Tag: USA

HAPPENS EVERY DAY by Isabel Gillies

Here’s a memoir by some poor woman who moves to Ohio for her husband’s work and three months later gets dumped by him for a much younger colleague. It reminds me of the Belle Burden’s STRANGERS, another memoir about how very possible it is to know almost nothing about your own husband.

Most interesting thing about this book is how extraordinarily old fashioned the writer is. The divorce happens in 2005, but it reads like its 1955. It is just wild. Try this:

“Because I was on the cover of Seventeen magazine when I was fourteen and I am an actress, I depend on the fact that, objectively, I am good-looking. Tall, blond hair . . But I can tend to depend too much on the idea that I am pretty and sometimes, I don’t try very hard.”

She spends a really astonishing amount of time on home decor, and really cares a great deal about her husband’s height. And again:

“It seems clear to me now that although Josiah loved us and wanted dearly to have a ncie family, there was something in him that just did not want to let him do it.”

‘Nice family’?!? What is that?!? Who says that kind of thing?

I’ve got to report she also comes from money. She seems to think it is pretty normal that she spends her summers in Maine, with the ‘other women’ all of whom apparently don’t have jobs. She grew up in an apartment overlooking Central Park. She acts like moving to Ohio is an insane trek into the wilderness.

I don’t know why I sound like I’m slamming her so much. I enjoyed the honesty of this book. It was refreshing. And it was encouraging to see how she recovered. One wonders how she did not see the red flag that he left his first wife while she was pregnant. He left her with two toddlers; maybe with this third wife he’ll make it till the next kids are in elementary school.

STAINLESS by Todd Grimson

I just love the plug for this novel:

“Justine is a vampire. Keith just lives like one. An ex-junkie and ex-rock star, his hands mangled by his dead ex’s own jealous ex, he’s let go of his ambitions. It’s true that Justine has been around for a few centuries and Keith barely three decades, but they’re good for each other: Justine is teaching Keith to take the long view; Keith is reminding her how it feels to be alive. Yet a cohort of criminals, desperate artists, dead-enders, hangers-on, and wanna-bes, undead and otherwise, threaten their curious union. Can love stay untainted in a world of monsters?”

LOL. It was kind of cool and creepy, being a novel of the underbelly of LA in the 80s, which even by the standards of underbellys is pretty seamy. It did start to get a little same-y, another teenage junkie murdered, etc. And for a while I was enjoying the central relationship, until eventually had to give up when we had a lot of emphasis about how the vampire lady was just so insatiable for his penis. That crossed into oh dear.

A RUMOR OF WAR by Philip Caputo

This author died recently, and from his obituaries I learnt that this is widely regarded as one of the best memoirs of the Vietnam war. It’s as bleak as you would imagine; it’s also kind of annoying.

Fellow soldiers die of heat exhaustion; his squad spends all its time on minor skirmishes with no clear front line; he gets assigned a desk job that involves counting corpses on both sides. One time, he sees pigs eating napalm charred bodies. In summary, it’s bad. Really bad. He’s not enjoying himself. Bizarrely, he is surprised by this. Like: what?

Who goes to war and thinks it going to be great? Apparently the answer is: this young guy. He thought it was going to be all glory and valour. It’s not like this was just before WWI, where the early idealism of the young men can be explained by the fact that there hadn’t been a major war in Europe in a hundred years. In Vietnam, WW2 veterans are still alive! Korean war veterans are actually serving! What was he thinking?

In any case, he learns his lesson the hard way. It’s grim reading. Here he is in the Introduction, to give you a flavour:

‘Finally, this book ought not to be regarded as a protest. Protest arises from a belief that one can change things or influence events. I am not egotistical enough to believe I can. Besides, it no longer seems necessary to register an objection to the war, because the war is over. We lost it, and no amount of objecting will resurrect the men who died, without redeeming anything, on cavalries like Hamburger Hill and the Rockpile.

It might, perhaps, prevent the next generation from being crucified in the next war.

But I don’t think so.

WILD GAME by Adrienne Brodeur

Words fail me on this one. The publishers have gone with a kind of cheesy womens-fiction cover, which is really to undersell how wild and weird this memoir is. It opens with the author as 14 year old being woken up by her mother in the middle of the night. Her mother excitedly tells her “Ben Souther kissed me!” She wants her to share in her happiness. You may wonder who is Ben Souther, to which I will tell you: Ben Souther is her HUSBAND”S BEST FRIEND. What?!

Now it’s slightly less bad than it first appears because the husband is the 14 year old’s stepfather, not biological father. However, he’s been in her life since she was 8, and they have a good relationship. The mother still expects her daughter to not only be happy for her but to actively help cover the affair up. So for example she always invites her mother and Ben to go for a walk after dinner, so they can go to the guest house and ‘talk.’

This messed-up situation goes on for TEN YEARS. Her brother does not know, so she also has to lie to him. She is incredibly lonely and increasingly crazy with the buden. Eventually the stepfather dies and the mother gets to marry Ben. Now she has what she wants, she sort of cuts her daughter out. It’s hard to describe how awful this is. And yet the book is not bitter. Towards the end, she says something along the lines of ‘my mother loved me as much as she was able to love anyone.’ This sounds bleak, but you come to understand how actually it is kind of an acceptance and a way to peace.

HEAVY by Kiese Laymon

This memoir is much beloved, but not by me. I’m sure there is an interesting life story in here somewhere, but I couldn’t find it. For me it was kind of buried under style. For example: he addresses the whole thing to his mother ‘you wanted me to be a strong man’ etc. Which I guess sounds cool in theory but I wasn’t feeling it. One thing I will recall from this book though is the one day when he came home from school and drank an entire bottle of ranch dressing in one go. I’ll leave that with you to think on.

IMAGINE ME GONE by Adam Haslett

Honestly readers are just so difficult. Here is a work of great artistry that I whipped through. It’s a sad story about the long shadow of a father’s suicide. And yet I hardly remember it. I mean honestly I feel the author: what is it readers want!! I did like this part, where a thirty something is reflecting on the Ansel Adams in his New York apartment:

“I was reminded how little I done to make (the apartment) my own . . One of thousands of adult dorm rooms in Manhattan, where credentialed children performed their idea of adult lives.”

EXIT LANE by Erika Veurink

I seem to be reading more genre fiction these days. Does this mean brainrot? I fear so.

In any case, this one’s a romcom. Interestingly, it’s from a startup with >$4m in investment, that’s basically a publishing imprint with associated income streams (e.g., buy the wine mentioned in the book). I can only be amazed that anyone would look at their investment dollars and think: I know, lets go make money in literature.

The founders of this imprint apparently cold call writers who have never written romatic fiction, or in some cases any fiction at all, and ask them to write for them. (This author, Erika Veurink, is I guess a brand consultant?) Seems an odd approach, and something of a slap in the face for aspiring writers, but there you go.

It compares itself on the cover to NORMAL PEOPLE and YOU, AGAIN. This is very hopeful. It’s not close to their league. However I read it in a single day, while half-dozing in the sun on the Common, eating ice cream, so no complaints here. If this is brainrot, rot away.

THE WRECK OF THE MENTOR by Eric Jay Dolin

I am just massively into shipwreck non-fiction. Who knew. This one is not so much about the shipwreck, which happened in Palau in 1832, but more about what happened after: I’m sorry to tell you the survivors were enslaved. The island was struggling with food insecurity (unclear why) so they weren’t fed very much, but they sure were tatoo-ed a whole hell of a lot. Eventually they were rescued.

Two things I found interesting. One, the Europeans conclude that the locals must have met Europeans before, because they know exactly what they want to get from the wreck: iron. I found this fascinating. I was obssessed with THE LAST DAYS OF THE INCAS, where I learnt that one of the most important advantages the Spanish had was iron (armour, swords, etc). It’s interesting now we don’t really think of it as ‘precious.’

Two, and this really blew my mind: apparently the whole South Pacific was just absolutely bristling with Robinson Crusoes. I always thought that lone shipwreck survivors were a rarity, but apparently not! Even more interestingly, quite a lot of them had actually chosen to stay on the islands. I guess I can kind of see it – you’re a 14 year old from Glasgow pressed into service as a cabin boy; I can well imagine a tropical paradise dripping with coconuts looks like a pretty good option.

Enjoy this vignette, of someone the enslaved men meet in Palau:

“The old man, who was entirely naked and barely five feet tall, walked briskly with an upright, almost regal bearing, “indicating that he felt himself a person of not a little importance.” He looked to be around sixty years old, with long gray hair, and tatoos covering his legs, arms, and breast. He had no teeth, and his very dark red, almost black, mouth – the result of chewing betel nuts incessantly – appeared like a void in his head. While the whalemen were trying to figure out who this specter was, he exclaimed, “My God, you are Englishmen, are you not?” Barnard quickly corrected him, and then the old man asked: “What year of the Lord is it?””

CASSANDRA AT THE WEDDING by Dorothy Baker

This book comes draped with reviews calling it a modern American classic.  I wasn’t feeling it.  It tells about a woman who goes to her twin sister’s wedding, and once there tries to commit suicide, because she is so unhappy about being left alone.

I don’t know what to tell you, I just found it kind of – meh.  I think I am just tired of books about people being so tortured all the time.  Stop drinking so much and go to therapy for god’s sake.