Girl Detective

It’s only the second month of the year, and my notes on movies are already hopeless out of whack. I have some on my list that aren’t on the blog, and vice versa. Even though I’m taking a break from the compulsion to see everything that usually is Oscar season for me, I still have seen nearly as many movies as I’ve read books. I’d like the movies to be a definite second, not a close one. After I post this, I’m going to my library request list and cull it of any other than “I want to see it NOW” films.

Greenberg (2010) d. Noah Baumbach. I don’t like Ben Stiller. But this was a smart, extremely weird, often uncomfortable but sometimes charming and hopeful movie. I’m not sure I’m glad I saw it, but I’m not sorry, either. (This was my pick from the library.) It hadn’t occurred to me till I read the trivia at IMDB, but the character of Florence does bear interesting similarities to Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Stacy in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

High Noon (1952) d. Fred Zinneman, with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. (My husband’s pick from the library.) An aging but still mesmerizing Cooper is the lawman who’s trying to retire when the rumored appearance of his old nemesis makes him question whether to stay and defend his town, while his virginal, Quaker bride urges him to leave with her, and rejects him when he doesn’t. Is he a macho idiot, or a heroic man? The film is satisfyingly vague enough about this to make it much more than a simple morality tale, and has more than a few echoes of its soon-to-be-blacklisted writer, Carl Foreman. Highly recommended.

Ponyo (2008) (My pick for the kids from the library.) Neither boy enjoyed this when we saw it in the theater, to my profound disappointment. Yet 7yo Drake especially liked the movie at home, and 5yo Guppy didn’t dislike it this time around. I’m beginning to suspect that familiarity may breed affection with these boys and movies, and they’re rarely going to like something the first time they see it. This is Hayao Miyazaki’s lovely take on Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Mermaid, that is not creepy and anti-feminist and sexist like the Disney movie is. A little fish girl falls in love with a 5yo boy. Her father disapproves, and the ocean falls out of balance unless things can be resolved. Sweet and lovely, Ponyo is rated G and one of the better films out there for kids–accessible, with an ecological subtext.

Spaced was a Channel 4 UK television series in the early 00’s, with Simon Pegg and Mike Frost, directed by Edgar Wright, who also collaborated on Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. There are only two short seasons of seven episodes apiece; the second series was commissioned before the first season even aired. Pegg is Tim, a wannabe comic artist who works in a comic shop. He becomes friends with Daisy, played by Jessica Stevenson, and they rent a flat together pretending to be a couple. Supporting cast includes Frost in his first acting gig, as Tim’s gun-crazy friend Mike, Daisy’s snotty friend Twist, Brian the crazy artist, Marsha the red-wine-guzzling lockjawed landlady, and Tyres, their insane bike-messenger friend. Weird, sweet, and hilarious. I can’t believe the UK had this, and we had Friends. Unfair.

I didn’t feel the love for One Day that critics did. It’s covered with amatory blurbs. I read it for one of my book groups, Books and Bars, and probably would have put it down.

The conceit is descriptions of only one day per year of the two main characters, Emma and Dexter, whom we meet in bed the morning after they finish university. Emma is a brainy feminist idealist. Dexter is a handsome lazy guy from a wealthy family who develops a drinking problem. Since the book starts with them in bed, it ostensibly avoids some of the “will they or won’t they,” yet it doesn’t. That tension underlies most of the book, and I didn’t find it that compelling, mostly because I didn’t care for the main characters. I am fine with unlikeable characters, but only if they are complex. Emma and Dexter were unlikeable because they were uninteresting to me, each a pastiche of unsurprising stock traits.

There is a major twist toward the end, and I feel the book picked up a bit after that, if only because there was finally some character development, but it was too little, too late for me. I leaked a few grudging tears at the end, so wasn’t unmoved, but became annoyed with it again as I tried to find illustrative quotes, and have given up. Not for me, but it did inspire a good book discussion, even if many of us left without figuring out why others loved the book.

Next up: Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold (aka Mr. Alice Sebold.)

I saw the spine of I Think I Love You, and had to pick it up; that was a favorite song from my girlhood and had a renaissance in college when my roommates and I would get up on a coffee table and sing it with improvised microphones at the top of our lungs. I think we all also had it played at our weddings; I have a photo in my wedding album of us dancing and singing to it.

After I picked it up I saw it was by Allison Pearson, whose I Don’t Know How She Does It I enjoyed and it helped me make the decision to resign my corporate job and stay home with my then 9mo son Drake. The description of I Think I Love You talked about teen idols, girls’ friendships, women’s friendship, the difficulties of middle age, all of which sounded right in my wheelhouse. The back blurbs were starred reviews from PW and Kirkus. I charmed a double discount from the guy behind the desk, and walked out with it, which was going to happen in any case.

The book centers on Petra, a 13 year old Welsh girl in 1974 hopelessly in love with David Cassidy. She holds a precarious place in a clique of girls, and a burgeoning best-friendship with Sharon. Petra’s chapters alternate, though, with Bill, a college-grad know-it-all who ghost writes an English David Cassidy fan magazine. As much as it shames him, he finds he is very good at his job, while he tells his girlfriend he’s a rock journalist, bending the truth more than a bit.

Bill stood and watched beside the other journalists, most of them men, none of them Cassidy fans; not in public, at any rate. How surprising it was, then, to see their lips move in sync to half the songs, as if they had been versed in his collected works by the power of hypnotic suggestion. Maybe they couldn’t help it; maybe they just had the radio on all day, in the kitchen at home, beside the draining board, and then on a shelf at the office, next to an open window. Cassidy songs would come and go, through an average radio day, and over the weeks they would seep into your nervous system, whether you wanted them there or not, and you would find yourself breaking out into a song, no more able to prevent it than you would a violent rash. (145)

The book moved from the 70’s to the 90’s, and does a very good psychological portrait of teenage fandom. Both the dust jacket and the binding are a blinding hot pink, so you have to embrace that you’re reading chicklit; I can’t really imagine a guy reading this book. It is by a woman, about girls and women, and really for girls and women and the different stages of life and love that many of us go through.

I was born a little late for the David Cassidy craze. My first pop crush was Donny Osmond, and my second was David’s younger half-brother, Shaun. But the details of pop-star worship are dead on, even with different pop stars, and girls from a different country than mine. If you ever had a crush on a pop star or ever suffered the cruelty of other girls, then I think you’ll find much to identify with and appreciate here.

This year I finally acknowledged how silly it was to say I wasn’t going to buy any books. So I noted something like I’d try to keep it to two a month. Which did not take into account graphic novels, so it’s not a much less silly goal. I’m not sure what a reasonable one would be, but perhaps I can keep track of this year’s acquisitions, and base next year’s on it? (Did you notice how I weaseled out of accountability for the WHOLE YEAR?)

For my own purposes (and perhaps as an excuse to my husband, who is a little better than me about not buying books) I’ll include the rationalizations/perfectly good reasons.

One Day by David Nicholls. For Books and Bars on 2/22/11. Also because I could have won something by buying a book. Didn’t win.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins. Because I saw the movie and read a recommendation at The Morning News.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. Bought for The Morning News Tournament of Books because library queue too long, and I really enjoyed Bender’s An Invisible Sign of My Own.

News to Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist by Laurie Hertzel. I won a signed copy at my friend Amy’s blog. Woo!

Savages by Don Winslow. Same reason as Lemon Cake: ToB plus library queue too long.

Number of these I have even started: 0.

Speaking of Faith by Krista Tippett. Because I’m starting a book group on literature with religious and mythic themes. I thought this might have a related essay.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Because this was recommended online as an example of the Demeter/Persephone myth, so I might want to read it for the above-mentioned book group, and it’s an Oxford World Classics edition, my favorite.

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald. I recently read an old Guardian article dishing on past Booker decisions; it made me want to seek this out. Since it’s about women and philosophy, I thought it might also work for the book group.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Because it’s about women and religion and I might want to read it for the book group, and when I went to look for my copy, I couldn’t find it.

I Think I Love You by Alison Pearson. Four of these things belong together; one of these things just doesn’t belong…It’s awfully pink, no? Saw the title, which was one of my favorite party songs in college, saw it was by Alison Pearson, whose I Don’t Know How She Does It I loved, saw it was about girlhood crushes, friendship, aging, motherhood, and had starred reviews from Kirkus and PW. I couldn’t leave Barnes and Noble without it, and it jumped the TBR queue ahead of all the other books in this entry. And I love it. So there.

I will lead a discussion next week of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, and just finished re-reading it. This was my third time through, and I like it better each time (2005, and in 2007).

Gilead is narrated by John Ames, a 76-year-old Congregationalist minister in small-town Iowa during the 1950’s. Ames married late in life, and has a seven-year-old son to whom he’s writing a series of letters for when he’s gone. In them, he describes his family, including his father and grandfather, both preachers, though of very different approaches. The family history is tied to the town of Gilead, and its past of racial unrest. During the writing of his letters, Ames is disturbed by the return to town of his godson and namesake, John Ames Boughton, called Jack.

He is not the eldest or the youngest or the best or the bravest, only the most beloved.

Ames experiences jealousy, anger and fear as he struggles to understand the complicated relationship between this young man (the son of Ames’ best friend) and himself. Themes of mortality, religion, prejudice, relationships and belief underpin the book, all told in Robinson’s clear, beautiful prose. Ames can be a slippery narrator, though, often writing one thing when the truth lies clearly elsewhere. In interviews about the book, Robinson has said the conflicting Biblical stories of Gilead intrigued her. The phrase “balm of Gilead” refers to something made from a native healing plant, yet a possible translation of Gilead is “rocky area.” Robinson carries this disparity through in the book, urging the reader to realize multiple, often conflicting truths.

The book barely acknowledges World War II and the Holocaust, though it’s set in 1956 America. Further, much is made of the suffering of fathers and sons, but little of daughters and their mothers. I suspect these are deliberate omissions, though, examples of the complicated nature of Gilead and John Ames.

Thoughtful and meditative, this is a book to savor, not gobble, and especially poignant in its consideration of the many complications in father/son relationships.

A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.

This week my younger son, Guppy, turned 5. He is, as I often tell him, a joy and a wonder. He is strong, sturdy, and independent.

Last summer he rode a bike with training wheels, and this summer we’ll try to take them off, and see what happens.

He learned to read this past year, though he often insists if I ask him what something says, “I can’t _read!_” (like the dog in the Snausages commercial).

He went through a “tagging” phase recently, where he wrote his name on things all over the house. Including my library book.

I’m often told he has a very cute speaking voice. His Ls and Rs are still a bit unclear; he tends to roll them, and the effect is sweet and funny, especially on names like Star Wars villain General Grievous. Obi-Wan is pronounced Obi-One, and Darth’s second name is Vater, but I’m sure these will be corrected in all good time.

For his birthday, he got a remote-controlled Hail Fire Droid ship with 18 working missiles, that he promptly figured out how to fire. At his older brother Drake. (It sounds more like Hellfire Droid when he says it, and I’m not sure that’s too far off.)

Like Drake (and because of him, I’m sure) Guppy loves comic books (though he insists he doesn’t like going to the comic shop), television, and video games (especially the Star Wars Lego ones). He is often sweet and affectionate, and is generous with his hugs. He is very much looking forward to day camp this summer, and kindergarten in the fall.

And readers, so am I. I love Guppy, but I also love having time apart from Guppy, and I’ll be interested to see how his individuality grows as he moves further out into the world.

This quote is from Gilead, which I re-read this week, and it reminded me very much of the many fleeting moments I’ll look at Guppy (and Drake, and my husband) and feel so very fortunate, or, in the language of Gilead, blessed:

Your existence is a delight to us.

Emma Donoghue’s Room arrived to much hoopla last fall. This was largely due to its explosive subject matter, a mother raising her now-five-year-old son in a small room. The boy, Jack, knows nothing of the outside world, and narrates the book.

Here’s what I can say without spoilers: this is a powerful book about a mother and son. The author, for the most part, pulls off the tricky feat of the five-year-old narrator. This is not a happy-sunshine book, but neither is it apocalyptic doom. It’s provocative and well worth reading not only for its many merits, but also to talk about it later. Those who might want to avoid it are readers averse to stories with deadbeat fathers, child-in-danger motifs, or violence/rape of women, though these last were not graphic.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

***

Seriously, spoilers. Don’t read if you haven’t read it. You don’t want to know.

I was amazed by the powerful narrative of the beginning of the book, and impressed with the slow accretion of facts filling in the background of the little boy and his mother, Ma, and how they came to be in Room. I loved the proper naming of everything in their tiny space, like Bed, Toilet, and Meltedy Spoon. I was impressed by the energy and ingenuity of Ma and the many ways she invented to raise Jack in isolation. For the first half, I felt compelled to read the book. It had a very high must-know-what-happens quotient. I was also impressed by how the author raised anxiety to a breaking point in me as a reader, then changed the setting to the outside world. I could feel what Jack and Ma were feeling throughout, and other characters as well. The psychology and motivations are very well done even if often squirm-inducingly uncomfortable.

The second half of the book, in the outside world, wasn’t as compelling to me as the first for several reasons. One, Jack’s voice wasn’t as consistently believable as a young boy:

That helicopter was full of paparazzi trying to steal pictures of me and Ma.

Two, everyone from the outside was either continually insensitive (Ma’s mother, father, and brother’s family, Noreen the nurse, the Oprah-ish character, i.e. most people) or not (Officer Oh, Dr. Clay, Steppa Leo). There wasn’t a lot of variation in the way people reacted, even if I did clearly understand why some of them were being insensitive and often even empathized with them.

Three, the end of the novel became too overtly didactic at points, for example criticizing those who are uncomfortable with breastfeeding, and most parents for how they care for their children.

What was to be four, but has changed even in the writing of this, was that I found Ma without enough complexity. For the most part, she was a perfect mother, raising her child skillfully even in spite of the insane circumstances. Once outside, she continued to be a strong, vocal character, wavering little, and making sense in the face of many people’s nonsensical behavior. However, while I did understand her choice to keep the outside world from Jack until he was five, I had a very hard time with her cajoling him in the escape attempts. In the second half, many readers didn’t believe she would attempt suicide, leaving Jack on his own. I initially felt the same, but after reflection felt the opposite. Suicide is not a rational, balanced decision. It is, for most, a strong impulse to stop the pain, which Ma had in abundance. I easily believe her pain and PTSD could have overwhelmed her protectiveness of Jack, especially now that she was away from her captor and in a safe environment with Dr. Clay and Noreen on the inside, and her mother and brother on the outside. So while initially Ma struck me as not complex enough, I changed my mind.

In the end, I recommend this book. Its many strengths far outweigh the few criticisms I had, and I suspect the characters will stay with me for some time.

For two other reviews I liked see Aimee Bender’s at the New York Times and one from the Entertainment Weekly blog.

Depending on how the author writes, I can either loathe the mention of food in books, or be so enamored of it that I get hungry and promptly want what’s being described.

Two series in which the many food references didn’t work for me were in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, and in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice series, beginning serialization on HBO this month with A Game of Thrones. In the Larsson books, I lost count of how many sandwiches, cups of coffee, and frozen Billy’s pizza were consumed. None of them sounded appetizing. Only dull and repetitive.

Ditto the food in the Song of Fire and Ice books. The food, along with what characters were wearing, was described so many times, and in such unnecessary detail, that I gave up partway through the third book, and am now afraid to pick up the series again as many fans fear Martin is going to die before he finishes the fifth book, which isn’t even the last in the series. And while the food, sauces and serving styles were repeated ad nauseum, vegetables are pretty much nowhere, something I noticed after reading Diana Wynne Jones’ Tough Guide to Fantasy Books. Meat: yes! Fruit: sometimes. Vegetables or salad? No way.

Two recent books had me salivating, though. Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad books, especially The Likeness, mentioned so many types of biscuits (cookies) so often that I now have both ginger lemon and chocolate cream in the house. Hollis Henry’s description of broasted potatoes from William Gibson’s Spook Country made me long for them. Hubertus Bigend in Zero History recommends The Full English breakfast a few times, so I ate baked beans with my eggs and toast all last week and am considering whether I want to go to Anchor Fish and Chips for the Full Whack. (Yes, you can get a Full Irish in Minneapolis!)

What food in what recent books has made you hungry, or horrified?

The third in Gibson’s “Bigend” trilogy, Zero History brings back two of the three main characters from Spook Country, Milgrim and Hollis. Milgrim is now working for Bigend, and Hollis reluctantly drawn back into doing same.

She was starting her second cup, Times unread, when she saw Hubertus Bigend mount the stairhead, down the full length of the long room, wrapped in a wide, putty-colored trench coat.

He was the ultimate if velour-robe types, and might just as well have been wearing one now as he swept toward her through the drawing room, unknotting the coat’s belt as he came, pawing back its Crimean lapels, and revealing the only International Klein Blue suit she’d ever seen. He somehow managed always to give her the impression, seeing him again, that he’d grown visibly larger, though without gaining any particular weight. Simply bigger. Perhaps, she thought, if if he grew somehow closer.

Both Milgrim and Hollis are, improbably, on the trail of… wait for it…

pants. Milgrim is trying to find a prototype of a good military pant, while Hollis is recruited to track down something known as a secret brand. Tying together the marketing and fashion aspects from Pattern Recognition and the spy/spook elements from Spook Country, Zero History brings in old characters and weaves them in with new. It is not easily identifiable by genre, though Gibson is traditionally shelved in Science Fiction. There’s mystery, thriller, and even romance. This book, like its predecessors, was plain fun to read and had a huge amount of “I want to know what happens next” charisma, which carried me swiftly along, with short chapters and alternating viewpoints.

After finishing, I thoroughly enjoyed this interview with Gibson from the current print edition of Rain Taxi. And I look forward to spelunking through his previous works.

I get a lovely feeling in my heart when I’m sitting in a dark theater, munching popcorn, watching a movie while my kids laugh beside me–doing something I love, and sharing it with them. I have a much less warm feeling after the movie is over, and they make faces and say they hated the movie.

I don’t take my kids to every kid movie that comes out. I take them to a few a year that trusted critics and other parents have recommended. Yet again and again, they seem to be engaged, laughing, enjoying and wham, by the time we’re out the door, they are grumpy: How to Train Your Dragon (which they said they didn’t like, but agreed to see again), Fantastic Mr. Fox, Princess and the Frog, Up, Secret of the Kells, Toy Story 3, Despicable Me, Megamind, and now Tangled.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Tangled, either, though. Look, it’s a pretty blond princess who’s been kidnapped by a witch with kinky black hair! Look, an older rascal who is tamed by the virginal princess into a good man! The major building blocks of the movie were dry as dust, with uncomfortable racist and sexist undertones. Really, the whole plot is that of the standard bodice ripper that clearly no one at Disney has taken the time to interrogate enough, if at all.

Here’s what I liked: Pascal the chameleon was great. The name of the thugs’ bar is The Snuggly Duckling. I think that’s it. My boys liked Pascal, and they liked the parts with physical humor. That was about it.

I don’t know what I’m going to do about my boys and movies. About the only movies I can get them to approve of are most Pixar flicks, most Miyazaki flicks, and Mary Poppins. Oh, yeah. And the Star Wars movies. I’m going to keep trying, though. But clearly, modern kids’ movies don’t seem to be the way to go.

I always found my family’s banana bread recipe difficult to make. The baking time way exceeded the suggested hour, which seemed par for other recipes, too. Further, it often came out super dense and almost wet rather than moist, probably a result of including the liquid from the bottle of maraschino cherries. Later in life I fiddled with it, combining it with a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated with good results. Only recently, though, did it occur to me to try the original ingredients with CI’s method. I did this yesterday, and am happy to report success. Here, then, is my family’s recipe, minus extraneous liquid (the cherry juice and a Tablespoon of water to mix the baking soda in), with some whole-wheat flour replacing some of the AP flour, and using the Cook’s Illustrated method. In a perfect world, I’d freeze some, make either of the other recipes (original or combo) next and compare. That, though, would depend on me being able to leave any of this uneaten. Unlikely.

Great-Grandmother Jenny’s Banana Bread with Maraschino Cherries
(makes one standard loaf pan, or 3 mini loaves) If your bananas aren’t ripe enough, peel them and put them on a cookie sheet in the oven while it preheats. Remove them, let them cool, then mash and include them.

Ingredients:

4/3 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup (8 tablespoons, or 1 stick) butter, melted then cooled
2 large eggs, beaten lightly
3 very ripe bananas, mashed well (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 10-ounce bottle maraschino cherries, drained, rinsed, stems removed, each ripped or cut in halves or thirds

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour one standard loaf pan, or three mini loaf pans. Melt butter in microwave or over low heat on stovetop. Set aside to cool.

2. In medium-large bowl, mix or sift together flours, sugar, salt and soda.

3. Check that butter has cooled, or it will cook the eggs. In medium bowl, mix together melted butter, eggs, mashed bananas and cherries.

4. Lightly fold wet mixture into dry with rubber spatula until just combined. Batter should be chunky with no flour streaks.

5. Scrape batter into loaf pan(s). Bake until golden brown, and tester comes out clean, about 55 minutes for standard loaf, about 40 minutes for mini loaves. Cool in pan 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature. Store in an airtight container.