Girl Detective

#19 in my book challenge for the year is the ubiquitously reviewed Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. He wrote three previous novels, the first and third of which were nominated for the Man Booker prize. Most writers do their autobiographical stuff first, and move on to more complicated stuff. Mitchell, whose previous three novels are both lauded and derided for their intricacy, saved his autobiographical bildungsroman for his fourth book. He and others have noted how unusual this is. The benefit to this method is that it’s a really well-written personal novel. The drawback is that it’s frequently so well-written that it ejected me from the narrative, which was told in what is supposed to be the voice of a 13-year- old boy in 1982 suburban England. Yes, the character is a poet, and yes, he has developed a complex interior life in reaction to his stammering problem. Neither of these, though, completely convinced me that certain sentences and certain insights were congruent with the 13-year-old narrator. For example, “Mr. Nixon, the headmaster, dashed past the doorway, emitting fumes of anger and tweed.” and “….the villagers wanted the Gypsies to be gross, so the grossness of what they’re not acts as a stencil for what they are.” It became clear as I read that Mitchell had set himself a difficult task, at which I think he partially succeeded–trying to write in the voice a boy who aspires to be a good writer, but isn’t there yet. In the end, though, I liked the book so well, and the characters in it, that I gave in and dismissed any quibbles that the voice wasn’t consistently believable. The book is the definition of bittersweet, veering between sadness and humor, with great characters.

Reviews, discussions, and interviews (strangely Seattle-centric links via Blog of a Bookslut):
Entertainment Weekly
CBC Canada
The Guardian: The Digested Read
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle Times
Christian Science Monitor
The Stranger
New York Observer
Village Voice
The Book Standard
Seattle Weekly
The New Yorker

#33 in my movie challenge for the year was Thank You For Smoking. The main character is a tobacco lobbyist, and the conceit of the satire lies in his earning the audience’s sympathy, both within the film and in the theater. But my lingering impression is that it could have been darker and funnier.

#32 in my movie challenge this year was Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man, about Timothy Treadwell, self-styled protector of grizzly bears. He and his girlfriend eventually got eaten by one. Treadwell clearly had some mental problems, and he is by turns endearing and annoying. A compulsive self-filmer, his footage makes up most of the documentary. Herzog is a gentle, non-sensational documentarian. While he disagrees with Treadwell, he takes pains to show the many aspects of a complex person. Interestingly vague are Treadwell’s dead girlfriend, whose family refused to participate, and exactly how Treadwell protected the bears, which he insisted he did during his visits each summer for over a decade. Most scary was the fervent description of the deaths by the coroner, who seemed to enjoy his job way too much.

#31 in my movie challenge for the year was Alfie, the original, with Michael Caine. I was surprised to see how good looking Caine was as a young ‘un–he looked like Jude Law does now, who starred in the remake. But his acting outshines his looks; he’s completely believable as a cockney cad. The women finally realize what a jerk he is, and he’s alone at the end of the movie. But neither of these is enough to redeem all the sexist yuckiness that went before. Dated and depressing, this gave me no reason to seek out the remake.

Our house came with rhubarb plants, which come up every year regardless of what I do or don’t do in the yard. I noticed one of our three plants (two of which are green; one is red) had begun to flower. Some sites say to remove the flowers, so while I was cutting I did my first harvest.

I froze the rhubarb last year, and found it unpleasantly mushy when I went to use it later. So this year, I used it as an excuse to make Nigella Lawson’s “Spring Lunch to Lift the Spirits” from How to Eat, which includes Lemon Linguine, Green Salad, and Irish Tarte Tatin.

While I appreciate Nigella’s “everyone can do it,” laissez-faire approach to cooking, I find her recipes sometimes hard to follow (recipes should NOT be written as prose) and a little sloppy (she directs you to taste _raw_ rhubarb and adjust for sugar?), so here are my adaptations.

Lemon Linguine (serves 4)

1 pound linguine
1 egg yolk (reserve white for Irish Tarte Tatin)
1/3 cup of heavy cream
1/4 cup of freshly grated parmesan
Zest of 1 lemon and juice of 1/2, plus more juice if needed
Pinch of salt
Freshly milled black pepper
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons of chopped parsley

Bring 4 quarts of water to the boil. Add 1 tablespoon salt, then pasta. Cook pasta according to package directions, but set timer for a minute or more less than what the box advises.

In a bowl, whisk the yolks, cream, parmesan, zest and juice, salt and a few grinds of pepper.

Test pasta for doneness. Reserve a 1/2 cup of liquid; drain. Return to pot off heat, add butter and stir until melted. Stir in egg mixture until pasta is coated, adding liquid by tablespoons if it looks dry. Divide among plates, sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Salad Dressing (my own, not Nigella’s)

1/4 c. oil
1 Tbl. white wine vinegar
1 Tbl. lemon juice
1 tsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. dry mustard
1 small garlic clove, minced

Shake to combine. Can be stored for three days.

Irish Tarte Tatin

2 lbs. rhubarb, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 1/4 c. sugar

Topping (from Cook’s Illustrated’s recipes for scones):

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
3/4 cup whole milk

Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 450 degrees.

Place rhubarb in pie dish; pour sugar over. Whisk first 5 ingredients of topping together in large bowl. By hand, with pastry blender, or 2 knives, mix butter into flour mixture until mixture resembles coarse meal with a few slightly larger butter lumps.

Make a well in the center of mixture and pour in milk. Working quickly, blend ingredients together with a rubber spatula into a soft, slightly wet dough. Knead dough a few times in bowl, then turn onto a well-floured work surface.

Pat or roll dough to 1/2 inch thick round. Place on top of rhubarb. Brush with egg white and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 15 minutes. Lower oven temp to 350, bake for 30 more minutes. Remove from oven, let cool for at least 5 minutes. Nigella recommends turning it upside down, which will likely result in a burn, then serving with brown sugar and cream, or custard. I recommend cutting the top, spooning out the bottom, and serving with vanilla ice cream.

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, I modified the brownie recipe I usually use. The results were well received. I also made Mexican Coffee that turned out pretty well.

During my pregnancy, I did a lot of baking, which I thought was part of the nesting instinct. Guppy is nearing three months, but the urge to bake has not abated. I don’t know if I’m still nesting, or if I am so enamored of baked goods that the desire for them propels me beyond my lack of sleep and zillion-long list of supposedly more important things to do.

Mexican Brownies

based on New Classic Brownies from Alice Medrich’s Cookies and Brownies

FOR BROWNIES
8 Tbl. unsalted butter cut into 8 pieces
4 oz. unsweetened chocolate, coursely chopped
1 1/4 c. sugar (can use light brown, white, or a mixture of the two)
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt
2 lg. eggs
1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1 Tb. ground cinnamon
pinch ground cayenne

FOR FROSTING
1 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/4 cup whipping cream
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 tsp. vanilla extract
(1/2 c. sliced almonds-optional)

Use an 8 in. square metal pan, lined across the bottom and sides with 2 strips of aluminum foil, spray with non-stick oil.

Preheat oven to 400. Position rack in lower third of oven.

Melt the butter and chocolate gently: in double boiler, in glass bowl over low-simmering water in small saucepan, or in microwave at 50% power. Stir frequently until mixture is melted and smooth.

Remove from heat. Stir in the sugar, vanilla, and salt. Check to be sure mixture is not hot, then add the eggs, one at a time, stirring until each is incorporated before adding the next. In small bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon and cayenne. Stir flour mixture into chocolate mixture, and beat with a wooden spoon until the batter is smooth, glossy and comes away from side of bowl, about 1 minute. Bake for 20 minutes, or until brownies begin to pull away from side of pan. Surface will be dry but inside will be gooey, so don’t bother with a toothpick test.

While brownies bake, prepare an ice bath: Fill a roasting pan or large baking pan with ice cubes and water about 3/4 inch deep.

When brownies are ready, remove pan from oven and set it immediately in ice bath, taking care not to splash water on brownies. Cool brownies in ice bath. (Medrich calls this the Steve ritual, and this step is critical in producing brownies that have a firm crust but creamy, fudgy center. You may use this method with other brownie recipes: bake for 20 min at 400, put in ice bath. I like the simplicity of this recipe.)

Make topping:
Whisk sugar, cream and butter in heavy small saucepan over low heat until mixture is smooth and comes to boil. Remove from heat; mix in vanilla. Cool 10 minutes. Whisk until thick enough to spread. Spread over brownie. Sprinkle with almonds, if using. Let stand until topping sets, about 1 hour. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and keep chilled.)

Lift foil handles and transfer brownies to cutting board; remove foil. Cut into 16 squares. Store airtight for 2 to 3 days.

One of the best things about the Loft’s Festival of Children’s Literature last weekend were the talks by editors. The festival had one headlining NYC book editor and several local book editors for smaller presses. Some of what was said was common sense, some of the common sense was stuff worth repeating, and some other stuff was good to know, because it clarified or contradicted advice in some of the usual children’s literature canon. One thing that became even more clear to me than previously is that children’s lit is a different thing than adult lit; the same rules do not apply.

Here, in no particular order, are some pieces of advice from various editors, some of which were repeated by all of them.

-Submit polished work, not early or partial drafts.
-Cover letters should be short and professional. No biographical info needed, no past publishing history unless it’s directly relevant, no marketing info for the book, no hyperbolic references to other work. A simple, Dear [Editor], Here is my work, Thank you, [Author] should suffice because it’s your writing that should speak for you, not your cover letter.
-Again, your writing is what should distinguish you, not the color of your paper or your font choice. Use white paper, 1 inch margins, double spaced, 12 point Times New Roman. Never a sans serif font, never all caps. No exploding confetti (I wondered if other people were reminded of Tobias from Arrested Development when that was mentioned.)
-Reseach the publisher and submit to one that is a good match for your work.
-Children’s publisher’s do not want to work with agents; they want to work with you.
-Picture book writers should keep their text short and relatively adjective free. The illustrations will do the work of adjectives.
-Unless you’re an author/illustrator, and a good one, the editor will pick the illustrator for a writer.

There was also a good panel of authors on agents. One had a good agent who had pretty much fallen into his lap, another had sought an agent at a huge firm who had not been a help, and two other authors had never had agents, but instead used a book lawyer as needed for contracts and other legal stuff. The concensus seemed to be that a good agent could help, a bad one could hurt, and a children’s author is fine without one.

I buzzed by the library after the festival to pick up a few books by the local authors from the panel. Drake is currently loving all of these:

The Best Pet of All by David LaRochelle
When Mommy was Mad by Lynne Jonell
Night Driving by John Coy

The Scotsman talks to David Mitchell, whose most recent book is Black Swan Green (link from Bookslut last month). What’s nice about the article is that it isn’t a dissection of the book, rather a conversation that includes it. There’s some good stuff on writing a novel from one’s life:

Black Swan Green does not traffic in veiled autobiography and wish-fulfilment.

“I kind of evolved a distinction between a personal novel and an autobiographical one,” says Mitchell, leaning forward on his elbows and speaking softly. “A personal one is where the protagonist and the writer have many things in common. An autobiographical one is where events and everyone around the protagonist or the narrator come largely from life.”

And the difficulty of writing in first person:

So, if you write a book in the first person, you can’t give any information to the reader that the protagonist doesn’t know - unless you smuggle it either through the narrator’s stupidity, or, in the case of Jason, this device of him not knowing what he knows.