OMG MAKE IT STOP

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Susannah Clarke

I wanted so badly to like this book To love it, actually. And I did--in the beginning, when I first started reading it, which was way back in June 2009. I was completely and utterly charmed by the story of Mr. Norrell, the last living magician in England, who assists the British in the Napoleonic wars by feats of sorcery. I was intrigued by the relationship of Mr. Norrell to his young protege, Jonathan Strange, who soon surpasses him in magic proficiency. I was even amused by Clarke's prose--she writes this book as though it is an historical text, peppered with footnotes. I talked about this book to everybody, recommended it to a dozen people, and even bought a copy for my friend, P.

And then something tragical happened. I put this book down for a week, and when I picked it up again, the shine was gone. I have tried, about every two weeks for the past six months or so, to pick it up and read a few pages, but I can't get back into it, and finally, I am giving up. I just can't finish it.

I have a few theories about what went wrong, but the main one is this: this book is just too FUCKING long. And I say "fucking" not to shock or distress any of you dear readers, but because it is the only appropriate word here. This book is EIGHT HUNDRED pages long. And while the story, the magic, the rivalry, the 5-page footnotes, are all interested for the first 200 to 300 pages? It's not interesting enough to make me want to wade through the last 500.

I read somewhere that Clarke spent a decade writing this book. And I'm sorry for her. Because if she'd taken half that time--and made it half the length--I would have finished it, and loved it, and it would be one of my favorites right now.

But as it is? Just--cannot--anymore. Sorry.

Rating: abandoned.

Excuses, excuses...and a new project!

I've been a little quiet for the past week or so because school is kicking my ass (stupid Federal Courts) and I don't have much time to read, and even if I did, I broke my stupid Kindle, so now I'm waiting on a new one. (Which should come tomorrow; I was right in the middle of the chapter in Wives and Daughters called Mr. Osborne's Secret when it died, and I just might die if I have to wait to find out what his secret actually is).

Also, I've been busy with a new project that I hope you guys will like. It can be no secret that I love, love, love the Sweet Valley High series for the crazy teenage hijinks and the amazing '80s fashion disasters. So my new blog, Calico Drive, will mesh the two, and feature recaps of each of the original SVH books with very detailed notes as to what everybody's wearing. Come on over and check it out and read my review of the first book in the series, Double Love, and let me know what you think? Pretty please?

Have this wish I wish tonight.

The Brightest Star in the Sky

Marian Keyes

A mysterious spirit has arrived at 66 Star Street, Dublin. The residents can't see it, but they know it's there, and this eerie presence knows all about them. It creeps from flat to flat, invading the private lives of Maeve and Matt, a young married couple who have suffered a horrible tragedy; of elderly Jemima and her handsome, charming foster son Fionn; of surly Lydia, struggling with a sick parent and two exasperating Polish roommates; of 40-year-old Katie, who longs for a family, but is stuck with an undependable boyfriend, Conall. As soon as the spirit arrives, the foundations of each and every one of their lives are shaken. Does this spirit wish them ill? Or is it there to help them find direction, fulfill their deepest desires?

So begins Marian Keyes's latest--and most ambitious--novel. Keyes's career began with strict chicklit fare, girls who love boys and shoes and want to be skinny, a host of Irish Bridget Joneses. But through the years, Keyes has also tackled more serious topics, like miscarriage and infertility (Angels), addiction (Rachel's Holiday), domestic abuse (This Charming Man), and mental illness (Sushi for Beginners) all while keeping that same effervescent quality we've come to expect from books of the genre.

Brightest Star is a departure from Keyes' previous works. For one, there's more parity between the sexes. Almost as many of her primary characters here are men as women. This can't be called strictly a women's novel (though no man will read it, just check out that cover. No.) It's not an ode to shopping, or having a baby, or planning a wedding, issues that seem to be most important to women. There's sex, and romance, and yes, shoes, but these characters also deal with issues that aren't confined to one gender: depression and sexual assault, aging, love, and loss. It's far more Nick Hornby than it is Sophie Kinsella, and Keyes deserves the accolades for making the switch so successfully (although I have to admit that I was a bit put off by this change, at first. It wasn't what I expected--or wanted--of this book. And another difficult thing for me was the sheer number of characters we deal with. Besides the ones I've mentioned, we go, with the spirit, inside the inner lives of a dozen secondary and even tertiary ones. Before I realized just how all these characters' lives would intermingle, I thought Keyes had gone a bit crazy).

Another big change for Keyes is in her narrative voice. Her previous works have her characters telling the story in their own words, or else they feature a limited third person narrator. Here, the spirit that moves among the characters' lives tells their stories as he (she? it?) learns them; he (for lack of better term) also has the ability to see into their souls, to touch their possessions and discern important events associated with each object. This is how we learn about Maeve and Matt's wedding day, Katie's first date with Conall. Again, it, too, takes a little getting used to, but in the end, it's fine.

Stuff I didn't like about this book. Well. Without giving too much away, I will say that Keyes plays fast and loose with these peoples' lives. There is one event that occurs that made me actually feel sick with shock and sadness. I just couldn't believe it was happening. I'm not sure if I felt that it was a little over-the-top, and that's why I didn't like it, or because I liked this character so much that it hurt me to see how that person was behaving. One would be an example of bad writing, the other of extremely good writing. But I'm not sure. I just can't decide either way.

The other thing is this new, vaguely New-Ageish tone Keyes is taking. The spirit tells us:

Not everyone knows this but each human heart gives off an electric current that extends outwards from the body to a distance of ten feet. People wonder why they take instant likes or dislikes to people. They assume it's to do with associations...but instant likes or dislikes are also the result of the harmony (or disharmony) of heart currents and Matt's and Maeve's hearts Beat As One.

It's an interesting idea, but what is it doing in this book? This isn't the kind of writer Keyes is. Is it? Again: weird.

The other thing is with this "spirit" or "ghost" or whatever you want to call it. I'm loath to spoil you but there is absolutely no way to talk about this facet of the story without a mild spoiler. It won't ruin the book, but if you're squeamish, I'm blocking it. A few lines of white will appear after this sentence; if you want to know, highlight it and you can read it. If you don't want to know, scroll onward! Anyway, this spirit of Keyes, you're supposed to think it's Death, or something totally creepy, but it turns out to be the spirit of an unborn child seeking out it's ideal parents among the lovers at 66 Star Street. But Keyes wants this to remain ambiguous, and so she leaves it vague for a while, as to this spirit's malevolence or benevolence. And people are always scared and terrified when they feel its presence. Suddenly, everything in Maeve was going at ten times its normal speed...Her body was flooded with adrenaline and her skin was prickling with the need for fight or flight. She clambered to a sitting position, her back against the wall, her head jerking from corner to corner, her eyes scudding wildly, trying to see everything at once, patrolling for all possible danger. She began to sob with terror. Um, that's the effect of the spirit of a little baby? It turns out there are more nefarious sources (and spirits) also at play, but when I read that I firmly decided the narrator-spirit was PURE EVIL and it was hard to go back, after that. Very Rosemary's-Babyish. Poor parents, cursed with such terror-inducing spawn. It was hard for me to be like, oh, awwwww it's a baby!!!

Overall, I have to admit that if anybody other than Marian Keyes had written this book, I probably wouldn't have liked it as much as I did. But I love Keyes. Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married is the first chicklit I ever read after Bridget Jones, and I loved it, and read it until it literally fell to pieces, and I have read all of her other books except for one, which I just learned about, more than once (or two, or three) times. My copy of Angels is so bloated from bathtime reading that it doesn't even look like a book anymore. And so: I can't hate this book, or even dislike it. Because I like her so much. And I'm actually pleased with, and proud of, her for going for broke and writing a book that pushes her limits. Even if she isn't 100% successful, and this book rings out with a wrong note in places, she's stepping outside her comfort zone, and trying to grow as a writer, and that's so much preferable to people like Jacquelyn Mitchard, or even (yes!) Sophie Kinsella, who beat the same dead horse until it's a pile of rubble in the street. As one of Keyes' characters would say: Good on her.

In any event, this book is strange, and unfamiliar, and there's something exhilarating about reading it, and Keyes's career is exciting to me again, when it was getting to be familiar, and comfortable. I look forward to seeing what she'll do next.

Rating: 4 of 5 stars.

Query: Are you a writer?

Last week, I broke radio silence and confessed that yes!--I have a novel in me (and the doctor said it's going to have to come out!) Talking about my writing is a very personal thing, but now my curiosity has been piqued and I must know: are any of you readers writers, too? What do you write about? Why do you write? Have you done NaNoWriMo? Do you eschew things like that?

I write because I simply can't not do it. Anything from short vignettes to Jane Austen sequels to imagined conversations between people on the Metro. I have at least one full length chick lit novel that I contemplate sending away every now and again called Citizen Kate, set in D.C. I began it as part of Nano in 2008. :)

I write like I read, I guess: anything and everything. What about you?

Somewhere off the coast of Maine.

Grange House

Sarah Blake

Grange House is a serviceable gothic tale, remarkable mainly because it's set in America instead of England. You kind of expect from the genre for there to be castles and lords, and aristocratic families fallen on hard times, don't you? But the dark piney woods, the Ultima Thule-ish feeling of Maine, is perfect for the setting and plays its part wonderfully. (It really is a creepy place; driving through northern Maine with my husband this summer, he turned to me and said, as we hurtled down the empty road, "We could be the only people around for a hundred miles." Creepsville.)

Every summer, Maisie Thomas and her parents visit Grange House in coastal Maine. They've been going every year of Maisie's life. But this year, the summer of 1896, it's different: the beginning of the visit is spoiled when a pair of drowned young lovers are washed up out of Middle Haven Bay. And then Maisie the dead girl begins appearing to Maisie, her ghostly form emerging out of the fog. And then Miss Grange, the owner of Grange House, begins to tell Maisie the story of her own troubled past. Maisie undertakes to help her write it, but as the details are revealed, she has to wonder: is Miss Grange's story actually Maisie's own?

The pleasure in this book comes from trying to connect the characters, to identify the places where they are lying, and the places where they are telling the truth. Blake is good at that kind of writing; she's good at characters. She's not so great at plot; here it's rather convoluted and hard to follow, but you don't notice so much, because you're looking at the people who stalk these pages, instead. The best writer would have great characters and great plot, but a good one can cover flaws in the one with the other.

The displeasure in this book comes from the fact that Sarah Blake overwrites like WHOA. I have never met a writer more infatuated with words. It appears she likes them so much that she wants to use them all, all at once:

Few of the other summer guests ventured to penetrate the back regions of the woods behind the House, preferring instead the yachting pleasures of the open, startling waters of the sea. For some fortuitous reason, I had been singled out as one who could walk alongside the quiet familiar of these trees, and my childish self-regard puffed greatly at the unexpected sympathy grown up between myself and my older companion.

WORDS. There are a lot of WORDS, there. If every word is supposed to lift you into a place, or scene, there are like ten separate places and scenes right there. A great writer, who uses words carefully, lets you linger with an image or an idea for a moment to get your bearings, but Blake whisks you through so that your head spins. You are in the woods, then you're jerked over to the "startling sea," then you're back in the woods but with Maisie, and you're taken into her inner world. All in two sentences.

Some people won't mind this. It will make them feel literary. But I minded, because most of the book is like that. You can't skim it, because you'll miss something. There are no filler sentences, no rest areas where you can stop and catch your breath.

When you're a book reviewer, you have to engage, every time you read a book, in a little analysis for the sake of fairness: you have to sit down and determine what kind of book it is that you're reviewing. Especially if you read across a lot of different genres, like I do. What is this book's purpose? What does it set forth to do? For instance, a book like Shopaholic isn't meant for the same purposes as a book like A Farewell to Arms. It's saying something about the condition of living, yes, because all books are, but it's intended primarily for the point of entertaining the reader, not for illuminating, or enlightening, the reader to the circumstances of his own life, or the nature of the world around him. Right? So if A Farewell to Arms is the gold standard, you can't blast Sophie Kinsella for her unrealistic characters or her unlikely plot points. You have to judge her by other chicklit. The first thing, when you're going to write a review, is that you have to identify the kind of book you're reading. And here's where I ran into trouble with Grange House. This book promised to be, is marketed as, the kind of juicy ghost story you could read in the bathtub. But then you have this ponderous, I-take-myself-so-seriously-here-is-a-DEEP CRITIQUE OF LIFE style of writing. Was this supposed to be a character-driven, plot-based story...or one of those novels in which nothing happens but lots of beautiful writing occurs, a la Ulysses or Tropic of Cancer? I wasn't sure, and I have the feeling Blake herself wasn't sure, and the result is slighty schizophrenic.

But the good news is that it is you get used to it, after a while, and sort of turn your brain off and just let it wash over you. That's how I got through the book. For all this, though, Blake's writing and story were intriguing enough so that I look forward to seeing what she does with her next novel.

Rating: a very middling 3 of 5 stars.

We will not make saltpetre until you send us pins.

Don't You Know There's a War On?: The American Home Front, 1941-1945.

Richard R. Lingeman

I always feel strange blogging about my writing, because this isn't a writing blog, and because I'm have a great fear about turning into one of those people who "has a novel" and is always pushing it on other people. Anywho, since I've broken the seal with my post on Elizabeth Berg's writing book, so I guess it's OK to proceed.

My latest endeavor, which at this point is purely for my own pleasure, is a fluffy little chicklittish treatment of three young women who come to the nation's capital to serve as "government girls" during World War II. They take defense jobs, find a place to live in the housing shortage, and pretty much spend the rest of their time jitterbugging, writing their boyfriends overseas, and depending on each other for friendship. I'm at the research stage, and so I turned to Lingeman's book to get more of a sense of what everyday life was like back in the wartime '40s.

And how. What a vast amount of information I've gotten from this 350-page book, which covers seemingly every aspect of wartime life in minute detail. From childbirth (almost always induced, because hospitals were overcrowded, and women couldn't be sure of getting a bed at the necessary time), to Hollywood picture production details (canvas was painted to look like wood because of the material shortages), to the amount of ration points you got a month (48 canned good points per person), to the color of the envelopes of the stipend checks the War Department doled out to servicemen's wives (pale blue). At first I started out marking relevant pages with little slips of paper; then I started underlining everything, but had to stop, because I was underlining everything; now I have a spreadsheet on my computer that lists what was rationed, when it was rationed, and the amount each person got per week/month/year.

But you don't have to be writing a novel about the Forties to appreciate this book. It's a surprisingly quick read considering how crammed full of information it is. And it's presented in a really interesting way. All day long, I've found myself peppering my conversations with tidbits from this book:

ME: There was this woman named Elvira Taylor who lived in Norfolk, VA and married like 5 servicemen at the same time so she would get their allotment checks of $50 a month. None of the guys knew. They only found her out because two Army dudes in England were comparing pictures of their wives and it was the same girl. By that time, though, she'd moved from Army men to Air Force men because their life expectancy was lowest. She was married to like eight dudes overall.

MY HUSBAND: Wow, what a bitch.

and

ME (buying a banana at Starbucks): Did you know that during World War II they made high octane gasoline from bananas because of the fuel shortage?

STARBUCKS BARISTA: No, I did not. But that is very interesting. And that will be two dollars.

This book spans the tumultuous four years from Pearl Harbor Day to V-J Day--but with a few glaring omissions. To wit: there is precious little about the African-American experience the war. And also: the Holocaust is not mentioned once. Lingeman mentions that at some point British anti-Semitism was high, because some Brits blamed the Jews for their current hardships, but other than that: nada. This book was written in the 1970s, and I guess the Holocaust was not really as talked-about as it is today. And it's not like black people in America had it really great, back then. (I read a case for my Federal Courts class today which dealt with desegregation of a Southern school district in 1983.) But it's unsettling, all the same. If the Apocalypse comes, and only this book survives, of all the literature of World War II, the human race in the future will think that there were no people of color in the US mid-20th century, and that Hitler's Master Plan consisted of architectural drawings of a sunroom, or something. It's not the be-all, end-all tome of the war, is what I'm saying, or even of the complete American home front experience.

But it is pretty damn good, and there are other books, for these other purposes. And now, because of the title, I have a song from 1776 ringing in my head, and anything that makes me think of 1776 is fine by me.

Rating: 4 of 5 stars.

Mr. Darcy's Neverending Cash Cow.

Mr. Darcy's Dream

Elizabeth Aston

I don't know why I do this to myself, I really don't. Damn you, Jane Austen! If I didn't like your books so much then I wouldn't be tempted to read these horrendous offshoots of them. I will confess that I have liked some of the Jane Austen sequels that have come down the pipe, including Elizabeth Aston's first two works, Mr. Darcy's Daughters and The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy. But all the ones that have come after have been silly, and insipid, and the protagonists hace had an increasingly flimsy connection with the original P&P characters.

You have The True Darcy Spirit, which deals with the granddaughter of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. And that's fine, it really is. I always wondered what the spawn of LCB would be like. There wasn't nearly enough Lady Catherine in this book as I wanted though, but whatever. It's still within a few degrees of separation of the original characters. You have The True Darcy Spirit, which showcases Rev. Collins's daughter. Also fine; but ditto on the not enough of...well, anybody who mattered in the original book. The Aston books I most object to are the ones where she just basically invents relations of Mr. Darcy so she can write about them, like in The Second Mrs. Darcy, which has a lady named Octavia Melbury married to "Sir Christopher Darcy," a remote cousin of Mr. Darcy. No. NO, ASTON. You are taking it too far and you must be stopped.

Apparently other people thought so, too, because the flap copy for Mr. Darcy's Dream is careful to point out that it is "populated with authentic characters firmly rooted in Jane Austen's mores and stylistic traditions." In this case, the story features one Miss Phoebe Hawkins, daughter of Georgiana Darcy, and in case that is not nearly enough for us, Miss Louisa Bingley (mother: Jane Bennet) to boot. To bring Pemberley into the mix, because, why not?--both girls suffer some form of humiliation so that they can remove from their lives in London to Derbyshire. Phoebe has a romantic entanglement with an unsuitable man, and Louisa has passed three seasons in London with no engagement. (FAIL). But OMG, guess what??? Arthur Stanhope, Phoebe's unsuitable suitor, just happens to show up as a guest at "Martindale House" which is only three miles away from Pemberley! (Maybe it sprung up overnight?) Will his path and Phoebe's cross? And he has a friend, who is a horticulturist, which just happens to be Louisa's passion, as well! Will love blossom (GEDDIT?) between them?

I'm being really mean about this book, which is really very sprightly and tries so, so hard to be charming, and maybe it succeeds. But you know what? You deserve a little nastiness, Aston. I've read all six of your benighted Darcy novels, and the Darcys, whom I love, and who are the only reason I am even reading this book to begin with, don't show up ONCE. They are always conveniently out of the country. And I would be down with that, because Aston has said she doesn't feel comfortable dealing with these beloved characters in depth. But it's the fact that nobody from the original books shows up in the novels. What is a book about Lady Catherine's granddaughter without at least a largeish cameo by Lady Catherine? If you're going to have two Darcy daughters emulate Lydia Bennet's elopement, why squander the opportunity to have Lydia herself could appear and egg them on in doing it? She just...wastes these chances. We're supposed to love these characters of Aston's because they are the progeny of the Bingleys and Bennets and de Bough's we know and love, and we're straining through the pages to get a glimpse of them but they don't show up. (It's like that seventh grade birthday party all over again). In Dream, Phoebe is Georgiana's daughter, and Georgiana is one of the most uncomplicatedly lovable characters in the book. But we don't get to even see her. She hasn't one line of dialogue. She's offscreen the whole time.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought this book was called MR DARCY'S Dream."

There was one point in Mr. Darcy's Dream when one of the girls cries out, "Aunt!" and a woman breezes in. And I get all excited, like, who is it going to be? Lady Catherine? CAROLINE BINGLEY? Even Anne de Bourgh would have been a welcome sight. But no. Aston won't go there. Apparently Lady Redburn is "Mr. Darcy's formidable aunt; his father's much-younger sister." I just threw the book down in exasperation. Why? WHY??? Honestly, if you're going to write a book about the Darcys without mentioning the Darcys, just pull a Georgette Heyer and write a Regency-esque novel that has nothing to do with them at all. At this point the whole Darcy thing just seems like a way for you to get unsuspecting Austenites to buy your books. Boo, I say. Boo unto YOU.

And something else that really bothers me? Is that Aston's heroines are all cut from the same cloth. They are spirited, handsome but not beautiful, outspoken and witty. In short: they are all miniature Eliza Bennets. But you wouldn't expect the daughter of Georgiana Darcy to have the same temperament as the daughter of Jane Bennet, who is the same as the granddaughter of Lady Catherine. Would you? That's the great thing about Austen's writing: her characters are all mostly of the same class but they are so different. You know Elizabeth would be too practical to get along with Marianne Dashwood, who would be too romantic to deal with someone like wishy-washy Anne Elliot, who would be perfectly in fear and awe of brash, confident Emma Woodhouse. Aston writes the same girl over and over. In this one she just happens to be called "Phoebe." And also: "Louisa."

I do appreciate that Aston always has her ladies have interests other than knitting and playing the pianoforte; painting or writing or horticulture, something like that. It's refreshing. And her books are well-researched, or at least peppered with period-appropriate slang words, like "Fustian!" But I cannot do this to myself anymore. I'd rather read one of the truly awful, unhistoric accounts where Lizzy and Darcy just have graphic sex for like 20 pages, all Ulysses-style. Because at least then I'd get to read about them. Which is the whole point of reading a P&P sequel.

Rating: 1 of 5 stars.