Read it: My Mama’s Prom by Bob Arter. I promise you won’t regret it. Mr. Arter never disappoints!
Fantastic review of Dr. Brown-Davidson’s new novel by In Posse‘s Anna Sidak. Give it a read here.
In her Washington Monthly essay, “Decline of American Greatness“, Elaine Kamarck extrapolates on what a second Bush term could mean for the US:
By the end of a second Bush term, our nation will be poorer, and poor nations have trouble leading the world. So do nations that no one believes. Preemption is not necessarily a flawed strategy; it is only flawed if the judgment about the immediacy of the threat is wrong. The public, the press, and the Democratic Party–all of whom gave the president the benefit of the doubt on Iraq–will be hyper critical and suspicious of further claims that some nation is about to do us harm. The failure to find WMD and the suspicions aroused by recent announcements of “new” terror threats that turn out to be three years old are beginning to have a boy-who-cried-wolf effect.
Here’s a snippet:
“I asked him if he said to remove the sticker and he said, ‘Yes, I did.’ I told him he couldn’t tell me who to vote for. When I told him that, he told me, ‘I own this place.’ I told him he still couldn’t tell me who to vote for.” Gobbell said Gaddis told her to “get out of here.”
Read the story here.
I heard Mark Childress read from his latest novel (or a novel in progress, maybe?) at Squaw Valley and was taken by his humor, poignancy and sense of drama. All of that is played out in his novel “Crazy in Alabama” which I read yesterday. The narrative is a juxtaposition of a coming of age story and an awakening—both of a woman who has been kept down by her husband and of the African American community of 1960s Alabama.
The story’s main characters are Peejoe (Peter Joseph), a 12 year old orphan who was living with his beloved grandmother (Meemaw) until his crazy aunt cut off her husband’s head and deserted her children. The aunt, Lucille, is the other main character. At 33, she has six children, a dead husband and a burning desire to make it in Hollywood, which is where she heads after she has committed the grisly murder.
Childress takes on big issues (race relations, oppression of women, the media, mental illness) and displays them unflinchingly. He also shows how there are some folks—leaders (Lucille also becomes some sort of de facto leader of women’s issues)—who take advantage of serious situations for their own political gain.
Childress proves himself great in this book. He writes with such deft assuredness that he makes it look easy, but it’s not. Clearly a student of popular culture, he weaves details (songs, movies, television) into a fine cloth and makes us feel as though we are right there with him.
Part Southern Gothic, part Hollywood exposé, part political treatise, this book should endure. But above and beyond all that, it’s a helluva great read.
The New Yorker for September 13th has some great stuff.
Calvin Tomkins’ “Recollections” about his childhood summers in the Adirondacks and the first girl he made out with is funny, heartbreaking and poignant. I enjoyed it quite a lot and was moved by the ending.
I was enraptured by David Remnick’s profile of Al Gore (“The Wilderness Campaign”). Enlightening and entertaining, Remnick gets just a little bit under the skin of this interesting introvert.
There is also a short story by Marilynne Robinson (oh how I loved her book “Housekeeping”) which I have yet to read.
The Hour and What Is Dead
by Li-Young Lee
Maggie O’Farrell’s second novel, My Lover’s Lover, is a complex and interesting narrative. Part ghost story, part stalker story, part thriller and part love story—the narrative keeps the reader on his toes from start to finish. Just as you think you’ve got it figured out, something shifts and you’re left wondering—just as the characters are–whether you know what’s real and what’s not.
Important themes revolve around loss and redemption. Lily lost her brother in childhood and is forever haunted (not that she realizes it) by this loss and so remains stunted in her emotional and intellectual growth. She is fey and sees things that aren’t there—or are they? In the end, she is redeemed through her own growth—she leaves the man (and woman) who is haunting her behind and sets out on her own. What will become of her is hard to say, but that she remains an enigma to the end is easy to see.
Following these themes of loss and redemption, Sinead loses her lover (and her sense of self–which somehow remains behind haunting her old lover’s apartment) to other women and though she can never reclaim her old feelings she is redeemed in the arms of her new lover, Aidan (or is she? Or is the vision of them in the end merely another figment of Lily’s imagination?). Aidan subconsciously seeks to reclaim that feeling of twinness he and his sister had in the womb. He is truly seeking his other half and finds it in Sinead.
Told in the rotating POV’s (between three characters, from first to third and back again, between past and present), this novel is not for those who rely on a linear narrative to get them by. At times, the reader must keep a mental tally to understand just where he is in the story.
It’s a good, fast read. Enjoyable and intriguing. I look forward to reading more of O’Farrell’s work.
After the Grand Perhaps
by Lucie Brock-Broido
Waking Jeffrey is an excellent new flash by Ellen Meister in Dicey Brown.
myfanwy collins 