Wasted Lives, Ruined Lives, Semi-Recaptured Lives: The Book List

Ah, the book list returns. It’s been a while simply because I read Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives, which tore at my soul and consumed my life for about four weeks. It got rave reviews and was one of the New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2007, but only sheer force of will (and the fact that I can rarely let anything remotely involving Mexico alone) got me through it. It is a postmodernist’s delight and I am no postmodernist. Give me something written in 1400 any day of the week. Striking at times? Yes. Evocative? In places. Worth my four weeks? No. A true story with an ending that, if not satisfactory, made sense and seemed at ease with the rest of the book? Nope.

After letting go of Bolaño, I moved onto other books. First up was The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell, a book that was a Barnes and Noble Recommends title, much like Love Is a Mix Tape. I resisted Esme, though – it didn’t seem like the type of book I’d enjoy and I feared it would only be chick lit, a genre which I disdain for its reassurance that acting like an insane harpy who shops nonstop is the precise way to land a man and live happily ever after (instead of, you know, taking responsibility of your life, planning, and living it outside of the material world). However, on a day in which I was look to buy Katharine Hepburn bios and needed a couple of dollars to complete my free shipping requirement at Barnes and Noble, I finally gave into their recommendation (in no small part because the book was bargain priced at $3).

I was pleasantly surprised. A quick read, but an entertaining one. Far from being the enabling, silly chick lit that I feared, this was a true work of literature that explored the sufferings of women when they had no choices to make themselves. No wacky great-aunts terrorizing their flighty grand-nieces here (which is what I thought when I skimmed the description); instead, it was a balanced, nuanced story about family secrets and a prim society that lead to many women being labeled as mentally ill when in fact they were expressing individuality and the right to be unhappy in their lives.

I will say this about the book – O’Farrell is a very skilled writer, developing characters and settings with ease, but the book is predictable. I knew the trajectory of the book less than halfway through, even as the author tried to confuse us with back stories that might account for and explain any suspicions aroused in the reader. The Washington Post said that “you read on in a panic, horrified that you may be right”; I wouldn’t characterize my pressing on as panic as nothing surprises me about what may have happened to powerless women at one time or another. The panic is a luxury you can afford if you believe that autonomy existed for everyone, equally, at all times. It is still an excellent read, especially in its ending; although you might no what’s coming next during your reading, you’re unsure of what’s next when the book ends. There are many possibilities but you can only speculate at that point, and as an avid reader and sometimes writer, I like to let my imagination fill in the blanks at times.

Speaking of imagination, onto the next book that rounds out this post – Stephen King’s Duma Key. Anyone who has perused this blog’s reading list knows that I came to King’s writing pretty late in my nearly 30-year span of life. I simply didn’t consider King worth my time and preferred to have my horror provided by good movies that hinted at horror. (Or provided it outright when a zombie bit into the neck of an unwitting survivor, but I digress.) However, upon sitting down to actually read King, I discovered that he could produce that terror that sneaks up on you, settles into a small space in your brain, and won’t leave until you will yourself to forget what is scaring you. I’m not sure how many of King’s works I’ve read, but I do know that his later stuff is hit or miss (see From a Buick 8 for a solid hit, Cell for a solid miss). Duma Key falls into a little of both (note: spoilers ahead for those who want to read the book).

Duma Key is the story of Edgar Freemantle, a rich contractor who suffers an “other life” ending accident while on-site at one of his projects. What follows is Edgar’s recovery, which encompasses everything from physical therapy to divorce to moving to Duma Key, Florida. There, he begins to paint as therapy, channeling great works of art that seemingly come from nowhere – he sketched as a child, but doodles on a phone pad had been his only artwork during his time as a contractor. His urge to paint is signaled to him by the itching of his right arm, which no longer exists, having been lost in the accident that nearly cost him his life and his memory.

As with all of King’s story, there’s horror in the ordinary – Edgar begins to paint and plays with reality in those paintings, not realizing the power that is being generated from his work. And of course things begin to spiral out of control, affecting his family and friends – much like it did for the novel’s other artist, Elizabeth Eastlake, when she was a child prodigy. At the center of all this power is Perse, the antagonist who makes everyone’s life a living and has a habit of taking daughters away. Perse taps into Edgar, Elizabeth and secondary character Wireman through their head injuries – inflicted by a crane, a pony-trap, and a gun, respectively.

And it is Perse, in her physical manifestation, that disappointed me most about Duma Key. I really have no questions where she came from – her name associates with the Oceanids of Greek mythology, ocean deities who (Perse in particular) gave rise to witches or were associated with them. Her ship, the Persephone, is an obvious hat-tip to the queen of the underworld in Greek mythology – however, Perse’s ship is more like a saltwater purgatory in which the dead can never really find rest, are allowed to periodically leave, but ultimately exist only to do Perse’s bidding in gathering more souls for her floating kingdom. That she seemed to emerge from nowhere to influence Elizabeth and Edgar did not trouble me – after all, where did Randall Flag come from in The Stand? If there is good helping Edgar that is not explained, why demand more of the evil? Her physical manifestation, though, as a small china doll that resorts to biting Edgar in her attempt to escape him and his plans for her? It made me giggle out loud.

Perse aside, Duma Key was classic King – everything seems to be going okay until the supernatural elements start to creep in and slowly take control of the ordinary, everyday world. Particularly touching is Edgar’s relationship with his youngest daughter, Ilse. Despite all he does to protect her, Ilse is hurt, first by her wandering Baptist boyfriend, later by Perse. Edgar’s final act is to release Ilse from the Persephone, ensuring a peaceful afterlife instead of an undeath aboard a ship from hell. As a self-professed Daddy’s girl, I know my father did everything in his power to protect me as I grew, but it got to a point where it slipped beyond his grasp. That doesn’t lessen the love, though, and knowing it strengthens our bond. In Edgar’s case, Ilse is in a period where she is just blossoming into an adult – Edgar notes this throughout the book – but her father’s one last try to save her ultimately fails. To take someone on the cusp of adulthood – when things will slip out of a parent’s grasp permanently but most likely not fatally – is the cruelest trick that Perse played.

What next on the book list? Good question. I still haven’t quite decided. Biography or more fiction? Hmm.

Onto the book list:

Finished:

1) Flesh and Spirit: Private Life in Early Modern Germany by Steven E. Ozment
2) Women at the Beginning – Origin Myths from the Amazons to the Virgin Mary by Patrick J. Geary
3) Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
4) A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts by Robert Bolt
5) Lisey’s Story by Stephen King
6) 1776 by David McCullough
7) The Savage Detectives: A Novel by Roberto Bolaño (Translation by Natasha Wimmer)
8) The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
9) Duma Key by Stephen King

Re-read:

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Currently Reading:

1) Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes by Eamon Duffy
2) The Aeneid by Virgil (Translation by Robert Fagles)

Waiting To Be Read (Already Purchased, Got as Gifts, Borrowed from My Boyfriend, or Otherwise Accessible without the Use of Funds, But Not an Assurance That I Will Read These Before I Buy More Books):

1) The Pillars of the Earthby Ken Follett
2) The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A. J. Jacobs
3) People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
4) Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn by William J. Mann
4) Me by Katharine Hepburn