Girl Detective

I’ve been reading Russell Hoban’s books since I was a girl, especially the Frances the Badger series, Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. I’m reading The Mouse and His Child aloud to my boys right now. When I read The Road last year and again this year, my friend RL said she agreed with a friend who he liked The Road, but admired Riddley Walker even more. Since I’ve been on something of a post-apocalyptic bender lately with The Road and The Handmaid’s Tale, and with Feed, The Hunger Games trilogy and A Canticle for Leibowitz still lingering in my memory, I decided to give it a go. I’m glad I had not one but two recommendations to spur me on. If I hadn’t, I think the challenging language might have stopped, rather than just slowed, me.

On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pi on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time before him nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he wernt all that big plus he lookit poorly. He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and made his rush and there we were then. Him on 1 end of the spear kicking his life out and me on the other end watching him dy. I said, ‘Your tern now my tern later.’ The other spears gone in then and he wer dead nd the steam coming up off im in the rain and we all yelt, ‘Offert!’ (p. 1)

Riddley is a boy turned man at 12, living in a post-apocalyptic version of England, called Inland, about 3000 years after a nuclear explosion in Cambridge (”Cambry”) put much of England under water and was followed by the usual post-apocalyptic things. Riddley lives in a community called a “fents” in contrast to “forms” in a mostly illiterate iron age. Those who live in a “fents” hunt and gather, while the more stable agricultural “forms” grow more common. Religion and government are combined in The Ram (formerly Ramsgate) and law is spread by itinerant puppeteers who perform morality plays based on the legend of “Eusa” a mashup of the apocryphal legend of St. Eustace with nuclear-scientific history.

I cud feal it in the guts and barrils of me. You try to make your self 1 with some thing or some body but try as you wil the 2ness of every thing is working agenst you all the way. You try to take holt of the 1ness and it comes in 2 in your hans. (p. 149)

Riddley is a sweet, earnest narrator who struggles to figure out what he’s meant for and to do the right thing. The futuristic argot made me slow down as a reader, and Hoban noted that one purpose of the language was to slow down the readers comprehension to the same speed as Riddley’s.

I highly recommend this book for fans of The Road and A Canticle for Leibowitz. It’s challenging to try and parse the language, but as I read it became much clearer, and research I did after helped a great deal, such as this piece in the Guardian, Lowboy author John Wray at NPR, this extensive site of explanation and annotations at Error Bar, and this summary at Ocelot Factory. I suspect Riddley Walker is one I’ll re-read, and that will bring even richer rewards on subsequent readings.

An idea for this year’s summer reading project came to me yesterday. Last summer was the Baroque Cycle, the year before was Infinite Summer.

This year I want to read Lizzie Skurnick’s Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading, and re-read the books featured in each of the 10 chapters. I’d do a chapter a week, and will read as many of the books in each chapter as I can/want to. (I won’t, for example, be re-reading Clan of the Cave Bear, though Flowers in the Attic might be entertaining in an ohmygawd way that Clan is too earnest for.)

For example, Chapter 1 focuses on Wrinkle in Time, From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself, and Harriet the Spy, with Farmer Boy, Danny the Champion of the World, Ludell, and the Great Brain covered briefly. I LOVE the idea of re-reading at least those first four books.

Anyone else think this sounds like loads of fun? For anyone who has older daughters, it might be like one long mother/daughter book group.

A concern: Shelf Discovery is very heavy on Judy Blume, who I do not remember THAT fondly. Where is the William Sleator, House of Stairs? Also, where is Amityville Horror, Amanda/Miranda and Lace for that final chapter on reading stuff we shouldn’t have been? It might be fun to reference titles like these from our individual reading histories that relate but aren’t included.

Last weekend I traded in my big yellow Sun Cruiser for a used Schwinn Sprint I’ve named Pepper. I live atop a big hill, and getting a lighter, more wieldy bike made sense now that I’ve established a riding habit. I’m sore from the new saddle, as the old was was wide and cushy, but I will persevere.

Good thing I decided I wasn’t going to make any more silly vows about not buying or borrowing books before I read the ones at home, right?

From Half-Price Books, St. Louis Park. I went in looking for Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. I left with these:

Count Zero by William Gibson. Reading the Bigend trilogy made me want to go back and read everything by Gibson.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I chose this for my book group on fiction with religious and mythic themes. I have a signed HC of this, so I wanted a beater copy to re-read. )(There’s a 10th anniversary HC out this June. Ten years? I remember going to Dreamhaven to hear him read from this.)

Farmer Boy and Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Because I’m brainstorming a new summer reading project of Lizzie Skurnick’s Shelf Discovery and all the books she references in it (yeah, it’s about 70, so what?), one of which is Farmer Boy. I meant to get Little _House_ on the Prairie, since we already have Little House in the Big Woods, but got “Town” instead. Ah, well, guess I’ll just have to go shopping again. Heh.

Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself and It’s Not the End of the World by Judy Blume. Both are referenced in Shelf Discovery.

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. His follow-up to American Gods.

Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman. Recommended to me ages ago by my friend Rock Hack. I really enjoyed the recent interview with Goodman at Bookslut, especially this:

Really good fiction operates on you more like a slow poison — in a good way. It enters your bloodstream and changes the way that you look at the world without your realizing it.

God on the Rocks by Jane Gardam. Because I _loved_ Old Filth, The Man in the Wooden Hat, and The People on Privilege Hill.

But that is not all, oh no, that is not all!

On Rue Tatin by Susan Hermann Loomis. From my mother, since my dad and sisters just returned from vacation in Normandy.

Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson. Because I like her site, 101 Cookbooks, and her other book, Super Natural Cooking.

Continuing with the wretched excess, here’s what I have out from the library:

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. Which I’m reading now because a friend said her friend recommended it over The Road. It’s future slang is difficult to wade through, but I’m loving the main character, and will persevere. I think it will pay off.

The Death of Adam by Marilynne Robinson. I wanted to read this in the wake of Gilead. Many challenging essays on a variety of literary and religious topics, I’m reading one at a time between other books. Many are a defense of Calvin and Puritanism.

Negotiating with the Dead by Margaret Atwood. Research in the wake of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms ed. by Kathryn VanSpanckeren and Jan Garden Castro, and Margaret Atwood: A Biography by Natalie Cooke. Ditto above.

Younger Next Year for Women by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge. Recommended by a friend in book group. Premise is that sitting tells your body to decay, moving keeps it young and strong.

The Yoga Body Diet by Kristen Schultz Dollard and Dr. John Douillard. Recommended in Yoga Journal, it sounded like a good, albeit pop-y, intro to Ayurveda. I thought I was Pitta, but am Vata instead. I’m so not a Kapha.

Oh, did you think that was all? Bwah, ha ha!

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell. Marilynne Robinson says the Puritans weren’t so bad. Margaret Atwood says they were intolerant and wanted a theocracy. Who to believe? I’m going to re-read Vowell, who I think falls more on the Robinson side of the debate.

Unwritten volume 3. An ongoing series about a Harry Potter-ish character that plays fast and loose with many layers of fiction.

Fables volume 15: Rose Red. Another of the ongoing comic-book series I read in collections, since I tend to forget things when I read them in monthly installments.

And with that, gentle readers, I am going off to nurse my wrist. WAY too many links in this one.

Or, what I did instead of writing and napping.

Shopped at Barnes & Noble Galleria (but didn’t buy anything.)

Shopped at Half Price Books in St. Louis Park (um, did buy some stuff; book stack photo to come)

Lunch of mushroom stroganoff with tofu drizzled with Sriracha sauce at Noodles and Co.

Double of Clusterfluff (Peanut Butter Ice Cream with Caramel Cluster Pieces, Peanut Butter & Marshmallow Swirls) and Chocolate Therapy (Chocolate ice cream with chocolate cookies and swirls of chocolate pudding) at Ben & Jerry’s, plus they were having a 3-fer sale:

It’s not the hubby who’s going to get chubby around here, it’s me.

Margaret Atwood’s Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing was recommended in Valerie Martin’s Introduction to Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which I recently re-read. This is not Ann Lamott’s Bird by Bird, a friendly, funny self-deprecating book for writers. This is an erudite, dry-humored, cerebral book on writing. It was challenging (in a good way) but not necessarily enjoyable, if you know what I mean. The six chapters are taken from a series of lectures Atwood did at the University of Cambridge. They concern (but are hardly limited to) questions of who is a writer, the difference (if there is one) between a writer and her work, the difference between writing for art or money, whether writers “should” write morally improving tales, who is the audience, and finally, what is the relation between writing and the fear of mortality.

The two chapters Martin recommends are the one on duplicity:

(after a gruesome question that ends the previous paragraph.) Now, what disembodied hand or invisible monster just wrote that cold-blooded comment? Surely it wasn’t me; I am a nice, cosy sort of person, a bit absent-minded, a dab hand at cookies, beloved by domestic animals, and a knitter of sweaters with arms that are too long. (35)

And the final one on negotiating with the dead:

But dead people persist in the minds of the living. There have been very few human societies in which the dead are thought to vanish completely once they are dead. (159)

Martin doesn’t spell out why she thinks these chapters are particularly relevant to The Handmaid’s Tale. I’d speculate that the chapter on duplicity grew out of the reaction to Handmaid’s Tale, and how much speculation there must have been as to Atwood’s own politics and feminist sensibilities and biases. And the final chapter, about negotiating with the dead, is relevant to the analysis of the final chapter of Handmaid’s Tale, SPOILER

in which future academics analyze the past narrative artifact the reader just read.

Since this post is obviously going to have spoilers for the book, I’ll start off with a story. My friend RG was a student at Swarthmore College when Margaret Atwood visited. After Atwood’s talk, my friend went up to her and asked, knees knocking to be in the presence of one of the great writers of our time, “Ms. Atwood, what happened at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale? I didn’t think it was clear.” Ms. Atwood replied, (frostily? kindly?, looking over the edges of her spectacles? I’m not sure) “What do _you_ think happened, dear?” in what was obviously a rhetorical question, or an oblique answer phrased as a question. My friend felt both dejected at the lack of clarity and embarrassed at still not “getting it.”

I’ve come to believe that ambiguous, “lady or the tiger” type endings are a sign of respect the author gives the reader. They’re certainly a hallmark of the Atwood novels I’ve read: The Handmaid’s Tale, The Robber Bride, and Alias Grace. Yet their frustrating opacity often serves the opposite purpose of complimenting a reader on her capacity to draw her own conclusions. Instead it enrages many readers, who feel cheated that they don’t get a definitive ending. (This is a frequent criticism I’ve heard about Tana French’s In the Woods, which I re-read recently.)

SPOILERS AHEAD:
*
*
*
*
*
The final section of The Handmaid’s Tale is titled “Historical Notes on The Handmaid’s Tale.” It’s the supposed transcipt of a future symposium of the history of Gilead, the republic the previous narrative was set in. On my recent re-reading, I found its most unsettling aspect the almost throw-away remarks that things in Gilead got much worse for women and liberty in general after the events described in the narrative. But that was before I read Valerie Martin’s helpful Introduction* to the Everyman’s Library edition.

Martin suggests further reading, and recommends among them a collection of critical essays Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms ed. Kathryn VanSpanckeren and Jan Garden Castro. Two essays deal specifically with The Handmaid’s Tale, “Nature and Nurture in Dystopia” (to recap: they’re reversed) and “Future Tense: Making History in The Handmaid’s Tale” by Arnold E. Davidson. After reading Martin’s gloss on Davidson, then the essay itself, I felt naive for having felt unsettled by one thing only in that last section.

The historical notes with which The Handmaid’s Tale ends provide comic relief from the grotesque text of Gilead. Yet in crucial ways the epilogue is the most pessimistic part of the book. Even with the lesson of Gilead readily at hand, the intellectuals of 2195 seem to be preparing the way for Gilead again. In this projection of past, present, and future, the academic community is shown to have a role, not simply an “academic” role (passive, accommodating) but an active one in recreating the values of the future.

I highly recommend seeking out Anderson’s essay after you finish reading The Handmaid’s Tale for a thorough, provocative, and disturbing close reading of the last segment of the book.

*I really wish that the material so often put before a text was put after it. I don’t want an analysis or context _before_ I read. While it’s my preference, I know I’m not alone, and I doubt I’m in the minority. I also think acknowledgements before the book rather than after are pretentious and obnoxious. Brief dedication, yes. Lengthy name dropping? Ugh.

From Nathalie Cooke’s Margaret Atwood: A Biography

Atwood started writing The Handmaid’s Tale in spring of 1984 while living in West Berlin and finished it later that year. It was published in 1985 to critical acclaim and would go on to be short-listed for the prestigious Booker Prize. While she wrote it, her husband said to her, “You’re going to get in trouble for this one.” Though she was well known in Canada previously as both a poet and novelist, this brought her a larger, international, mainstream audience. Her American publisher ordered a second printing before the first was even released.

She claims the original idea came from a dinner-party conversation about the dangers of religious fundamentalism. “No one thinks about what it would be like to actually act it out,” she or someone else said. Then she said, “I think I’ll write about that.”

In 1983 she began to compile a scrapbook about “the religious right wing, no-cash credit-card systems, on the low birth rate and prisons in Iran.” While the setting for the book is Cambridge and Boston Massachusetts, Atwood had traveled to Iran and Afghanistan, and the repressive rules for women she encountered there were also part of the inspiration for the near-future dystopia of Gilead.

Cooke quotes Atwood’s argument that The Handmaid’s Tale is not science fiction:

Science fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that. That isn’t this book at all. The Handmaid’s Tale is speculative fiction in the genre of Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Nineteen Eighty-Four was written not as science fiction but as an extrapolation of life in 1948. So, too, The Handmaid’s Tale is a slight twist on the society we have now. (277)

(Interestingly, this rejection of the SF genre is one speculative fiction, sci-fi and fantasy writers and readers would likely both agree and take issue with. They’d likely agree it was speculative fiction, but take issue with her separatism, since most works grouped in the sci-fi and fantasy genres can be better described as speculative fiction.)

In spite of this protest, The Handmaid’s Tale won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction in 1987.

What Was She Thinking [Notes on a Scandal] by Zoe Heller has been on my to-read-someday list for a while, but was recommended to me particularly by the Biblioracle at The Morning News based on the last five (non Tournament of Books) books I’d read, which were:

Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Life with Jeeves
The Road Cormac McCarthy
Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold
I Think I Love You by Alison Pearson

And for the third time, The Biblioracle made a good call; he’d previously recommended Gibson’s Pattern Recognition and Rachmann’s The Imperfectionists to me. I liked them both immensely

Since the novel was turned into an Oscar-award nominated film, you may know the basics. An English schoolteacher, Sheba Hart, falls into an affair with her 15-year-old student while a friendship develops with an older colleague, Barbara Covett. Barbara is the book’s sole narrator, and a powerful one she is. She’s been teaching school to middle/lower-class students for decades, and has a stoic resignation about it. Not for her the sunny platitudes about helping students realize their own potential. Barbara is smart, with razor-sharp observations that frequently decimate those around her in this narrative. No one, except perhaps sometimes herself, escapes her judgment.

I am presumptuous enough to believe that I am the person best qualified to write this small history. I would go so far as to hazard that I am the only person. Sheba and I have spent countless hours together over the last eighteen months, exchanging confidences of every kind. Certainly, there is no other friend or relative of Sheba’s who has been so intimately involved in the day-to-day business of her affair with Connolly. In many cases the events I describe here were witnessed by me personally. Elsewhere, I rely upon detailed accounts provided by Sheba herself. I am not so foolhardy as to claim for myself an infallible or complete version of the story. But I do believe that my narrative will go some substantial way to helping the public understand who Sheba Hart really is.

What’s especially fascinating is that Barbara, while an unreliable narrator, is not unsympathetic. By tearing off the gauzy veils of nicety and political correctness, she reveals an exhilarating honesty, vulnerability and sense of humor that no one around her has the least suspicion of. Heller skillfully portrays myriad complex characters through just one person’s point of view. What Barbara writes, and what she leaves out, tell a full and satisfying story. Even as it moves back and forward in time, it’s easy to follow, and tantalizing in how Barbara bestows the details a little at a time. An impressive feat of authorial control, I thought.

I’ve been on something of a movie bender lately, mostly thanks to a compelling series of “soundtrack” films by local cinephiles Take Up Productions.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) is Hitchcock’s remake of his own earlier 1934 black-and-white, British film. Bernard Hermann’s score is almost a character in itself, and the climax of the movie takes place at a concert with the orchestra directed by Hermann himself. This has a pretty blond Doris Day as a retired international singing star visiting Marrakesh with her husband, the much older Jimmy Stewart, a doctor from Indianapolis. Strange things happen when the visit the market, in a scene I think much be the referent for the market chase in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Great with building tension, it has many hilarious lines, including the final one, along with a creepy subtext of marital dissatisfaction and discord. I’ll be seeking out the original to compare/contrast.

North by Northwest (1959) Another collaboration between Hitchcock and Hermann, with mod visual credits and music to open it. Cary Grant is his usual awesome blend of gentleman clown, while Eva Marie Saint is Hitchcock’s icy blond who he puts through the wringer. Grant’s suit also takes a beating, and the jacket disappears for the scenes on Mt. Rushmore.

Charade (1963) directed by Stanley Donen (who also did Singin’ in the Rain) and scored by Henry Mancini, this has cool opening credits and music. Grant again is the December man to Hepburn’s May cutie. The age difference bothered him so much Grant insisted her character be the one to pursue his. Funny, charming, and labyrinthine in its plot, this was a heckuva lot of fun.

Fahrenheit 451 (1966) by Francois Truffaut, in his first color and his one and only English language film. Nothing funny about this one, but beautiful visuals, including Julie Christie interestingly cast in the dual role of girl/wife, which apparently caused Terence Stamp to drop out as the lead, as he was afraid to be overshadowed by his former lover. Truffaut’s future didn’t look very futuristic from this late date except for one element: the large television screen for viewing an ongoing “reality” show that invites the viewers to feel the actors are their family. This part chilled me in the book, but perhaps even more in the film, seeing a thoroughly of-the-moment size flat screen.

This month’s selection for the new book group I’ve started, which reads books with themes of religion and myth, is Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. When I mention this, the almost universal response is, “Wow, I haven’t read that book in years!” That was the case for me, too. I probably read it in the late 80’s, and again in the mid 90’s. I remembered broad strokes, but not particulars. I wondered if it would hold up. Did it, ever.

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium…in the army cots that had been set up in rows, with spaces between so we could not talk. We had flannelette sheets, like children’s, and army-issue blankets, old ones that still said U.S.We folded our clothes neatly and laid them on the stools at the ends of the beds. The lights were turned down but not out. Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth patrolled; they had electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts.

The narrator, whose real name is never revealed, describes a near-future in which fertility rates have declined, largely due to nuclear fallout after an earthquake. The country is now a repressive theocracy, in which Biblical verses are deployed to justify awful acts. Bit by bit, the narrator mixes details of her past and the history that brought about her present. Atwood is such a skillful writer that I never noticed the jumping around in time and scene. Pieces of the picture are added bit by bit, as in the above paragraph, and the tension grows as the narrator’s present situation becomes more charged.

I found this book difficult to put down, and resented the things–meals, sleep, my husband and children–that required me to do so. Even though I remembered the ending, I didn’t remember the details, and I could barely wait to take in the particulars again. When I finally reached the conclusion, which somehow managed to be both unsettling and satisfying, I felt in awe of the skill and power with which Atwood had created such a rich and terrible future. Frightening and timely, more than 25 years after it was published it still gives me much to ponder.

Earlier this week, 7yo Drake woke at 7:30 a.m., said he felt like throwing up, and promptly did. I set the timer for an hour, but he threw up again before it went off. An hour after that, though, he kept sips of water, then juice, then mushy food, then bland food, down when dispensed charily at appropriate intervals. (I am queen of the barfing protocol. I’ve had to be considering what touchy stomachs my boys have. But, knock wood, we’ve never had to take them in for dehydration.)

Tuesday is usually the day I have to myself for writing and making plans, like the tea a neighbor had invited me to. Just before 1 p.m., I weighed my options, then asked Drake if he’d be OK if I went a block away to tea. He said he’d like to come with me, which wasn’t ideal as she had two younger kids at her house that I didn’t want to potentially expose to a virus. I told him he could have an hour of computer games while I was gone. He rapidly agreed to stay home.

We practiced using the phone, both answering and calling. I quizzed him on what to do in an emergency as well as what qualified as emergencies–pretty much burglars, blood, or fire. We discussed trust and responsibility. And then I locked the house and went over to my friend’s house for tea. I called after 30 minutes, though I had to call twice to get him to answer; he said he couldn’t find the handset. And I came home promptly after an hour. To find him in the exact same spot I’d left him in, playing a game called Crazy Taxi.

I’m sure some parents would think leaving a 7yo alone for an hour while I was a block away was no big deal, while others might think I’m shockingly neglectful. I fall somewhere in the middle. I tried it; it went well for both of us. My experiment returned meaningful results, albeit within a particular set of circumstances. I don’t think we’ll need to repeat this on a regular basis, but I thought it was a promising start.

Can we all get together and agree to stop vowing to stop buying books? It’s what we _do_, people! I’ve fallen off the wagon so many times that I’ve learned the pleasure of walking. So I’m going to buy books. In moderation. Whatever that means.

The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo. To read as a possible selection for the book group I started on fiction with themes of myth and religion.

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich. Ditto the above. (Extra points for local authors!)

Enter Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. A collection of the very first Jeeves stories, which aren’t usually anthologized because Bertie wasn’t even necessarily Bertie Wooster yet. Had to have. Love Jeeves.

Cakewalk by Kate Moses. Because I gave my, previous copy to my sister for her birthday, and NEED to have that chocolate chip cookie recipe at hand.

A pretty box that a lovely gift came in.

Totoro. If you have not seen the animated film My Neighbor Totoro, do so immediately. No matter your age. Even if you don’t have kids. It’s lovely and probably one of my favorite films. Full stop. The director Hayao Miyazaki is like the Kurosawa of animation.

(Imitation) cherry blossoms. When I lived outside of Philly, spring was my favorite time. I lived in a neighborhood that had a lot of mature weeping cherry trees and I would take walks just to admire them. Minnesota is too cold for cherry trees, so I procured these at a home design store. The sight of them makes me very happy.

Todays post-nap afternoon snack:

Barsy’s smoky almonds mixed with Sunspire chocolate SunDrops, mini pretzels, dried cherries and Barbara’s Bakery Shredded Spoonfuls. It’s like Chex Mix, but easier. And tastier.

A cup of Peace Coffee Pollinator made in the one-cup Bodum French press my husband got me last year.

A serving of Ben and Jerry’s new flavor, Late Night Snack: Vanilla Bean ice cream with a salty caramel swirl and fudge-covered potato-chip clusters. I’m here to tell you: it’s also delicious in the afternoon! (Perhaps I should try it for breakfast tomorrow? You know, in the interest of science?)

Ben and Jerry's Late Night Snack: good all day!

I watched one of last year’s Oscar nominees, The Kids are All Right, with my husband earlier this week. It was alright–not great, not terrible. It did a good job of making the characters not all good or all bad, but Annette Bening’s character was still far too unlikeable, and I wasn’t wowed by her performance, either.

At one point the son of the lesbian couple asks his moms why they don’t like lesbian porn. Julianne Moore’s character responds that it’s mostly straight girls, pretending to be gay, like the actresses in this film. I couldn’t help but wonder if this is the kind of movie that liberal straight people watch and say, “Wow, what a great portrait of an unconventional family.” and that gay families watch, roll their eyes at and say, “Yet another straight fabrication of gay real life.”

(or: blogging quickly because I need to leave for the South America party at preschool.)

Several years ago I read Aimee Bender’s novel, An Invisible Sign of My Own. I really enjoyed it, and especially liked her skill with metaphors about inner life and how difficult it is to get along with others. Those themes are front and center in her latest novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, in which 8-year-old Rose suddenly realizes the ability to taste the emotions of others through food they’ve prepared.

I was hoping I’d imagined it–maybe it was a bad lemon? or old sugar?–although I knew, even as I thought it, that what I’d tasted had nothing to do with ingredients…and with each bite, I thought–mmm, so good, the best ever, yum–but in each bite: absence, hunger, spiraling, hollows. (10)

Many reviews point out this idea was used famously in Like Water for Chocolate, but I don’t find it a problem to use a similar idea for a very different book. The number of characters in this book is small, yet each is developed well, so that when surprises occur, I found them both pleasing and not all that surprising. This made for an engaging and enjoyable read of an often sad, most definitely strange book. Rose ages from 8 to her early 20s in the book; this could easily have been sold as a young adult novel. The cover and title make it look and sound like chicklit. Those expecting that will most likely be disappointed, or at least confused, by this odd girl, and her odd family, all of which utterly charmed me to the end.

Four years ago, when Guppy was one, my doctors, therapist and I were trying to manage what turned out to be more than a run-of-the-mill post-partum depression. Instead, a long-standing seam of depression and anxiety had been opened up by the seismic shift of having a second child. As we worked through what was needed for treatment, I was told again and again by friends, doctors and counselors: it gets better. Especially around the time they’re five and seven. Many also admitted to me that they hadn’t enjoyed parenting very small children, and it was only as time passed that they settled into their role as parents.

Four years ago, four years seemed a very long time to wait till things got better. And the time, for me, has not chirpily flown. It has passed, one day at a time. Slower with diapers, bloody noses, fevers, screaming, and each extra syllable added to Mom!” Faster with cuddles, reading aloud and hand-holding. Fastest of all in quiet moments to myself, like the one I’m in now. But it has passed. My boys are now five and seven, and I’m here to testify: it _is_ better.

It’s no coincidence that the shift takes place when the younger is five. They can do many things themselves, especially going to the bathroom, and don’t need constant supervision. They’re able to reason, and play with others. They’ve got some impulse control. And being in school (my younger will start kindergarten this fall; we don’t know yet whether he’ll be in full or half day class) means they get more peer interaction, and I get more quiet time. For this introvert, quiet time on my own is critical to balance and well being.

I’m under no illusion that things will be rainbow and sunshine from here on. Other parents also say that while some things get easier as they grow, others get harder. But I feel much better equipped to handle the current challenges than I did the old ones. So add my voice to the chorus. When the youngest is about five, it gets easier. I’m glad we’ve all hung in there to find this was true.

Last night was my husband G. Grod’s turn to pick what we watched, and he chose Ghostbusters, as part of a recent 80’s comedy bender we’ve been on since we watched Trading Places at Christmastime. He was worried that it wouldn’t hold up, then spoiled all the lines and laughed throughout the movie. It _does_ hold up. It’s funny, with the teensiest bit of raunch, and Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd are perfectly hilarious as they confront creatures and get slimed. Yes, it does have some of the best lines:

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!

But I think my favorite moment is when Sigourney Weaver’s character comes out of the conservatory, and Murray is doing a little kick/hop/dance across the fountain square. It’s brief, funny and charming. Rather like the whole movie.

English fantasy writer Diana Wynne Jones passed away March 26 after a long bout of cancer. I feel fortunate to have read her work, which I owe to my dear friend Thalia. I met English Thalia in Philadelphia in the mid-90s, and in the back and forth of new friends who are also book geeks, she lent me The Lives of Christopher Chant, and told me about how she’d read that instead of studying for one of her critical final exams. I devoured that, then quickly sought out Jones’ other work, which was easy to do. DWJ was a prolific writer over several decades, and so popular in England that most of her books were not only still in print, but also available in American editions. Neil Gaiman has said her books were an influence, and J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter series has many similarities to it.

Her intelligent and beautifully written fantasies are of seminal importance for their bridging of the gap between “traditional” children’s fantasy, as written by CS Lewis or E Nesbit, and the more politically and socially aware children’s literature of the modern period,

Reading her obituary in the Guardian, I am amazed at authors whose lives she crossed: Arthur Ransome, Beatrix Potter, C.S. Lewis, and Tolkien. And her work now stands deservedly alongside theirs on bookshelves in homes, libraries and bookstores across the world.

If you haven’t yet read Diana Wynne Jones, you are missing wonderful things. I particularly recommend Charmed Life and The Lives of Christopher Chant (in that order), Howl’s Moving Castle, and Deep Secret.