As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

I don't know why I waited so many years to read William Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness novel, As I Lay Daying. But it spoke to me in ways it likely would not have when I was in my 20s or 30s.

In my 30s, I had not been married, had no children and lived in Chicago even though I grew up in rural Arkansas. I worked in a job where I generally was surrounded by intelligent people. None of us seemed old -- not even those of us who were. We lived.

Now, though, I am married. Like many marriages, it's had good and bad times. I now have a 10-year-old daughter, adopted late in life during a trip to China. I now live in the South, in a town less rural and more educated than Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. I work alone, but just yesterday a man who might have easily been Anse Bundren walked into my office. He smelled, he hated, he was clearly the boss in his family -- one where a little girl's head was shaved rather than spend money on a good haircut and lice shampoo. For a time, he was Anse Bundren. I suspect he always will be.

I've seen Addie Bundren, too. She's in Chicago, Conway, everywhere. But I do think she's more common in the South, where women and children are quickly put down if they stand up too much to male authority, even when the man is of Anse Bundren's quality. She suffers; she endures; she seeks happiness but never finds it. She is married but neither loves nor is loved by her spouse. Never has been. She knows "that the reason for living is getting ready to stay dead."

If you're young, read this book. But read it again in 20 or 40 years. It's as timely now as it was when Faulkner wrote it in 1930.

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Nicole Krauss' novel The History of Love is a wonderful and mysterious story spanning 60 years, two continents (Europe and North America) and more than a few lonely, confused, even disturbed people. It's also a book in a book. Not surprisingly, the book within the book isn't that good, though only excerpts appear.

Krauss' novel, however, is truly a good read. It leaves the reader wanting more, wondering what lies ahead for certain characters even after the last page. The novel is rather confusing, perhaps intentionally so. After all, the various narrators who tell the story are confused about their own lives, their own history. One seeks proof of his own existence. Another is translating a book for a man who does not really exist. One is unaware that he is a published author. A young boy is building an ark for the next great flood. A young girl, Alma, works to solve the mystery of who everyone is -- including the other Alma for whom she is named.

Leopold Gursky, a Polish immigrant and the novel's main character, is a Holocaust survivor, one who hid in the woods, foraging for food, even eating bugs and rats. Alma, the young woman he loved, pregnant with his child, left Europe amid the Nazi threat. That child grew up to be the acclaimed author Gursky had yearned to be.

The Holocaust is long over, and yet Gurksy is still alone in the woods, a lonely man in a New York apartment with a similar solitary friend, very likely an imaginary friend. Gursky drops things in stores and asks odd questions so that people, at least one person, will notice him each day -- so that he will not die having gone unremembered that day, almost to verify his own existence.

I enjoyed the novel but believe it needs read twice. No doubt a second read would highlight details, names that might go unnoticed in the first read. The novel also is replete with literary allusions, which could be better appreciated on a second read.

The novel is, not a study, but a detailed, mysterious look at human loneliness, human desires, human frailties, human hopes, human memories, humanity's connection. A World War II soldier's oversight, a man's plagiarism, a first name repeated, an old man's curiosity and a young girl's persistence interact in ways no single character ever foresaw and together form The History of Love.

A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cosse'

A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cosse' is a book for book lovers, especially those who appreciate great literature.
Set in Paris, the book tells the story of a bookstore whose owners decide to sell only “good” books. The owners -- a man who has worked in bookshops before and a wealthy woman, the silent, even concealed partner -- select a secret committee of authors to choose the novels they will sell.

The bookstore surprises everyone and at first does a great business but soon faces harsh criticism, even violence from detractors who accuse the owners of literary snobbery and elitism (Sound familiar?) and begin attacking their credibility. Meantime, bizarre accidents start happening to one committee member after another.

I enjoyed the novel, translated from the French by Alison Anderson, but found the ending disappointing. The deus-ex-machina solution was a bit disturbing. Couldn’t Cosse' have come up with something more plausible? Simply leaving the crimes totally unsolved, which Cosse' pretty much did anyway, would have been a better, more realistic ending to an otherwise fine book.