The Elegance of Muriel Barbery

When The Elegance of the Hedgehog by French writer Muriel Barbery was released last year, I devoured the novel in one sitting. The structure intrigued me--very short chapters, confessional and intimate-like essays, which overlap to tell the story of Renee Michel, a 54 year-old concierge at a posh Paris apartment building. "I'm a widow, short, ugly, chubby; I have bunions on my feet and, on certain difficult mornings, it seems, the breath of a mammoth. But above all, I conform to the image assigned to concierges. It would never occur to anyone that I am better read than all these self-satisfied rich people." What a voice! This is a novel about social class, how people can be isolated (and misunderstood) even though they live together, and the power of art, literature and philosophy. Over the course of the story, Renee befriends Paloma, a 12 year-old girl from the building. She is a young idealist--disillusioned and cynical about the self-importance and vanity of the people who populate her world (her tone is slightly reminiscent of Holden Caulfield, if he were a bit more philosophical)--who intends to commit suicide by her 13th birthday. Not to fret. In the union of these two (very different, solitary) souls there resides great comic relief and in the end, a life-affirming message.

Just released is Gourmet Rhapsody, the novel Muriel Barbery wrote prior to The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Both books share a similar literary structure, many of the same characters and they are both set in the same Paris apartment building on Rue de Grenelle. The themes, too, remain but in Gourmet Rhapsody, Barbery adds the sensuality of food and mortality to the story of the last 48-hours in the life of a powerful, famous (and very arrogant) French food critic. "I am the greatest food critic in the world," Pierre Arthens, the protagonist announces at the beginning of the book. "I am going to die and there is a flavor that has been teasing my taste buds and my heart and I simply cannot recall it." In the story, Arthens, a brilliant yet heartless man, confronts his mortality by "rhapsodizing" about his experiences with food--recalling, in luscious detail, foods such as bread, tomatoes, sushi and mayonnaise, as well as mentally revisiting his grandmother's table, a country farmhouse and a mistress' kitchen. But another side of Arthens emerges via monologues from the people who willingly (and unwillingly) shared their lives with him--his devoted and long-suffering wife; his bitter, drug-addicted son; his unloved daughter and grand-daughter; two mistresses; and even his cat. It's a fascinating, beautifully-rendered story about a complicated man, his life and death, and how, in the end, the evocation of his experiences with food defined his desires, emotions and the goals of his life.

Muriel Barbery is an intelligent, colorful writer, one to watch. Do yourself a favor and don't miss either of these bittersweet, redemptive books.

The Best of the Best

The National Book Foundation is allowing the general public to vote for The Best of the National Book Awards in Fiction. The nominees are comprised of past winners and they are:

1) The Stories of John Cheever (John Cheever)

2) Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)

3) Collected Stories of William Faulkner (William Faulkner)

4) Flannery O'Connor: The Complete Stories (Flannery O'Connor)

5) Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon)

6) The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (Eudora Welty)

So far, Flannery O'Connor is the front runner...Hooray! Cast your vote here. By doing so, you might win a trip to the NBA ceremony in NYC!

Once on the site, be sure to click on the pictures of each author to link to other information about each book and author--as well as thoughts about each books from other writers, former nominees, and acclaimed NBA Judges like Alice Elliott Dark.

What Makes A Reader Care?

A creative writing instructor of mine once stressed how important it was to read books to the very end—even if we didn't like them. He believed writers could learn from work that didn't really appeal to them and/or hold their interests—possibly as much or more than work that did. As a disciplined person—at least in my reading and writing habits (red wine and extra-cheese pizza do not apply)—I’ve tried to hold fast to that rule. When I close a book, I sit with things in order to pin-point what worked and what didn't in order to apply what I’ve learned to my own writing. We bring so much of our own lives to what we read, as well as to our interpretations and the judgments we make about what we read. I've come to the conclusion that it always helps a reader's journey if they care about a character, but what makes a reader care . . . A sense of familiarity? Empathy? Anger? Frustration? A redeeming quality? Hoping the character will transform in a way that will be fulfilling to us by the end of the book? All of which leads me to the larger question of do you really have to "like" a character and agree with his/her choices in order to enjoy and fully appreciate a book?

I recently finished The Film Club by David Gilmour, a Canadian novelist and film critic. This thought-provoking memoir is about a father who allows his troubled, 15 year-old son to drop out of school with the stipulation that he'll watch three movies a week with Dad, and together, they will discuss them, in depth. I really looked forward to this read, as I was raised on a steady diet of movies since I was kid. The premise of Gilmour’s ultimatum to his son was the hook that enticed me. And while the plot appeared to be about a father and son who spend time together watching great movies, the story evolved into one more about a father trying to understand a son (and vice-versa) and parenthood—the challenges, joys, and the tendency to make mistakes.

I am a reader of mostly female-themed domestic fiction and it makes me wonder what kept me engaged through all 240 pages of this memoir. I am not a father or a son, and my own father (or mother, for that matter) would never have proposed such an educational ultimatum to me nor would they have been so liberal about alcohol and drug use and teenage sexual exploits. There were times during the read when I fiercely disagreed with Gilmour’s parenting style and the choices he made. But he did offer me an honest glimpse of an unfamiliar world. In straightforward, deft prose—and through candid, often heart-wrenching, storytelling—Gilmour revealed his foibles, as well as those of his son, as they both grappled with “the experiment” and tried to find their respective places in the world. Flawed characters trying to learn and grow—and do the right thing . . . in that, there is great universality.

The Film Club (a memoir) by David Gilmour
(Twelve, Hardcover, 9780446199292, 256pp.)
Publication Date: May 2008
To purchase this book via INDIEBOUND click HERE

What Becomes A Novel Most?

Writing is a subjective business. While one person might love a book, another might find they can’t get beyond Chapter One. In a review in The Washington Post of A Gate at the Stairs—a much-anticipated novel by Lorrie Moore, a coveted and acclaimed short story writer—Ron Charles hailed the book, but referred to it as "an unhurried tale." Further on in the review, Charles states, "I should warn you that Moore is a lot more interested in her narrator than her plot. There is a fair amount of precocious riffing in this novel, a syncopation of sweet and mordant beats. Things do happen--even startling, gripping things--but any reader who needs that to stay engaged will have drifted away 200 pages earlier during one of Tassie's (the protagonist’s) soliloquies. Much of her fascination with words and wordplay is amusing, but some of it seems too clever by half, along with her super-duper writing-seminar descriptions of the weather that are polished to distracting brilliance."

I admire Ron Charles's reviews. He is a conscientious, sensitive reader. He obviously spends quality time with books and takes great pains to fully absorb them in order to write such thoughtful reviews. But in a world (and an industry) where sensationalism often prevails, Charles's assessment of A Gate at the Stairs accommodates contemporary reader expectations. I'm well aware that publishing has become less about writing and more about book sales. But it seems that novels vying for bookstores must strive, first and foremost, for hook and page-turning ability—why else would Ron Charles need to issue that "warning"? Of course, an author of Lorrie Moore's literary stature and caliber of craft can cry herself to the bank. But why should it be that some books—gently-paced, well-written books by lesser-known or even unknown writers—those that serve quiet shifts in plot and subtle character transformations, are often considered of inferior quality and marginalized?

The Spare Room

"My initial reason for writing is that I need to shape things so I can make them bearable or comprehensible to myself. It's my way of making sense of things that I've lived and seen other people live, things I'm afraid of, or that I long for."~Helen Garner

PREMISE: A woman in Melbourne, Australia offers her spare room to an old friend who lives in Sydney and is seeking an alternative medical treatment to battle terminal cancer.

In The Spare Room, Australian author Helen Garner returns to fiction for the first time in 15 years. It was surely worth the wait, as her latest offers a realistic (often wry) examination of the tug-of-war between life and death, patients and caregivers. The plot of this very brief (192 page) novel, that reads more like a memoir, is obvious. However, if you are a conscientious reader you will recognize (and appreciate) how small, subtle moments change lives, and you'll be rapt by Garner's attention to detail. Her best scenes are understated but nuanced in such a way that they become immensely powerful. Take note of the graceful, concise writing in Chapter One (a few short paragraphs on pages 4-5), where Helen, in the midst of preparing her spare room for her friend's arrival, breaks a mirror. It is a chilling moment that foreshadows, on many different levels, all that is to come between two, very different women--Helen, the caregiver, who has lived a "traditional" life as a wife and mother and Nicola, the patient, who has lived (or has she?) a more artistic, "bohemian" lifestyle. The circumstances that reunite these two old friends will test their strengths and weaknesses, their belief systems and coping mechanisms. Helen Garner has written a deeply-affecting novel that is a beautiful tribute to the power and frailty of friendship and how it can transform amid the challenges of life.

Do Not Deny Me

A cynical, burned-out drama professor unexpectedly bonds with a mediocre student. . . A psychic works at the Department of Motor Vehicles . . . A man in mid-life goes on a quest to build himself a tree house . . . A caretaker wife becomes wicked and vile toward her husband who has suffered a stroke. . . An elderly woman, with a passion for quilting, befriends a troubled little girl in her neighborhood . . . In Do Not Deny Me, the latest short story collection by award-winning writer Jean Thompson, the lives of regular folks intersect with life-changing events that emerge from the ordinary. "What intrigues me are the interior lives of anyone you might meet during the course of an unremarkable day, the possibilities for tragedy and drama that exist in any life," Jean Thompson said in an article recently published in The Chicago Tribune.

I discovered the writing of Jean Thompson more than a decade ago. I was completely riveted by "Mercy" (a story about a cop and a grieving mother) in her collection, Who Do You Love? Since then, I've read everything she's written--short fiction, novels and essays--and I've not been disappointed. Jean Thompson is a master storyteller who writes compelling, realistic, thought-provoking gems. Her novels (City Boy, Wide Blue Yonder, My Wisdom, The Woman Driver) and her other books of short stories (Throw Like a Girl, The Gasoline Wars, Little Face and Other Stories) are well-crafted, literary page-turners. Layered around the deep, emotional core of her tales are characters who seem like people you know--warts and all--struggling to overcome challenges in their lives.

Jean Thompson was recently asked her thoughts about reading fiction: "People read for diversion and entertainment, but also, I believe, because they hope to become passionately engaged in other worlds and other sensibilities. And because we are language-oriented creatures, language opens portals for us, helps us to understand and interpret our own lives."
Jean Thompson is one of those rare, artful writers who, especially with Do Not Deny Me, crafts stories that offer readers a glimpse of themselves. And it is because of her tender irony and the gripping realism of her work that she is keeping the short story form alive--and well.
Fivechapters.com (which serializes a story each week) recently featured a Jean Thompson short. Link to read "A Winter Husband"

It's Complicated

Have your heard the latest? Hollywood Maven Nancy Meyers has a new movie coming out at Christmas. Hooray! In case you aren't familiar with her work, Ms. Meyers is a writer-director-producer who has been at the helm of making sophisticated, lady-led romantic comedies since the eighties. She writes great roles for and about women mired in a peculiar combination of success and failure. Professionally, her protagonists are driven overachievers, but their personal lives are often a mess. Therein is the perfect quandary to set a Nancy Meyers story. Her canon of cinematic work offers a plethora of great scenes . . . Think Private Benjamin's first day in the army barracks. Career woman Diane Keaton in the I-have-no-idea-how-to-hold-a-child scene in Baby Boom. Helen Hunt attuned to Mel Gibson hearing her thoughts in What Women Want. Diane Keaton's embarrassment when Jack Nicholson accidentally spies her naked in Something's Gotta Give. And Cameron Diaz, in the throes of a broken heart, going on a carbohydrate food-shopping blitz in The Holiday. Like fine wine, Nancy Meyers, the most hopeful-romantic screenwriter in the business, grows better with age.

In the upcoming It's Complicated she's written a story about a 20-year marriage that ends because of an infamous younger woman scenario. When the husband's new relationship sours, the first wife becomes her ex-husband's mistress. See, it really is complicated. The film stars Meryl Streep as the jilted wife/lover and two men who vie for her affections--Alec Baldwin as the rotten, no-good husband and Steve Martin as Meryl's architect/potential new beau. Can hardly wait to see what memorable scenes Meyers conjures in her latest . . . too bad it's only August and not December. Be sure to take a peak at behind the scenes with the cast.

A Day at the Beach

The sun is blinding. You stare out at the waves and feel the sand between your toes, hear the surf crashing at your bare feet . . . Packed alongside your suntan lotion and sunglasses, you've stuffed in a couple of books . . . Best Friends Forever the latest novel by Jennifer Weiner? The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger? Or maybe you are more "literary" and you've toted along a collection of well-crafted short stories like Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri? Or do you lean more toward a page-turning classic like Rebecca?

What if the tenets of summer were turned inside-out and instead of simply settling down with a book at the beach, you were able to bring one of your favorite literary characters to life and take him/her with you to experience the sand and surf. Who would you choose--man, woman, child, dog, extraterrestrial--and why? Maurice Bendrix? Chauncey Gardiner?Arthur Clennam? Rhett Butler? Holden Caufield? Frank Bascombe? Fitzwilliam Darcy? Henry Beck? Newland Archer? Maybe even Lorelei from The Dogs of Babel? Susie Salmon? Annie Wilkes or Paul Sheldon? Bridget Jones? If you can't narrow down your list, maybe you ought to throw an imaginary beach party and invite a whole bunch!

The Washington Post polled a handful of well-established authors on this very question . . . Some interesting thoughts.

Photo - "Palm Beach Surf" by Kathleen Gerard

Mangia!

Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater by Frank Bruni has finally been released. If you're a foodie and a book lover, you can attest to all the hype and hoopla that's been surrounding this memoir for months. With its release, the world will finally get a good look at the covert restaurant critic from The New York Times, while he dishes about his history and passion for food. Weighing in at more than 350 pages, you'll learn how Bruni's Italian family treated cooking and eating with a zealot-like fervor, how he's been a yo-yo dieter for years (he went on the Atkins diet with his mother when he was just a kid), and he reveals his tricks and pseudonyms while skulking about the New York dining scene. Leavened with wit and good humor, no wonder heavyweight memoirists like Augusten Burroughs, David Sedaris, and Anne Lamott have blurbed the book. Order a pizza, crack open the cover and dig in!

Richard Russo, Misogynist?

Why did Newsweek magazine allow Jennie Yabroff to slam author Richard Russo, calling him a misogynist? "In That Old Cape Magic, the protagonist, Griffin, is a classic Russo male: unable to get over his childhood (featuring, of course, a domineering mother and feckless father) and act on his own behalf." Yabroff goes on to say that "for the men of Russo's world, flaws are a good thing. . . women aren't afforded the luxury of conflict or shortcomings." That's far from the truth.

Richard Russo is a high-profile, Pulitzer Prize winner. He is an author whose often complex books mine the terrain of masculine self-discovery and how many people--flawed men and women--grapple with the idea of trying to connect to and feel at home in the world. He's shown great versatility with Empire Falls, Bridge of Sighs and in his latest, That Old Cape Magic - a comic, road trip novel written in a similiar style and tone to Russo's first book, Straight Man. (Hilarious!) Men are always at the center of Russo's novels (that's their appeal), but according to Yabroff, "The way Russo tells it, women are bitches, bovine, dumb (but shrewd); like witches, and their familiars, cats, they have magical powers to summon misfortune on any man who crosses them." You certainly don't need to read between the lines to recognize how Yabroff's insulting assessment of Russo's fictional women and his writing, in general, is a vicious and poorly substantiated attack. Excellent rebuttal essay about the Newsweek article by Bethanne Patrick over at BookStudio.

Photo of Richard Russo by Elena Seibert

Dogs in Books . . . A Winning Combination

What do an elderly couple with an aging dachshund, the selling of prime Manhattan real estate and a potential terrorist attack all have in common? You'd think nothing, until you read Heroic Measures, a new novel from author Jill Ciment. It's a short, well-plotted, quietly nuanced thriller where part of the story is even filtered through the point-of-view of an injured, elderly dachshund. The bonds between dogs and people are intricate and photographer, Jill Krementz (widow of author, Kurt Vonnegut) has captured the presence of these four-legged creatures in the lives of writers. Canine companions have a long history in literature, from Anton Chekov's short story, The Lady with the Dog, to contemporary memoirs such as Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas and Pack of Two by the late Caroline Knapp. So whether it's fiction or nonfiction . . . people love dogs and dogs sell books. It's a package deal. Woof! Woof!

Circles of Influence

The way you see nature depends on whatever has influenced your way of seeing.

Georgia O'Keeffe


In an exhibition entitled, Dove/O'Keeffe: Circle of Influence currently on display at the Clark Art Gallery (MA), a parallel is drawn to show the influence and visual affinities that existed between two artists--Georgia O'Keeffe, who is celebrated as one of the most significant American visual artists of the 20th Century, and Arthur Dove, America's first abstract painter. O'Keeffe credits the work of Dove as her primary introduction to abstract art. She admired the bold, vibrant color and forms depicted in Dove's art and that admiration inspired O'Keeffe to make her own abstract drawings in charcoal and watercolor.

Just as reading across literary disciplines can better serve one's writing, so can being exposed to and experiencing other art forms. O'Keeffe is quoted as saying, "Art, life and consciousness are interconnected." With that in mind, perhaps the more you examine your own artistic influences--visual, literary or otherwise--the more enlightened you will be about your own work and its direction.