UNPUNISHED VICE

My review of Katie Ward’s excellent debut also ran in Shelf Awareness this week:

Katie Ward’s debut novel, Girl Reading,is better described as a collection of seven self-contained but intertwined stories drawn from nearly as many centuries and settings. Each story centers on the creation of a portrait of a girl, reading; each reveals a complex and profound relationship between reader, writer and artist.

The book begins in the 14th century and takes us to the year 2060. In between, a teenage orphan poses for Italian Renaissance master Simone Martini; a grieving countess commissions a portrait of her dead poetess lover; a man takes a picture of a young woman reading in a bar in modern London and adds it to his Flickr stream. The stories, though differing in character and circumstance, are threaded together by a deep sense of synchronicity and sparkling allusions to art and literature. In a testament to Ward’s deft talent, every character is richly drawn, every chapter crisp with authenticity. When a cameo by Rembrandt and a reference to Flickr comfortably exist in the same book, you know the author has done her work.

Girl Reading’s best quality, however, is also its flaw. Ward’s tight control over seven centuries of vividly imagined stories is almost too good; the chapters often end too quickly and neatly, just short of satisfaction, lest they sprawl out into books of their own. But in a novel that celebrates the intimate, complicated bonds between women and their books—and each other—that is an easy fault to forgive. —Hannah Calkins, Unpunished Vice

My latest in Shelf Awareness. Truly loved this one—a gorgeous and brave book.

Beautiful Thing is a portrait that begins in profile: “Leela’s face was a perfect heart,” Sonia Faleiro writes. “And knowing well the elegance of her little nose, Leela would flaunt it like an engagement ring. On certain evenings at the dance bar, when she needed to increase the padding of hundred rupee notes in her bra, Leela would engage only in silhouette.”

Faleiro met 19-year-old Leela while she was researching an article on Bombay’s “bar dancers,” the thousands of maltreated, disenfranchised, often alarmingly young girls who make their livings performing for men in dark bars, frequently selling sex at the behest of pimps. The article, deemed “un-newsworthy,” went unpublished—but Faleiro, captivated by Leela’s irrepressible vitality, knew this proud, independent girl had a story that must be told.

Beautiful Thing is Leela’s story, but through her, Faleiro unveils a larger narrative of Bombay’s bar dancers and sex workers, one colored by love and violence, glamour and squalor, sex and corruption—and one that reveals the dark heart of Bombay itself. The city (glittering with promises but “toxic, no less than an open wound”) and its dance bars attract girls like Leela, who are lured into working “on the line” because of the immediate financial independence it promises. Faleiro discovered that essentially all of these young women were fleeing horrifying home lives rife with every kind of abuse; she recounts that “every one of the bar dancers in Leela’s building had either been raped by a blood relative or sold by one.” But even though life on the line is a landmine of danger and exploitation, Leela relishes the freedom it seems to allow her.

Faleiro follows Leela through a year of her life—into dance bars, into brothels, into tiny flats cramped with beautiful girls and plastic bags stuffed with gifts from their customers. She meets a vibrant, heartbreaking array of dancers, prostitutes and hijras (physiologically male sex workers who dress and act as women), as well as the pimps, madams, gangsters and corrupt police who govern their lives. Customers and lovers come and go; friendships are intense, rivalries brutal.

Never judgmental or condescending, Faleiro delivers Leela’s story with a reporter’s distance and a novelist’s immediacy. She animates journalistic observations with vivid descriptions, and her dialogue sings with slang and dialect. Leela moves through the pages as a remarkable, tragic and inspiring figure—victim, heroine, survivor. —Hannah Calkins

From Shelf Awareness:

Hanne Blank follows up Virgin: The Untouched History with Straight, a compact and engaging look at not just the history, but the construction of heterosexuality. Yes, that’s right: the construction: Blank argues that heterosexuality is a concept “coined for a world in which the ideal of economically and socially viable adulthood meant marriage, children, and middle-class domestic responsibility”—in other words, “heterosexuality” is just a stamp invented to legitimize sexual desire and activity between men and women.

That claim may raise even the most progressive eyebrows, but Blank’s surprisingly short history is also surprisingly convincing. She traces the development of heterosexuality from the word’s first appearance in 19th-century Germany to its current status as “emblematic of an inherent physical and psychological normalcy.” While displaying this impressive scholarship, Blank makes Straight personal as well as academic, using her not-quite-hetero relationship with an intersex partner as a powerful frame for her argument. “To lay claim to heterosexuality, it seems to me, after all my explorations into its history and nature,” Blank writes, “is to pledge allegiance to a particular configuration of sex and power in a particular historical moment. There isn’t much in that configuration, or its heritage of classicism and misogyny, that I find appealing enough to want to claim as my own.” However, skeptics (even those quite attached to this “particular configuration”) will find plenty to learn from in Straight about sexuality, gender, history and the messy intersection of all three. — Hannah Calkins

Today, Shelf Awareness, a daily newsletter for book industry professionals, launched a new twice-weekly version for regular folks. I write reviews for this new reader publication, and for their inaugural issue they’ve included my review of Irshad Manji’s Allah, Liberty and Love. (It’s at the bottom of the page. Credited to some chick named Hannah “Caulkins.”)

This is it:

Irshad Manji is a Canadian journalist and the author of bestselling The Trouble with Islam Today(2005), a provocative critique that sparked both outrage and solidarity around the world. Allah, Liberty and Love is built on the foundation of that book. If Trouble was the critique, Allah is the roadmap to reform, as Manji lays down seven lessons in “moral courage” that will guide us—Muslim or not—to peace and freedom.

A devout Muslim, open lesbian and passionate advocate of democratic ideals, Manji is perhaps an ideal voice for progressive reform. Writing in an engaging, open style, she combines the strength of her own faith with a clear-eyed, relentless insight into the troubling politics, fears, and narratives that govern contemporary Islam.

With an unwavering commitment to integrity and conscience, Manji argues that culture is not sacred, clinging to group identity is a trap, and that offending people is the price of asking tough, vital questions: “My questions re-imagine the public discussion so that Muslims and non-Muslims can find shared purpose in human values.”

Manji’s writing has been criticized for being too personal, but matters of faith, conscience and individual liberty are personal—profoundly and urgently so. Manji’s project is not to provide a removed, scholarly study of her religion; it is to motivate people around the world, of any faith or none at all, to listen to their consciences, ask questions and challenge dogma for the benefit of the greater good. —Hannah Caulkins, blogger at Unpunished Vice

Discover: A bold, compassionate and highly accessible argument for Islamic reform.

I will ignore my wounded pride over having my byline misspelled because I GOT PAID FOR THIS. Wheeee!

What a title, right? 

It’s a good book, too, especially as it goes along and Flynn gets increasingly experimental. This is technically a memoir, but Flynn is a poet, and he’s best when he’s, you know, “pushing the boundaries of genre.” (I use quotes because I could never say that while taking myself seriously. There goes my academic career.)

Flynn simultaneously tells the story of his reunion with his homeless, estranged father, of his own childhood, of his father’s sad and shady history, and of his own time working in a Boston homeless shelter, which is where he encounters his father for the second time in his life. 

Suck City gets billed as a memoir about homelessness and father-son relationships, but it’s also about addiction. Flynn’s father is ruined by alcohol, and Flynn struggles with drugs and drink as well. I was most interested in that aspect of the book. Flynn weaves in the story of his own addiction with a sort of distance (no dramatic hysterics) that is very powerful and impressively non-cliched. 

Suck City is being made into a movie starring Casey Affleck and Robert DeNiro. It’s a compelling story for sure, but I don’t know how they’ll translate Flynn’s more poetic qualities and descriptions to the screen. 

Like this, for example, or the chapter composed entirely of staccato euphemisms for drinking, getting drunk, blacking out and waking up again.

I guess what I’m saying is you should probably just read it. 

Judge this book by its cover: Sort of pleasant at first… inoffensive… completely forgettable.

Here’s all you need to know about This Is Where I Leave You:

1. Gimmicky premise. (Do we really need another funeral-as-reunion tragicomedy with a droll narrator and a cast of kooky relatives?) 
2. Dull narrator who is supposed to be funny, sympathetic, likable. Nope. Just dull. And whiny.
3. Some witty dialogue. A few poignant observations. 
4. Other people liked it. 
5. And it’s getting made into a movie. 
6. I’m bored.

I love to run (alone and slowly). And I love to read (also alone, less slowly). Normally, I love to combine my favorite activities, like singing and driving, or eating in bed while watching Dexter in bed. But the thought of reading about running has never really made sense to me. I mean, sure, I have some use for practical articles about technique or diet, and I read stuff online to help me self-diagnose my constant injuries. But running blogs, usually chronicling somebody’s training and always named something dumb like Run Steve Run!, have only ever renewed my conviction that running just isn’t that interesting to read about. Or maybe runners are just terrible writers (“Did ten miles this morning! Weather a little chillier than yesterday. My knee started acting up again around mile six, but then it let up.” Etc.).

But I figured that I could probably expect more from Haruki Murakami, the prolific novelist with a glowing reputation, than from Steve, the dude behind runsteverun.blogspot.com. 

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is a slim little memoir in which Murakami writes about his history as a runner, and as a writer. I’m not sure what I was expecting. I haven’t read any of Murakami’s purportedly surreal, complicated novels, but I know they’re surreal and complicated. Running is not. The language is simple and straightforward, and Murakami does not make any obscuring embellishments. In that way, it has more in common with “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” Raymond Carver’s fantastic story from which Murakami has taken its title, than with what I’ve heard about his other work.

Still, like in Carver’s story, there’s something more profound going on here. What Murakami talks about when he talks about running is about writing, about aging, about discipline, about choosing how to live your life. It’s a good, quick read, but the real reason it works is because Haruki Murakami, Famous Novelist, wrote it (as opposed to, uh, Haruki of Run Haruki Run!). That’s all right with me. He’s earned it. 

The Position

by Meg Wolitzer

Scribner, $13

This book isn’t going to change your life, but it’s about a life-changing book. The Position is the story of a suburban family, the Mellows of Wontauket, and what happens to it after the parents write a Joy of Sex-type book (complete with drawings from life). The story opens in 1975, just after the book’s publication, when all four Mellow children discover it on the bookshelf in the family den. 

But The Position mostly takes place in the early ‘00s, decades after that traumatic moment of discovery. The four kids have grown up into adults with varying levels of fucked-up-ness, all of which can be traced back to the horror of seeing those wavy ‘70s drawings of their parents in crazy positions. And those parents, Roz and Paul, split up shortly after the book was published (exactly why isn’t revealed until late in the story). In short, this sex book — which was credited to enlightening sexual revolution-era (straight) couples everywhere — really messed up the Mellows.

I remember reading Wolitzer’s book The Wife when I was in high school and being amazed by how good it was. Since it was so long ago, I’m not sure if I can compare the two. But I’m not amazed by The Position. I didn’t quite buy that every single defect in these peoples‘ lives could be credited to this sex book, and some other elements of the plot were similarly unlikely.

There are also many points of view — every member of the family, plus their partners’ — but the effect, remarkably, isn’t a messy one. However, it all does feel a little superficial. The varied perspectives are what makes the story so interesting, and they’re sort of the point, but I wonder what the book would have been like if Wolitzer had narrowed down the focus to two or three characters. 

But, it’s entertaining and insightful and parts of it — usually descriptions, rather than full scenes or dialogue — are really, really good. I think The Lazy Book Reviewer got it right when she said: “You can add Wolitzer to the list of writers we’d all pay more attention to if she were a dude, everyone.”

And I did really enjoy reading it, in spite of its flaws. Mostly it’s because I think Wolitzer enjoyed the hell out of writing it. It’s in the way she treats her characters, in the way she moves them through scenes and through their lives. I got the sense that she was having fun. I can appreciate that. 

She has a new book that just came out called The Uncoupling, which appears to be about a city-wide women’s sex strike a la “Lysistrata.” I’d say that Wolitzer has a marked and informed interest in the politics of white suburban sex. 

Bastard Out of Carolina

by Dorothy Allison

Plume, $15

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison was a huge hit when it was published in 1992. I love it for its title, but I understand why the rest of the book was praised: it’s a smart, fast read, and everybody’s a sucker for a good Southern coming-of-age tale. The young narrator is tough and wise, a girl born to an unmarried teenage mother with a sprawling, complicated, poor family. Her name is Bone, and she’s an angry incarnation of Scout Finch.

Before I cracked this one open, I knew that Bastard was about a poor girl growing up in the mid-century American South, so I knew to expect plenty of poverty and despair and race tensions and rape. Based on that, and on the title — which sounds like it came deep out of the American Canon alongside the one that brought us Scout — I expected it to be… I don’t know, weightier. More complicated. Less book club-friendly.

I think that I forgot that Bastard was a bestseller. Yes, the subject matter is weighty and dramatic. Yes, Allison writes engagingly and well. But in spite of the poverty and misery and abuse and occasional insights into class struggle, it’s all just very palatable. Easy. It almost feels like this is the Hollywood version based on a much deeper original work. 

This is one of those books in which it always seems to be summertime, and everyone is constantly on their front porch telling old family legends and trading folksy colloquialisms and getting into fights. Allison’s prose is uncomplicated and consistent and drawls pleasantly. The book is populated with stock Southern characters: there are lot of Strong Southern Women and Rough but Lovable Men. And Bone, again, who is basically what happens when Scout Finch is poor and mad and stuck with lecherous stepfather “Daddy Glen” instead of Atticus.

Bone’s voice is a strong one, and I was definitely rooting for her in her fight against Daddy Glen. But I just sort of breezed through it, and that seems like an odd way to read a book about poverty and misery and abuse. I don’t regret reading this, but I don’t feel compelled to pick up anything else Allison has written.