Girl Detective

A.M. Homes’ May We Be Forgiven May We Be Forgiven was a selection in this year’s Morning News Tournament of Books. Though friends have recommended Home’s books to me over the years, I hadn’t gotten around to reading her. But when I glanced at reviews, they seemed to say, eh, kinda bugged me, not her best. So as March went on, and as time to “catch up” on Tourney books became slight, I wondered if I should even bother with this 480-page tome. But since kind friend Amy lent it to me, a book in hand was better than one I’d have to pay to rent from the library, so I started it anyway. Then, I couldn’t put it down.

It’s told in short spurts with many breaks; this helps make a book more devour-able to me. I have two little boys and often have to put down my book to yell at them to stop fighting. Or, more rarely, compliment them on how well they’re playing together/practicing piano, doing homework, etc. The main character is Harold, whose bully of a younger brother, George (e.g., he insists he’s the older brother) gets in a good amount of legal trouble, is institutionalized, then gets in A GREAT DEAL of legal trouble, and Harold is left to take care of the house, kids, pets, and anything else that comes along. And a great deal comes along.

From the beginning, the excessive nature of George’s actions gave the novel a heightened feeling of reality that read to me as farce, not realism. That’s why I have trouble with the critiques of the novel that say it’s unrealistic. I think the author was pretty clear that it’s supposed to be hyper-real and weird. Beyond that, though, it’s funny while also being touching, and I found it just plain intriguing. Harry is a Nixon scholar who amused by by continuing to insist that “the story keeps unfolding.” I wanted to know what happened to these characters, and I was happy when some of them got their stuff together, including Harry.

However, it is hard to ignore the presence of a magical Negro, the white male savior, and the mythical man that every woman wants to sleep with. Was Homes using these cliches with irony? I did find it interesting that this was what a commenter in the ToB identified as a White Male EFF Up novel (WMFU), but is written by a woman, unlike other WMFU stories I can think of, like This is Where I Leave You, High Fidelity, Harry Revised, and more.

Edited to add: Also, what was with all the scat stuff? Nearly every character had an incident of uncontrollable diarrhea at some point. I wondered if this was a graphic allusion to a Jewish myth that claims the universe is something that God shat out, and our job as people in it is to create beauty in the midst of messy broken-ness.

The book didn’t make it far in the Tourney. It beat Billy Lynn’s Long Half Time Walk but went down to Building Stories (which I’m reading, or rather, squinting at, now). Apparently I’m the only person who sort of loved it, but now I’m excited to go read other books by Homes. And lucky me, there are a lot of them.

Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop is the lovely story of Father Jean Marie Latour in the mid 1800’s going to New Mexico and the western territory. The book is told more in impressionistic standalone stories than in chapters. I had to re-read passages sometimes for them to “stick”.

Father Jean and his right-hand man Father Joseph minister to an ever-increasing territory. One of the surprises to me was how much and often these characters traveled. Back and forth to France and all across the west from Colorado to Mexico?

Joseph was more vibrant to me than Jean, so it seemed odd he was the secondary character. In its mix of Catholicism and Native American culture, I was often reminded of one of my favorite books, Louise Erdrich’s Last Report on the Miracles of Little No Horse. Father Jean was lovely, but he’s no Father Damien. But then, what character possibly could be?

Reading this is part of my auto-didactic, self edu-ma-cating project. I don’t think I’ve ever read Cather before. Now I’ve got My Antonia and O, Pioneers on my radar. Filling in the gaps of my reading education is like spitting in the ocean, but oh, I do love it.

I was sort of afraid to read Gone Girl. Except for one or two dissenting voices, all the reviews I’d read, and all the things I’d heard from friends were “It’s great!” I wanted to read it, sure, but had not yet got around to it, and the longer it went on, the more the hype filled me with dread. Then when it was chosen as a contender for this year’s Tournament of Books, and when it went on to be the odds-on favorite (now I can’t find the betting site, but it’s out there somewhere), I knew it was time. Of course, by this time, the library list was a gazillion people long. (OK, exaggerating a bit. Only 1000+). Then my kind husband got it for me for my birthday, and it was finally TIME. Yippee, I thought, time for a thumping good read! (with just a whisper of “I hope” after that.)

Then I began to read, and as you may know, it’s structured in alternating points of view between the husband and his missing wife. And their marriage is a train wreck, and as the chapters go on I can’t believe their marriage lasted this long, and reading about it is sort of entertaining, but also painful, and I couldn’t really be said to be enjoying myself.

Stay with it, said friends when I griped on Facebook. Then on page 219, when the book goes into its second section, things changed up. I knew something wacky was going on in those first 200 pages, but not exactly what, and then things shift, and at that point, I may have resented breathing because it interfered with me finding out how this author was going to pull off the end of the book. And she did, which is saying a lot, because this is one whacked-out book.

So to sum up (feeling v. pleased with self at lack of spoilers): first half was like a car wreck–messy, ugly but rather fascinating. Second half was like going downhill on a roller coaster. Psychological characterizations were very good–we knew why these characters behaved in certain ways. Plot was very good, especially in the 2nd half. So it reminded me of the best parts of the Tana French novels (the psyche stuff) combined with the best part of Laura Lippmann’s books (un-put-downable).

That said, I’m not sure I’d recommend it far and wide. Not everyone wants to spend time with a psychopath. Both The Fault in Our Stars and Where’d You Go, Bernadette have a wider appeal, I think. Not sure I’d pick it for the ToB win, either. I continue to hope The Orphan Master’s Son goes all the way. BUT, entertaining as all get out and well executed on many levels, and with intriguing questions about male/female dynamics. So, highly recommended.

Louise Erdrich’s The Round House. She’s a local writer, I’ve admired and enjoyed the other books I’ve read by her (particularly The Last Report of the Miracles at Little No Horse). It won the National Book Award and the Minnesota Book Award. And it’s a contender for the Morning News Tournament of Books. Was there any way I wouldn’t read it? Nope.

As with most of her novels, this one is set on the reservation in North Dakota. It has both new characters and ones from previous books. Unlike most of her other books, it is narrated only from the point of view of one character, 13yo Joe, though told from an adult vantage point. In this way and many others, it reminded me a great deal of the film Stand by Me. It’s a coming of age novel, centering on a group of four boys, one who comes from a happy but injured family, another who is good hearted by bad reputed.

Joe’s world is upended when his mother is attacked, and what follows is something of a conventional mystery–who did it and why?–but also has the added element of Law and Order of how the crime is discovered and prosecuted (or not).

I found Joe and his friends engaging main characters, I was delighted to hear about Father Damien and Nanapush again. I was pulled along by the story, and felt for the surrounding characters of Joe’s parents, his uncle’s girlfriend Sonja, and Linda Wishkob.

What underlies this book, and elevates it in my opinion, is its foundation of social justice, and the way it highlights how powerless women on a reservation are in the face of certain crimes. Erdrich wrote an op-ed on this in the New York Times, and the recently signed Violence Against Women Act, a move in the right direction.

Opinion on Round House is mixed. Some, like me, loved it. Others think it’s middling, not engaging enough, with an uncompelling protagonist, and a preachy tone. There was a lot of contention after its match in the The Tournament of Books. To each her own. But this book will stay with me for some time, especially the ending, and the questions raised by Joe’s actions and decisions, and whether I agree with them or not.

I would not have read HHhH, written in French by Laurent Binet and translated by Sam Taylor, except it’s a contender in The Morning News Tournament of Books, and I’m so glad I did. This is a head-tippingly original and thought-provoking book.

It’s billed as a novel, but it’s not, exactly. It’s Binet’s attempt to tell the history of Reinhard Heydrich, a Nazi villain I’d never even heard of but will now never forget. It’s the true story of how two men, one a Czech, another a Slovak, were tasked to assassinate Heydrich, also known as The Butcher of Prague. Taylor pieces together documents, his own reactions, some fictionalizations, which he then identifies as fictional, into a mesmerizing taken on historical fiction. It’s unapologetically subjective, with Binet and his biases appearing regularly. He’ll write something early on, and revise it later. Perhaps my favorite example of this is how, as the story is coming to an end, he notes how difficult it is to write, and includes the dates, so we can see how long it took the author to bring this story to a close.

I could include exemplary bits, but I am tired of typing, and really, you should just go read this book. Especially if you’re a writer. Or you like historical fiction. Or WWII. Oh, just read it.

Can this series really be on its 18th collection with Fables: Cubs in Toyland? I continue to enjoy this comic-book series about a group of fairy tale characters who exist alongside the real world, disguised from it. This tale focuses again on the several “cubs” or children of Snow White and Bigby Wolf, spending most of its time with Therese (the princess-y one) and Darien (her brother the pack leader.) It is spooky, creepy, sad, and involving. As usual, the ending leaves me wanting to tear right into the next volume. Good stuff still.

I read Zone One as part of a choose-your-own-Colson-Whitehead-novel book group–Zone One, John Henry Days, or The Intuitionist. Alas, since I lead the group, I had to read all three, which was not what I would have planned if I’d remembered the Morning News Tournament of Books was coming up. But I enjoyed all 3, found them similar and different and am glad I read them all.

Zone One is Whitehead’s take on the zombie tale. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic NYC. The narrator, nicknamed Mark Spitz, is part of a civilian group of 3 sweeping the city for skels (zombies) or stragglers (people who got bitten, but didn’t turn rabid, but instead returned to a particular point where they stay frozen) missed by the mass killings the Marines did in the first waves after the plague hit.

As with John Henry Days, the main character is lacking in emotional maturity. Also similar is the commentary on our culture of shallow consumption. It ticks along at a good pace, with the beautiful sentences that Whitehead is so good at crafting. He does a good job at crafting a believable and chilling near future.

The book is structured into three days in Mark Spitz’s life (always both names are used). We get stories of his past and survival plus those of others he encounters as we go along, most of which are well spun. Two that rankled, though, was the withholding of how he got his nickname, and how the anecdote was related in Saturday’s narrative though it took place on Sunday.

One particular character’s Last Night story (about a birthday party) was chillingly all too easy for me to imagine and may well haunt me forever.

(Patience. I will eventually get to the stuff about the John Green book. But first, a long story about why I haven’t, yet.)

Have not managed to kick virus from last week. Rested. Got better. Expended burst of energy. Got worse. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Then, the morning after my birthday, which I spent congratulating myself on how not old I felt, I woke feeling woozy and congested again (see above; also, I do not drink, so it wasn’t that) and with a swollen, painful middle finger knuckle and no memory of having injured it (again, I do not drink, so the obvious conclusion did not apply.)

Oh, no! I thought. I have my dad’s arthritis. I emailed him. He told me I didn’t. (He’s a retired doctor, not just an internet diagnostic genius, as I am, so I mostly trust him. Kinda like a Medical Magic 8 Ball. FYI, best site for diagnosing yourself and not freaking out is The Mayo Clinic’s excellent site.) I left it alone. It got worse. It hurt so much I couldn’t sleep, then got up and had to eat rice cakes and drink almond milk so I could take the TWO ibuprofen I could find in the house at 1am. I missed the GIANT BOTTLE my husband had gotten earlier that day. Shoulda known he wouldn’t allow us to run out of what a former brother in law called Vitamin M.

Anyhoo, slept on couch so wouldn’t disturb husband who was looking forward to geeky sci-fi con today, then told him when he got up that he had to drive me to urgent care because my hand was so effed up I couldn’t be trusted with the car. Two hours later I was told it wasn’t broken, it wasn’t arthritis, but a swollen joint capsule. Doc asked if I did repetitive motions. Typing, I asked? No, he said, wouldn’t be just that finger.

I professed ignorance and innocence while wondering if perhaps my flipping off of my family behind their back when they annoyed me had perhaps gotten a little two vigorous. And yet, I usually give the double salute, so even though I’m (sort of) joking about this, it is just the one hand. Upon consideration, it may have been from opening a jar. I got some pain meds, and am doing much better now, thanks. Which you can probably infer, since I’m typing this. But if you could see how many times I have to edit a line, you might see I’m still impaired (handwise, I mean. Again, don’t drink anymore.) And now I have to see a rheumatologist. Maybe I’ll just stop opening jars. (And flipping off people. Maybe.)

SO, the reason I started this is to say why I haven’t blogged lately, and why, now that the story has been told, I may give short shrift to reviews as I catch up here.

I’d heard from a bajillion people I trusted that The Fault in Our Stars by John Green was A. Really good and B. Really sad. I knew I was going to read it sometime, so when it was picked for this year’s Morning News Tournament of Books, AND it finally came in at the library, it was time.

And as for a review, I like what Janet Potter had to say at The Millions, because I think we do it a disservice by focusing on the crying part, as I did in my Good Reads review that said not to read the last 50 pages in public:

It’s a sad book, to be sure, about two teenagers who meet in a support group for kids with cancer, but it’s also joyful, hopeful, wise, funny, romantic, and genuinely inspirational. So why, in my efforts to share this joy and hope with other people, did I keep saying, go be unspeakably sad for as long as it takes you to read a 300-page book?

I think that when we talk about The Fault in Our Stars, we go straight to the unspeakable sadness, out of all the emotions evoked, because we want to convey the incredible emotional resonance of the book. What we’re trying to say is: this book mattered deeply to me, I think it could matter deeply to you too.

I didn’t love this book because it was sad, I loved it because the main characters were funny and smart. I delighted in the time I spent with them. Highly recommended.

But, don’t read the last 50 pages in public.

Revival, Vol. 1: You’re Among Friends by Tim Seeley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Found myself wanting to like this more than I did. I found some clumsy visual storytelling like an text dump on a spread, and multiple characters who look too like others.

Everything reminded me of something else, so nothing felt fresh or original. Newscaster reminded me of Cersei from Game of Thrones. Main character reminded me of something by Rucka (forget which title: Stumptown?) Art and main character design reminded me of Whiteout. CDC guy reminded me of Sayeed from Lost.

Yet it says noir right on the cover, and part of noir is its embracing of tropes. In my experience, a critique of a noir work that says it’s cliche misses the point, and yet that’s what I felt after reading this. Am I missing the point? Not in the mood for noir?

It has an intro by Jeff Lemire who writes Sweet Tooth, which I love, so I feel I should love it by the transitive property. Not sure whether I’ll continue with this series.

BUT, props for the Dessa and Rhymesayers poster in one character’s dorm room!

View all my reviews

File under the heading “Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time”:

For one of my three book groups, I picked an author, rather than one book to read, so we’re having a sort of literary Colson Whitehead potluck where people could read Intuitionist, John Henry Days, or Zone One. But, as the moderator, that meant I had to read all 3 in the month before the Morning News Tournament of Books, which I’m much rather be reading nerdishly for.

John Henry Days centers on a freelance journalist, J Sutter, who goes to cover an event celebrating the legend. We’re told early on there’s a murder, and then the book hops here and there (rather in the manner that a legend accretes) telling J’s and John Henry’s and the ballad’s stories.

John Henry Days is a bigger and much more ambitious book than The Intuitionist. Interestingly, I preferred the latter. this one was a bit too big, sprawled a bit too much, and I felt like Whitehead and his editor were too reluctant to kill his darlings (edit out precious but unnecessary sentences). From Jonathan Franzen’s review at the New York Times “Freeloading Man“:

Unfortunately, in his pursuit of the exhaustive, Whitehead also serves up …half a dozen other interludes that read, at times, like the work of somebody getting $2 a word.

If Franzen says you’re too wordy, that’s something to pay attention to.

But, Franzen also says that just when you are frustrated you stumble across a sentence or passage or chapter that draws you back in, despite the rambling and un-urgent narrative. I found this absolutely true.

Impressive, often entertaining (one bit about air quotes will stay with me for life), but a little too wordy, and a little too cerebral and lacking in emotion, for me to urge it on all and sundry.

The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson, a selection for the 2013 Tournament of Books, is exactly the kind of book I’ve come to hope for from the tournament. I’d heard that it was good, but not until I read it myself, and it reached out and dragged me into it for 440 odd pages, did I appreciate HOW good, or how glad I am to have this book in my life now.

A boy in North Korea, who is NOT an orphan as he defensively tells people throughout his life, grows up and has improbable adventures with unbelievable coincidences. Horrible and wondrous things happen. It’s like a Dickens story set in a communist state, the details of which are so insane it reads like satire, but probably isn’t. Especially in the second half of the book, point of view and time switch suddenly and often, yet I didn’t have trouble following the narrative. This reminded me of David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, except without the bat$hit crazy magic stuff. Kim Jong Il = bat$hit crazy all by himself, no magic needed. I loved this book, and highly recommend it.

I’m having one of those days where I can’t find things. Couldn’t find the charger for one of our gadgets, and then couldn’t find my copy of The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead so I could pull a segment out to show you how much trippy fun his prose is.

Tellingly, my first thought was, “huh, must be one of those days, stars out of alignment and what not.”

When really, the correct response is “this house is an effing pit, and I really need to stop being so sluttish about the housewifery. (NB “sluttish” used in the English, not American sense.)

The Intuitionist was Whitehead’s first novel, and it’s a mind-bending work. Lila Mae Watson is the first black female elevator inspector, in an alternate reality where elevators are really important, and racism is overt.

“Lila Mae Watson,” she says. “I’ve come to inspect your elevator.”

The man’s lips arch up toward his nose and Lila Mae understands that he’s never seen an elevator inspector like her before….He doesn’t like her. “Let me see your badge,” the man says, but Lila Mae’s hand is already fishing in her jacket pocket. She flips open her identification and holds it up to the man’s face. He doesn’t bother to look at it. He just asked for effect.

The hallway sells of burning animal fat and obscure gravies boiling to slag. (4, 5)

(As you can see, I found my copy. It was hiding under some of the boy’s school papers right next to my desk.)

Elevator inspectors come in two flavors: Intuitionists, who sense what’s wrong with the elevator by trying it separate it from its “elevator-ness”; and Empiricists, who crunch numbers. When Lila Mae is implicated in an accident, these two groups scramble to place the blame in the other groups’ camp, all while some noir-ish mystery plays out with kidnapping, torture, hired goons, and alluring strangers.

As a story, it’s compulsively readable, but its also about race, change, and potentially all sorts of other things. I continue to ruminate on it after I finished. Engaging and thought provoking, my favorite combination.

I read comic books, but not generally superhero ones. It has probably been about fifteen years since anyone at the comic shop said to me, “Hey, you should check out Wonder Woman.” But a friend recently said I might like the new story line, which centered on the Greek gods. I recently enjoyed spending time in ancient Greece when I read The Song of Achilles. Then I saw the striking art by Cliff Chiang on the cover of the collection of the series’ reboot, Wonder Woman: Blood, and I thought it might be time to try again. I’m glad I did.

As part of DC Comics’ reboot, many of the series regulars have aspects old and new, so it’s a good time to start reading. I’m familiar with the Wonder Woman story, having seen all 3 movies (the Cathy Lee Crosby one and both Lynda Carter ones) when I was a girl and watched the ongoing series with Lynda Carter.

In this new take on the character, Zeus is missing, other gods are jostling for the throne, and Diana learns some shocking news about her origin while taking on the protection of a young woman who Hera is trying to kill. This collection is of the first 6 issues. I really like Chiang’s art, and his strong, distinct portrayals of characters, and will snap up the next graphic novel as soon as it comes out.

A selection for this year’s Morning News Tournament of Books, Lauren Groff’s Arcadia was a surprise to me. Going in, I thought it was a dystopian-future YA novel. Imagine my surprise, then, to find it set in a 70’s commune in upstate New York. Because I didn’t expect it, the book felt utterly surprising to me. Written in short, lyrical bursts, it engaged me from start to finish.

I devoured it in a few days, and am hesitant to say more about it, so that you might enter without baggage as well. What I will say is that I loved reading it, and it was full of characters who I loved and cared about. An early section is narrated by a small child, but was not irritating to me as was Emma Donoghue’s Room. The time frame reminded me of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Good Squad.

Fair warning: the end of the book centers around a character’s parent dying. I have many friends who lost a parent recently, and this last section might be excruciating to someone still grieving such a loss.

HEY, Y’ALL! I FINISHED ALL 1231 PAGES OF LES MISERABLES!

Before I read this book, I didn’t believe in abridgements of books. Now I do. Seriously, this book begs to be abridged. The edition I read was lightly abridged, and it was still overly long, with stultifying digressions and redundancies, even aside from the two (on cloisters and argot) that Denny, the translator of this edition, chose to put as endnotes. Long chapters that digressed away from the story, on related things like the Paris sewers, were almost always slogs that sometimes defied this reader’s will to keep going. If you are going to read this book, I recommend that you skip digressions. You can tell which they are because they don’t have the main characters. I believe you will lose little or nothing. Perhaps this is me being a cretin or a lowly literate reader, but I stand by this advice.

If the book were only the story of Jean Valjean, Marius , Cosette, Fantine, Javert, Eponnine, the Thenardiers and Gavroche, then this would be a whopping good tale. See the success of the musical as proof. Interestingly, I found the book to have a much more involving and satisfying end than did the 2012 film adaptation, and I was amazed that near the end, after so many pages, I sped up to a gobbling pace.

A word about the particular edition, the lovely Penguin Hardback Classic with the red cardinals. Many of those cardinals disappeared over the course of the reading in little flakes of red paint. These Hardback Classic editions are lovely objects (I have several), but alas, do not stand up well to actual reading. The Penguin trade paperback version is one of the only film tie-in covers I don’t find offensive, plus it would have been easier to schlep around for the many weeks I was reading. For portability and true unabridged-ness, I tried the Signet mass-market edition edited by Fahnestock and Macafee, but switched to the Denny HC because it was pretty, because the MMPB print was too small for my aging eyes, even with bifocals, and because the translation to me felt stiff.

Finder is one of the longest running independent comics out there. Hard to describe, creator Carla Speed McNeil once copped to “aboriginal sci-fi,” and that works as well as anything.

The “through” character, even if he’s often just in the background, is Jaeger, half-aborigine, and thus shunned by all. He can play civilized, but prefers the wild, and this combination seems to drive women wild, though he’s honest and doesn’t pretend he’ll ever settle down. This is a sexually explicit series, so if that makes you uncomfortable, it probably isn’t for you.

Four stories are contained in Finder Library v. 2: Dream Sequence, Mystery Date, The Rescuers, and Five Crazy Women. There’s a mix of high-low, funny-tragic throughout the book. Dream Sequence and The Rescuers are mostly tragic, while Mystery Date and Five Crazy Women are mostly comedy. McNeil’s black and white art is accessible, but nuanced. These stories bear fruit on re-reading, and the end notes in this collection are worth checking out.

In brief, to avoid spoilers:

Dream Sequence: a popular virtual world is invaded by a predator.
Mystery Date: a student of anthropology and prostitution tries to figure out her mysterious new professor
The Rescuers: the baby of a privileged family is kidnapped, and the story interwoven with the tribe of aborigines camping in the area.
Five Crazy Women: Jaeger gets (and deserves) no sympathy from a long-time friend as he pours out some of his checkered past with women.

If you haven’t checked out or heard of Finder before, look for the collection Talisman, and if you like that, seek out the two library collections for the entire series. For ongoing new stuff, check out McNeil’s website.

For those of you familiar with this series and with Friday Night Lights, I have a theory: Jaeger = grown-up, alterna Tim Riggins.

A selection for the 2013 Tournament of Books, Where’d You Go, Bernadette (no question mark, which I find strange) by Maria Semple had been on my radar for a while, recommended in reviews and by friends. Semple’s background includes a stint as writer on Arrested Development, and the book is similar in its same snarky, frantic style. It does, though, have a beating heart that’s perhaps more akin to something from Modern Family.

The novel is made up of a hodgepodge of letters, reports, receipts and articles, tied together with the memories of Bee Branch, an 8th grader at a private school in Seattle. Bee’s mother is the Bernadette of the title, who disappears two days before Christmas, and the novel starts in the month leading up to it. Bee’s father in an executive at Microsoft, and the family is planning a trip to Antarctica, a present for Bee for her all-A grades.

Though the story is often about Bee’s search for Bernadette, it’s the woman herself who is the bright, shining star of the novel. Bernadette is a bundle of crazy, having had a series of disappointments and difficulties both personally and professionally. But watching her navigate her fear of the impending trip abroad and the people around her is a blast. She’s smart, complicated and interesting, just like the book, which I devoured in two days. Fair disclosure: I was also avoiding a deadline and cleaning the house, but still, this book was wildly engaging and entertaining. The ending was abrupt, so I wished for a bit more closure, but like Bee in the book, I’ll take what I can get when a book is this flat-out fun to read.

A selection in this year’s Morning News Tournament of Books, I’m not even sure if Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles was on my radar. I’ve read none of this year’s selections, though many have been highly recommended by friends. But this one I knew almost nothing about, and it’s this kind of reading experience that makes following the Tournament of Books (ToB) such a delight to this geeky reader.

The novel is narrated by Patroclus, who you might remember from Greek myths and the Iliad as Achilles’ best friend. Miller richly imagines the details of their boyhood, and how they came to be immortalized in Homer’s epic. I read the Iliad in my first year of college, in a literature course. It was one of just three books we read. We started with the Iliad, then War and Peace, then Hemingway’s In Our Time. In high school, I skipped reading the books I was assigned, and managed to pull off good grades anyway. In college, though, in that class, I felt the challenge of a semester devoted to just three books, and I read them all. And details of them all remain, these twenty six years later. So I knew how the story would end, but it didn’t diminish by one jot the urgency with which I read this story, consuming it quickly while still appreciating the backstory Miller was detailing, and the lovely prose she used to do it.

Divine blood flows differently in each god-born child. Orpheus’ voice made the trees weep, Heracles could kill a man by clapping him on the back. Achilles’ miracle was his speed. His spear, as he began his first pass, moved faster than my eye could follow. It whirled, flashing forward, reversed, then flashed behind. The shaft seemed to flow in his hands, the dark gray point flickered like a snake’s tongue. His feet beat the ground like a dancer, never still.

I could not move, watching. I almost did not breathe. His face was calm and blank, not tensed with effort. His movements were so precise I could almost see the men he fought, ten, twenty of them, advancing on all sides. He leapt, scything his spear, even as his other hand snatched the sword from its sheath. He swung out with them both, moving like liquid, like a fish through the waves.(45)

Like the film Brokeback Mountain, this is a love story between men that is more about the love than about them being men. And yet, I had two questions in the end. Throughout there is a great stigma attached to their love between men, especially from Achilles’ mother. I had thought this was a stigma now, but not as much in ancient Greece. Achille’s mother, the divine sea nymph Thetis, was an example of my other question. Miller depicts her as cold and frightening, which is fascinating, yet as one of only three main female characters, it gives what felt to me a painfully short and narrow window into women in ancient Greece. Another character, Deidameia, is selfish and cruel, while the third, a slave girl Briseis, is uncomplicatedly good. All other women are mentioned merely as prizes, objects, or occasionally as beloved of men.

I can’t speak to historical accuracy, but I was left with the nagging feeling that a more modern stigma against men loving men was applied to these boys retrospectively as conflict, while a nuanced portrayal of women was not. And while the latter point might have been historically accurate, I wanted something more from the females in this tale.

You know those books that are on your radar forever, and yet you never buy a copy and occasionally hear it recommended to remind you of it, but then years go by, and you still haven’t read it? That book, for me, was Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower. Published in 1995, it was on many best-of lists, yet didn’t even make the short list for the Booker Prize that year. When I read the article “Tears, Tiffs and Triumphs,” I was intrigued by how it was mentioned a few times by authors even though it had not won the award itself.

So finally, finally, I have got around to reading it myself, and it is a lovely little book. The German poet Novalis, before he became famous under that name, was “Fritz” von Hardenburg, a young Romantic from a good, but poor family. When he falls in love with a very young middle-class girl, his family is upset. And I too, as the reader, found it baffling. Falling in love on sight with a twelve-year old? And yet, as the story plays out, and we meet Fritz and his Sophie again and again, surrounded by their families and friends, it is completely understandable and sympathetic by the end.

It’s set in the late 1700’s, as the Germans struggle to interpret what the ruckus over in France means for all of them, and filled with memorable characters, great humor, grand grief, and lovely passages of writing.

“I have been in the kitchen,” she went on. “Stewed pigs’ trotters, plum conserve, bread soup.”

“I cannot eat,” said Erasmus.

“Come, we’re Saxons. We can make a good dinner, even if our hearts are breaking.”

I found it a delight.

I read The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente for one of my book groups. It was suggested by a woman whose middle-school aged daughter had already read it. In my head I though of it as The Book with the Purposely Unwieldy Title.

It flies its geek flag proudly, starting off with a bunch of fantasy tropes:

Once upon a time, a girl named September grew very tired indeed of her parents’ house, where she washed the same pink-and-yellow teacups and matching gravy boats every day, slept on the same embroidered pillow, and played with the same small and amiable dog. Because she had been born in May, and because she had a mole on her left cheek, and because her feet were large and ungainly, the Green Wind took pity on her and flew to her window one evening just after her twelfth birthday.

This is a modern take on the Victorian fairy tale, and reminded me strongly of Neil Gaiman’s work. The author does not hide the shoulders she’s standing on to write the tale: Persephone, Alice in Wonderland, Narnia, The Wizard of Oz, and Gulliver’s Travels are all given nods. If you enjoy those stories, then you’ll likely enjoy this one, which is a cheeky, knowing take on a lost child’s adventure.

September makes interesting friends and enemies, and takes on a quest, of course. She is by turns afraid, brave, stupid and clever and thus a decent guide to Valente’s version of Fairyland. Originally written as a web series, it tends to wander rather than proceed with purpose.

There are some surprising twists at the end that I appreciated and I found the book engaging and diverting to read. I will check out the sequel, but don’t feel the need to do so now, now, now.