the fire that Carrie started on their street, along with other houses. Carrie leaves to go burn down a local bar (in her mother’s honor, I guess), and she ends of dying in the parking lot there, having overexerted herself, and having the stab wound in her shoulder.

King definitely started off his career as a professional novelist with a bang, and I’d still say that  Carrie is his best-known work. Is it his best? No, but it’s far from the worst King that I’ve read, too. If I didn’t feel like the characters drove the story, I can at least say that they were complex, as I would expect from King characters. Margaret White was interesting, as she grapples with horrible guilt from sleeping with her husband before they were married; she even got pregnant with Carrie before they were married, and she seems to think that that’s why her husband died, and why her daughter has “evil powers.” She had a violent episode in high school; she saw a classmate smoking a cigarette, and proceeded to beat this person with her purse. Her father, a bar owner himself, was killed by a drunk patron. It’s pretty easy to see how Carrie became the way that she did, but I’d be even more interested in seeing how Margaret got her twisted religious views, so twisted that she won’t even go to a church to worship, but will only do so at home. Besides situations with her grandmother and her daughter, it doesn’t seem like much from Margaret’s life was “phenomenal,” but I still think it would make a very interesting story.

Book #107: Slaughterhouse-Five

Book #107: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

August 13, 2014

I started this book during my workout at the gym. When I saw how far I was able to get in just an hour (the electronic version on my phone doesn’t give me page numbers), I was like, fuck it, I’ll finish it today. Considering that I outlined the curriculum for three of my sections this morning as well, I don’t think it was time wasted.

The only Vonnegut I’d read previously was the short story “Harrison Bergeron.” That’s a story that I’ve used in language arts classes since my first year, and it always goes over well. I had high expectations going into Vonnegut’s best known and most influential novel, and I was not in the least disappointed.

The story of Billy Pilgrim is told by a fictitious narrator, who is probably based on Vonnegut himself. This unnamed narrator describes how he spent years deciding how to write a book about what happened in Dresden, Germany at the end of World War II. During the Allies last attacks on a weakened Germany, the city of Dresden, previously untouched in the war, was fire-bombed, leaving thousands dead and the city in ruins. A group of about 100 American soldiers (according to the book, which is probably accurate considering that Vonnegut himself was really there, just as he has his narrator there, too) survived the bombings in their shelter, beneath a slaughterhouse. They were kept imprisoned in Slaughterhouse #5…hence, the name of the book.

But the whole thing isn’t set in the war or in Dresden. It jumps back and forth in time frequently. This could be due to many things, but it seems that Billy Pilgrim is dealing with serious mental illness. Young Billy, in the war, is a character that I could relate to. He was polite to an irritating degree, kind of clueless about his situation (just kind of following orders), and kind of just acting on his instincts. The trauma of the war, it seems, triggered a sensation of jumping back and forth in his life. However, the problem with my theory is that the events that he could foresee (marrying and having a life with Valencia, getting into and surviving the plane crash, etc) all came true. So it’s an intriguing question that Vonnegut leaves unanswered: what’s really going on here?

In addition to the time-traveling, Billy also believes that he was abducted by aliens and kept in a zoo for several years, that a young actress was put in there with him, and that they had a child together. His return to Earth is never explained, whatever that’s meant to indicate. In their prison on a far away planet, the two of them do not despair, but seem to live a normal, happyish life…just like any average American might have anyway, except their being naked all the time.

His ideas about the alien abducting seemed to have been fueled by his reading of science fiction novels by Kilgore Trout, who is apparently a character in other Vonnegut works (in fact, a number of characters from his other works make appearances in this one…interesting). Still, the accuracy of his “time traveling” or his visions or whatever leaves some things open to the reader.

Most of the details of the book seem realistic, besides all the alien stuff happening in Billy’s own head, but Vonnegut also presented a futuristic (it would have been the 1970s) America, which had been divided up into many different countries…probably to strip it of power as punishment for the Vietnam War, which is mentioned a bit in this text (which was published in 1969). Yes, it seemed like things were pretty bad at that point, just like they’ve been seeming pretty bad lately. The constant refrain of “so it goes” after any mention of death might have gotten irritating at times, but I felt like, while it might be seen as being flippant toward death, I think it has rather the opposite effect.

There’s a seemingly-random scene that involves an asshole of an elderly millionaire, who was in the hospital room with Billy when he was recovering from the plane crash, having his very young wife, who had learning disabilities, read the transcript of a statement that President Truman made after the bombing of Hiroshima. The way that the president was so flip when giving out big numbers was disturbing, and he was talking on about using more bombs, destroying more Japanese cities and taking more lives, all in the name of over-retribution for Pearl Harbor. I can say today that our past few presidents have not approached any war or armed conflict with the intent of taking as many lives as possible…at least not publicly.

There is a section at the end of the book where Vonnegut’s narrator gives a prediction about the world population reaching 7 billion before the year 2000. We made it, I think, or came really really close, and have exceeded that number now. One character was flip about it, saying that so many lives…not everyone can be significant. Which comes off as being really inhumane. But while it’s true that death happens, and sometimes that is just how it goes, human life is always significant. I feel like Vonnegut felt that way and approached this story with that in mind. It was interesting to see that the Nazis depicted in this book were, if not friendly and accommodating to all, at least not overly cruel to the American and British prisoners. I feel like I read that Vonnegut was not treated so well in the same slaughterhouse that he was a POW in, but he didn’t show any of that in this book. They all treat each other as human beings, which is obviously not the way that all POWs and other Nazi prisoners were treated in the war. The Holocaust is only mentioned a little bit, but I guess that wasn’t Vonnegut’s experience in the war. It does describe the conditions of Russian POWs, much worse than the Americans and British, as Russia and Germany were bitter enemies and Russians were Communists. The characters themselves don’t express much pity towards the Russians, though they do refuse to join a turncoat American Nazi in fighting Russia on that front. Plus, there’s the scene that shows a poor starving Russian POW helping Billy, who is strung out on morphine after a nervous episode at dinner, when he gets caught in the fence separating their camps. There are these bright shimmers of humanity in this book, and I almost felt like, as I kept reading “so it goes” after the mention of death, that it was almost a tribute to those who had died. “So it goes,” that’s true, but with a tip of the hat, to acknowledge the person or people, to acknowledge that they had lived and been human, and were significant for that reason alone.

Book #106: How to Create the Perfect Wife

Book #106: How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain’s Most Ineligible Bachelor and his Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate by Wendy Moore

August 12, 2014

This book popped up as a “new release” on my library’s ebook site, and I was instantly fascinated by the title. Until I read the description, I imagined a farce involving a mad scientist of some sort in old timey England. Well, this is actually a nonfiction text, essentially a biography of Thomas Day and Sabrina Bicknell (aka…well, lots of other names).

I thought that I recognized the name Thomas Day, but then I thought maybe I was just mixing up Thomas Hardy and Charlie Day. It seems like it could be a pretty common name, anyway. Then, when the book started talking about Day’s theories on education, and his influences (especially Jean-Jacque Rousseau), I began to wonder about a text that I’d read for one of my graduate courses. The text  Act Your Age: A Cultural Consturction of Adolescence by Nancy Lesko gives a history on education, with a focus on how society has created the state of adolescence that many young people stifle under. I thought maybe I had read about Day in this text, but much of the research that she sites goes back to after his time. However, as one of the first children’s authors  ever, and writing stories for children that imposed certain morals and values (another theme in Lesko’s text), his influence is felt.

See, Thomas Day wasn’t a bad guy. Moore doesn’t try to show him that way. She does a great job of putting the whole situation into context, showing how Day is a product of his time and his environment. He came from wealth and privilege, and was able to indulge in years of study, and became known to his friends and admirers as a philosopher. He was socially awkward and didn’t give much care to his appearance; he sounded like a pompous douche to me, though Moore doesn’t go so far in her descriptions. The worst thing about him was that he hated to be wrong, refused to be wrong, in fact. And while he had very lofty ideals, he was, in fact, a hypocrite, as Moore proves.

So Day is best known in history as an abolitionist, a philanthropist, and a poet. Those are all good things, right? Yet while he helped the poor and condemned slavery, he in fact had his very own “slave” (to a certain extent). Sabrina (a name that Day gave the girl himself) was chosen by Day from an orphanage to be trained up as his “perfect” wife. There’s another girl, whom he calls Lucretia, involved at one point, but he decides to ditch her and focus his efforts on Sabrina exclusively. When the girl was 13, she lived alone with Day. This was unheard of at the time, and would definitely still be considered creepy today, but what’s weird (as Moore points out) is that none of the people who knew what Day was attempting with the girl tried to put a stop to it. What he was doing was highly illegal for a number of reasons, but being wealthy and educated, he got away with it.

He educates Sabrina in a traditional sense, with reading and writing and math and all that stuff, but he also wants to build up the traits in her that he thinks an ideal wife (for him, at least) should possess. He dictates that she dress plainly, and even that she scorn fashion. He expects her to be submissive to him. And he also wants her to be strong-hearted…so much so that he basically tortures her. The hot wax (dropped onto the girl’s bare arms and back, which is sadistic to say the least), and shooting blanks at her skirts with a loud pistol were certainly the worst physical punishments that he put her through, but he was cruel to her in other ways as well.

Day felt all along that he could treat the girl however he wanted to because, no matter what, he’d provide her with a better station in life than she, as an “illegitimate” orphan, would have otherwise had. When he decides that she doesn’t suit the bill, he packs her off to boarding school, but continues to have control over her life, though he rarely writes to her or comes to see her. That’s probably the worst of it, in my opinion, how he left her isolated from people she’d come to know, and how he hardly cared for her at all. He gave her what he considered one last chance to pass his tests, years later, but he made an excuse not to marry her and packed her off again, because he’d fallen in love with someone else.

Sure, Day provided Sabrina with connections that would later help her through her troubles. Because of him, she met her husband, the man who had originally selected her as the girl for Day’s experiment (so, so crazy!). Day ran with some important people at times: Benjamin Franklin was someone he would have intellectual discourse with; Anna Seward was an intimate friend at one time, but later despised him because of the whole Sabrina situation; Charles Darwin’s grandfather was a close friend. Jean-Jacque Rousseau himself didn’t seem to have much love for Day, but then he was a pretty awful guy himself. Most of these people, at one time or another, respected Day, but came to be alienated by his sanctimoniousness and his propensity for long-winded monologues. Essentially, he wanted a wife who would listen to him blather on while they lived in some isolated hideaway, and would agree with him always and obey him, but would be smart enough to at least understand what he’s talking about. Urg, this guy is such a dick!

There are some interesting-sounding texts mentioned in this book that I would maybe read myself. It’s clear that Moore knew her shit, that she did the appropriate research. It’s incredible how much of the story she’s able to piece together from all of the correspondence that she found (and she’d probably be dependent on the letters of Day’s most famous acquaintances), and from speculation that she can back up with evidence. Never on any huge points, but like she is able to speculate that Sabrina had been a certain child’s godmother based on something that the mother had mentioned about the baptism and Sabrina’s impending arrival.

I couldn’t help but compare this book to The Crimes of Charlotte Brontë. Tully was making wild and scandalous claims about the well-known Brontë family with scant evidence (much of the “evidence” presented in the book was fictionalized!), and heavy speculation…lots and lots of assumptions. And Tully provided maybe a short list of references at the end of the book. With this work, Moore cited pages…and pages…and pages…of notes, citations, etc. Again, she knew her shit, and that was clear in the style of the text, as she included a myriad of well-placed quotes from the people mentioned on the subject of Day and Sabrina, among other related topics of these people and the time. It hardly ever got dull, whereas with Tully’s book, I found myself nodding off and spacing more than a handful of times.

I would love to read other nonfiction works that are of this quality. I wonder what other texts Moore herself may have out there? What I really appreciated about this book is that while it truthfully revealed the disgusting and scandalous actions of Day toward this poor girl, it was also rich was interesting information about the time period. This was around the time of the American Revolution, and Moore creates a rich portrait of Georgian England. This impulse read was a great choice.

Book #105: The Old Man and the Sea

Book #105: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

August 10, 2014

This is a book that I read in preparation for the coming school year. A class set of copies is available through our local education agency, and so it is a book that I feel I’ll be able to use with one, or perhaps both, of my language arts sections. I’ve never read a full-length work by Hemingway, and while I’ve read that his style is pretty simplistic, I hadn’t really gotten a feel for what that meant until I read this book today (just one go, in the bathtub, haha). But now I see it. Sometimes it’s simplistic in a way that’s a little irritating to me, describing some seemingly small detail or another. On the other hand, the observations and reflections made by Santiago (mostly referred to as “the old man” in the text…Coelho paid tribute to this in  The Alchemist), who is a seemingly simple man, are poignant and even beautiful. Yes, Hemingway was a deep guy, with a tough, manly exterior. That shows in this work.

The Old Man and the Sea is Hemingway’s most famous work, obviously; it even won the Pulitzer. The basic premise is well-known, of course: an old man sets out alone to fish, catches a huge one, but while it’s impossible for him to haul it in, he refuses to give up. The story is both tragic and triumphant, as old Santiago, in spite of his aches and pains and numerous injuries to his hands, holds the line and tries to outsmart this huge marlin, whom he comes to respect, over the course of about two days. He finally outwits the fatigued fish, but has to tie it to the side of his boat. Inevitably, in the waters surrounding Cuba, the fish is devoured by a series of sharks. Santiago works to keep them a way, killing a few and injuring many, but he returns to the shores of Havana with a giant carcass that has been picked clean.

Some readers have found this book to be redundant, maybe even pointless, but they are obviously missing the big idea here. For this old man, fishing is all that he knows. He’s a very simple man, of course: he lives in a little shack, he gets up early to fish everyday, sometimes accompanied by Manolin (who is mostly referred to as “the boy”), and gets out on his skiff to fish. As he’s gotten older, it seems like he’s lost his touch; he’s currently on an 80+ day streak of no major catches, and is a laughingstock. But he is determined; he has a good attitude, and he has strategies, and he sticks to his plans. The relationship between him and the boy is very touching, as the boy looks out for this down and out old fisherman whom he respects, the man who taught him everything. The old man keeps thinking, as he struggles with the huge marlin, that he wishes the boy were there.

Some parts of the book were a little difficult for me to follow, as I’m not familiar with fishing much at all. I know it requires a lot of patience, which Santiago seemed to have in spades. I’ve never done much fishing, it’s not really my kind of activity. But I’ve read other works about fisherman, I’ve seen those crazy fishing shows on TV, I know that it’s a tough but important and time-honored way to make a living. When I teach this book, I will try to show students pictures of skiffs like the one Santiago and other Cuban fisherman circa 1950’s-ish would be using. I would also bring in some information on baseball at that time, especially information on Joe DiMaggio, who seems to be a hero for Santiago. He thinks to himself, I wonder what DiMaggio would think…his father was a fisherman…would he have toughed it out with me? That made me think of  The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, how Trisha would imagine her hero/crush along with her as she was lost in the woods.

For the most part, I really appreciate this book, though I could see why teenaged readers could be turned off by it. When I teach it, I will need to do so carefully. I’ll want to get the students to connect with Santiago on a more personal level, try to see the whole situation from his perspective. I think it could go over rather well. I’m glad that I’m starting to get excited for the new school year, because it will be here very, very soon.

Book #104: Gone Girl

Book #104: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

August 9, 2014

Whoa. Shit in this book got way too  real. I would consider this book to be a very dark commentary on attitudes toward marriage, with some very extreme and complex characters. I was very impressed with the way Flynn shaped these characters, because while they (and I’m taking specifically about Amy and Nick, the two narrators, here) could be very disgusting and easy to hate, you could also understand them, in a way. As I said, it was all just  too twisted, and yet so much of it seemed to ring true.

Okay, so while I was pretty certain throughout the first part of the book that Nick really didn’t have anything to do with Amy’s disappearance, and that something very different was happening, I didn’t see it coming. Nick comes off as a monster in the first part of the book, while Amy comes across as pretty normal, a pretty woman, maybe a bit of a snob, but certainly not someone who deserves to be beaten to death by her husband. But it turns out that Nick is pretty much your run-of-the-mill douche, just an average guy, really. I mean, even in the first part, besides the visions of him bashing his wife’s head open in their kitchen, I wasn’t convinced that he was a completely terrible guy. The visions could be either attributed to a time that he felt provoked by Amy and actually pushed her (one incident that led to her very, very extreme actions) and she hit her head, or to a fantasy that he’s had of bashing her head in with a hammer. Okay, so that’s probably not normal, but I don’t think very many people could judge just a fantasy. Especially when the reader becomes introduced to the “real” Amy.

People who are dating often show a very selective side of themselves to the other person. They hope they can keep the person around long enough to attach themselves in a committed relationship, and once they’re moved in or married, they suddenly have all these personality traits that were previously hidden. Sometimes its normal things, like not realizing that your partner is a neat-freak or hearing them baby-talk their dog obnoxiously (I’m guilty of that, and wouldn’t do it in front of anyone I was dating casually, haha!). Or, in the case of Amy with Nick, it could be that she completely fabricates her entire personality, and slowly sheds this fake identity and is pissed when you don’t love her still. I mean, the weird thing is, what she’s saying about the “cool girl” stuff is completely true. There are many desperate girls who claim to like Star Wars or whatever, or watch sports, just to get in with their guy. Completely faking your whole personality until you’re two years into a marriage seems really extreme, but I don’t necessarily think that Amy is unique in this. In most cases, it would end in divorce. That wasn’t going to happen to Amy.

Can I talk about the Elliotts for a second? I’ve been dying to talk about the Elliotts. Amy is an only child, a “miracle baby,” to two child psychologists, Rand and Marybeth. During her childhood, they made massive money on a series of children’s books about a girl named “Amazing Amy.” In the years leading up to this incident, the series had become less and less popular, as “Amazing Amy” aged along with real-life Amy. Amy always felt like her parents used the series to criticize her choices in life, simple choices like ditching a soccer game to hang out with friends, while “Amazing Amy” would reflect and decide to stick to her commitments…because she’s perfect. It would suck to live that way, especially with your parents being lovey-dovey all the time (“come on, baby, now, I’ll show you a good time”). Both Nick and Amy find that pretty disgusting. And is it forced? Amy says that she told Desi (Jesus Christ, I will get to that motherfucker in a minute) that her father would come into her room when she was a kid and…you know. Was that even true? She basically lied to everyone close to her, all the time.

In many ways, it was Rand and Marybeth who forced Nick and Amy to move to Missouri, after taking most of Amy’s trust fund (borrowing it, I guess) after they had been spending so irresponsibly. Both Amy and Nick had worked for magazines, more or less as writers (Nick more, Amy less, no matter what she says about it), and…well, the book takes place in modern day, so guess what? So, jobless and with only a fraction of Amy’s money left, they go to Nick’s hometown, a cheaper place to live than NYC, surely, with the intention of caring for Nick’s separately ailing parents. His parents are a complicated situation in and of themselves, but not as weird as Amy’s whole situation. His father is a sexist, belligerent man with Alzheimer’s; his mother died of cancer maybe a  year after they’d moved to Nick’s hometown. But really, if they’d had the money and their jobs, they would have stayed in New York, regardless of how sick his parents were.

Okay, on to Desi. I could tell he was a creeper when Nick paid him a visit, even after finding out that most of Amy’s claims about his behavior after their break up (in high school!) were exaggerated or false, of course. Still a creep. He reminded me of that guy from that creepy old movie, The Collector; he’s a rich pansy who more or less wants to keep Amy as his pet. And he’s obviously very sexually confused, and a momma’s boy. Did he deserve what he got? Not really. But honestly, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that he would do what Amy says he did, because quite frankly, he’s that type. Super creep. But not actually the worst character in the entire book!

Just a quick word about Margo (Go). She’s Nick’s feisty twin sister. I like her, mostly, but she wasn’t completely and totally fleshed out. I kind of felt like, with a character that had so much potential, that I already knew her, I’d read her elsewhere, almost a kind of stock character. Is she gay? I read her as gay, and nothing, not a whisper or a hint, is mentioned of this. I’m pretty sure, though…

The negative comments that I’ve seen about this book pretty much reflect on the fact that the characters are kind of hard to stomach. I appreciate this book, though, for the fact that they’re so complicated, they’re relatable…which is a little hard to stomach in itself. I would definitely read more by Gillian Flynn. I found myself, before I’d really gotten into the meat of the story, comparing her mastery of characterization to that of Kazuo Ishiguro, one of my favorite contemporary authors. This is the kind of book that I’d cautiously recommend; I’d want to recommend it with enthusiasm, but I feel like many people, like those negative reviewers, would somehow not be able to connect with the story. Perhaps there’s a lack of honesty there, if they deny to themselves that they can’t, somehow, understand these characters. Sick in the head, yes…but so many people out there are as well.

Book #103: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Book #103:  Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

August 4, 2014

People like Brandon Stanton, Ron Howard, and Rod Stewart believe that every picture tells a story. Riggs took that concept further with this book; he discusses in an interview at the end of my electronic copy how he was inspired to the write the book based on these bizarre photos that he’d started collecting from flea markets, these random black and white vintage snapshots of creepy-looking kids. The narrator of the book, Jacob, is introduced to these pictures by his grandfather, who talks about the “peculiar children” he stayed with at a home on an island of Wales, where he’d been shipped to escape the Nazis in Poland. Jacob eventually comes to believe that the bizarre old pictures were doctored, like how fairy pictures were doctored back in the day. That’s probably the case with the weird pictures included in this book, which inspired it, but Riggs wrote this book with the assumption that the pictures were all real.

This is a young adult novel, and it was actually the one that I’d wanted to read when we broke out into books (the book I was assigned instead was  The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks), because I was intrigued by the concept. It was pretty cool to consider how Riggs incorporated these random pictures into the story, but I honestly feel like the pictures got to be a bit much. I mean, some of it felt kind of forced in the story. There’s no real explanation for why Miss Peregrine takes so many pictures, and I felt like the story could have used a plausible one. In this day and age, when I can fit countless photos, and take them any time I want, on my iPhone, I still don’t take for granted the fact that photography was kind of complex in the 1940s. Plus, many of the pictures look quite a bit older than that, which doesn’t make sense even with all of the time-travel details of the story.

I felt like the plot that Riggs created, with the time-loops and the hollows and the wights, all fit together tidily and I don’t take issue with any of that. My problem is with Jacob himself. Clearly, he gains self-confidence in the story and grows as a character, but I want to know more about Jacob from before. I was bothered at the detail of him not having any friends, besides the one kinda punkish guy he hangs with at the beginning of the book. I didn’t get whyhe didn’t have friends. He describes himself as being “average,” and I believe that, but average guys have some friends. Is he shy? I would get that he would be shy, but the book doesn’t really show me that. Is he super duper awkward? He seemed pretty clever to me, as a narrator, so I didn’t see him as being awkward. Throw in the fact that his family is rich, and now I’m very baffled. We’re supposed to believe that the life he is leaving isn’t a great one, anyone, but I’m not buying it. His mother is superficial, his father is an unaccomplished wuss, but before the events of the book, that seems to be the worst of it. I’d rather Riggs made him a dickhead, a rich snob who thought he was too good to work at Smart Aide (one of the chain of drug stores that his mother’s family owns in Florida), and then have him be traumatized by his grandfather’s violent death, and have a determination to go to Wales and check the whole situation out. That’s a Jacob that I could have warmed up to, and it would have made his decision to go with the rest of the peculiars much more poignant.

The fact that we do get some interesting tidbits about Jacob’s life before being thrown headlong into all of the details that tie up the pictures makes it all the more frustrating. I guess this book just wasn’t what I expected it would be. The fact that now Nazis are more or less involved is almost eye roll-inducing. I didn’t really dig this book the way I thought I would, but I’m not saying that I wouldn’t go on to read the next one at some point. Perhaps an accurate assessment of this book, for my perspective, is that the set-up wasn’t really satisfying, but the execution got me on board. As I said, the complicated world that Riggs has created is rich and interesting, and I have no doubt that more surprises are introduced in the following book. I have a feeling, though, that the next one will probably have more, rather than less, pictures to supplement, and I don’t necessarily feel that that’s a good thing.

Book #102: Gone, Baby, Gone

Book #102: Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane

August 1, 2014


In an attempt to find a book that I could get really excited about reading, I referred to my ebook "wish list" on my local library's ebook site. I had, of course, read the short story collection Boston Noir, which Lehane edited and contributed to, a few months ago. When I saw that this particular book was available, I got that excited feeling, that "I really fucking want to read this book right now" feeling. Mission accomplished.

Now, if I hadn't heard of the film (which I haven't seen, but I do know that as the acclaimed director, it took Ben Affleck from the status of "Matt Damon's slacker friend" to someone to take seriously in Hollywood), I probably wouldn't have been as interested in this book, due to the fact that it's the fourth book in a series (of six, at least at this point?) about Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. And obviously I haven't read any of the other books. But I can say honestly that it's not really necessary to read the other books to get what's going on, or to understand the relationship between the two main characters. There's some references made to events in the previous books, I guess, but these seem realistic, as Kenzie (the narrator) reflects on some of these traumatic, violent events that almost took his and Angie's lives. Also, one previous situation has bearing in this book; it would be unrealistic to think that they could kill a pimp and not ever have it come back to haunt them.

So Kenzie and Gennaro are partners of their own private investigation firm, and they are a couple. By the end of the book, Angie is moving out of their apartment, but I'm pretty sure they get back together in one of the following books. She's very upset about how the whole situation went down, while Kenzie grapples with whether or not they did the right thing, too. They technically did the job they'd originally been hired to do: they found the little girl, Amanda McCready, and returned her to her mother. But was it the right thing to do?

Last fall, I had a conversation with a classmate of mine. Our discussion of a book that talked about child abuse had reminded her of a movie she'd seen. She couldn't remember the title, but she was talking aboutThe Tall Man, starring Mrs. Justin Timberlake. In that movie, the legend of the Tall Man snatching kids from their homes is a cover, I guess, for a conspiracy to kidnap kids from their abusive, negligent parents, and to send them off to "better" lives. If I'd read this book before that conversation, I would have brought it up, because it examines just the same moral questions as that movie does.

Helene McCready is a crappy parent. She's lazy, she does drugs and neglects the basic needs of her daughter, and her brother, who went through the same crappy childhood as his sister but grew up to be a responsible person, has had enough. He gets together with a friend of his, a detective, who is like "the Tall Man" in this situation. When Kenzie and Gennaro have finally put together the complicated pieces of the puzzle, they figure out that Amanda, nearly a year after she disappeared from her mother's unlocked (and unsupervised) apartment, is alive and well with a higher-ranking police officer and his wife, and receiving the love and care that she never did at home. Gennaro wants to leave her be; Kenzie goes along with his cop buddies who helped them stake out the place, and they have the couple arrested and Amanda sent back. The book asks the question: who were the real criminals here?

But what I want to know is, what makes these people the way that they are in the first place? Why does Helene neglect her child in the first place? Why is she so dumb, and addicted to crappy television? Why were the Tretts and their buddy such monsters? The most horrifying part of the book is when Kenzie, Gennaro, and the two cops they'd worked with on Amanda's case (not knowing that those two were in on the kidnapping plot themselves) run a bust on a house where these three child molesters are staying, knowing that they have a kidnapped little boy inside. The boy's there, all right, but they're an hour too late to save him: he's been killed in the most gruesome way possible, and the time leading up to his death since he'd been kidnapped were horrifying enough themselves. This is truly a gritty book.

The Tretts were meant to serve as a contrast to the Doyles (the couple that had Amanda), clearly. I mean, undoubtedly it is very very very wrong and evil to kidnap children and exploit them, or torture them, or do anything to harm them in any way. That's the kind of thing that the cops who kidnapped Amanda had been working against all through their careers, and they witnessed a lot of horrible shit as they tried to save so, so many children. And clearly, the Doyles were nothing like the Tretts. The Doyles wanted to love Amanda and give her a good home, and Kenzie himself could clearly see that the girl was happy as they spied on them. So there's definitely shades of gray in this area, for sure. And, Kenzie seems pretty sure that Amanda won't be better off back with her lazy, uncaring mother. And yet, would it have been right for them to allow the Doyles to get away with it?

A lot of reviews I've seen of this book have called it one of Lehane's best works, and the best of the Kenzie and Gennaro stories. Having not read anything else by him, I could believe it, because this book isn't quite like your average mystery-thriller. The heart of the story are these gray areas that the book explores, and its gritty realism. When I was in the 7th grade, I got into the mysteries by Mary Higgins Clark. I would be embarrassed to read something like that now, and even then I got to noticing that her plots were kind of formulaic; I really came to know what to expect. There were not nearly as many moral gray areas in her works. I remember some stories where seemingly "good guys" ended up being "bad guys," and they were rightfully punished in the end. In Lehane's work, there are not many clear "good guys" or "bad guys." Even Kenzie himself takes part in some questionable activities, and pals around with some unsavory characters, yet I certainly wouldn't say that he's "bad."

This book allowed me to appreciate again how complicated it would be to write a good mystery story. That's one genre that I'll probably never try writing myself, because I feel like if it's not done really well, everything seems sloppy. Lehane mostly did a good job of satisfying me on most points of this mystery, without forcing a happy outcome onto all of the "deserving" characters. Life isn't about what people deserve, it's about what they get. But there's one small detail that's bugging me, and I think I'll have to refer back to the text for this one. I feel like when Kenzie and Gennaro went into Amanda's room, that they saw the doll Pea lying on the floor. This was after Amanda was taken, mind you. Now, when they were at a quarry, Gennaro became convinced that Amanda had been killed and dropped in because she saw that doll in the water. But but but, Amanda didn't have the doll when she was kidnapped...she couldn't have, it got left behind. Yet none of the characters ever acknowledge this; in fact, Broussard, one detective who was in on the kidnapping plot, thought this was a clever move on his part, making it look like Amanda was dead so that they'd stop looking at her. But clearly, it was a sloppy move, yet it's never acknowledged. Am I wrong?

But, other than that nagging detail (which, now that I've looked back, it could be another doll that they see in the room...but did Amanda even have Pea with her when she was taken, though?), I was very impressed with the book, and I am dying to see the movie. Not on Netflix at this point, but I think I will rent it off Amazon. And I will be reading another book by Lehane before too long.