Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro

I was expecting big things from Alice Munro’s latest book of short stories Too Much Happiness.  Munro was recently awarded the Man Booker International Prize for her overall body of work (rather than just a single novel) and its contribution to fiction on the world stage.  Even before this award, she was lauded by critics both in North America (she is Canadian) and abroad. She is said to be “Chekhovian” and if by this we mean that her art tells the truth, as Chekhov asserts, then Chekhovian she is.  Munro’s truth can be shocking. It may be revealed to us suddenly, as in “Child’s Play” or may arrive gradually, at least to the protagonist, if not to the reader, as in “Deep Holes”.
I was a bit disappointed by some of these stories.  The”‘surprise ending” of Deep Holes felt manipulative, the device not worthy of an author of Monro’s stature. In most of the stories, “things” just happen to people, outrageous things even, yet the only reaction seems to be acceptance, disaffection and then the awkward adjustment to the new circumstance. In most cases, the characters seem to come to terms with these dislocations fairly quickly, and the true price paid is revealed years later. Munro somehow manages to pack decades into one short story and does it so smoothly that you forget that you’re not reading an entire novel.  Still, the most successful story is the longest, the title story “Too Much Happiness”.  It’s a beautiful and imaginative tale about Sophia, a mathematical genius at a time (19th century Russia and Europe) when such gifts only make her a freak.  Sophia struggles to find a way to make a life that allows her to be both a mathematician and a woman and lover. But it seems the two can’t be combined as Sophia is unlucky in love and works only as a teacher in a school for young people. The story ends with a dreamlike sequence as Sophia makes her way by train and ferry back to Sweden while deliriously ill with pneumonia.
While some of these stories are more successful than others, Monro always has something valuable to show us about human nature, our broken hearts and broken lives and our failed attempts to mend them.
Click here to find this book in our catalog.

Family Album by Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively’s new book Family Album presents itself as the story of an old fashioned (or out of fashion) large family of six children, growing up at the family estate of Allersmead.  This family is certainly everything that the perpetually smiling matriarch Alison has ever wanted, as she frequently tells anyone who will listen ….. “this lovely big family and a lovely home…. What mattered was the family, always..”  Whether this was what her husband Charles wanted is a matter of conjecture, as Charles is remote, sarcastic and always holed up in his study, writing.  Charles is present in body at selected important family events but emotionally he is a black hole.  Ingrid is the inscrutable Swedish au pair who comes as a young woman to help Alision with her brood and is still there 35 years later.

As for the children, Paul, Gina, Sandra, Roger, Katie and Clare, they are marked in their own ways by the discrepancy between the picture perfect family presented to the world (and to the children themselves) and the reality behind the façade.  Adulthood finds them scattered across the globe and none have produced children, apparently not seduced by Alison’s vision of the importance of family.  They rarely visit Allersmead, with the exception of Paul, the eldest, who hasn’t really ever managed to leave.
Lively is a good writer, and prolific, but this novel certainly doesn’t break new ground, nor is it particularly compelling.  A couple of secrets are revealed towards the end, but only the necessity of writing this blog entry caused me to finish the book. If you like books about the changing roles of women, about families and contemporary society in general, however, this unchallenging read may fit the bill.

Click here to find this book in our catalog.

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

I love poetry, I like a good laugh, and I love to philosophize, and Nicholson Baker gets all three right for me in his latest book, The Anthologist. Some in the library world may remember Baker as the grouch who savaged U. S. libraries for their failure to preserve documents in any manner other than digitally (Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper).  Click here to find this book in our catalog. In contrast, here Nicholson writes lovingly of poets and poetry. We’re treated to his opinions on rhyme and rhythm, on the origins of modernism and on the small world of poets as they head out to conferences and compete for inclusion in literary journals and anthologies.  Paul Chowder is the down-on-his-luck narrator who has just lost his girlfriend, Roz, because he has a bad case of writer’s block and she’s disgusted with his inability to get on with “it”. “It” would be the introduction to a poetry anthology that Paul has been hired to write but just can’t seem to. I say “seems” because through the course of Paul’s musings about poetry and his stream-of-consciousness observations of his everyday life, the introduction inadvertently gets written.  Roz comes back, and all is well again in Paul’s world. This short work of literary fiction is great fun. If you’re a reader of poetry, you’ll have fun disagreeing with many of Chowder’s (or is it Baker’s?) pronouncements. On the other hand, if you’ve been afraid to venture into the world of poetry, you’ll find this such a non-threatening introduction that you’ll soon be searching for your college anthology.

Click here to find this book in our catalog.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

Here’s what you need to know about Wells Tower: he tells it like it is. He doesn’t pretty it up, and unfortunately, he sees the world a lot more clearly than you do, so you’re going to have a deep, dark look at a reality that may make you fairly uncomfortable. His characters are on a downward trend. Bob, in “The Brown Coast” whose father has just died, has recently lost his job (reported to work drunk), rear-ended an attorney ($38,000 judgment, $2000 more than his inheritance) and been kicked out by his wife (caught in an infidelity). And the affair wasn’t even fun!  Here’s how Tower describes it: ”There’d been no joy in it, just a two-week spate of drab skirmishes in a basement apartment that smelled heavily of cat musk”.

“Retreat” uncovers the undying hatred between two brothers, one successful (in his own eyes), and the other not so much (in his brother’s eyes). It’s a tour de force of linguistic and situational hilarity.  You don’t know whether to laugh or cry because it’s so painful to watch them interact.  Matthew, the older brother, is such an ass, and Stephen, the younger by 3 years, has gotten the better of him since they were children. They hate each other bitterly, yet are periodically compelled to make another attempt at having a relationship.

The saving grace of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is that Tower’s sympathy for his characters shines through every heartbreaking word. In his bluntness, he hits no false notes, and he’ll have you guffawing as he nails a character, situation, or place. This wonderful debut collection of short stories is highly recommended.

Click here to find this book in our catalog.

Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure by Matthew Algeo

It is January 20, inauguration day.  The outgoing US President if flanked by Secret Service agents.  He is escorted to Marine One, the presidential helicopter, and with tight security and a watching press, he returns home.  He will receive a very large pension,  support staff, office space, travel funds, mailing privileges and a security detail.  It has not, however, always been this way.

Harry Truman left office in January  1953, without any of these perks.  He returned to Independence, Missouri, and to what he hoped would be a private life.  Many lucrative offers for speaking engagements and endorsements were made to Truman, but he rejected them, refusing to do what he felt would ‘commercialize’ the presidency.

Early that summer he bought a 1953 Chrysler and he and his wife Bess, along with millions of other Americans, took a road trip.  They drove from Independence to Washington, DC, then on to New York, to visit their daughter Margaret.   They believed that they could travel “incognito.”  It only took a few hours for them to realize how impossible that was!   Along the way they caused a sensation at almost every diner and filling station at which they stopped.

Public radio reporter Matthew Algeo has traced the Truman’s route as much as possible, and visited many of the same stops they made.   He chronicles this unlikely excursion in delightful prose.  In addition to a detailed itinerary, Algeo also provides many interesting side trips, both press and government reactions to the trip, and interviews with a variety of people who met the Trumans that summer.  This includs a highway patrolman who stopped the former president for driving too slowly in the fast lane.

This is a wonderful tale of a few weeks in the life of a former president.  It also provides an intimate peak at Harry and Bess Truman’s very private and devoted marriage.

Click here to find this book in our catalog.

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

What would happy if suddenly you could no longer use the letter ‘z’?  And then you could not use ‘q’; and then ‘j’?  This is precisely what has happened on Nollop, a 63 square mile autonomous island nation southeast of Charleston, SC.   This quirky island nation was founded in the 1840s and declared their independence from America in 1870.  It was originally named Utopianna, but the name was changed in 1904 to honor their most famous citizen, Nevin Nollop.  His fame was from developing the popular pangram sentence that all beginning typist learn:  The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Nollop is a isolated community, which venerates learning and language, and considers most modern technology a nuisance.  Telephones are rare;  most communication across the island is done through letters.

In the town center of Nollopton, (the center of government) there is a monument to Nevin Nollop, with his pangram  spelled out in tiles.  When the letter ‘z’ tile falls and breaks, the High Island Council calls an emergency meeting to determine the meaning of this event.  After days of deliberation, the Council decides that Nollop is sending them a message, from the afterlife, that the letter ‘z’ must be removed from the vocabulary.  Thus, the order comes down, that ‘z’ can no longer be used in speech or writing.  Penalties for use are to be severe.  But then, a few weeks later, ‘q’ falls off, followed ‘j’. Unable to admit that their earlier decision might be wrong, the Council continues to declare that the fallen letters must be purged from the alphabet.

This is delightful epistolary novel, with much of the correspondence between Nollopton resident Ella Minnow Pea and her cousin Tassie Purcy.  As each letter is dropped from Nollop’s allowed alphabet, Dunn removes it from his character’s writing.  The diminishing alphabet challenges even the most erudite writer’s vocabulary.  What follows is an amazing literary achievement;  a novel that is both a humorous and serious commentary on the potential folly of government.  This book is both a fun read, and a great choice for your book club.

Click here to find this book in our catalog.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

This novel does not open with “It was a dark and stormy night…”, but it certainly would be an apt beginning.  A modern day Gothic, The Thirteenth Tale is ripe with secrets, suspicions, dark  rooms, howling storms and a mysterious past.

Books are Margaret Lea’s life.  She was written a few minor biographies, and spends much of her life assisting her father with his antiquarian book shop.  She prides herself in reading works of ‘value’, not popular fiction.  Vida Winter is the most popular of British authors.  She is famous for a number of popular novels, none of which Margaret has read.  Therefore, when Winter contacts her, requesting that Margaret write her definitive biography, Margaret is very reluctant.

After agreeing to consider the project, Margaret begins to investigate Winter.  She finds that over the years Vida Winter has given various accounts of her life.  And, she finds one of Winter’s book in her father’s shop entitled The Thirteenth Tale, which has only twelve stories.  Her interest peaked, Margaret ventures to Winter’s isolated estate to begin the work.  After a lifetime of secrecy, Vida Winter is ready to tell the truth about her life.  However, she is only willing to do it her own way, and in her own time.  She convinces Margaret to stay in her house and to hear her story.  Slowly, Margaret begins to realize that the secrets are not just in Winter’s past, they are in her house.

In the best style of du Maurier and the Bronte sisters, The Thirteenth Tale is a delightful, if slightly dark and spooky, novel.  Setterfield is a former professor of French literature.   The Thirteenth Tale is her debut novel.  I think you will look forward to her second book, due out next year.  I certainly do!

Click here to find this book in our catalog.

The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

“Laurel Estabrook was nearly raped the fall of her sophomore year of college.  Quite likely she was nearly murdered that autumn.”  These opening sentences drew me in, and I hardly put the book down until I was finished.  But this is not a novel about an attack.  It is a novel about the aftermath.

Six years after her brutal attack, Laurel is a social worker in a homeless shelter in Vermont.  After the death of one of the shelter’s residents, Bobby Crocker, she is asked to evaluate, and curate, a show of a large collection of photographs he obviously took.  Schizophrenic and alcoholic, Bobbie Crocker wasn’t really your stereotypical street person.  His photographs were used in 1960s issues of Life magazine, and included  Eartha Kitt, Dick Van Dyke, Muddy Waters—they’re celebrity shots he took, combined with elegant evocations of Jazz Age Long Island.  But among these fascinating shots, Laurel discovers something else:  photographs of her home town, and a snapshot of herself riding a bike, just as she had, on the day of her attack.   As she devotes more and more time to researching Crocker’s past, her friends and family become concerned for her mental well-being.

On the surface, this sounds like a straightforward story.  It isn’t.  Laurel is from East Egg, NY.  And many of the photographs she finds in Crocker’s collection are from East Egg, and include pictures of Tom and Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby.  Can this be true?  Is this, in some way a sequel to The Great Gatsby?  This is an amazingly complex novel, with a surprise ending I never would have imagined.

Click here to find this book in our catalog.

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingles Wilder

For most of us who have been life-long readers, we have childhood favorites which we love to revisit.  I have several, including the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  So, it was a treat for me to find that we now have the complete series on audio.

The eight volume series begins with Little House in the Big Woods, in Pepin Wisconsin.  It is the story of four year old Laura Ingalls, her parents Charles and Caroline (Pa and Ma), her older sister Mary, baby sister Carrie, and their bulldog Jack.  The book tells of the trials and joys of pioneer life.  In the second book, Little House on the Prairie,  the Ingalls family packs up and heads to Indian Territory (Kansas).   In the following books the family first moves to Minnesota, and then on to their permanent settlement in South Dakota.  The series is a realistic, warm and often funny exploration of pioneer life in the late nineteenth century.

Originally there were eight books in the series.  Additional titles have been added by Wilder’s daughter.  One book in the original series, Farmer Boy, is the story of Almanzo Wilder, the son of a successful New York farmer.  We meet Almanzo again in On the Shores of Silver Lake.

The audio books are beautifully read by Cherry Jones, and include “Pa’s fiddle playing” by Paul Woodeil.  The series is perfect for readers of all ages.

Click here to find the fir

st book in this series  in our catalog.

Big, Bad, Love by Larry Brown

Before his 2004 death in his native Mississippi, Larry Brown enjoyed the reputation of being considered one of the most promising up-and-coming southern fiction writers in the United States.  His first novel, Dirty Work, won instant acclaim and established him as a literary force to be reckoned with.  Sadly, there will be no more books, but Brown’s excellent writing placed him in the company of other great southern writers like Cormac McCarthy, Harry Crews, Flannery O’Conner and William Faulkner.  Like those before him, Brown took heed of his surroundings, seeing the people of the rural south as soulful, but at times wreckless and defeated.  He also doesn’t shy away from the fact that southerners can be down right comical, and at the same time, strangely lucid and wise.

Big Bad Love is a collection of short stories all of which center around men who live in some manner of drunken destitute.  Love and salvation are the underlying themes throughout the book, but these men are not the traditional soul searchers by any means.  They are down-and-out, lost, and have strong penchants for cheap booze and fast women.   However, they are not lost to the point of giving up.  All of them keep pushing through their struggles, particularly the character from the final story, (the novel’s namesake).  He is divorced, soul-shattered, unemployed, yet still wakes up every morning from his alcoholic haze to continue writing; sending manuscript-after-manuscript to every lit magazine imaginable.  Regardless of his steady pile of rejection letters, he perseveres; knowing this is what he was born to do and that nothing will stop him from achieving his literary glory, (not even himself).

For those who like their fiction on the gritty side, this book offers plenty of beer-guzzling and backseat sex.  Still, there are plenty of dark-humored moments.  I remember especially getting a kick out of the story, “The Apprentice.”  It’s told from the point of view of a husband whose wife fashions herself as a writer and subjects him to her lousy stories, in which he makes a habit out of lying for the sake of sex.  Basically, he tells her that her stories are good and she rewards him.  The fact that he finds his wife’s writing such a nuisance  is incredibly comical.  He says, “I don’t know where this writing thing came from or what caused it, but it’s a part of her now, like her arms or her face.”

You can get this book through the WCPL catalog here.