Nom de Plume

The Salem witch trials continue to fascinate, both for readers and for writers. The novel is told from three points of view : Charity Fowler (who would do well to remember her name), her father Lucas, and her exotic aunt Susannah who appears the night Charity’s mother dies in childbirth. Charity harbors a dark secret and fears for her soul–a matter exacerbated by her strict and righteous father. Instead, she seeks solace from a group of conniving girls who tempt her into their play at witchcraft. She loses all sense of reason, and begins to think of her aunt as the devil.

Well, you can see where this goes. Ho hum.

About midway through, our trio of protagonists become caricatures; their characters aren’t believable, their actions hard to fathom, and their emotions unreal. The best part of the book was the section from Charity’s point of view; she is half mad from her own failings and the restrictions of Puritan society. But alas, this section is obviously not sustainable, and I can understand why Chance switches the POV. Unfortunately, this is to the detriment of the book.

All in all, this was a lifeless book–once Charity is no longer the focus–that may be historically accurate, but is eminently forgettable.

This weekend, we’re going to a Japanese bed and breakfast on Bainbridge Island. Steve found the place because he has decided the backyard needs to be a Japanese garden–and has been doing a ton of research. Which is how he found the Bloedel Reserve.

Alas, no one takes dogs, so Harry P is going to be boarded at the vet’s for the weekend. It’s a tough life.

I started this book rather hating the perfect heroine and her spare, perfect prose. Grace seems to have the life we all long for: an apartment in Manhattan, a full-time cleaning person, lots of spare time, a great marriage.

The only problem is that Laz, her husband has disappeared.

This is not an uncommon occurence, but usually when he returns he is so full of affection and love that Grace allows it to continue. At his behest not to bring anyone else into the situation, Grace pretends to everyone he is still around – she strews his items around for the maid to clean; she brings coffee to the doorman, just like he does; she makes his excuses to her parents and their best friends on their weekly Scrabble night, carting home leftovers for him to eat.

Only a day turns into two, and then a week and more. He’s never been gone this long. Grace’s life starts unraveling–without his presence to define hers, she starts to inhabit a dreamlike landscape in which nothing seems real. We start to realize that she has given up her own identity to be with Laz.

Solomon takes us through this tale of transformation; it’s interesting how her language, so precise and cool in the beginning transforms just as Grace does. Grace herself is sometimes quite irritating and you want to smack her, but she doesn’t seem unbelievable. Her parents are great characters. This literary chick lit is a good read for a mellow day when you don’t want to think too much but don’t want something utterly mindless either.

People who drag themselves into work even though they’re hacking up a lung and are more contagious than ebola.

You know, I’ve been sick more in the past year than I have been in the past five–and I blame it on recirculated office air and people who come in because they are “just too busy.”

So there.

but somehow, in my late night webbish peregrinations, I stumbled upon the What is Scientology web site. (I still haven’t figured it out, so if anyone has a clue, let me know.) They have all these testimonials, mainly talking about how scientology has helped them achieve fame and fortune. I particularly appreciated this gem from the Rev. Alfreddie Johnson, Jr., Founder of the World Literacy Crusade. One hopes his grasp of the written word is better than his history.

For billions of centuries, man has searched and searched, never really finding the answers. Mr. Hubbard’s spiritual technology is the solution to problems man has had to face for trillions of years.

In my experience with Mr. Hubbard’s processes and training, I have been able to confront and eliminate things that have caused ruin in my life. I have found that the barriers in life are the ones that I have created. As a result, I am more ethical, more creative and more successful. My goal of helping a billion human beings find answers to questions for themselves is unfolding right before my very eyes.

Part of my ongoing obsession with woodblock prints.

Sachiko Furui is a Japanese artist living in the United States. Born in Osaka, she combines the perspective of a mid 20th century shin hanga print with a more abstract, loose aesthetic. I’m in love with her work in progress, A Hundred Views of America. There’s such a range of style. Here are just a few.

Little Italy, Delaware

Mystic, Connecticut

Old North Church, Massachusetts

Portsmouth, New Hampshire

You can view more of Sachiko’s work on her site or you can bite the bullet and purchase a print at Verne Gallery.

There are certain women writers that I lump together in my mind because of a certain sensibility they share: Margaret Atwood. Carol Shields. Anne Tyler. To this list, I add Alison Lurie, a writer who in my opinion doesn’t get enough credit. Many of her real killers are dated, often set in the sixties and seventies, with old-fashioned “hip” dialogue and some social constructs that the modern woman may not have a lot of patience with, or even sympathy for. Nonetheless, her stories still whiz along, and she brings a deep sympathy to her characters.

The Nowhere City was another of my Barnes and Noble freebies–remaindered reprints of a book originally published in 1965. Paul and Katherine Cattleman move to Los Angeles from the academic world of New England. He has failed to get a teaching position, and takes a year-long job as a historian for a large corporation. Katherine is unhappy about moving to LA, reacting against the city’s fakeness with acute sinusitis.

Paul is not a faithful husband; he never has been and feels no guilt about it. And the things Katherine hates about LA–the sense of not having a history, not being real–are the very things he loves. He enters into a deep affair with a “beatnik” who lives in the slum of Venice (in itself interesting to me, because the landmarks described are familiar to me, but it’s a different world from the gentrified Venice Beach of today).

Yet Katherine embarks on her own journey, complete with an affair with a psychiatrist who is estranged from his starlet wife. Lurie captures the arc of the Cattlemans’ marriage through Katherine and Paul’s affairs with others—and the person who is ultimately changed by the California experience is Katherine; she who hates LA comes to embrace it wholeheartedly, while he who loves it–at least at first–is the one who remains static. I loved that the unhappy wife is the person for whom vistas open.

Lurie also captures the essence of LA as I remember it: artificial, lacking in history, a place where normal arbiters of taste and morals are somehow placed in abeyance. I can’t remember everything I’ve read by Lurie, except for The War of the Tates. This was a much better book. And I’ve got another of hers to read, so stay tuned.

One of my free Barnes & Noble books from the $25 dollar gift certificate. Martha has a miserable job as a fact checker for a women’s magazine, a series of hypercritical boyfriends, and a crippling self-esteem problem. While staying with her best friend’s parents on Fire Island, she stumbles into a group of goddess worshippers communing on the beach—and gets sucked into the community when she saves the leader from drowning. Throughout the book, Martha is involved with the rituals–Talking sticks, sweat lodges, man-bashing gatherings–but keeps a watchful eye on her own involvement. She wants the peace she thinks these women have, but knows deep down that they are just as petty and jealous as anyone else.

There were parts of this novel that had me laughing out loud: Prose wickedly satirizes the rituals, the goddess worship speak, the ubiquitous man-bashing. But there’s something liberating in Martha’s journey into and out of this feminist-on-steroids group. Good insight into the relationships women have with each other, the reader really gets a keen sense of Martha’s self-hatred in the beginning. Recommend.

Fast forward a few decades to a world in which autism has been completely eradicated by treatments given in the womb. Lou Arrendale belongs in a select group who was born too early to be completely cured. Nonetheless, he is doing very well as a high-functioning autistic: He has an apartment, a car, a fencing class, a crush on a “normal” and a good job at a pharmaceutical company where he and others are valued for pattern recognition skills.

Then he gets a new boss who resents what he calls preferential treatment for the autistic employees, and makes a threat; they will be fired if they don’t participate in a trial program reversing the effects of autism and making the same person, only normal. But what is normal? Why is normal better? And how could Lou be the same person if he weren’t autistic?

The Speed of Dark is a thoughtful, intelligent book that I would highly recommend in addition to–and even instead of–A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Moon has created strong, sympathetic characters, and provided the reader with rich insight into the workings of Lou’s brain. In turns hilarious and heartbreaking, this is one of the better, more thought-provoking books I’ve read in a while.

Why do all the Home Despots and Lowes always have hot dog stands right outside? I mean, why not hamburgers or sub sandwiches?