Bibliotica

Firefly Lane
by Kristin Hannah
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When you were a teenager did you ever feel like a ram of your head against the wall might be more productive than a conversation with your mother? If you are a parent, have you ever felt that way about your child? If so, this novel is for you.

Firefly Lane is a tale of the lifelong friendship between cool, breezy and somewhat broken Tully, daughter of a strung out leftover hippie, abandoned to her grandmother most of the time, and average, suburban Katie. Their friendship is formed accidentally when they become neighbors, but ends up becoming a sustaining force for both girls.

As they grow up, Tully is the one who knows what she wants and pushes everything out of her way to get it, dragging Katie along in her wake, until, finally, Katie ends up with what SHE really wants - a home and family, and loving husband.

Set against the television news industry Katie and Tully’s friendship follows a timeline from the early 1970’s, when they meet, until present day, when Katie has to face a devastating challenge and needs Tully, estranged in recent years, to help get her through.

While Firefly Lane is not, ultimately, a feel-good novel, it is a strong portrayal of women’s friendships, and the characters drawn by author Kristin Hannah are complex and believable.

Goes well with an ice cold glass of lemonade, an Adirondack chair, and a soft cotton blanket.

Prep
by Curtis Sittenfeld
published by Random House
published in 2005

~~~In Prep I was expecting a posh boarding school story where the rich-bitch characters bragged about hotel deals in exotic foreign countries and wore designer clothes to class.

Instead, I got the story of one Lee Fiora, a young girl from Indiana who decides that boarding school sounds like a romantic sort of thing, applies to several, gets a scholarship, and is then obligated to go. We follow Lee through her four years of school at Ault, meet her roommates, glimpse her classes, but just as Lee never really connects with anyone there (largely through her own choosing), I felt that we never quite connected with Lee.

I was somewhat of a loner in high school as well, and stories of individuals who are gloomy are not always the most appealing things to read, but unlike Lee, I was never bitter, and while I’d never care to go BACK, my high school experience was mostly positive. That being said, I confess to finding boarding schools romantic when I was thirteen or fourteen and I wonder if I’d have ended up as dark and depressed as Lee had I gone to them.

Somehow, I suspect not.

Nevertheless Prep was an interesting read, if only from the standpoint of Lee’s life being compelling in the same way in which a train wreck is.

Goes well with a stiff drink.

There had been a lot of hype about The Jane Austen Book Club and I knew it was supposed to take place “in a California river town” but it was pretty clearly referring to Sacramento. I spent many of my teen years in Modesto, Fresno, Stockton and Sacramento, so it was sort of like homecoming to read a novel set in those environs.

The book itself is the story of five women and one man who read and discuss each of Austen’s works. I have to confess that I never appreciated Austen when I was required to read it in high school, but I’m considering renewing my acquaintance with her on the basis of this book, which was a funny, sad, sweet, and very realistic portrayal of real women in many stages of life. As the lone man, Grigg served mostly as contrast.

This book is not one that requires home theater sconces and dramatic music, and is better read sitting on a sunny porch with a glass of iced tea.

The movie that was adapted from it happened to be next on my Blockbuster queue, so I watched the movie almost immediately after finishing the book, and I was not disappointed by either.

Good read.

by Jane Gardam

It was the title of this book that hooked me. I envisioned a tale about a street gypsy with pretty skirts and musical talent shaking her tambourine in a band, and having delightful love affairs with men who were ever-so-slightly disreputable.

Instead, I got a story about a woman who had been through a hysterectomy thirty years before, and still hadn’t gotten over it. If people who exhibited cerebral palsy symptoms gave up as easily as this woman did, there would be no triumphant stories, and that comedienne from The Facts of Life would never have had a career.

But I digress. Eliza is clearly mentally unstable, but we don’t really see how far gone she is because this is an epistolary novel - a series of letters all sent to a woman named Joan who may or may not be a real person. She’s always been a little odd, apparently, but now that her Diplomatic Service husband has left her, no longer able to put up with her idiosyncrasies, whatever was holding her together has cracked.

Through the letters we meet a woman who has no children, no friends, no real life outside of her husband, and while I also don’t have children, It was difficult for me to empathize with Eliza, who appeared, more than anything, to need a really good shaking.

There are the requisite revelations of the secret horrors of her life, of course, made to strangers rather than to friends, but I find myself a bit empty after finishing this book. It was well written, well crafted. I just couldn’t relate.

by Elizabeth Strout

Continuing the recent trend of reading books about mother-daughter relationships, I picked up Amy and Isabelle because I liked the cadence of the title, and found myself in a slow novel, not in the plodding sense of the word, but in the sense that this was a story of gradual emergence.

The book opens on a hot summer day in an office where there is no air conditioning, and while the period is never specified, the mention of typewriters and and lack of computers, or even any specific office supply other than such things as legal pads and Papermate pens puts us in the late sixties to early seventies.

We are introduced to both characters, Amy, the teenaged daughter of single mother Isabelle, within the first few pages, and while the rest of the novel does peel away their layers - Isabelle was raped by a family friend, never married, and has an unrequited crush on the boss, while Amy is discovering sex and lust and is openly attracted to her substitute math teacher - I never got past the feeling of wanting the story to really BEGIN.

It’s a slow tale, of people who live slow, quiet lives, and while the details are impeccable, I was left unsatisfied. Some undefinable “something’ is missing from Strout’s work.

by Marianne Fredriksson

Hanna, Johanna, and Anna - three generations of Swedish women, grandmother, mother, daughter. This novel by Marianne Fredriksson was an impulse buy - I’d just come home from ten days with my mother, and missed the mother-daughter dynamic. I expected something light and fluffy, instead, I got to read the histories of three fictional women, and about how their social inheritance of manners and gender roles informed their lives and choices.

Anna’s story really bookends the other two, for the novel is her interpretation, first as a thesis then as a novel, of the women who raised her, but taken as a whole, it’s a fascinating look at how in some fashion we are all our mother’s daughters, even when we don’t wish to be.

The first third of the novel was difficult to read, both because of the content (there’s a rape of a very young girl) and because the grammar reflects the uneducated way of speaking Hanna had, with funky verb tenses. Until I got to the next section, I was almost convinced that this was just a really bad translation, but it was done for effect.

I wouldn’t recommend this as a light reading, but if you’re in the mood for a respite from dealing with small business phone systems and endless faxes, and want to really explore generational culture…this book is a great addition to the pile.

Last week, I wrote about my frustration with the book The Goddesses of Kitchen Avenue, by Barbara Samuel. I’m please to report that we’ve worked out our issues, and I’m in a place of enjoyment with the book.

Any frustration I had is partly my own fault. The cover art features a cafe table with a lovely blue tablecloth, and a bunch of coffee mugs and glasses, a couple of desserts, and many women gathered around, sharing the food. We don’t see their faces, but we can see that they are friends.

I bought the book in flagrant defiance of the “Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” rule, because I liked the picture, and then, I became frustrated when it wasn’t a happy cozy cafe book, but a deep look at fractured relationships. Just because I’m writing a happy cozy cafe book, I expect everything to be like that.

Anyway, I’ve set it aside while I finish a Trek novel for review later this weekend, and will review it formally sometime next week.

by Madeleine L’Engle

It seems fitting, with her death still so very recent, that my next book for the 11 Decades challenge is Madeleine L’Engle’s first published novel.

It takes place in a slightly romanticized New York, and traces the story of Katherine, a brilliant pianist, and Sarah, and aspiring actress, friends of a sort, though the latter is painted rather unsympathetically.

L’Engle delves in to all sorts of subjects: sex, religion, love, growing up, and the artistic personality - as she shares with us Katherine’s journey from teen to young adult.

The story does not end with all romances happily tied up, but it does continue in the sequel, A Severed Wasp, which holds resolutions that are satisfying, if not perfectly tidy.

by Kate Muir

About this Book:
Madison Malin is Texan by birth and French by marriage, an actress who has always found herself playing the bimbo in distress in not-quite-pornographic movies. Her husband, Olivier, is an itinerant philosopher who chases young women and holds court in cafes, fancying himself to be a sort of Gen-X version of Sartre. The novel explores there relationship, and how it disintegrates when they hire a new English nanny for their daughter, Sabine.

Why I Chose this Book:
I was in a French sort of mood the day I picked this up, which was the same day I picked up a couple of other books that took place in Paris. I liked the title and the back cover blurb, and thought it would be interesting. I was expecting a light and predictable romance, and instead got a sometimes-amusing, sometimes gritty view of a marriage. Why is it, by the way, that no one ever writes stories about happy marriages?

What I Liked About this Book:
I was all set to love the nanny and hate Madison, but really the only character I wanted to shake to death was Olivier, which means Ms. Muir did her job, because he was supposed to come off as an arrogant ass. Anna, the nanny, by the way, was delightfully real, and I liked the subplot with the cook and the Chechnian immigrants.

Would I Recommend this Book?
Read it if you don’t mind a jaded air about your fiction, and don’t expect fluffy bunny happy endings. These characters are interesting and complex, but they’re not always nice or pretty. This is NOT chick-lit.

Sometimes, even if a book is good, you have to put it aside for a while, because it just doesn’t fit the right mood. I’m in the middle of reading Of Song and Water, and it’s a beautiful book, with vivid descriptions and haunting characters. Sort of a blues riff in textual form, all about jazz and shipping, prohibition and personality conflicts. It’s lovely to look at, I like the texture of the paper, and the words are well chosen.

But it’s also sad, and as much as I appreciate the quality of the book and am interested to know what happens to the characters, I need to put it aside for a while.

Of Song and Water was written by Joseph Coulson