Forgetting Tabitha by Julie Dewey

I wanted this story to be good.  I wanted it to.  But…

This is historical novel that claims to follow a young girl from the seedy and corrupt life of Five Points, New York, as she journeys west on the Orphan Train in the late 1800s.  And instead I found Anne of Green Gables meets Fifty Shades of Grey.  

In the beginning of the novel, I immediately had to choose whether I was reading this book for its function as a story or for the quality of writing.  It clearly did not have both. Ms. Dewey has a feel for story and its grand scope, and even its romanticism, but the writing lacked consistency, flow, and an appropriate voice.  So I chose to read for story – but even there I felt betrayed by the author.   Full to the brim with historical trivia (that needed a heavy dose of fact-checking), I did not get to know “Tabitha” well-enough before I had to “forget” her.  I was swallowed up by all the telling, not showing, and dismayed with the graphic and disturbing sexuality.  This could have been a pretty good story – a nice and well-spent tale – without the sudden and jarring turn into the ultra-sleazy.  There is a way to cover the dark-side of life without giving every single twisted detail.

This book needs more proofreading, content and copyediting, and polishing.  And it needs to be decided whether this is an expository or a narrative piece.  While the narrators’ voices are easy enough for a young reader to follow, this book was definitely too adult – too poorly edited – for me.

I received this book in exchange for a fair and honest review to Amazon and Goodreads.  Please look for my review there as well.

Photo credit:  http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519NGMvCMlL._SX311_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

This review can be read in the Canon City Daily Record.


"Adults follow paths. Children explore." Though both seem to inhabit similar spaces, they also manage to live in very different worlds. And different worlds require different rules - those for adults, those for children, and those for monsters. Sometimes these rules collide with fatal results.

Neil Gaiman, Newberry-winning author of "The Graveyard Book," explores such rules and boundaries in a story that began as a gift for his wife. The result is "The Ocean at the End of the Lane," the bestselling novel making fantasy accessible, as easy to reach and enjoy as a favorite fairy tale.

An artist attends a funeral near the home of a childhood friend, and memories return. He recalls clearly - vividly - being a helpless boy who loved books, kittens, and Gilbert & Sullivan operas. He remembers the powerful and odd women of the Hempstock farm: Old Mrs. Hempstock was old enough to remember the Big Bang; Ginnie could read others' thoughts; and Lettie, eleven, knew everything. The man cannot forget tragic events that held him in their grip shortly after his seventh birthday.

At the end of an English lane in the country, there is an ocean, and dreams and reality blur into one tangle. There, a monster takes advantage of adult greed and desires for instant gratification. And what about the children? Are they, too, powerless over such lies and ignorance, fear and loneliness? No. For children know what it is to find comfort in the purr of a kitten, the warmth of a bath, the full belly after a meal, and the cozy companionship of a friend's hand when facing the unknown - when facing demons ("fleas" and "varmints") that change shape, discern hearts, and demand a home.

"The Ocean at the End of the Lane" is brilliantly told in a clear, direct style. Though told from the point of view of a child, it is not a children's book. Even so, there is an immediacy - an urgency - in the telling of this beautiful tale, as if now, as an adult, the middle-aged man must conjure up what he once knew. This story unfolds and evolves like the recurrent dreams of youth.

Many novels of the fantasy genre require the reader to step into a whole new world and completely accept a reality quite different from their own. This novel approaches the world of grown-ups and invites readers to see it from the eyes of a child, and recognize a time when becoming a hero was not a mere fantasy, a time before "childhood memories [are] covered and obscured beneath things that come later."

Photo credit: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513EmERKdxL._SX326_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Authors thank reviewers: Anne Carson

I did receive a note from Anne Carson that began: "thanks for your note."  It was a brief note with a couple of fun tidbits for me as a writer and reader, but I am grateful for her quick and personal response.

The review of "1=1" can be read here.





Photo credit: https://image.freepik.com/free-photo/dog-swimming_19-133179.jpg  

"The Story of a Painter" by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

This story can be found in the January 18, 2016 issue of The New Yorker.

This review can also be read at The Mookse and the Gripes.

First Line: "There once lived a painter so destitute that he couldn’t afford a single crayon, let alone brushes and paints."

Last Line: "'It’s because you’re a silly one,' Vera told him. 'Always were and always will be.'"

How wonderful to read a story that is merely a fairy tale - a story intended to amuse, to entertain, to hold the recepient's interest from beginning to end!  And though this piece is elementary, it is fun, and also current, touching universal and timeless themes and characterizations.  Fairy tales remind us that some things- some thoughts and emotions - some of life's circumstances - never seem to change.

No Big Bad Wolf, no little gnome of a man, and no princess to be found here.  But amid echoes of Dickens and Tolstoy we find a poor, abused painter; a young woman with a withered leg; a melodramatic swindler; and magic - paints, brushes, canvases...  There are "strangers in a strange land" and there is "no room in the inn" for a woman giving birth.  And guilt!  Oh, the guilt that runs throughout this piece - a thread weaving together the fuzzy differences between wants and needs!

As in any fairy tale, there are positive events that suddenly lead to negative turns and a moment when all seems lost.  Despair looms and threatens the thinnest fabric of humanity and hope.  But then there is a moment when what is real overcomes what is magic, in the end, and the hero comes through triumphant, and legally and lawfully wed.

Mormon Moment: "For behold, are we not all beggars?"  Mosiah 4:19
 
Photo Credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Ludmilla_Petrushevskaya_seven_2009_Shankbone_NYC.jpg/200px-Ludmilla_Petrushevskaya_seven_2009_Shankbone_NYC.jpg

"1=1" by Anne Carson

This story can be found in the January 11, 2016 issue of The New Yorker.

This review can also be read at The Mookse and the Gripes.

First Line: "She visits others."

Last Line: "The fox does not fail."

I do not understand everything about this story, but I know there is so much in there. I wish I had more learning, more background, more intellect to make and see the connections that are here in this piece.  So I'd like to encourage discussion about this story.  I am ready to learn. 

What did you notice?  What struck you about the beginning and its connection to the ending?  Is there a symbolism that ran through here that was heavy for you?  Did this prose piece feel poetic in tone and theme?  What is this tale really about?  

Water predominates this piece - the lake, the sea.  It held and cradled characters - the main character, the dog, refugees... 

The first line is haunting: "She visits others."  Yet, then the protagonist calls herself selfish.  How?  Why?  She notices people, situations, individuals...  But she says there's "no momentum in sharing"...?

"There is pressure to use this water correctly... Every water has its own rules and offering... Perhaps involved is that commonplace struggle to know beauty... Every water has a right place to be, but that place is motion.  You have to keep finding it, keep having it find you.  Your movement sinks into and out of it with each stroke.  You can fail it with each stroke.  What does that mean, fail it."  What does "fail it" mean?

And how does this connect to the end?  "The fox does not fail."  And Comrade Chandler's connection to the fox?

So much to talk about here.  Let's see what we discover from each other.

Photo Credit: http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1380283628p5/34336.jpg

Mormon Moment: "And he said unto me: What desirest thou?  And I said unto him: To know the interpretation thereof... [for] I do not know the meaning of all things."  1 Nephi 11:10,11,17

"The Beach Boy" by Ottessa Moshfegh

This story can be found in the January 4, 2016 issue of The New Yorker.

This review can also be read on The Mookse and the Gripes.

First Line:  "The friends met for dinner, as they did the second Sunday of every month, at a small Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side."

Last Line: "It was clear to him and to the other beach boys watching from their perch in the dunes that the old man wasn’t carrying any money."

A couple, steeped in privilege and an elite lifestyle, meet with an untimely death and grief upon returning home from a vacation on an island.  The story is meant to explore a man's experience with a controlling marriage, too-tightly fit career, and the lack of choice and freedom he feels inside his life of privilege and ease.

There were great images in this piece - they juxtaposed each other in a subtle, and quietly jarring way.  Yet they felt forced.  This piece could have been an organic exploration of relationships, emotions, desires.  Instead of allowing the reader to watch the story unfold in a natural and life-like flow, Ms. Moshfegh tells us what to see and think, and when, in an overt manner.  The characters are well-developed, but they are pushed from scene to scene, moment to moment, by the author.  I wonder what John would have thought about the last picture on the roll if particular thoughts were not insisted upon him...

I tried to find the criteria used to select fiction for the magazine.  I found this response from Deborah Treisman at The New Yorker: "We have no concept of 'trademark' New Yorker fiction. It is next to impossible to define one limited category that would contain work by Haruki Murakami and Alice Munro, Edwidge Danticat and Jonathan Franzen, Jhumpa Lahiri and David Foster Wallace, William Trevor and Aleksandar Hemon, John Updike and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Gabriel García Marquez and Antonya Nelson, to name just a few of the very different writers we’ve published in recent years. What is important for us is that a story succeed on its own terms. If the writer’s goal is to be linguistically inventive, he or she needs to pull that off and do something fresh; if his or her goal is to have an emotional impact, that must come through in some powerful way. The styles and approaches can be as different as is humanly possible, as long as they’re effective."

"The Beach Boy" feels like it is on its way to "suceed[ing] on its own terms", but is not quite there yet.  Such dramatic and sudden shifts in personality do take place in times of grief, in times of great upheaval, and sudden freedom.  This transformation is covered in a brief paragraph, but it reads like it's trying to create effect - make readers see the change - rather than allowing them to discover it on their own, notice it by connecting to their own life experiences while reading.  The narrator feels as controlling as Marcia, without being as light-handed and airy.

Photo credit:  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/85/Ottessa_Moshfegh_2015.jpg/220px-Ottessa_Moshfegh_2015.jpg
  

Authors thank reviewers: Cecilia Ekback

Read the review for Wolf Winter here.