Girl Detective

I picked up Mysterious Skin, book 37 in my 50 book challenge for the year, after a recommendation by Michael Schaub at Blog of a Bookslut. Schaub noted that a movie had just been made and was receiving good reviews. This was the third book in a row I’d read with narration revolving among characters. Heim’s writing wasn’t always strong enough to carry this off. I sometimes had to flip to the beginning of a chapter to remind myself who was speaking because the voices weren’t distinct. The two main characters are Brian and Neil. We are introduced to them when they are 8, then return to them 11 years later. Brian is a loner struggling to recall what happened that left him with no memory after a little league game, while Neil is a homosexual hustler who keeps upping the level of risk in his life. The stories intertwine skillfully. Neil is an especially compelling character, sympathetic in spite of his recklessness. Overall, the book is concerned with memory–what we recall and what we don’t, and how we bring memories and blanks with us as we age. The writing, especially toward the end, flagged considerably, but the story and characters were enough to propel me to the end, which, while it answered the questions posed by the book, was a little contrived-ly weird for me.

Apologies for the movie-cover link. Amazon was not being cooperative when I tried to link to the cereal cover, which was the copy I read from the library.

I saw this author at the Twin Cities book fest last fall and liked what she had to say. Where No Gods Came, book #36 in my 50 book challenge for the year, is the story of Faina McCoy, returned to her mother in Minneapolis from California, after her father must take an Australian oil-rig job to pay off gambling debts. Faina’s mother is an alcoholic and her sister Cammy is a runaway and a grifter. Faina quickly gets drawn in to taking care of her mother. She struggles through Catholic school and numerous painful encounters. The portrait of Minneapolis is well-drawn, though the names of streets and locations have been switched or disguised. The narrative switches among the characters, but their voices are not distinct. I sometimes had to flip back to the beginning of a chapter to remind myself which person was speaking. In spite of that, the characters were distinct and believably, often depressingly, complex. Much of the novel was quite dark, so I was relieved when Faina, whom I’d come to care about, gained the redemptive ending I thought she deserved.

I finished Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories the weekend before last, book #35 in my 50 book challenge for the year, and one question looms large: why do so many people hate the ending? I felt there was a good sense of closure, and didn’t feel rushed into it. Also, I’m not sure what part can be called “the” ending, since she’s got about a dozen story lines, all of which have some sort of end.

While I did think that the various mysteries weren’t hard to guess, I didn’t find this problematic. Instead, I was so engrossed with her characters that I was reading to spend time with them. Having a set of difficult mysteries to second guess would have distracted me from them. The central character is a detective named Jackson Brodie, hired by several of the other characters to solve the case histories of the title. The narration revolves among many of these characters, and each voice and view are distinct among the many narrators. I was impressed by how Atkinson kept the reader grounded, reminding throughout of times, dates and ages, rather than expecting me to flip back and forth. Additionally, she was quite good at jumping the narrative ahead over some big revelation, then going back to it later, through another character’s viewpoint. This never felt contrived to me. Atkinson had a smooth authorial control that kept things moving along at a fast, but not breakneck speed.

I so loved the characters that I regretted when I finished the book, and regretted even more that I had to start my next one right away. I got Case Histories from the library, but am going to buy a copy. I would like to read it again, and soon. Now that I know the endings, I can examine Atkinson’s crafted writing at a more leisurely pace.

Buying the book, though, has not yet occurred because it has not been easy. I asked my friend Queenie, who works at a bookstore to pick up a copy for me. She checked three of the biggest stores nearby, none of which had a copy. Case Histories was published in October, and stores don’t often reorder hardcovers after six months, since the trade paperback will be out in a few months. So if you’re thinking that you’ll browse through it the next time you’re in a shop, you may be out of luck. I will probably be purchasing from Amazon.

As you can see from the link above, I am now an Amazon associate, so if you purchase anything from them by following a link from me, I will receive a tiny percentage, which will go to further books and DVDs to review here. I will get a general link set up soon. I know you kind readers have many options of buying books, and probably more than one site through which you could purchase, so I thank you in advance for any consideration.

Jennifer Weiner does a hilarious reading of Curtis Sittenfeld’s review of Melissa Banks’s The Wonder Spot. Sittenfeld’s Prep was given to me by a friend, so it’s on my nightstand now, though the reviews I’ve read have been less than compelling. At a presentation I attended earlier this year, Michael Cart, a young-adult fiction expert I’ve quoted before, wondered if Prep would have been better with an editor familiar with the young adult genre, since it includes a lot of typical YA cliches.

I loved Banks’s first book, a novel in stories, The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing. The Wonder Spot, the victim of Sittenfeld’s review, is in transit to my local library right now.

Yet at bat on my reading list is Paradise by A.L. Kennedy, on deck is The Fall by Simon Mawer, and in the hole is Family Matters by David Guterson, all library books that have a return date. I think my library to-be-read books are going to create a black hole as they crash through the surface of my nightstand, where they reside alongside the “books I already own that I intend to read real soon” and “graphic novels that I’ve bought recently”. I’m not sure that taking the phrase “on the nightstand” literally has been the motivator that I thought it would be.

#28 in my 50 Movie Challenge for the year, and a recommendation from my friend Zen Viking back from the Shakespeare post. A high school riff on Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. Funny and engaging in a teen movie kind of way, i.e. it’s not life changing. Larry Miller is hilarious as Bianca and Kat’s obstetrician father who refuses to let them date. I had a tough time suspending my disbelief that either Heath Ledger or Julia Stiles was scary enough that no one would date them. They still look like movie stars. David Krumholtz seemed to be channeling Richard Kind, but has since graduated from the part of “less good looking but funnier friend” (one of Roger Ebert’s Movie Cliches), to hot young thing on Numb3rs.

I finished watching Season Two of MI-5 on DVD last night, and am in the middle of A. L. Kennedy’s alcoholic love story, Paradise. I must take some drastic measures to lighten things up. If those are the only two media things I’m in the midst of, I might forget what hope is.

Both, though, are extremely good. I recommend them, just in conjunction with other, lighter things.

I recently embarked on the 6th draft of my novel. I took a brief detour when something–my muse, the devil?–whispered in my inner ear to switch to present tense.

“Present tense is stupid,” pronounced my husband G. Grod when I mentioned this to him. I tried it anyway. It was excruciatingly slow. Normally I am a fast editor, but it took me about six hours to get through fewer than twenty pages. The response of my writing group was not as blunt as G. Grod’s had been, but it was clear they weren’t fans of the change. I promised I’d switch back to past tense. Then one of them said that in a workshop she’d taken, the writer/instructor related that she started each new draft fresh, writing from memory, using her old draft as an occasional guide. I’ve read two books by that author, both of which I admired a great deal. The advice was scary–write it again? When it seems so close to ready to send out?

I’ve given it a shot. The new draft is going much more quickly than did the present-tense debacle, but much more slowly than if I was line-editing my last draft. I’m coming up with some different stuff, though, and I like that I’m unshackled from all those sentences I’ve written. This new draft may take longer than I’d like to produce. Then again, which draft doesn’t?

I start off with all good intentions on the latest revision of my novel. Then my mind wanders. I wonder what happened to that guy I liked sophomore year in college. I Google him. I fail to turn up a valid hit. I go back to the novel. Then I go back to Google and make my search more specific. I get what might be a valid hit, but can’t confirm. I return to my novel. I return to Google and try a few more variations till I find a picture, in which he looks ridiculous. Good riddance. Return to novel. Return to Google a few more times for different people, with varying results. Find a short story that contains names of two guys I dated, and they weren’t common names. Get creeped out and return to novel. Google Girl Detective and am pleased to find this new site finally listed on page two. Old site still number 1, mostly because of a few accidental zeitgeist topics. Google my real name, which has never turned up results, and find a piece I submitted that got published, unbeknownst to me.

I now have an actual, valid writing credit. And I wouldn’t have known about it if I hadn’t been avoiding my latest revision. The moral of the story may be that Google distraction can be beneficial to my writing. But maybe not.

By the last night of last weekend’s college reunion, I was longing for a little more engagement with people than “Hi, where are you now, and what do you do?” (My response, which I honed for pithiness over the weekend: Minneapolis, stay at home mom and writer of YA novels, one of which I hope to send out soon for publication.) So I thought of two questions for people, the first of which was told to me by a friend at a wedding last year.

1. If you were going to have same-sex sex with a celebrity (this is for heteros–the opposite for gay friends), who would it be? I found men were terrible at answering this, and women barely hesitated. One guy did, though, acknowledge that some of my suggestions (Clive, Ewan, Owen Wilson) were good ones. At first I offered my own example of Angelina Jolie, though I thought that a bit cliche. I soon remembered how hot Frances McDormand was in Laurel Canyon, though, so I changed my answer. Angelina got more than a few votes, as did Shane from The L Word.

2. What was something that happened in the last year that made you really happy? Note that I didn’t ask for a superlative, just one happy thing. In spite of this, people struggled to answer, and seemed to feel guilty if they couldn’t come up with a happiest. One friend said it was how her infant daughter did the hand motions to Itsy Bitsy Spider, a few chose good vacations, and one guy said he knew he should say his wedding, but really it was the Red Sox winning the pennant.

I had never yet attended a college reunion, though I’d attended my 5 and 10 year high school ones. What I found aggravating at those was the level of inane chit-chat, and suspicious level of achievement. At this 15 year reunion, though, my bullshit detector didn’t detect much artifice. Yes, there were quick chats, but people, including myself, really did seem interested in where other people lived and what they were doing. Given that the music was loud and the crowd was big, I think we did pretty well.

I was so careful before my shower last week. I shook out my towel, peered into ever nook of my robe, jiggled the shower curtain and looked inside the shower. I saw no centipedes. Only as I finished and went to draw the curtain, which I HAD jiggled, did a HUGE brown centipede scurry down the edge to the floor, causing me to let out a full-on scream. Then I killed it dead.

So my question for all you experienced home owners out there is how many centipedes are too many? I know they’re “normal” and even supposedly beneficial, but I’m not sure how much more I can take. Do I have to live with them? Do I call an exterminator? I suspect that our drain tile system, which ensures a dry basement, creates an easy in for them. Do I have to suffer centipedes as the price of my dry basement?

The second dilemma isn’t of the house, but of the detached garage. The inspector said last year that the garage roof had one year left in it. Do we dare to push it another year?

Finally, I’m wondering about gutters. We have a high, steep roof, so cleaning them ourselves would be challenging. Do we do it anyway, hire someone, ignore till winter? Ignore at our peril?

Any input from experienced folk would be wildly appreciated. I am SO out of my element as a homeowner. Like parenthood, it demands work, knowledge and practice that I find difficult to adopt in my late thirties.

From Bookslut:

There’s coverage of Lionel Shriver, the US-born author who won the Orange Prize yesterday for We Need to Talk About Kevin, at The Scotsman, The Independent, the BBC, The Times, the CBC, Reuters, and This Is London. Much is made of her traditionally masculine first name and her decision not to have children. (Quick, how many male authors have you seen get quizzed incessantly about their lack of offspring? I think it’s about…let me do the math here…yeah, about zero. Ah, vive le double standard.)

Well, yes, but the male authors who don’t get quizzed haven’t written a book with a main character of a mother who doesn’t form a bond with the child that goes on to commit mass murder.

If Ms. Shriver doesn’t want to have kids, I applaud her decision to buck convention. The premise of this book smacks of an extreme apologia, one which, however well-written, doesn’t compel me to read it. A simple “no, not for me” would suffice.

If you are not yet reading Manolo’s Shoe Blog, perhaps one of today’s entries will convince you of its super-fantasticity. Manolo the author, who is not Manolo Blahnik (called “Manolo the Maestro” on the blog), is not a fan of Karl Lagerfeld.

Here is the fat, happy-but-crazy Karl Lagerfeld, smiling at us like the Sergant Schultz from the Hogan’s Heroes, wanting nothing more than the bratwurst and the pastries, and perhaps to destroy the House of Chanel with his clothing designs.

Obviously, this picture it is from before the Lagerfeld he made is infamous pact with El Diablo.

Now, the question for the Manolo, it is should the Faust/Lagerfeld be pitied, or despised?

Manolo’s Shoe Blog covers shoes, fashion, celebrity, and more. It is all written in a stylized pidgin-y voice, with tongue firmly in cheek. It’s funny, sharp, clever, and occasionally bitchy. Best of all, it has a heart. I read the Manolo daily.

Apparently the end of May/beginning of June is when I make big life changes. A year ago I resigned my job in advertising to stay home with my toddler Drake, then 9 months old. Both immediately and since, I have never once regretted the decision. Drake was frequently sick in daycare, and both G. Grod and I missed a lot of work. Drake’s health improved dramatically upon leaving daycare. Staying home allows me to focus on two of my priorities, Drake and writing. Work took a lot of my peace of mind, and didn’t compensate for it in other ways.

And both blew right by me at the beginning of this month. The first is my anniversary of moving to Minneapolis from Philadelphia, which was seven years ago. The second is the anniversary of the first post on the original Girl Detective, which I started three years ago.

I was reminded of the anniversaries this morning when I saw a house with a roof bashed in by a fallen tree. When I moved to Minneapolis in June, I was stunned to find huge uprooted trees everywhere I looked. It had been a record year for tornados. I’d known to expect bad winters, but bad summers in addition to bad winters seemed like we’d made a poor choice of where to live. Seven years later, I’m very happy with where we live. Tornados are a fact of life in the midwest, but the season is short and I’d much rather have them than earthquakes. We considered moving back to Philly both after Drake was born and when my husband G. Grod was laid off. It’s hard living far from family, but we like living in a politically aware area, with good schools, libraries, lakes, used bookstores, writers, writing classes and events, grocery cooperatives and local businesses like our coffee shop.

Just over three years ago, my friend M. Giant said he’d started a weblog called Velcrometer. What a great way to establish a writing practice, I thought, and quickly followed suit. I now write more, and more regularly, than I ever did before. I have yet to be paid for my writing, but I’m working on two novel manuscripts in addition to this weblog, so perhaps that’s a goal for a future anniversary.

I went to my first college reunion over the weekend, the fifteenth. I went not so much to catch up with anyone I’d lost touch with, but rather because the several friends I do keep up with were all going to be there, one with her husband and family. When one lives far away, as I do in MN, it’s important to try to get the most out of trips across country.

The night before my flight found me rustling through my closet for pieces that fit and were seasonal, then trying to put together outfits around them. The weather was hot and humid. This was not conducive to either a calm mind, or fitting into tight jeans or skirts. There was much frustrated hopping up and down. Finally I managed to put together four outfits that seemed as if they’d match both the weather and the events I’d be attending. I tucked in the tight jeans, too, just in case I got a last minute reprieve. And I packed a whopping four pairs of shoes, in addition to the one that I’d be wearing. Usually, I wear a pair and pack another. For packing in general, I try to take a bare minimum. Often I end up having under packed, though that’s never been problematic, just rather boring for me to wear the same things over and again. For my reunion, though, the rules were different.

I was fortunate to spend the night before the reunion with my sister Ruthie. I tried on my four outfits for her, all of which she approved. She confirmed that the jeans were too tight so they moved to the bottom of my suitcase. We found another smashing outfit in her closet, though, one that went with an existing pair of shoes. Additionally, we combed through her jewelry and handbags to accessorize all five outfits.

I felt somewhat ashamed of myself for obsessing so much over my appearance. If I was going to see my friends, why did it matter what I wore and how I looked? What did I have to prove, and to whom?

At the reunion, my time was my own–my spouse G. Grod and toddler Drake were at my in-laws. I had luxurious stretches of time to spend with my friends. We tried on each other’s clothes, and talked about our husbands and children. We traded makeup tips and birth stories. We tried to recall who we’d kissed in our younger days, then were shocked to see many of them balding and portly, very different from their 18-year-old selves. Each night I limped into our hotel after a night in lovely heels. My friends and I joked about fashion before function, but my blistered, aching feet told another tale by Sunday. I had fun, though, dressing up for the first time in a long time, and not worrying about having Drake smear up a dry-clean-only outfit (those few that I own) or tug at and break my jewelry.

I realize now that it wasn’t those boys that I kissed, or even the girls I was envious of back then, that I was trying to impress by dressing well. I was trying to give my college self, a chubby, drunk, depressed girl, the happy ending she so desperately wanted.

The first time I took a writing class, I read the following quote by Joan Didion, and it hit me with almost physical force. It still has power, almost ten years later, as I discovered when I read it recently at Mental Multivitamin.

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.

– Joan Didion in Slouching towards Bethlehem

I’m a late bloomer. It takes me a long while to get my act together and figure things out. This weekend was good, making new connections with old friends. But I also reconnected with my old self, who wasn’t very happy in college. I think she would be pleased if she could have seen the life we’re living now.

I am just returned from my 15 year college reunion. I had great fun, but am rather tapped out. Our flight back today sat on the runway for two hours before taking off. Fortunately, my toddler Drake was in mostly good spirits, so fussing was minimal, then he slept for most of the runway sitting and flight. Some people think I’m overcareful of the nap, but I find that if I respect the nap, it respects me.

A friend at the reunion gave me a hard time for not having updated in a while, and for writing overmuch on books and movies. I finished two books while I was away, both quite good, but I will try to post some fun stories as well as reviews as soon as I’m able.