A Smorgasbord of Reviews!

I have been away for over a week, in San Diego running a long and tiring conference for work. Needless to say, when I'm working 13+ hours a day on my feet and getting up at 5:00 am, I don't really feel I have the time or the inclination for blogging. Fortunately, this only happens 2 or 3 times a year :)

Being away, however, does NOT mean that I haven't been reading my little heart out! After all, I did have many, many hours on airplanes and in airports to get to San Diego and back. Rather than doing these separately, I'm going to give you all three reviews below.

Coward by Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips

This is a fascinating crime story. A criminal known as much for his cowardice as for his talent and intelligence somehow lets himself get involved in a really messy heist that goes bad...and for the first time, he can't run away. The most interesting element of the story to me revolves around why our hero is known as a coward: he doesn't generally carry weapons, if something goes wrong he runs from the scene immediately, he always has a back-up plan to get himself out of any sticky situations. And that is what has caused his fellow hustlers and theives to label him a coward. In the end, though, he reveals that his so-called cowardice has a rather unexpected reason (as he tears to pieces everyone who caused the hell of the last several days, including himself). There are some touchy-feely moments with him and a dead buddy's wife (and her daughter), a bartender friend, a heroin junkie with Alzheimer's who raised him after his dad went to prison...but mostly, the story itself is fascinating and gripping and the art is BEAUTIFUL.

Bound South by Susan Rebecca White

I picked this book up after hearing the author read from it at the Virginia Festival of the Book. Her description of it at that reading felt like it was equally about three characters whose lives were all tied together, but really, I think this is Louise's story. Her daughter, Caroline, and her housekeeper's daughter, Missy, also have stories to be told during the book, but Louise is the tie that binds. She has the most chapters in the book written from her perspective, and she is the character who experiences the most real growth. So I'm going to talk about her last.

Missy's story is the most concise. She's a teenager living in a poor area outside of Atlanta. Her mom has been working for Louise Parker for as long as she can remember, and Louise is kind to her, like a second (wealthy) mother. Her dad abandoned them when she was a small child, and she has hoping for him to come back and have a relationship with her ever since. She finally gets the chance to meet him when she finds out he's starring in a Christian drama on public access out of North Carolina, and she goes on a road trip with Louise's son, Charles, to find him. She finds out the truth about her dad, so she can let him go, and also goes through an experience that will change her life forever.

Caroline is the rebellious wild child of the Parker family. She's the oldest child and has been openly defiant of her mother's proper Southern ladylike ideals since she was five years old. She won't eat, dress, talk, or act in any way befitting her heritage and stature. She and her mother are constantly battling over everything, until she gets caught in a compromising position with her teacher. Then she runs off to San Francisco with her teacher, and their relationship is remarkably improved by the distance. She explores her desires and passions, works in the local theatre community, gets in and out of a bad marriage, gains a lot of weight and finally ends up with someone suited to her. In other words, she grows up. And it's a nice growing up story, but not ground-breaking.

Then there is Louise. Bizarre, struggling, complicated, proper Louise. Her entire adult life has been structured around being a good wife and mother and a wonderful hostess and friend. She believes in being polite at all costs and serving delicious food. The one thing she does for herself is buy folk art. She doesn't care what anyone else thinks of the art she buys; she just buys what she responds to emotionally and intellectually. Her daughter moves out, her son announces he's gay, her husband shares that he thinks his twin brother who committed suicide while they were in college was gay, she turns her house into an art gallery a few times a month, she smokes weed for the first time with her daughter in California, she lets an artist take a photo of her lady parts...and she generally lets go and becomes herself. And becomes happy. Hers is by far the most detailed and interesting transformation.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I'm a total Southern lit junkie, as most of you know, and this is right up my alley.

The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers

Let me just say up-front that I read McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter when I was in 10th grade, for English class with the best English teacher I had ever, including in college. And I loved it. With all of my heart. I've read that book over and over, and I even wrote a curriculum unit on it when I was in college for secondary education. Interestingly, I haven't read that many of her other books. I got The Member of the Wedding for free off of BookMooch, and I decided to do this crazy Fill-in-the-Gaps Project around the same time, so I put the book on my list and knew I'd read it soon. So this is book #2 I've finished for Fill-in-the-Gaps.

I read this book almost entirely on the plane to San Diego. I was about 30 pages in when I got on the plane, and it was over 2 or 3 hours before I landed in CA. It's good to know her writing is always amazing. I adored this book. It's sad and touching and nostalgic and beautiful. Frankie (aka F. Jasmine) is a rough-and-tumble tomboy just entering puberty and feeling desperately alone. Her best friend has moved away, her other friends have all turned into teenagers and she's not ready to do that, her dad works all the time. She spends most of her summer with her dad's cook/maid and her six-year-old cousin. When her brother comes home from the military and brings his new bride-to-be to visit, she falls in love with them because they belong to each other. And she decides that she belongs with them to, that she'll finally not be lonely any more when she goes to their wedding and they will of course take her with them after they're married.

Ninety percent of this book takes place the week before the wedding happens. Not a lot happens as far as action, but a lot happens in Frankie during this week. Her decision to grow up and to belong somewhere, and the actions she takes to make it happen, and her anticipation of the wedding are all so true emotionally, it's hard for me to believe that this could have been written by a grown-up and not by an 11-year-old. And then her utter heartbreak when her brother and his bride leave the wedding without her, and her determination to run away from home are stunning. It's such a simple tale, a child's story of the last vestiges of her childhood being stripped away from her. But it's just so real. And that is McCullers' true talent in all of her books I've read. She puts you through the same emotional paces as her characters, and you come up from the book gasping for air. I can't think of another writer who does this as viscerally, at least for me.

Belated Report from the Virginia Festival of the Book

Well, I am a little over a week behind in telling you about my attendance at the Virginia Festival of the Book. I ended up only going to two events in the end, but they were both quite worthwhile!

Coming of Age in the South: Novels
Authors: Cary Holladay (A Fight in the Doctor's Office), Jayne Pupek (Tomato Girl), Susan White (Bound South)

I wanted to attend this session because I am a HUGE fan of Southern literature; I'd say it may be my very favorite genre. I'd never heard of Cary Holladay or Susan White, but I've read Jayne Pupek's Tomato Girl (and enjoyed it), plus she lives very near Charlottesville so I thought it might be fun to meet a local author who writes a genre so near and dear to my heart. Well, I got there about 15 minutes early, and it was packed. I ended up sitting on the floor for most of the session, until a little old lady got up during the Q&A, put her hand on my arm and whispered, "I've got to get out of here; I'm not from the South and these people are driving me crazy! You can have my seat." HA!

At the beginning, they made the announcement that Jayne would not be able to come because of a family emergency. I was a little disappointed, but they said that both of the other authors would be reading from their most recent books, and I knew that would be fun. Cary Holladay read first, part of a story that takes place really near to us, in Glen Allen, VA. She was quite entertaining - she had a quotation from a famous author or historical figure for nearly every situation, or an anecdote from her days at William & Mary (go Tribe!). Her book, A Fight in the Doctor's Office, was published because it won a contest, and the prize was getting published. She's had several books published, and they've all happened in some way like that - she said she's never had an agent or been published through the traditional process.

Anyway - her book was about a woman and her parents on a road trip to find her husband (who they all call The Topiary because he's shaped perfectly round and always wears a fuzzy green sweater) because he has run off somewhere. They don't know where and they don't know why. They stop in Glen Allen for a night because her mother has a guide book that is a thousand years old that paints it as a quaint, beautiful town, but by the time they arrive, it's kind of dusty and run-down and in the middle of nowhere (I think it takes place in the 1960s). And the heroine falls in love with a little deaf black child and refuses to leave Glen Allen with her parents. That's about all of the book we got to hear, but it was definitely an intriguing intro!

Then Susan White stepped up to read from her first novel, hot off the presses, Bound South. I felt some connection to her, too, because she got her MFA and started writing this book while at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA, which is near to my family and Hollins has figured in my life at several different times for various reasons. Not to mention the fact that when asked what album she'd choose as the soundtrack for her book, she said she would have to pick different albums for the three different characters from whose viewpoint she wrote the book, but for the first character...(and here she scrunched up her nose and peered inquiringly and doubtfully into the audience of 90% women over the age of 65)...had anybody heard of an album called Exile in Guyville by Liz Phair? And I wooted on the inside and smiled and half-raised my hand on the outside. Anyway, she's moved back home to Atlanta now, and most of this story takes place in Atlanta. She started reading and I could not stop laughing. She read a little bit from each of the three characters' perspectives, and I do not know where she came up with these people, but I was dying laughing.

The story seems to mainly be about the relationship and interaction among these three women. One is the daughter (about 12 years old) of a housekeeper who works for a wealthy Atlanta society lady. This little girl belongs to a fundamentalist evangelical Christian church, and that colors everything in her world view. The society lady her mom works for is main character #2, and she is the archetype of Southern society, where everything has to be proper and just so...though she has an odd modern art collection, we learn, including a portrait of Jesus in a sparkly blue ballgown. Madam Society's daughter is main character #3, and she is a wild child in hot pursuit of tearing down everything her mother believes is right and good. She's the character the Liz Phair album was meant to back up. All three came alive before my eyes with her reading, and I wanted desperately to know their story. So I bought her book and got her to sign it. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I will before long, I'm sure.

It was a great session, especially for someone as enamored of Southern lit as I am. I hope for more on this topic at next year's Festival!! And now it's late and this is long, so I'm going to stop. More on the other session I attended at the Festival next time!