Nom de Plume

My standards for chick lit are pretty low. Even so, if you’re looking for something light and frothy, do not pick up Carole Matthew’s More to Life Than This. It was beyond tedious.

Speaking of which, I’ve lost all patience with Charlie Bone and flung down Charlie Bone and the Hidden King 15 pages in. Nothing ever seems to happen. They never make any progress. They never even seem to get older. Hmmphh.

And given the amount of children’s fantasy I’ve been reading lately, I finally overcame my prejudice and perused the fantasy section for grown-ups at the library. I came home with Tad Williams’ Shadowmarch: Volume 1. In the thank you treatise in the front, right before fulsome praise for his editors, and right after being eternally grateful that he could make a living as a writer, he says, “Thanks also to our talented assistant, Dena Chavez, who keeps Deborah and I as close to sane …” Snap! went the covers. I just couldn’t do it.

Finally (at least for now, and based on what’s in front of me), there’s Diana Gabaldon’s A Breath of Snow and Ashes. I remember a woman I worked with a long time ago loved this series — and I am sure I would be entertained by it too had I been reading them in sequence. It just felt like too much work to catch up on what was going on. I found myself spending more time wondering about the time traveling bit, and what time zone (???) the kids lived in, and all that.

The kiddie lit quest continues with this delightful book. Countess Maliara and her brother swear to their dying father that they will protect their people against the rising demands of the king. This promise results in an ill-advised war, in which Meliara scampers all over kingdom come evading capture. That’s book one. In book two, the king has finally been overthrown and Meliara must overcome her wild ways and lack of education — and take her battles to court. And she realizes that a certain someone she thought was her enemy is actually her greatest fan. This was fun and entertaining, and if, for any reason at all, you need a present for a girl, this should be on your list.

Such lovely froth. In this sequel to Maileron the Magician, Kim is now established in Richard Merrill’s townhouse in Regency England and undertaking her magical studies in earnest. And of course, Stuff Happens, and she Falls In Love. Fantasy and regency — who could ask for anything more?

Ushman Khan lives in New York, far away from his native Iran and beloved wife Farak. Isolated and lonely, caught in a cultural no-man’s land, he spends his days catering to his rich clients and his nights at the airport, pretending Farak is coming off a plane and he is there to meet her. On one such excursion, he meets Stella, a college student. The relationship that develops between them is beautiful and fragile–made even more so by Farak’s desertion of Ushman and Stella’s extreme youth. This was a lovely novel, rich in detail and vividly woven.

Or, An Alternate, and Possibly Very Shallow, Way of Reviewing Books

To me, this is the photo of a woman who takes herself very seriously. She seems to set herself apart: her shoulders are stiff; her mouth set in a firm line. “I am serious,” she seems to say. “I am wise.” Her eyes are wide open, yet not particularly candid; they seem somewhat hostile to me. There is a barrier. She does not want to be known.

This is a photo of author Mary Gaitskill, whose novel Two Girls Fat and Thin I read several years ago (lying in a bathtub in a rental house on the Oregon Coast, trying to warm up after three hours boogie boarding). It was okay, a little pretentiously intellectual. She is also the author of Veronica: A Novel, which I put on hold and tried to slog through over the weekend.

And you know what? Every single thing I hated about the book (I only managed to get to page 27) can be seen in her author photo. Of being completely inaccessible. Of being separate, better than, and completely offputting. Her prose is muscular and acrobatic, seemingly for its own sake. As a writer, she is not with the reader; she is against us. And she wants us to know it. Her mystique is more important than her writing.

This photo is something else entirely. To me, this is a woman (beauty notwithstanding) with eyes who have seen too much but is still kind. “This is who I am,” she seems to say. “I am here. I am present.” She seems candid, at ease with her flaws. She seems interesting.

Then again, I confess a partiality to Kathryn Harrison. I have read everything she has written, and my perceptions of her photos are probably influenced by the fact that I have read her personal nonfiction. But I also have to say that I read Envy yesterday, and it was amazing. The prose was gorgeous. There was one paragraph — the beginning of a chapter that was perfectly placed — that I kept rereading just for the imagery:

On Little Squam Lake, in New Hampshire: a shingled summer cottage at the bottom of a track through the woods, a steep incline that made it impossible to walk toward the front door, especially if you were carrying someting heavy, a suitcase or a bag of groceries. Gravity pulled you into a run, flung you at the house, which was long and low and filled with liquid green light, sun reflected off water and filtered through trees in lush, midsummer leaf. They’d rented in for a month, sight unseen, through one of those miniscule ads in the back pages of The New Yorker.

The cover exhorts young sorcery fans to “set aside Harry Potter and pick up Merlin.” Alas, I disagree. I found Merlin to be extremely irritating and more than a little smug. To be honest, I am not sure if this is Merlin or the author, who made the strange decision to write this in the first person. First person, third person–usually writers know when it works. In this case, it most decidedly did NOT. For me at least. I found myself disliking Merlin and disliking Barron even more. It was a struggle to finish, and I only did so because my library pile was woefully small.