I stopped at the library on the way to pick up RDC from school Monday just to return books (a likely story) and gave the new fiction just a cursory glance, and there this was. It didn't touch me as much as the earlier two did, much as I liked it. I think I missed the analogy she drew between Rivers' anthropological work and the Great War. Barker's ability to fictionalize historical characters realistically stood out. (20 September 1996)
Madeleine L'Engle, Two Part Invention
Madeleine L'Engle's memoir of her marriage to Hugh Franklin and the process of his death. I crave all the biographical detail I can get about Ms. L'Engle because her fiction is so autobiographical. I was curious to know more of how they were able to adopt Maria and this memoir mentions it slightly. One quarrel with her point of view, unfairly because I didn't live through it. She calls his summer of dying statistically excessive, because not only did he have one disease or illness on top of another but each was the worst case his doctors had ever seen. Yet she knows, and he knows, and she's written, that their whole life was wonderful, happy, filled with work they loved to do (even as it wearied them), with children and friends and learning. To call one summer of illness "statistically excessive" strikes me as blind to all who suffer all their lives with disease, poverty, overwork, oppression. But I didn't live through it. (mid September 1996)
William Shakespeare, Richard III
Nothing to be too proud of here; I had never read it before and Rich and I want to see the movie. The pretentious might sneer, but if Shakespeare could rewrite Ptolemy's age to make Cleopatra more accessible to his audience, then Shakespeare can be reinterpreted for another audience. I want a family tree of the Plantagenets and Yorks. The line of accession I know; what I want are the cousins and just how Richmond was related and how were the Tudors descended from Henry V, if at all, because "I am Welsh, you know." (late August 1996)
Madeleine L'Engle, A Live Coal in the Sea
I just took this from the library on Friday 30 August, along with Camilla
to refresh myself about this protagonist. I am also in the midst of Richard
III so it might be a few days before I get to this, Ms. L'Engle's
latest offering. I'm not a manic Shakespeare reader and doubt I will ever get
to Katherine Forrester's state (and L'Engle's? if not, certainly someone she
has known) of reading everything but Timon of Athens. Somewhere
L'Engle has written of never reading the one final play, because to know there
would never be another Shakespeare to read would be painful. I considered that
for Jane Austen when I had only Mansfield Park left, but then I
caved in. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have been able to read Joan Aiken's Mansfield
Revisited, which is my favorite of her Austen continuations (if she is
responsible for Sanditon, I can easily understand why she published
only as "A Lady.")
(A week later) Now that I've read it, I wonder if Madeleine
L'Engle wondered about Camilla through the years as she did about Katherine
Forrester (The Severed Wasp). Next on my L'Engle list is A Two-Part
Invention, which I understand is a memoir of her life with Hugh Franklin,
and I hope that it will be typically L'Englian and intertwine everything, writing,
Hugh, her children, Crosswicks, because so much of A Live Coal in the
Sea could have been inspired by her own life. Hugh Franklin starred in
a soap opera but he probably wasn't a sex symbol; and L'Engle and Hugh Franklin
adopted their third child, Maria, after her parents', their good friends, deaths.
Besides that I feel slightly possessive about Madeleine L'Engle for love of
A Wrinkle in Time and because we've lived in and loved the same
small state, I really want to know her. And have I mentioned my proudest moment,
that she responded to my adoring letter?
Maybe I ought to make up my own L'Engle page.
Madeleine L'Engle, The Small Rain
No matter how many lists I draw up from the front material of her books I am
still staggered by how many books by this my favorite author (I have more than
one) I still haven't read. I think that unread number is due partly to my tenacity
as a child to the Murray family, when my peculiar loyalty required me not to
meet the Austins (though they were published first), and to my fondness (in
its archaic sense of silly doting) as an adult for children's books. It is also
due to her later books' religious tendency. I admire how she can say "This
is what I believe" (and "this is how I believe") without saying
"You must believe it too," but Christian essay simply doesn't hold
my attention.
Anyway, The Small Rain is Ms. L'Engle's first published novel.
I knew its protagonist from a much later book, A Severed
Wasp, which I reread upon finishing The Small Rain, and
once again I had the pleasure of finding out how L'Engle's characters grow and
evolve. Some authors can't do that well: I think Jean Craighead George betrayed
Julie and her wolves in the second book (which I cannot call a sequel because
in it Ms. George promoted an agenda through Julie by betraying the spirit of
the earlier Julie of the Wolves. And don't get me started on what happened
to Sam and Frightful!). But L'Engle, I believe, does consider her characters
and let them breathe. Sometimes, in her later books, her authorial intrusion
is too loud or clumsy; but she doesn't manipulate her characters. (late August
1996)
Sue Hubbell, A Country Year: Living the Questions
I think of this literary essay as what would happen if Annie Dillard were a beekeeper. The two are similarly fascinated with nature and through their fascination draw you in too. She describes the Linnean system of classification as if it were poetry, and in a way it is. I don't remember any particular mention of a God, nor do I remember who said that God is in the details, but that is the sense I get. Ms. Hubbell sees the minutiae that everyone else seems so often to overlook. (Mid August 1996)
Recommended by my friend DAO, who
though he can't keep his English royalty straight, is quite a bright guy. Anyway,
working in Explore Bookstore in Aspen means he finds all the cool new books
before anyone else I know.
He recommended The Liar's Club as being unlike anything else I
had ever read, and he was right. I can't imagine being able to bare my soul
as honestly and unashamedly as Mary Karr does in this memoir. I screamed with
laughter (which reaction, admittedly, is easily achieved) as I reflected on
my own working-class background. I knew that the East Texas setting meant it
wouldn't be like Annie Dillard's An American Childhood, but I had
recently read that also-superb memoir and Karr had neighbors of the same last
name, so the parallels (or their lack) kept springing to mind. Straightforward,
witty, believable, vibrant. I loved it. (July 1996)
Zora Neal Hurston, Moses, Man of the Mountain
I always think of Harriet Tubman leading people north to freedom as the parallel to Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt, and she was called Moses; so for me a male Moses reverses what I expect. I began to read Hurston after Their Eyes Were Watching God bowled me over with its turns of phrase, its folklore, its lonely beauty. My favorite aspect of Moses, Man of the Mountain is how you never know if what Miriam saw is real: who is the baby? and does his identify nullify his deeds? Also, Hurston might have meant that the Biblical Moses is dubious, too. (July 1996)
Pat Barker, Regeneration and The Eye in the Door
I learned about her from A.S. Byatt at her Tattered Cover reading. She mentioned her delight at Barker's winning the Booker Prize, and my seatmate seconded the recommendation, so I tracked these novels down lickety-split. War, shell-shock, intolerance, uncertainty, integrity; all delicately and intricately handled. I read Regeneration by the pool the day after I was fired and thought (not for the first time), "Damn, why do I waste my time working?" That following weekend my husband and I camped in Rocky Mountain and I began The Eye in the Door during a thunderstorm. All reading should be so indulgent: I heard the rain on the roof of the tent, was unhurried, naked, in a pine wood. (July 1996)
A.S. Byatt, The Shadow of the Sun
I first discovered Byatt when I spotted Possession at the UConn Co-op in the fall of 1991. There was a lot I was trying to escape at that time and Byatt's flawless (to me, the non-scholar) creation of Victorian-era poetry and letters, compellingly interwoven with the present-day, delivered me grateful into another time. I recently saw A.S. Byatt at the Tattered Cover in Denver and she signed The Shadow of the Sun, Possession, and some other books and I finally read The Shadow of the Sun, her debut. Her images are evocative and her characters fully fleshed out, but I thought the ending kerplunked. I expect that from Pynchon but I didn't from Byatt and was disappointed--unfair of me, I think: it's her first novel, lisa. The quartet of novels of which The Babel Tower is the third and most recent and which I heard her read from are in my Soon pile. It was she who recommended Pat Barker, too. (June 1996)
Go to next season, Reading Index, Books, Words, or the Lisa Index.
Last modified 20 November 1997
Speak your mind: lisawherepenguindustdashcom
Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999 LJH