Year in (Book) Review:The Girl Who Played with Fire

Second round with little Lisbeth and her cohorts.

I do have to say that I enjoyed this one more than the last one, which I did enjoy, and I do have to say that I have no good explanation as to why. A few theories: while the first of Larsson's trilogy revolved mostly around Kalle Blomkvist, which I cannot pronounce and therefore call him, simply, 'Mike,' Fire is a lot more Lisbeth, and she's a cool character. (Side note: you know how sometimes you get something stuck in your head, even when it's ridiculous? Somehow, my tiny blonde -- and so maybe sort of Swedish-looking? -- friend is the only human being I know over the age of eleven who is as tiny and as spunky as Lisbeth is described to be. And once I thought of that, now I can't picture anyone else in the movie in my head that plays as I read. Kim is neither apparently autistic, tattooed, or known to have killed anyone, so... yeah. Moving on.) Also, this one just felt more active to me. Not that Dragon Tattoo didn't keep things plowing forward, but this felt more like a thriller to me. More of a page turner. I hope it's a trend that continues through the Hornet's Nest and, if it should come to pass, the fourth book.

What I didn't love so much. The book begins with some interesting characters and happenings that go... absolutely nowhere. I don't like getting to the end of a book only to find out that the first third of it was filler. I don't think books should start with filler. That doesn't make much sense, now does it. The circumstances don't advance the plot at all, and they don't give us any information or insight into Lisbeth's personality that we haven't already been privy to from the first book. (Another side note: some people will tell you that you don't need to read the first one in order to enjoy the second. That may be true, but it is my opinion that you absolutely need the first one to really have any clear idea what or who you're reading about in the second. And also I don't really understand people who would read the second book in a trilogy without reading the first. Those people make me uneasy.)

I take some small issue with Larsson repeatedly handing his characters the tools -- skills, knowledge, and sometimes actual, literal tools -- they need to get out of the situations he puts them in. I sort of think if they can't get out of them themselves, maybe the writer has no business putting them there in the first place. But this is nitpicky, and probably unavoidable, and is why I don't write thrillers.

But, after some of the slower stories I've been reading lately -- some good, some eh -- this is a great way to get back to movement. He'll keep you up at night with the "one more chapter" syndrome, and that is, I would have to say, probably the best thing a writer can do.

(A final side note: Just Netflixed the Swedish film version of the first novel, which is supposed to be amazing. I'm a little freaked out, not completely sure I want to see some of those things played out in front of me, but I'll let you know if I recommend it! Anyone seen it yet who wants to weigh in before I watch?)

It's Not You

I am famous in small circles and my own mind for my interesting choices of mates. I have no "type," I've always said, at least not physically anyway. I can get just as giddy over a preppy green eyed blond as I can over a dark and spiky haired artist. I don't much care for ugly, because it's not pretty, but I do have a soft spot for the nerds. The cute dorks. Always have. It's the four-eyed bookworm in me. It's intangible, as it probably is for a lot of people, but I like what I like and I know it when I see it and I can't imagine ever giving someone the chance to "grow" on me. Like algae. Or fungus. (Huh. Are algae and fungus the same thing?) Either way, ew.

The one thing I always thought bound a good number of my beloveds together was the complete and utter totality of their commitment issues. I get into a relationship and then stubbornly stay there, come hell or high water, even when, as one ex put it, we seem sort of doomed to be together. Together... but not married. Together ... but ... not really. Not so much. Like magnets, my clinginess and their complete lack thereof simultaneously attract and repel each other. It may not be going anywhere, or even particularly healthy, but I can count on it. It's just the nature of my type.

Now imagine the size of the hole blown into this theory last weekend, when not one but two of my exes got engaged. Neither of them to me.

I can't lie; that'll make you stop hard in your tracks. Particularly when "you" is "me" and "me" is way over this side of 30, childless, and whining on an endless loop to friends, God love 'em, who have long since stopped listening to me bitch about being old and childless.  I always assumed I wasn't married to these particular guys because they had "issues committing." But if they're engaged...

Oh my God.

Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the commitmentphobe.

And maybe I'm just whining about it because I feel like I'm supposed to? I like guys. (Seriously. It was one kiss, drunk in a bar, so don't even go down that path.) And I like kids. I do. I don't like the idea of not being able to have them. But, even at this advanced age, I can't quite hear my biological clock. Maybe mine's on vibrate? I'm sure it's ticking, it must be, but it's not prompting me to action.  I'm just sitting here, still single. Still old and childless.

But really, what's that action supposed to be? Am I to go after guys now like a heat seeking missile, just tracking down someone with a decent head of hair, a controlled beer paunch and some spare sperm? Am I to lower my standards, giving that sort of creepy guy who leers at me every time I go into CVS a chance? (Mind you, he doesn't work there. He's just always there. And he doesn't have a decent head of hair or any control over that gut.) And a chance at what, exactly? Oy.

It's been a retrospective week. A sort of sad one, even. Not because I was supposed to marry either of these guys, because apparently I wasn't. While it's hard not to feel just a little left behind, I trust -- I hope, anyway -- that they have found just the right person for them. I would love for them to be happy and content and have lots of little exes.*

It's just that ... if it's me, I think I'm sort of screwed. I think I can fix anything else but that.


*This is not a completely accurate statement. In fact, it's an outright lie. I tried to be PC but I feel badly about being dishonest. This should read something more along the lines of: I believe completely that one of them has found the right person, and I couldn't be happier for him. He's my friend. One of my best. Our relationship has changed dramatically and continuously in the seven or so years since we met, but I think it's grown and shifted into what it was meant to be. A really great friendship. He's still a shit sometimes and doesn't call me when he's supposed to (you were supposed to call me last week) but he cares about me. He cares to know me and stay in my life and I truly, deeply hope his beautiful young wife-to-be will as well. The other one ... the other one. Not so much. That's all I have to say about the other one.

Year in (Book) Review: How Did You Get This Number

I have a healthy sense of irony, I think. I get that saying anything even remotely critical of a girl who writes about every trite and trivial thing happening in her life may make your eyebrows go up. I get it. So if I sound critical, just realize it's really nothing more than envy.

That's what Sloane Crosley does in her second book of personal essays, How Did You Get This Number -- she writes about every trite and trivial thing. Only what is trite and trivial in her life would land in the "five coolest things ever to happen to me" column in my life. Her first collection, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, came out a few years ago and had much the same impact on me as this one: insane jealousy that people live much cooler lives than me and therefore have more, and wackier, stories to tell.

I will compare her to David Sedaris, which is truly the highest compliment I can pay to an essayist. Indeed, every night after bathtime when it's time to say my prayers, He (God, not David) hears something from me along the lines of, "Dear God, please oh please oh please let someone compare me someday to David Sedaris." Sometimes it comes before my plea for a rich, gorgeous husband and a new pair of Louboutins and sometimes it comes after, but it's usually tucked comfortably in the middle.

The only times I got annoyed with Ms. Crosley were the moments she seemed to be veering down one path and then, ooh ... something shiny ... and she was off in another direction. I would rather read (and write, I guess, is probably really what I'm saying) a million short, tight stories than a rambling one that could probably be really funny except that you completely lost me and I have no idea what you're talking about so instead of laughing at/with/potAYto/potAHto you I'm just annoyed with you for talking too much. Again, ironic, I know. I know.

I do have to concede, though, this would have made a much better beach book than a heartwarming, beautifully executed tale about child sexual abuse. You can pick it up, put it down, read it quickly, skim, all attributes of a book destined to be resort reading. Not much meat, and that's okay, because who wants meat on the beach?

Actually, I'm going to tell you all to go get it, and read it, and then report back to me what you liked and what you didn't, so that when I start writing my own book I'll know what you want. Okay, go.

ADDENDUM TO Year in (Book) Review: The Kindness of Strangers

It took me a long time to read this book, because I knew I would have to write a review.

It's not that I shied away from the subject matter or that I'd heard anything less than praise for the novel. It's that I pinky-promised myself last January I would review every single book I read, even the embarrassing ones. No skipping, no matter what -- if it got read, it got reviewed. 

It just never crossed my mind that I would read a book by someone I know. In this case, it's not even just someone I know, but a former English teacher and current writing mentor. How the hell do you do a book review on your writing mentor? I can't even bring myself to call her anything other than Miss Kittle and she hasn't been my teacher since like 1991. We're practically the same age. And still, there is reverence given where there is reverence due.

That being said, I feel a need to reassure you that it's an honest review. She can't grade me anymore. If I hadn't liked the book, a lot or a little, I would have told you. It is an exceptionally well-crafted story.  Phew.

Year in (Book) Review: The Kindness of Strangers

Imagine the darkest thing you can that could happen to a child. Now, take it one shade deeper into blackness -- into the unimaginable, really -- and that's what we're asked to deal with in Katrina Kittle's The Kindness of Strangers. The name and the book jacket are lighthearted and lovely. The life of its youngest main character is anything but.

In turn, fortunately, Kittle's telling of his story is anything but bleak. It's impossible, I would have to believe, to write about crimes against children in an honest and raw way without making your readers very, very uncomfortable. I choose to write about things like bikini waxes gone bad and ill-behaved house pets, so clearly she has a level of maturity I've not yet found. But she tackles the issue head on, without ever tiptoeing around it or doing a disservice to her characters by not making us, as readers here by choice, go through the same crises they must face.

She leaves you guessing, nearly to the end, who you can root for and who you should spit on. Much in the same way middle-schooler Jordan wants so much to believe in the best in people, even in really, really bad people, Kittle makes us want that too. She sweeps us up in his adolescent need for normalcy and family, and reminds us those are needs we never outgrow. 

It's a beautiful telling of an ugly truth. 

Side note: Because I frequently make inexplicable and suspect choices, I read this book on vacation. While I highly recommend reading the book, I equally highly recommend not reading it on a beach.  It just feels weird.

Year in (Book) Review: The Heretic's Daughter

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. Favorite book of the year (so far) goes to the hauntingly beautiful writing of Kathleen Kent in The Heretic's Daughter. Recommended to me by my writing partner (and I use that term loosely, since in between our brief flashes of brilliance we spend most of our time gossiping and talking about her charmingly frustrating four year old), it is the first book in a long time that's kept me up way past my bedtime, because I just had to have one more chapter in me before I closed my eyes.

First, the backstory. Ms. Kent, as many of us do, grew up with stories of her ancestors. One in particular was Martha Carrier, who would have been her grandmother nine times back or something like that. One of the most prominent figures in the infamous Salem witch trials of the late 1600s, Martha was hung for being outspoken, critical of the judiciary process she was held slave to, and for generally not being well-liked by her neighbors. That's pretty much all it took in those days, in that town. The author was so fascinated by the stories that she spent a significant amount of time researching both the trials themselves and her own family's involvement. She dug through historical research, myriad archives and transcripts, and her family's memories. The result is her debut novel, and I think it is really lovely.

Told from the fictional perspective of Martha's young daughter (the daughter was real, just the storytelling was imagined), Kent brings to life an absolutely beautiful and devastatingly harsh time. Fear of Indian attacks ran rampant. Smallpox swept unceremoniously through households and towns and killed in indiscriminant multitudes. The Puritanical life was barren. But, as Kent gently reminds us, families were close to and dependent upon one another, and kids were, as they will always be, kids. Sarah, our narrator, is equal parts stubborn -- like her mother -- and sarcastically observant of the iniquities of the time. She witnesses, and experiences first hand, some of the worst atrocities our country has been responsible for committing against our own. It was terrifying, and Kent does justice to the enormity of the situation, without ever once being flowery or overly stylistic. She stays true to the voice and nature of her characters, and since they wouldn't be melodramatic in the telling of their tale, neither is Kent.

She writes poetically, effortlessly. It's a distinctive style and specific to the era, but she never forces anything on her readers. It flows, and she paints. They say that an actor has to respect whomever it is that they are portraying, even if the audience sees an evil tyrant or a selfish drunk ... both of whom appear in The Heretic's Daughter. Somehow, though, all of Kent's characters are beloved and heartwarming ... well, okay, maybe not all of them, but the main ones, anyway -- even the most fatally flawed of the bunch.

It's a slow unfolding, so if you're looking for action, action, action you should probably put this one on hold for now. But if you decide to pick it up, and I hope, hope, hope you will, have a computer close by -- I found myself repeatedly needing to Wikipedia the people and circumstances she was describing, because it was so unbelievable to me that this stuff really happened. It really did.