The Interestings

As soon as I saw the reviews for the new Meg Wolitzer novel I wanted to read it. I loved the idea of a summer camp called Spirit-in-the-Woods which is specifically for creative teenagers. 

The Interestings begins in the 1970s with a group of teenagers who are would-be musicians, artists dancers and actors.  Six form a close friendship and call themselves The Interestings.  The novel chronicles their lives to the present day   I do like a 'how they turned out' story. Of course, life doesn't turn out fine for all of them.  Some do very well creatively and financially, some jog along and one spectacularly screws up his life.

I particularly liked all the cultural references which I could identify with being of a similar age to The Interestings - bands like the B52s and Talking Heads, Indian cotton shirts and Levis.  The lives of The Interestings are also influenced by notable events such as the rise and fall of Nixon, the Central Park jogger rape case, the Aids epidemic and, of course, 9/11.

Julie Jacobson is perhaps the most intriguing character.  A girl who is not exceptional but finds her niche among The Interestings as they hang out in teepees at Spirit-in-the Woods engaging in adolescent fumbling and drinking V&T (vodka and Tang).  Julie becomes Jools - popular, funny and accepted.

The Interestings is a big substantial novel.  The sort of book you can lose yourself in and I found myself reading late into the night unable to put it down.  That's not to say it's perfect, there are one or two clunky phrases and a couple of times a character uses an expression I'm pretty sure didn't come from the era they were supposed to be in at the time, but those are minor quibbles. I would highly recommend this book and I'm glad to have discovered Meg Wolitzer. 

I've read some exceptionally good contemporary fiction this year.  As always, I prefer American women writers and I'm now reading The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout.  There are new novels by Donna Tartt and Amy Tan to look forward to in the winter months and, of course, a new Bridget Jones novel by our own Helen Fielding.  Wonder how Bridget will cope with the Internet, blogging and Twitter?! 

The Provincial Lady Goes Further

June 18th. Heatwave continues and everybody says How lovely it must be in the country, but personally I think it is lovely in London and am more than content.  

I've always said that the first volume of the Provincial Lady's diary is the best but I'm now going to Eat My Words because I've been re-reading The Provincial Lady Goes Further and finding it rather wonderful.

In this second volume the Prov Lady has had considerable literary success but this has not translated into very much cash and she is still tormented by her limited budget for clothes and the presents she would like to buy for the children.  She has however, rented a property in Doughty Street, Bloomsbury, the heart of literary London, where she has time and space to write and can attend bookish events with 'dear Rose'.

Sadly, there is very little Lady B in this volume - she has moved abroad - but there is plenty of Our Vicar's Wife, Robert the undemonstrative husband, children Robin and Vicky and even Mademoiselle makes a welcome appearance.  Helen Wills is still around but thankfully has not produced any more kittens and Cook as usual has the last word.  There is also the scandalous Pamela Pringle who rings up in the middle of the night asking the Prov Lady to cover for her numerous indiscretions.

As always the Prov Lady is dissatisfied with her appearance but philosophically concludes that it is Useless to Struggle against Middle-Age.  She has no truck with  pretentious literary types and is quite capable of skewering sycophants with her wit.  She feels guilty about sending Vicky to boarding school and worries about Robin.  Her account of taking Vicky to half-term Sports at Robin's school and dissolving into tears when he wins a cup is very poignant.

As always I find myself fascinated with the details of 1930's England - Lyons tea shops, shampoo and sets, dresses made of delaine and tussore, Time and Tide magazine and rainy picnics.

I'm now re-reading The Provincial Lady in America.  Which is your favourite?

Vic Lit and summer reading

As the debate continues regarding notable females on banknotes I would like to see one of our eminent Victorian novelists represented.  Elizabeth Gaskell or George Eliot or a Bronte, maybe.

I read the two contemporary novels on my 'summer' reading list as the rain beat against the window and the wind howled around the house!  I know some of my fellow bloggers loved Claire Messud's The Woman Upstairs but I had some reservations.  I kept turning the pages and Messud writes very well, but I just didn't buy the premise that a mature woman would become besotted with a whole family.  Nor was I convinced that the work produced by the artist Sirena would attract the attention it did.  However the ending is good.  What you can see coming a mile off doesn't happen quite the way you think it will. 

Maria Semple's Where'd You Go Bernadette was much more my cup of tea.  I loved it.  It's the story of Bernadette Fox, former brilliant architect married to Elgie who is doing very well at Microsoft and mother to teenager Bee. Impressions of Bernadette are relayed via emails between her neighbour Audrey and her friend Soo-Lin who think she is aloof and anti-social. We know that all is not well with Bernadette from the secret emails she sends to a PA in India who organises her life so that she doesn't have to socialise. We learn that her architectural career came to an abrupt end and she spent many months in hospital with Bee as a baby.  A spectacular row with Audrey over some overgrown blackberry bushes precipitates a crisis for Bernadette.    There is also first person narration from the sweet-natured and academically gifted Bee.

I do like novels relayed via emails/letters/diary entries and the epistolary form works very well with humour (I'm thinking Diary of a Provincial Lady, obv!)  Both the Messud and the Semple are about what happens when a creative artist is stifled.  For me, the Semple was by far the best.

George Eliot's Adam Bede is next on my list - I feel a Vic Lit reading project coming on.

The Round House

Mom had planted the pansy seedlings she'd grown in paper milk cartons.  She'd put them out early.  The only flower that could stand a frost. Louise Erdrich, The Round House

My local Waterstones told me they 'wouldn't be stocking' the new Louise Erdrich novel and would I like to order it?  Well no I wouldn't actually.  I took a trip to Blackwells in Oxford where I could actually pick up a copy from the shelves.   It was well worth the visit.  I think this is Erdrich's finest novel since Love Medicine was published in 1984.  If you are familiar with earlier works you will recognise the landscape, some of the named characters - Nanapush, Lamartines, Morrisseys - and the 1980s setting, but it works perfectly as a standalone novel.

It begins with 13-year old Joe and his father pulling up tree seedlings that have worked their way into the foundations of their house on a North Dakota reservation.  Wondering why Joe's mother is late home from work they decide she must have gone to the grocery store at Hoopdance and decide to drive out to meet her.  Suddenly Joe's mother drives past them, very fast, in the opposite lane.  They follow her home and when she doesn't get out of the car but remains sitting in the driver's seat staring ahead they realise that something is very wrong. 

Joe's mother has been the victim of a brutal attack.  Joe resolves to find out who did it, and although the novel has elements of a whodunnit or a thriller it is really, I think, a coming-of-age story.  Despite its harrowing theme and the examination of the legal issues surrounding attacks on Native American women, the novel is at times laugh-out-loud funny. I loved Joe's crush on his Aunt Sonja the Swedish ex- stripper with a heart of gold and the chase between furious Father Travis and Joe's friend, Cappy.  The novel's denouement, revenge and revelation had me avidly turning the pages and I didn't want the book to end. 

Litlove has an excellent review (as always) at Tales from the Reading Room. 

American Classics

So much contemporary fiction from American women writers to look forward to this year. Claire Messud's new novel The Woman Upstairs will be published next week in the UK.  I spotted the new Elizabeth Strout The Burgess Boys in Waterstones last week and there will be novels from Curtis Sittenfeld (loved Prep) and Amy Tan.  Best of all, Louise Erdrich's prize-winning novel The Round House has finally been published here.  I'm reading it now and I'm woefully behind with ironing,  gardening and general communication with my family because I just can't put it down!

Talking of fine American writers I've just re-read The Great Gatsby.  My daughter, Kate, was going a little stir-crazy on study leave last week so we thought we'd go and see the new film.  Some critics have thought it over the top but as Rachel of Book Snob points out the novel is not exactly subtle!  Of course, seeing the film made me want to re-visit the novel with its fine opening sentence:

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages you've had.'

Nick Carraway has always been my favourite character in The Great Gatsby and I thought Tobey Maguire played him very well and looked remarkably like a young F Scott Fitzgerald.  I'm also rather fond of Jordan Baker with her 'grey sun-strained eyes.'

What are your favourite American classics?

Harriet Vane

After re-reading Gaudy Night earlier this year I promised myself that I would read more of the wonderful literary detective novels of Dorothy L Sayers.  I'm rather fond of Harriet Vane who features in four of the books - Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon - so I'm starting with those.

Have His Carcase published in 1932 begins with Harriet on a solitary coastal walking tour.  As an independent young woman who writes detective novels, enjoys her own company and repeatedly turns down marriage proposals from the adorable Lord Peter Wimsey she is a character ahead of her time:

She was twenty-eight years old, dark, slight, with a skin naturally a little sallow, but now tanned to an agreeable biscuit-colour by sun and wind.  Persons of this fortunate complexion are not troubled by midges and sunburn, and Harriet, though not too old to care for her personal appearance was old enough to prefer convenience to outward display:

After finding a cove on the beach to sit down for lunch the hot sunshine sends her to sleep.  Upon waking she walks along the sand and is puzzled by an object on a rock a short way out to sea known as the 'flat iron'.  Upon close inspection it turns out to be a man's body with the blood still wet and the chilling suggestion that perhaps he was murdered while she was asleep.  Harriet is not the kind of woman who runs away screaming, instead she examines the body, tries to calculate the tides and searches for help.

I'm only about 100 pages in but very much enjoying it so far.  Do you have any favourites from the golden age of detective fiction?

Life Writing

Last month I went to beautiful Oxford to hear Paula Byrne talk about her book Jane Austen - A Life in Small Things at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival.  The event was held at the Blue Boar lecture theatre at Christ Church.  Paula Byrne spoke very well about Austen, her links with Oxford and also about the nature of biographical writing. 

With many books about Austen already in print and no new cache of letters emerging Byrne spoke about the necessity of finding a new approach to her subject.  Instead of a traditional 'womb to tomb'  biography she chose to focus on meaningful objects in Austen's life including the topaz crosses, a card of lace, an East Indian shawl, vellum notebooks and a bathing machine.

While Byrne's book worked very well I'm not so sure about Jane Dunn's Daphne Du Maurier and her Sisters which I've just finished.  It examines the lives of the three Du Maurier sisters, Angela, Daphne and Jeanne.  Angela wrote novels and Jeanne was an artist and although their lives were interesting I really wanted to read about Daphne.  This book has its moments though and the presentation and photographs are excellent.

I think my favourite literary biographies are Valerie Grove's Dear Dodie (life of Dodie Smith) and Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte.  What are yours?