#CBR5 Review #48: Constance by Patricia Clapp

I read an excerpt of Constance in upper grade school and was hooked to the drama and romance of the Separatists making their way on Plymouth Plantation. I’d read several books about the settlement, which further piqued my curiosity. And by books, I mean “historical romances.” In my defense, I spent my entire K-12 and undergrad in Christian school, so I read a lot about the Pilgrims and any romance was welcome from the diary and sermonizing bits I grew up with.

So, Constance is told from the perspective of young Constance Hopkins, a teenager who has come with her father and stepmother to live in the New World. We hear briefly about the ship’s journey, but much more extensively about the sickness during their first year of settlement, the contact with the Native Americans (First People? Indigenous individuals? What is the PC term these days?), and of course, the burying and marrying that takes place. The marrying occupies a lot of the book, because as soon as Constance realizes that she’s got boobies, she’s ready to test their magical powers on several of the young men in the colony. And that’s where the book lost its steam. Seriously, she talks about this demure thing she does with her eyelashes which she thinks is a coy look, and *I* could only think of THIS:

Also, she lets like five guys kiss her (maybe it’s only three, but that still seemed like a lot for such a strict religious community), and I was all like, “Girl. Stop leading boys on just because you’re a woman, and you can.” I’m such a wet blanket around teen romance. There are several guys vying for because she’s pretty and single and she’s spunky.  One of the guys is a ginger, and I was initially rooting for him, and then his carousing turned into boring responsibility, so then I got bored of him. So of course when we meet the guy she actually ends up, I knew of course. Because she doesn’t like him, and he’s kind of a dick to her at first, and they argue and disagree. OF COURSE.

Anyway. Constance was one of the girliest YA books I’d read, and while I’m not sorry I read it, I realize why I am choosy about which ones I do read. One can only take so much angsty historical romance, you know. Also: my junior high reader only included the sickness parts and left out all the scandalous stuff. Of course.

#CBR5 Review #47: Broken Chords by Barbara Snow Gilbert

Full disclosure: after months of reading angsty man-books, it’s been kind of fun to read some girlier YA. Not that all YA is girly, and not that girly is bad by any means, but still: after all the masculinity crisis issues I’ve faced down, it’s nice to take a break and deal with some less high-stakes drama. But by all means, spare me from the lovey-dovey stuff. Ick. Thankfully, Broken Chords managed to balance that out nicely and told a very compelling story.

Clara Alexander Lorenzo is a seventeen-year-old piano prodigy. She has an opera singer for a father, and a conductor for her mother: thus, her life is soaked in music. Expectations are high as she enters a student-competition: if she wins, she gains a scholarship to Julliard, and thus fulfills the dreams of her parents. And yet, this seemingly perfect piano princess questions everything about herself and her own skills when she auditions for a bit part in her ballet’s production of The Nutcracker and when she hears her major competitor play. Obviously, this competitor is a very cute boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Obviously. Less obvious to me was how the story would resolve, and while it did, it wasn’t as neat and packaged as a Nicholas Sparks rom-dram. So, points to Ms. Gilbert for that.

I took piano lessons for something like ten years (maybe less? It wasn’t consistent, since I skipped semesters of lessons in college), and while I’m super rusty now, I gravitate towards it as my instrument of choice. It was fun to read a story about a fellow pianist, and it also made me glad that Clara’s life is not mine. I have a lot more free time, and I enjoy plunking out my simple tunes without the fear of having to please a crazy pageant mother (and Clara’s makes a most excellent villain–because mothers are anathema in the YA world. Obviously).

Despite some of the tropes that Ms. Gilbert lets herself indulge in, Broken Chords is an interesting and highly enjoyable read. Clara is a sympathetic and evocative character without being an empty-headed pushover (HEM HEM! Bella Swan) or a neurotic shrew (almost every TV show with a main female character). And because it’s YA, it’s a super quick read. And that is by all means a great thing.

#CBR5 Review #46: A Dance to Still Music by Barbara Corcoran

When I was in elementary school, the denominational private school I studied with had a series of readers that drew from all sorts of children’s/young adult novels that I wrote down and later planned to read in whole. This and the next two CBR Reviews will focus on them. First is Barbara Corcoran’s 1974 novel, A Dance to Still Music.

Margaret is a teenager who has lost her hearing from an unexpected sickness. Trapped in a silent, lonely world, she and her mother have moved from their Maine home to Florida in hopes of prosperity. Margaret’s mother has bad luck with men, and having been conned by one to this Florida job, is bitter and angry. Margaret is too, but because, you know, she can’t hear. She decides to run away back to Maine, but is stopped by two fateful meetings: the hitting of a young fawn on the highway, and its subsequent rescue by a quirky and self-sufficient woman named Josie. Together, these women nurse the deer and form their own unconventional family.

What I liked most about this novel is its attention to someone who is facing a challenge or health issue. Margaret’s voice is evocative, letting the reader into her thoughts and providing us a chance to feel empathy for those who may not possess all their senses. This book is probably out of print, but I was able to borrow a copy from my local library. It was a fast and interesting read, filled with the kinds of characterizations one can only find from the YA writing of the 1960s and 70s.

#CBR5 Review #45: The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow

What would it be like for your family to fall apart when you were a child? What if everything you knew about your parents suddenly became untrue? What if you still can’t put the pieces together as an adult? E.L. Doctorow examines these questions, and many more, in The Book of Daniel, one of the finest postmodern novels I’ve read yet.

Daniel Lewin is a young man completing a doctoral thesis and along the way, he has to help his suicidal sister, Susan, all while struggling to adjust to being married to Phyllis, a significantly younger woman, and a father. Yet, we also find out that Daniel has been grafted onto his family. His birth name is Daniel Isaacson, the son of Paul and Rochelle (born Rachel or Rachele) Isaacson, two Leftist Communists who are arrested and then executed on charges of treason to the Soviet Union. The story may seem simple, but as we see through Daniel’s eyes, the truth, lies, and the fictions we want to believe all intermingle until it’s hard to tell what we really remember or what we choose to believe.

Doctorow draws on the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for this story, and he really captures the spirit of the 1950s and ’60s superbly. He creates the climate of paranoia present in McCarthy-era politics, and demonstrates how easy it can be to accuse someone of a crime, simply because their beliefs are different than yours.

The questions Daniel comes in with are answered and not answered simultaneously. Doctorow’s writing is sharp and evocative–he makes Daniel alternately a pitiable and despicable character, but one you find intriguing, nonetheless. It’s also a testament to his style that even though I knew how the story ended, I wanted to see where it wound around. I highly recommend this novel, and I’ll be reading other works by Doctorow.

#CBR5 Review #44: Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

This book. I just have no idea what to do with it. According to my friend Wikipedia, Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood ranked #12 on the Top 100 Gay and Lesbian Novels that the Publishing Triangle compiled in 1999. Really? I found moments and images extremely well-written, but then the rest of it alternately confused and depressed me.

Briefly, here’s the story: Robin Vote is a woman seeking some kind of security/safety/love, without realizing that she’s just super unhappy no matter where she is in life. She meets and marries the false baron Felix Volkbein, who really just wants a legitimate heir. She gives him a son, Guido, and then realizes she cannot live the kind of life she’s expected to. So she runs off with Nora and sets up house. But then she breaks Nora’s heart by running off with Jenny, a four-time widow who is described as stealing other people’s happiness. Interspersed are the wild monologues of Dr. Matthew O’Connor, a cross-dressing individual who is often caught in makeup and women’s clothing.

As far as early lesbian writing goes, Djuna Barnes is a visionary for crafting images and ideas that would later spur on queer writers and readers. As a story, it’s really more about Dr. O’Connor, and he’s a more interesting character than the rather elusive and selfish Robin. It’s an interesting read, if you don’t expect much “story.” It’s more a poetic-aesthetic experience than a novel.

Wanted: Your book opinion

Hi, friends. I’m going to buy a book, and I need your help deciding what shape this book should take. By that, I mean: Nook file or hard copy? I’ll set out the facets of my particular dilemma, so you can give an informed opinion. Though a shoot-from-the-hip opinion would also be helpful.

Okay, here’s the deal. I just finished reading History and Refusal by Stephen N. doCarmo, a fantastic and excellent book on the relationships between consumerism and postmodernism in American social politics, as seen in contemporary American novels. It is one of the densest but best setups of the various debates raging within postmodern literary theory and is going to become an absolute MUST for my dissertation prospectus. Obviously, I need to own a copy so I can desist from marking up my university library’s copy, right? ALSO: the introduction sets up this debate fantastically, and I feel like it would be a perfect companion to a contemporary American class or an intro to literary theory class (either of which I *might* teach, if I’m very lucky in my career). Plus, the chapters on American Psycho and White Noise have some of the most interesting critical analysis on each of the texts and would again make perfect teaching companions for these novels.

So…in checking out Amazon: I could buy a new hardcover for $45, with a used book running about $47 at the cheapest. Google Play does not have an ebook for sale, and the hardcopies direct me to Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble has a hardcover for $53, with a Nook file for $30. Ebay has a used copy for $37 (I think), and Alibris.com has a used copy for $37.

I’m honestly tempted to buy the Nook file. I could have it uploaded to my computer AND my Nook. Plus, my bookshelves are double-packed already. Actually, make that bookshelf. My cheapo grad school bookshelf I bought from a shall-not-be-named Stuffmart Consumerist Conglomerate was just not going to survive the move to our new apartment. My Sister and I tore it down with shocking ease, and so now I have a stack of about nine beer boxes sitting in an empty space where a bookcase will eventually stand. So, I’m not *exactly* suffering for books.

BUT: if I buy the Nook file, have I then gypped myself of being able to utilize for my students? My current graduate institution has a fantastic system called ARES, in which you can provide the chapter/book/article, they upload it to a protected site, and they pay the royalties so there’s no copyright infringement. Of course, every institution is different, and some just want you to have the password protected site like D2L or blackboard. My thought is, if I buy a hardcover, then I can make a PDF or hard copies to then share with my students in the appropriate and copyright-appropriate channels. But if the library has a copy of the book, I could just use the library’s copy, right? Of course, assuming the library has a copy of said book and I don’t have to resort to ILL (which is fantastic, but takes time for the requests to be fulfilled).

I’m *clearly* overthinking this, but I want to throw my money at the best long-term solution. So tell me: what is that solution?

 

#CBR5 Review #43: Seize the Day by Saul Bellow

After the behemoth that was The Sound and the Fury, I decided that something quick would be best. And wouldn’t you know, Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day clocked in at 118 pages. Perfect. I don’t know much about Saul Bellow, to be perfectly honest, and I’d never read him before. I had no idea what to expect. But I knew that he’s listed several times as one of the American Greats. And this is, after all, my Great American Literature summer tour, so there you have it.

The plot of the novel covers one day, which seems insignificant, but the weight of the past and the terrifying emptiness of the future makes it a potentially life-changing day for Tommy Wilhelm. A man in his mid-to-late 40s, Wilhelm is in a lot of debt, out of a job, and trying to get out of his marriage so he can marry a younger woman. He’s a mess. He’s also foolishly invested his savings into the stocks that his friend, a Dr. Tamkin (who I envisaged as one Tobias Funke), who calls himself a psychologist, but is probably a total quack. Wilhelm also realizes that his relationship with his father has been destroyed beyond repair, and the series of his life choices have brought him to this moment, in which his future could be unmoored and penniless.

It’s a rather grim read, and a frustrating one, because this anguish could totally have been prevented. Maybe that’s Bellow’s point. Maybe it’s a metaphor (and I won’t try to tease that out, because it could just be the academic in me reading into stuff), or maybe it’s a harbinger of things to come for the United States economy. Either way, I found myself engrossed in Wilhelm’s tale of woe, and the ending itself leaves an evocative image, one that I won’t easily forget.