Girl Detective

A friend of mine, complaining about the general crappiness of most comics, wondered, “Why can’t Grant Morrison write all the comics?”

Well, because some of them have to be non-ultra-violent, and more than token-ish-ly redemptive.

Which is somewhat unfair, because WE3 is a very good graphic novel, and was book 44 in my 50 book challenge for the year. I just wish I’d been warned about how extremely violent it was–ahem, G. Grod, Blogenheimer–and that said violence involved animals. Morrison’s story is, as usual, dark, violent, clever and insightful. Quitely’s art is, as usual, exquisitely detailed. The story concerns a dog, cat and rabbit who have been conscripted by the US military and upgraded with robotics for killing purposes. Then they get loose, and it’s rather like Homeward Bound meets the Terminator, or any of a jillion other comparisons–this one probably isn’t original, but I’m sure you get the idea. This is a sad, sad story that even the ending can’t redeem completely. If you have a soft heart for small creatures, you might want to skip this. It’s quite wrenching.

We all know that each child differs from the next and that their academic needs are best met when we take these differences seriously. We also know that schools have enormous difficulties in this regard and are openly desperate to do better. Two pillars of the current education debate–tracking of students and class size–are intimately connected to this larger question of individualizing education. Yet the novel approaches and creative solutions thus far conjured by educators have not altered the primary design flaw of schools: They are mass institutions and thus by definition ill suited to the academic needs of individuals.

Homeschooling parents have a distinct advantage over public-school teachers when it comes to individualizing education. (P. 20)

Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense by David Guterson, was book #43 in my 50 book challenge for the year. I’ve already received some flak because I’m considering home school for my child. (I’m considering public school as well, but no one gives me sh!t about that, do they?) But Guterson, a high school teacher who is also the father of three home-schooled children, makes a compelling case for it. Beyond the point I quote above, which I think is a very strong one, he also continuously emphasizes that parents should be actively involved in their children’s education, whether it is in a school or at home.

Writing has never been the strong point of the Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale collaborations. Loeb’s story is usually workman-like and dependable, while Sale’s art is striking and distinctive. I found the writing in Hulk: Gray, book #42 in my 50 book challenge for the year, quite disappointing. The framing conceit is that Bruce Banner has called a psychiatrist friend of his in the middle of the night. The eventual conclusions of the book rest on psychological implications for the characters, all of which are interesting and valid. I think the same conclusions could have been done with a less forced method. There are several scenes in which Bruce isn’t present. While it’s possible that one of the characters there could have told him later, it is exactly this kind of question–how did he know what happened if he wasn’t there–that weakens the entire book. And while there aren’t many characters in the book, none of them feels much more than two-dimensional. Perhaps if the reader brought a prior knowledge of these characters to the book then the flimsy characterization wouldn’t be such a problem. These graphic novels, though, are meant to stand alone and not rest on intimate knowledge of Marvel Universe continuity. Sale’s art is the best thing about this book, but is not enough for me to recommend it.

But consider how many relationships survive sewn together with tacit complicity and mutual deception. It’s the cold light of discovery that’s so dangerous. Better to live with the lies. (P. 170)

Book #41 in my 50 book challenge for the year was highly recommended to me by two members of my writing group. One said it was the perfect mix of story and craft. Mostly, I agree. Mawer tells a story that shifts back and forth in time, and back and forth among characters. Nonetheless, he always maintains strict authorial control, and the story unfolds seamlessly. I don’t agree that it is perfect because of characterization. There was one character who became sympathetic only as it served the story. Once it did no longer, she slipped back into her not very complex self. Another character, also a woman, had an almost cruel lack of redeeming qualities. Finally, the main character, Rob, never really seemed a character in and of himself, only as he related to the other characters. The characters never came alive for me, so I found it worthwhile, but not superlative.

The Scott Pilgrim graphic novels, volumes 1 and 2 (Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, respectively) by Bryan Lee O’Malley were books number 39 and 40 in my fifty book challenge for the year.

Scott is a 23 year old slacker who has no job, is in a band, and lives in a tiny apartment in Canada with his gay roommate Wallace. Scott has struck up a romance with 17 year old Knives Chau, a girl he met on the bus. Subsequently, though, he sees a girl in person who he recognizes; she’s been skating through his dreams. He introduces himself to the girl, Ramona Flowers, at a party, and their romance begins, though he hasn’t yet broken things off with the increasingly crushed-out Knives. Volume 1 ends with a hilarious Hong Kong movie-ish fight between Scott and an ex-boyfriend of Ramona’s. In Volume 2 Scott must face the second of Ramona’s evil ex-boyfriends, and we get more backstory on the girl that left Scott heartbroken before Knives. There’s also another Hong-Kong movie-ish fight, this time in a public library, during which we learn why Knives has such an odd name.

These are funny, weird and exceptionally charming books. They are teen fiction with magical realism, distinctive manga-inspired art, engaging characters and some drop-dead funny panels. I’ve also liked O’Malley’s previous work on Lost at Sea and Hopeless Savages: Ground Zero, which is written by Jen Van Meter, who is married to comics and mystery writer Greg Rucka.

I am delicate and the world is impossibly wrong, is unthinkable and I am not forewarned, forearmed, equipped. I cannot manage. If there was something useful I could do, I would–but there isn’t. So I drink. (P. 202)

Paradise by A.L. Kennedy, book 38 in my 50 book challenge for the year, was a recommendation from Blog of a Bookslut, where Jessa Crispin noted that it might be the best book of the year. Michael Schaub disagreed; he thought it was Francine Prose’s A Changed Man, that is, until he read Paradise.

The voice of Hannah Luckraft is always powerful, and at times funny, tragic, pathetic, sharp or blurry. I struggled to limit myself to quoting just one passage above, but the novel begs to be marked up, it is so full of memorable bits. Hannah’s voice runs the gamut, as she narrates this non-linear love story of two drunks. It reaches off the page and draws me in, clutches me in a death-grip until its final, murky end. I was more than impressed by Kennedy’s writing; I was a little scared by it. But I couldn’t look away, either from the writing or from what happened (or didn’t) to Hannah.

Anyone who has read the book, please email me. I must discuss the ending.

I picked up Mysterious Skin, book 37 in my 50 book challenge for the year, after a recommendation by Michael Schaub at Blog of a Bookslut. Schaub noted that a movie had just been made and was receiving good reviews. This was the third book in a row I’d read with narration revolving among characters. Heim’s writing wasn’t always strong enough to carry this off. I sometimes had to flip to the beginning of a chapter to remind myself who was speaking because the voices weren’t distinct. The two main characters are Brian and Neil. We are introduced to them when they are 8, then return to them 11 years later. Brian is a loner struggling to recall what happened that left him with no memory after a little league game, while Neil is a homosexual hustler who keeps upping the level of risk in his life. The stories intertwine skillfully. Neil is an especially compelling character, sympathetic in spite of his recklessness. Overall, the book is concerned with memory–what we recall and what we don’t, and how we bring memories and blanks with us as we age. The writing, especially toward the end, flagged considerably, but the story and characters were enough to propel me to the end, which, while it answered the questions posed by the book, was a little contrived-ly weird for me.

Apologies for the movie-cover link. Amazon was not being cooperative when I tried to link to the cereal cover, which was the copy I read from the library.

I saw this author at the Twin Cities book fest last fall and liked what she had to say. Where No Gods Came, book #36 in my 50 book challenge for the year, is the story of Faina McCoy, returned to her mother in Minneapolis from California, after her father must take an Australian oil-rig job to pay off gambling debts. Faina’s mother is an alcoholic and her sister Cammy is a runaway and a grifter. Faina quickly gets drawn in to taking care of her mother. She struggles through Catholic school and numerous painful encounters. The portrait of Minneapolis is well-drawn, though the names of streets and locations have been switched or disguised. The narrative switches among the characters, but their voices are not distinct. I sometimes had to flip back to the beginning of a chapter to remind myself which person was speaking. In spite of that, the characters were distinct and believably, often depressingly, complex. Much of the novel was quite dark, so I was relieved when Faina, whom I’d come to care about, gained the redemptive ending I thought she deserved.

I finished Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories the weekend before last, book #35 in my 50 book challenge for the year, and one question looms large: why do so many people hate the ending? I felt there was a good sense of closure, and didn’t feel rushed into it. Also, I’m not sure what part can be called “the” ending, since she’s got about a dozen story lines, all of which have some sort of end.

While I did think that the various mysteries weren’t hard to guess, I didn’t find this problematic. Instead, I was so engrossed with her characters that I was reading to spend time with them. Having a set of difficult mysteries to second guess would have distracted me from them. The central character is a detective named Jackson Brodie, hired by several of the other characters to solve the case histories of the title. The narration revolves among many of these characters, and each voice and view are distinct among the many narrators. I was impressed by how Atkinson kept the reader grounded, reminding throughout of times, dates and ages, rather than expecting me to flip back and forth. Additionally, she was quite good at jumping the narrative ahead over some big revelation, then going back to it later, through another character’s viewpoint. This never felt contrived to me. Atkinson had a smooth authorial control that kept things moving along at a fast, but not breakneck speed.

I so loved the characters that I regretted when I finished the book, and regretted even more that I had to start my next one right away. I got Case Histories from the library, but am going to buy a copy. I would like to read it again, and soon. Now that I know the endings, I can examine Atkinson’s crafted writing at a more leisurely pace.

Buying the book, though, has not yet occurred because it has not been easy. I asked my friend Queenie, who works at a bookstore to pick up a copy for me. She checked three of the biggest stores nearby, none of which had a copy. Case Histories was published in October, and stores don’t often reorder hardcovers after six months, since the trade paperback will be out in a few months. So if you’re thinking that you’ll browse through it the next time you’re in a shop, you may be out of luck. I will probably be purchasing from Amazon.

As you can see from the link above, I am now an Amazon associate, so if you purchase anything from them by following a link from me, I will receive a tiny percentage, which will go to further books and DVDs to review here. I will get a general link set up soon. I know you kind readers have many options of buying books, and probably more than one site through which you could purchase, so I thank you in advance for any consideration.

On the eve of starting the next draft of my novel, I re-read this book for inspiration, book #34 in my 50 book challenge for the year. I’m thrilled to re-read. It’s something I did when I was younger, before I got overwhelmed by all the good books out there. But re-reading is a practice, even a skill, that I want to cultivate. The first time I go through a book, I read to see what happens. I race ahead to find out. Subsequent readings allow me to savor the the choices the author made in terms of language, craft, and story.

Speak is teen fiction, and one of my favorite books, not only of recent years but perhaps ever. The main character and narrator is Melinda, who starts ninth grade with no friends, because she called the police during an end-of-summer party. Both times I read this, Melinda’s voice reached out and grabbed me, and hauled me along her very sad and yet extremely funny story.

It is my first morning of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomachache…

Older students are allowed to roam until the bell, but ninth-graders are herded into the auditorium. We fall into clans: Jocks, Country Clubbers, Idiot Savants, Cheerleaders, Human Waste, Eurotrash, Future Fascists of America, Big Hair Chix, the Marthas, Suffering Artists, Thespians, Goths, Shredders. I am clanless. I wasted the last weeks of summer watching bad cartoons. I didn’t go to the mall, the lake, or the pool, or answer the phone. I have entered high school with the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, the wrong attitude. And I don’t have anyone to sit with.

I am outcast.

The ending is so fitting that it flirts with overdetermination, yet it is so balanced that I don’t want to change one jot of it. I am frankly envious of the author who wrote such a compelling character, powerful voice, and wrenching story. I love this book.

This was also the eleventh book I finished this month. If I keep up this pace I’m going to beat my goal handily. Maybe I should give Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle a try. It feels as if the more I read, the more I’m able to read. Some of the books I’ve read this month were short, but some weren’t–one was the nearly 1,000-page Don Quixote! I feel I’m a better, faster reader than I was before I gave myself this challenge.

a teen fiction anthology edited by Michael Cart. Book #33 in my 50 book challenge for the year. As usual with Cart, this is a strong collection by talented writers including Katherine Paterson, Lois Lowry and Jon Scieszka. The stories range in tone and time though all center on the theme of the future. It was published in 1999, prior to what many people asserted was the turn of the millennium. Because its publication pre-dated 9/11, the stories and themes take on an almost old-fashioned innocence, which feels strange because the collection is only a few years old.

Book #32 of my 50 Book Challenge for 2005. The author said she wrote this as a break between Persepolis and Persepolis 2. It has the same charm and humor of Persepolis, but feels more slight, both in weight and in content, like the graphic novel equivalent of a novella. It centers on an after-lunch gathering of women for tea and discussion of others and each other, and their mostly difficult relations with men. The title refers to a method of falsely re-creating virginity, a practice that one story told with disastrous results. As with Persepolis, the art is deliberately simple. It is easy to find points of recognition in the stories, even with women of different age and culture.

Book #31 in my 50 Book Challenge, by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev. Another strong entry in the Bendis/Maleev collaboration. Daredevil, confronted by his naked ex-girlfriend in his bed, a.k.a. The Black Widow,

DD: My life’s kind of in dissaray.
BW: As opposed to when?
DD: You got me there.

It’s a solid story that moves fast and has some funny bits. The collection includes an issue drawn by several artists, who do a much better job than is usual for a gimmicky flashback issue. Maleev’s art seemed more photo-referential than it has before, reminding me of Tony Harris’s art in the very entertaining Ex Machina.

by Elisabeth Robinson. Book #30 in my 50 Book Challenge for 2005. A novel in letters about Olivia Hunt, who is trying to produce a film of Don Quixote when she finds out her younger sister is dying of leukemia. The letters are from Olivia to various people in her life–friends, family, co-workers, her ex-boyfriend.

The epistolary format didn’t work for me. I didn’t find Olivia’s narratives well differentiated in types of letter (emails were similar to faxes and to letters) or in recipient (she told parts of the story to whomever she was writing to, so if you removed the “Dear X” from the letter, it didn’t matter for long stretches whether she was writing to her sister, her friend or her ex.) I think this book might have worked better if Robinson would have interspersed narrative and letters, rather than trying to cram the former into the latter.

There were some sentences that were unwieldy and incongruous in general, made more so for being in a letter, e.g.,

It’s a clear, fine spring day and I had to feel it for a minute, to just breathe in the sweet magnolia scent of a June day in the Ohio Valley.

Also, Robinson didn’t use quotation marks, which made dialogue sometimes difficult to follow.

Perhaps as a result of the letter format, none of the characters felt three dimensional. I didn’t see much growth or increased insight even in the main character of Olivia. Things changed around her, but I didn’t find her very changed at the end.

On the positive side, there was a good balance of funny and sad, and some interesting insight into the Hollywood experience. Since I read it recently, I understood all the references to Don Quixote, and thought it was a good thematic match for her sister’s illness. I thought it especially ironic that she notes in a few letters that people should not worry about Gilliam’s Don Quixote, since it won’t get made. Her fictional version does get made, though in real-life Robinson worked on a version that didn’t. Terry Gilliam did eventually try to film Don Quixote. He turned his failure into the documentary Lost in La Mancha.

In spite of my previously professed preference for novels, I have read and enjoyed several short story collections lately.

28. All This Heavenly Glory by Elizabeth Crane. Similar in many ways to #25 Stop That Girl by another Elizabeth (McKenzie, who in fact is named in one of the fawning blurbs by little-known authors on the back, one of whom is Thisbe Nissen, whose name I’ve always admired even if I have not read his [her?] books), this is a novel in stories about Charlotte Anne Byers, who eventually goes through a convoluted dropping of the Anne on her way to adulthood; the stories alternate between childhood and adulthood, though I found the former rather than the latter more engaging, making me wonder, as I did with the aforementioned Stop That Girl, whether all stories with intriguing young heroines have them grow up into boring, crazy women, in this case who are boringly redeemed by the love of a younger man, though the book itself isn’t boring, in fact it’s quite funny, such as in the opening story when she says she is seeking Owen Wilson (not an Owen Wilson type, she clarifies, but the man himself), and I often recognized myself in bits (though not the parts that involved, as did Crane’s previous collection, #24 When the Messenger is Hot, an opera-singing dying/dead mother, Iowan step-family, authorial move from NYC to Chicago, and an annoying tendency to use the second person narrative when things got a bit too autobiographical), as in her childhood obsession with her friend’s Crissy dolls, one of which I owned as a child, and whose growing hair never broke, though I wrote previously about how Crissy’s “sister” Velvet’s hair mechanism did break, and if you find this ongoing sentence with commas and parentheticals to be very annoying, then you might want to give the book a miss, because Crane is very fond of them and can go on for over a page, though, admittedly, she does it more skillfully than do I.

29. Beware of God by Shalom Auslander. I wasn’t in the mood for dark humor, but this collection won me over. It’s extremely dark (lots of death, including people, a dog, a monkey) but so clever, subversive and funny (God is a happy, giant chicken!; the Peanuts characters take sides in warring religious factions!) that the end result is almost charming. I laughed out loud several times, and would have read more parts aloud except that my husband had to leave for work and I didn’t think Drake would get the jokes.

27. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Edith Grossman. I did it! It was long, but well worth it. Sancho Panza and Don Quixote are interesting, complex characters. The book is by turns amusing and sad. What I enjoyed most were the tricks that Cervantes played with multiple authors and various reference points. There are gaps in the story, e.g., Sancho’s wife has four different names. Cervantes didn’t correct the mistakes on subsequent printings, but instead wove them into the entire story. Grossman’s translation and notes make this book easy to read and enjoy.

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. A woman I know refused to read it because her friends who read it no longer shop at chain grocery stores or eat at fast food restaurants. Scary, enlightening, compelling and well-written. It made me glad I already adjusted my life to (mostly) eschew fast food and grocery chains. One of the reasons I enjoy living in the twin cities is the abundance of whole-food cooperatives, one of which I can (and do) walk to.

So far, I’m on track to meet my 50-book challenge for 2005. Both of these were recommendations culled from some of the litblogs I read.
24. When the Messenger is Hot by Elizabeth Crane. Stories featuring women who are in recovery, have relationship troubles, and/or have dead/dying opera-singing mothers. Funny and well-written, I especially liked “Return to the Depot!” and “Intervention,” about a woman whose friends intervene to let her know that she’s NOT an alcoholic. I found Crane’s forays into second-person narration less successful than the rest, but not without merit.

25. Stop that Girl by Elizabeth McKenzie stopped being good when the main character in the interconnected stories, Ann Ransom, stopped being a girl. The stories from her childhood were funny and intriguing. Once she got to college, though, I found them boring and pathetic. Perhaps it is the author’s intent to show how smart, sassy heroines get swallowed up into boring lives, but I thought the last few stories took away from the charm of the earlier ones.

Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta. I found this book on a blog dedicated not only to YA literature, but to portrayals of sexuality that are real, balanced, and specifically about girls and women who are responsible for their own sexual actions. While I commend that ideal, I’m not loving the book recommendations on the blog. Saving Francesca had good elements, but overall I can’t recommend it unreservedly. It is a teen problem novel, in that the main character starts off the school year with a problem–her mother is depressed and won’t get out of bed–and then solves the problem in the course of a school year. Parts of this book are funny, well-written, and true to life. It contains some great supporting characters. But the problem feels contrived; no one even asks if the mother has seen a doctor for the depression until halfway through the book. Also, Marchetta has an aggravating tendency to over-write. Countless paragraphs that ended a scene had ending sentences that lessened the impact of whatever decent writing came before it.

And being that happy makes me feel guilty. Because I shouldn’t be. Not while my mum is feeling the way she is. How I can dare to be happy is beyond me, and I hate my guts for it.
I hate myself so much that it makes my head spin.

Finally, I thought the issue of sex was largely avoided. The main character talks about it, but only kisses the boy she has a crush on. One of her friends may be having problems, but it isn’t discussed. The parents’ sex life is discussed, which I applaud, but the teens themselves are suspiciously abstinent.

Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl was Book 22 in my 50 book challenge for 2005. I’ve had this sitting on my TBR pile for years, having picked it up along with her second memoir, Comfort Me with Apples, which is a quote from the bible’s “Song of Solomon.” Reichl’s third memoir, Garlic and Sapphires, was just released, reminding me that the first two memoirs languished on my shelves. Reichl is a strong writer, and intersperses her personal history of her relationship with food with recipes that relate to the tale. Like her writing, the recipes are clear and inviting. In the end, though, I felt something was lacking. I consciously admired the book, but it did not move me to affection. Must all memoirists have crazy mothers, I wondered as I read, in this case a manic-depressive whom Reichl dubbed “The Queen of Mold” for her tendency to use outdated food. Reichl found what humor she could in their relationship over the years, but eventually it becomes too painful, and the quick redemption she finds at the end seems like a small bandage on a gaping wound. Another reason for my perceived lack of closure might be the two other memoirs that carry on the narrative. I’ll read Comfort Me with Apples, certainly, since I already own it, and use that as the litmus to decide whether to read Garlic and Sapphires. My hope is that the reading of Reichl’s second memoir will stand on its own, as well as retroactively enhance my reading of the first.