Girl Detective

#51 in my book challenge for the year, In the Shadow of the Law is a legal thriller. It is sure to be compared to Grisham, which is unfortunate, because In the Shadow of the Law is a solidly written, non-formulaic thriller.

Roosevelt is a professor of law and former Supreme Court clerk. His prose is sometimes more exuberant than necessary, but perhaps fiction provides a welcome departure from legal-ese. There is plenty of the latter in this book. One of the characters, Mark, is a clueless first-year student, who regularly asks other characters what is going on. His ignorance means others explain legal facts to him and thus to the reader. While this is useful to the plot and informative in general, sometimes the explanations are long and result in unbelievable dialogue.

The best developed character is Walker, the former Supreme Court clerk who eventually looks to escape the crush of the firm by becoming a law professor. While some of the other characters were a little too easily categorized, each was given a good amount of complex and believable backstory. There was Mark, the clueless one, Katja, the hardworking one, Peter the soulless head of the firm, and Ryan, the boorish one who thinks he’s smarter than he is. Ryan is so obnoxious that I found the chapters on him difficult to read. I became excited when it looked as if Ryan might die a quick and nasty death. Instead, he goes on to an interesting fate that I did not foresee.

At one point, I thought I had foreseen a key plot point to the ending, but it it turned out to be merely one of several factors. The book centers on two cases, a chemical fire and a death-row appeal. Both the cases in the plot were tied up well and believably. The case endings and the fates of the characters were pleasant surprises, not formulaic or predictable. This was a smart, promising legal thriller.

The term comfort food can cover a lot of bases. It can be what one seeks out when depressed, ill, or fatigued. For me it can also encompass nostalgia–this food from that favorite restaurant, or this food because I used to eat it with that person.

Last month, I visited the east coast. A friend picked me up at the train station, and I said I needed something to eat. She mentioned a restaurant I’d never much liked, but that was close. To my surprise and delight, she had mixed up what was where, and we walked instead into a new location of a bakery that I loved when I lived there. I did not see either of the two favorite treats I used to get, but I asked with tentative hope for a berry roll or a grape focaccia. Imagine my further delight: they had both. They heated the focaccia and toasted the berry roll, then gave me goat cheese to spread on it. My friend shared the details of her new academic fellowship while I munched on two favorite foods that I’d often eaten in her company years ago. It was a lovely reunion, however brief, with my friend. It was all the more lovely for the serendipitous addition of favored food.

I have reached and now surpassed my 50 book challenge for the year, coming squeakily close to doing it by the end of June, if it hadn’t been for the overlong Prep. Since I managed to reach my goal just past the middle of the year, I have re-evaluated. In general, the goal is a good one–approximately one book a week for a year. But I also read graphic novels and teen fiction, both of which are usually very fast reads. I wondered if I should stop counting these books, and only list the so-called adult books. Yet that seems unfair. They may be faster to read, but they’re still books, and books deserving of wider attention and appreciation than they’re usually given. Based on my personal choice of reading matter, I think a goal of 100 books for the year would be a more suitable challenge. It would urge me to read, on average, one “big” book and one young adult or graphic novel a week. The new goal, then, is 100 books for the year. I’m already behind!

Chasing my toddler Drake with a full dropper of baby Motrin:

“Don’t run from the drugs, sweetie. They bring happiness and relief.”

Yet I told the truth. After the Motrin, both he and I were happy and relieved, because the most challenging parts of the day (i.e., screaming and tantrums–mostly his) were over.

I recently noted how I had a hard time recommending Mr. and Mrs. Smith because most people interrupted to say that they didn’t like Angelina. While I certainly understand being bugged by an actor, I also know that good directors can get compelling performances out of normally average actors. Two relatively unknown films I have recommended often get eye rolls because of their stars, yet those who pass up these movies will miss out, because they are treats.

Out of Sight, directed by Steven Soderburgh, starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez.

Femme Fatale, directed by Brian De Palma, starring Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and Antonio Banderas.

#50 in my 50 book challenge for the year was Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, about a midwestern girl who attends an exclusive east-coast prep school on scholarship. Sittenfeld recently wrote a mean-spirited review of Melissa Bank’s The Wonder Spot, which I thought was a sweet, well-written book. When a friend gave me her copy of Prep, I decided to judge for myself whether Sittenfeld had written a good book, and whether it was better than Bank’s.

The answer was no, on both counts. Prep reminded me in tone of Alexander Payne’s film About Schmidt. It dwelt on the awkward, the ugly and the embarrassing in human nature with scarce redemption to balance the pain. My friend had noted, “the main character is a little self-involved. Sometimes I wanted to slap her upside the head and tell her to get over herself.” My friend is much kinder than I am. I found the main character, Lee Fiora, so self-involved that she was almost completely unsympathetic, and I spent most of the book’s 400+ pages wanting to shake some sense into her. Lee was an uncomfortable mix–hyper-observant of others, yet uninsightful about herself. Her actions consistently hurt those around her. Four hundred pages lacking in self-awareness, growth, and plot did not make for an enjoyable or rewarding reading experience. Prep read like an uncomfortably realistic high-school girl’s journal, with the boring, overwrought and turgid bits left in.

Prep, though, is not without merit. Sittenfeld’s prose was overall good, and she had some excellent insights into issues of class, as cwhen Lee notes how she sometimes wears her non-scholarship roommates clothes: “And I could have offered her something of mine, but she didn’t wear my clothes, which was not a fact we discussed.” (P. 252)

A weird thing that bothered me was that Sittenfeld used semi-colons so liberally that I suspect many of them had to be edited out. Most pages had a semi-colon and frequent em-dashes, and as a former copyeditor I found these punctuation marks to be distractingly frequent.

A weird thing I liked, though, was the cover, which has a pink and green grosgrain belt that is realistically crinkly to the touch.

Who on earth would be ringing our doorbell at 8:05 a.m. on a Sunday, we wondered. Yet no one was there. It occurred to my husband G. Grod that he had just turned on our laptop. The doorbell, which is radio controlled, rang several more times during the day, always in conjunction with some activity on the laptop. We have removed the batteries from the doorbell until we have a better solution. Better to disable the doorbell than the laptop, methinks.

Descending basement stairs carrying laptop, power cord, wireless mouse, hardcover book, glass of juice and snack was not a good idea. Better to take spillable item on separate trip.

Note to husband: laptop is fine. So am I.

The exterminator came today after I sighted what turned out to be an earwig yesterday, a roach a week ago, and far too many centipedes last month. He agreed with me that the lone roach was probably a fluke. He did not seem nearly impressed enough that I’d had to presence of mind to save the corpse. Yet that’s what ALL exterminators ask for, and they often doubt that it was a roach, and I could prove it!

Sadly, I have had a fair number of roach outbreaks, all of which have proved to either be flukes, i.e., they came in from a box or paper bag, or overflows from somebody else’s roach nest. Even I’m beginning to be suspicious. Maybe it is me. I’m not the most sluttish housekeeper in the world, but the place isn’t sparkling, either.

As for the centipedes, he said the bad news about them and about spiders is that they’re the top of the insect food chain, so if we’ve got ‘em, it means we have other insects as well that they’re feeding off. So he sprayed inside and will come back to spray outside, and said that our dehumidifier, as well as the recent drier weather, should help a lot. Also, he noted that spiders don’t respond to spray because they just tiptoe over it, and don’t groom themselves like insects do.

Lovely image, don’t you think?

I did see one small centipede carcass already, so I’m feeling good about calling in the cavalry.

#31 in my 50 movie challenge for the year was Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I know that you may not like either of the stars, particularly Ms. Jolie, since this is a usual comment once I say that I saw and liked the movie. This was a good summer action film. It was funny, it had good car chase scenes, and like it or not, there was good chemistry between the stars. They looked like they were having fun. Vince Vaughn was good if underused in the role of Pitt’s less good looking but funnier friend. The metaphors of lying for repression and violence for sex were hardly veiled, but some of the updates on the war of the sexes were quite good, e.g., he keeps his guns in the toolshed while she keeps hers in the oven.

#30 in my 50 movie challenge for the year was Crash, directed by Paul Haggis. In Altman-esque fashion, Crash follows a handful of characters through a few days and several belief-straining coincidences. But the story doesn’t suffer for these coincidences, as it doesn’t from a few bits of stilted dialogue. Instead, I was swept up in characters, their stories, and amazement because I didn’t see a bad performance in the bunch. Don Cheadle was, as usual, amazing, but the surprises were Sandra Bullock and Brendan Fraser, both cast against type. Matt Dillon and Terrence Dashon Howard both chewed up the screen during their scenes. Dillon’s character was sometimes so hateful that it was a brave role to take on, and an even braver one to do so powerfully. Crash was about racism, and it had some ugly moments, but it had compensating beautiful ones, too. What was most interesting was the complexity of the characters. Only one character seemed wholly good; the others were all a compelling, wrenchingly real mix of good and bad. I am still thinking about this film days after I saw it. One of the themes I took away was that we often can’t predict outcomes, so we might as well act in line with our higher ideals rather than out of our baser fears.

Drake is approaching his 2nd birthday. At his 18-month checkup, my husband G. Grod and I were abashed to admit that Drake wasn’t talking much; he made a lot of noise, but little of it was words. The doctor asked how many words he had. We generously said about eight. Then the doc asked how many words Drake said that other people would recognize as words. We generously said two or three. Since then, Drake’s language has had continuous momentum. I was not surprised to feel relief. What I have been surprised to feel, though, are twinges of sadness as he barrels along developmentally.

As do many children, Drake would identify animals by their sounds, or his approximation of their sounds, rather than by their names. A cat, for instance, was a “Beow.” As a responsible, teaching parent, every time he said “beow” I said, “the cat says Meow.” I emphasized the M and made sure that he could see my mouth as I formed the word. So it was with both great excitement and sadness that one day he looked back at me and said, “Meow.” A few months after that, he said, “cat.”

So now Drake knows that a cat says “meow” and he can communicate that with his own words. He has also shifted from “bu-POHN” to “button.” These are correct, and indicate that he’s learning and growing. I never thought I would, but I will always feel a pang for those sweet, brief days when a cat was a beow.

One is that the book has almost identical elements to All This Heavenly Glory by Elizabeth Crane. Both followed a female protagonist from girlhood to adulthood and centered on family, friends, boyfriends and jobs. Both books had the protagonist in a decent job with a younger boyfriend at the end.

What was unique about The Wonder Spot, though, was that Bank did not have a page or pages for acknowledgements. I usually enjoy reading these, because they often name the author’s teachers and members of their writing group. They can be straightforward, long and self-indulgent (the most painful I have read was in The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger), and funny. But it is singular not to have one, so I found this lack in The Wonder Spot to be curious. I’m choosing to interpret it as modest and self-effacing, in line with Bank’s writing style.

I’m coming to you cordless from the relative cool (about 80) of my basement as I test drive some new hardware while Drake naps. I have a few wrinkles to iron out, but I think a new writing routine is in the works, one that doesn’t involve skulking around the too-hot upstairs study.

Technically, I’m wireless, not cordless, but then I wouldn’t have been able to quote from one of the best teen movies ever, The Sure Thing. Did you miss that 80’s gem? If so, watch it to see Anthony Edwards with hair, Nicolette Sheridan before she became a skank, John Cusack being cute and charming as always, and a funny small role by Tim Robbins.

#49 in my 50 book challenge for the year, Necklace of Kisses revisits Block’s most famous character Weetzie Bat at 40. A kind friend lent me an advance reader’s edition, as this book has not yet been released. “Where were the kisses, Weetzie Bat wondered”, as she considers her failing relationship with My Secret Agent Lover Man. In the wake of 9/11 he has shut her out, and now goes by Max. Weetzie escapes to a pink hotel. We are treated to tantalizing and too-brief chapters on the supporting characters, including Max, Witch Baby (who now goes by Lily), and Cherokee Bat. Most of the book concerns Weetzie’s magical adventures at the hotel as she encounters a surgically altered mermaid, a satyr, a sweet transvestite, fairies on the run, and more. Some of the encounters are charming, some are menacing, and all are underscored by Weetzie’s desire to meet with Zane Starling, a boy from her youth that she didn’t kiss and now wishes that she had.

Block’s prose is lyrical and well suited to her story of magical realism. Both the story and the characters are more grounded than many of Block’s previous works. It was a bold and interesting move to take the ethereal character of Weetzie and to bring her forward from 80’s LA to situate her more squarely in the harsh light of modern time. I suspect that the increased realism is informed by Block’s own relatively recent motherhood, since many of Weetzie’s meditations concern raising Witch Baby and Cherokee. There is a touching scene in which the daughters admonish Weetzie to dress her age, grow up and go home. “And now they had looked at her so coolly, as if she were only monstrous in her orange sneakers.”

Necklace of Kisses is a sequel to a well-loved and critically acclaimed teen-fiction series (collected as Dangerous Angels), yet I believe it will be marketed by publisher HarperCollins as adult fiction, or more accurately a crossover book, one that will be shelved in adult sections in libraries and bookstores, but purchased by both adults and teens.

I am hesitant to critique the book because I have such affection for the characters and their author. While I was thrilled to revisit some of my favorite characters, I’m not sure I liked them as well as I did their 80’s selves. One of the things I love about Block’s books is how she writes about food. Here, though, Weetzie is a lactose-intolerant, sugar-eschewing, teetotalling vegetarian. The descriptions of food were still good, but I found the numerous dietary restrictions distracting, and the food in this book didn’t sound as delicious as in previous books. Also, there were a few too many awkward brand name mentions. What discomfited me most, though, is the dreadful cover featuring a photo-realistic sparkly pink suitcase. (Weetzie’s suitcase in the novel is covered with tiny pink rosebuds.) I was embarrassed to be seen reading a book with that cover. I wished for a cover that was more impressionistic and ethereal, yet I wished that for the characters and the book as well. I wanted more balance between the magic and the realism, and instead Block veered too sharply between their extremes.

My dad served in the Navy during the early 70’s on a nuclear submarine. Growing up, this sounded wildly exciting. As an adult, however, I suspect the experience was much more mundane, especially given the two most common anecdotes my father cites from that time.

One, they cleaned the machinery with orange Kool-Aid. Moral of story: orange Kool-Aid is highly corrosive. (I liked grape better anyhow.)

Two, the eggs on board were not refrigerated for the entire, multi-week run. Moral of story: it’s hard to spoil an egg.

#48 in my 50 book challenge for the year. Block is one of my favorite authors. Wasteland, a teen-fiction novel, is the spare, bittersweet story of Marina, and her sorrow in the wake of her brother Lex’s death. Marina casts about for reasons, aided by her friend West. The book is narrated alternately by all three, even by Lex, seemingly from beyond the dead. The book is powerful and provocative, but I felt Block pulled her punches at the end with a soap-opera-convention plot turn. It is filled with late 70’s/early 80’s detail, and does not have much of Block’s characteristic poetic prose and magical realism, though it is nonetheless beautifully written.

You died. You were sitting on the bleachers in P.E. when Ms. Sand told you to go to the principal’s office. You were peeling the yellow rubber thing that said N.H.H.S. off of your green gym shorts and chewing your fingernails on the other hand. You could taste the bitter peel of polish. You were staring down through the slats of the bleachers to the gym floor. You were not even forcing tears back down because there weren’t any because you were dead.

You, that’s me. You called me you and I called you you. That was our name for each other. When you died I did and so it didn’t matter. (P. 19)

We bought this wheeled attachment for Drake’s car seat for Drake’s and my trip to see my family in central Ohio, where he got some good quality time with my parents and his aunts and uncles.

It adds wheels to the car seat for easy transport through the airport onto the plane and off. It allowed me not to take the stroller on the trip, and ensured that travelling with Drake by myself was much more manageable. I wish we’d had it ages ago.

Travelling went mostly well. Drake was a little scream-y, perhaps due to incoming molars. Going out, the sour-faced woman in front of me did not seem to appreciate my apology, but the kind woman with her daughter in back of me assured me that it does get easier over time. And coming back, the man at the gate went above and beyond to get Drake his own seat so I could bring the car seat on with me and not have to hold him in my lap, and our flight was smooth and early.

Drake threw an on-the-ground, kicking, screaming tantrum after the 4th of July parade, though he did enjoy seeing the fire trucks and horses. He also very much enjoyed frozen custard, a lemon shake, and french fries with ketchup and vinegar. He won’t be two for while yet, but I think he’s got some of the behaviors already, both good and challenging.

My husband and I got married and moved in together in 1998. We bought a condo in 2001. We had our son Drake in 2003. We bought a house last fall. Yet G. Grod swears that he didn’t witness true commitment on my part until last month, when I finally merged our comic book collections. For years, his Green Lanterns, Wolverines, and Uncanny X-Men have been sequestered in their own boxes. And for a while, I fiddled around with an elaborate filing system that had completed series in one place and titles I was continuing to buy in another. My friend the Big Brain rolled his eyes, and advised me that there should only be two piles–read, and unread. So I merged all our titles, filed them alphabetically, and the only ones out are the ones unread. Additionally, I put all the graphic novels together, too, filed mostly by title, though a few are by author’s last name. They are arrayed in one line above the computer as I type. It feels good to know that I am both better organized, and that my husband thinks I’ve finally committed to this relationship.

In my writing group, we try to have a credo of no apologies, with the assumption that we are all busy people, not sitting around on chaises eating bon bons. Unfortunately, I find it very hard not to apologize sometimes. I haven’t posted much this week, and won’t be posting next week, either, so please check back week after next.

Among other things, I’ve been working on my novel. I took my favorite chapter, which was 5 pages. I wrote a revision from memory, which was 13 pages. Then I edited down the revised chapter to 6 pages, and am really pleased with the result. So pleased that I actually submitted it for a publication. Without having anyone else read it.

If I think too much about this, it terrifies me.