Stories by Doris Lessing

After reading a few of Doris Lessing's short stories, I realize how much great writing I have missed by not reading more of her works earlier. Of the few stories I have read lately -- "Wine," "He," "An Old Woman and Her Cat," "A Room," "The Unposted Love Letter" and "The Other Garden" -- the thing that struck me repeatedly was the universality, the timelessness of Lessing's stories.

In "Wine," for instance, a husband and a wife talk as they sip wine. Lessing does not give this couple names. After all, it doesn't appear as if they really know each other that well anymore anyway. And they could be any married couple, perhaps many couples -- those who, as they say, have grown apart or those who never were quite together anyway.

The story that most affected me, though, was "An Old Woman and Her Cat." This story is about a poor and lonely widow named Hetty whose only companion in her London flat is a once-stray cat named Tibby. She feeds it, she talks to it, she sings to it. So, when demolition in the name of progress threatens their home, she protects Tibby with her life, much as the friendly, trusting Tibby has protected her -- by bringing her birds to cook as she had no money to buy food -- and as the little cat ultimately will trust another less-deserving human for its own protection.

Humanity. Progress. Society. Trust. For me, the story was all about society's misplaced priorities and the dangers of misplaced trust. We trust political leaders filled with hate -- and money -- to guard our freedom; we trust often-greedy banks with our money; we trust our children with teachers who make less than plumbers, our lives with exhausted emergency-room doctors. We trust our safety with police officers who make less than men who can run fast and throw a ball far. We trust, and all too often we get burned, cheated, robbed, hurt because there's someone else who's richer, smarter, closer in kin, higher in rank, more powerful or just better-looking.

Our obituary may someday show up in a newspaper if any of our "survivors" sees fit to buy the space. But for the most part, most of our deaths will go unnoticed by the rich, the powerful, the smarter, those higher in rank or status. But our life will have mattered -- to ourselves and to the ones we helped, especially if their station in life was even lower than our own. And their life, no matter how unnewsworthy, will have mattered to us as well.

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen

In Anna Quindlen's newest book, she writes of life as she approaches 60. The book is a memoir of, to a limited degree, her young adulthood and, to a much greater one, of her marriage, her three children and her career as a journalist and successful author. Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake is largely written in essay form -- perhaps my favorite genre -- and reveals much about the woman behind the bestselling name.

If you didn't already know it, she supports, among other things, women's rights, including those that would open more high-ranking management positions to women.

Quindlen takes a generally optimistic tone, though she admits some fears -- along with hopes -- that many, if not all, people face as they grow older.

"Most of us convince ourselves that we will reach a plateau from our peak, not a valley," she writes.

"I try to imagine all the contingencies, but I admit I focus on the ones I like best" -- sitting at a book club with friends, not in the hallway of a nursing home, for instance, she adds.

Quindlen recalls the words of an elderly friend, Mrs. Smiley, who once said, "If you break a hip, you're finished."

To which, Quindlen observes, "It was an overstatement, but I think what she was really trying to say was that sometimes a single moment can mark the dividing line between who you are and who you never wanted to be."

I read those words, I agreed with them, I pondered the unfairness of them, and then I tried to pinpoint the dividing line in my own life, if it already exists. The very fact that I consider these words to be so unfair suggests I have at least approached that line -- or it has approached me. The line, the incident, the thing that changes everything, does not have to be an injury or an illness.

It can be a wrong decision, one we made as an immature teenager (as in Anne Tyler's wonderful novel Saint Maybe). Or it can be one we made as a mature adult but with naive expectations, with fanciful hopes or sometimes with greedy or sinister intent. Perhaps, the dividing line is a move we made, a job we turned down, a job we took, a marriage proposal we accepted or declined, a missed plane, a canceled doctor's appointment, a lie we told, a lie we believed, a lie we pretend didn't happen.

If it's not clear by now, I loved Quindlen's book, though, unlike her, I am less happy with my life at this point than I was when I was in my 30s. The 30s brought more choices -- in work, in health, in relationships, in the smallest of decisions and in the biggest of adventures. And yet age also has given me more self-confidence, along with a greater ability to understand why good people make mistakes and why we should be inclined to forgive rather than accuse. You see, as we live longer, we are bound to make more and more mistakes, some worse than others. So, we -- I -- can see more clearly than ever how I, too, have so often needed forgiveness.

Unlike the high school senior who didn't get asked to her prom, who was made to believe she was obese at 130, 140 pounds, who felt such irrational guilt she washed her hands over and over and over -- the woman I have become is moderately self-confident, not content but no longer embarrassed by her weight. Now, I can more freely call a supervising editor by a first name instead of Mr. (There weren't many upper-management figures in newsrooms with a Mrs., Ms. or Miss title in the 70s and 80s, and frankly there still aren't.) I now can even express disagreement when I disagree. I will defend myself and rarely apologize unless I believe I am in the wrong or unless I see no other logical recourse: I am pragmatic. And despite the feeling by many younger men and women that it's time for people of my generation, especially women, to quit being ambitious, to step aside and let them replace us, I shall continue working for a better life, a better job, another start if you will -- I'm not quitting and have no intention of doing so.

In many ways I'm braver, more courageous than I was at age 30. In other ways never before expected, I'm more vulnerable than ever, afraid of the unknown, of what lies ahead.

But fears or not, if I live to be 80, 90, 100, I won't go out sitting quietly "in my place." I fully intend to speak up for women's rights and against gender, racial and age discrimination as long as I can -- unless both my verbal and written voices give out on me first.

As Quindlen writes, "To be continued. It's another day, and I'm off and running. See you."

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

It took the death of a beloved horse to make me cry and then to make me understand how nature can help us understand our own lives. Lady, a registered American Saddlebred, was not my horse. She belonged to Cheryl Strayed, the author of Wild, the account of Strayed's hike more than a decade ago along the Pacific Coast Trail and the events that prompted her journey.

Strayed is not a particularly sympathetic narrator, despite the abandonment by her father, the death of her mother from cancer and her own recent divorce. Neither is she an especially credible narrator unless the reader is to believe that a woman who is smart enough to write two books didn't realize that her backpack-luggage was too heavy to carry hundreds of miles on rugged, sometimes dangerous terrain even though she could barely lift it without first sitting down. Nor did she think to pack a hiking stick, though she brought along a stash of condoms -- just in case.

Even so, the links between nature and humanity became obvious to me when Strayed wrote of putting down Lady, her ailing, 31-year-old horse. Because she couldn't afford a veterinarian, Strayed decided to summon her brother Leif to help her shoot the horse. She'd been told that death by gunfire would be instant, painless for Lady. So, Strayed brought Lady out, tied her to a tree and stood by Leif as he followed her instructions and shot the horse "Right between her eyes."

Yet Lady's death was neither sudden nor painless. "She bolted so hard her leather halter snapped into pieces and fell away from her face, and then she stood unmoving, looking at us with a stunned expression," Strayed writes.

So, Leif shot again, firing three more bullets into Lady's head. "She stumbled and jerked, but she didn't fall and she didn't run, though she was no longer tied to the tree. Her eyes were wild upon us, shocked by what we'd done, her face a constellation of bloodless holes."

The pain, the suffering, the sense of betrayal linger until Lady finally dies. But only after Strayed told how Lady looked at Strayed and her brother "with a stunned expression" did I grasp the link between a horse and a person, maybe even myself. Strayed's gentle horse was stunned, not only because of the bullet, but more importantly because the people she had trusted made it happen. To Lady, they had betrayed her.

How many times have we also been hurt, betrayed -- whether physically or mentally -- by people we thought loved us or at least cared for us? Maybe they did love us at least once upon a time; maybe not. If we survive the hurt to deal with those people -- whether friends, colleagues, spouses, others -- then we have our own decisions to make. Do we trust them again? Do we watch our backs as we continue the relationship? Do we act by doing nothing? Or do we take chances, make compromises with our own lives because rarely is anything -- even death, divorce, abandonment -- as simple, clean or clear-cut as we once thought it was, back in the days before betrayal, before we woke up, before it happened. Before. Before. ...

Rarely, are solutions to difficult problems, to betrayals, a clean shoot; a clean, painless, instant end. And maybe non-fiction is that way, too. Maybe the truth just doesn't always add up. Maybe the truth doesn't even always seem credible, even when it is. So, perhaps Strayed is far more credible than I gave her credit for at the start of this review. Maybe just as she was clearly unprepared for some of the rugged terrain of life -- marriage, drugs and death among them -- perhaps that explains why she also was unprepared for nature's challenges on the Pacific Coast Trail.

Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton

Blood, Bones & Butter is not just another book for foodies. Gourmands will enjoy it, but so will almost any reader who likes a good story with offbeat characters. There's not a single recipe in this book whose cover depicts a chicken's head turned upside down -- perhaps reflecting the way life has at times been for author/chef Gabrielle Hamilton, neither predictable nor conventional.

I cannot recall a single paragraph where Hamilton, owner of Manhattan's popular Prune restaurant, waxes eloquently about the taste of green vs. white asparagus, oysters on the half shell or a mirepoix.

What Hamilton does is wax, usually with eloquent writing and often with earthy language, about a life spent learning to survive and even thrive in the kitchen and, more importantly, with her own family and her husband's -- with food somehow almost always at center stage. Her work in the food industry has not always been a pretty job. She writes of almost being arrested once in her low-wage waitress days. She recalls later cleaning up "legions of cockroaches," human excrement, rotten apples and the remains of a dead rat.

Clearly, a chef who will clean up a stranger's excrement rather than delegate that chore to a subordinate is likely not prone to food snobbery. Indeed, Hamilton, who's more akin to Anthony Bourdain than Daniel Boulud, once even mentions how unimpressed she was by a meal at one of New York's most upscale restaurants. Still, food is a big part of Hamilton's story -- her memories of it as child at family meals, her dependence on it to make a living as a young adult and finally her adventure with and love of good food and those around her who also celebrate it and, like her, want to learn more about it.

Hamilton is also nothing but candid about herself. She writes of her strengths; she writes of her weaknesses. She writes of her own indecisiveness. She writes of her lesbian lovers followed by her Italian husband and never fully explains the change in lifestyles, sounding a bit baffled by it herself. The couple have two children but have never lived together.

Hamilton tells her life story almost as if she were talking, without dressing up her language or her actions over the years. The same goes for those who have played major roles, good or bad, in her life. Her parents, who divorced when she was a child, come across as more than a little negligent. Her in-laws, whom she sees once a year in Italy, fare much better despite the lack of demonstrative love between Gabrielle and her husband. I say "demonstrative" because it's clear that Hamilton wants more from her husband, that she wants him to suggest a romantic evening or such even though he is more concerned with getting the latest iPhone.

Because of the first-person narration, the reader sees all of the characters in Hamilton's life through her point of view, an unflinchingly opinionated one at that.

Hamilton is not only a gifted chef but also holds a master of fine arts degree in fiction writing. She is a visual artist as well. Just look at the picture of the bloody asparagus at the front of her book.

Hamilton's memoir is interesting and, for the most part, well-done. At times, though, I found her writing rough and hard to follow -- a bit uneven just as Hamilton's own life has been.

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje

At 269 pages, Michael Ondaatje's newest novel, The Cat's Table, is reasonably short. As a result, Ondaatje leaves the reader wanting to know more about different characters and plotlines. Isn't that what a good book should do?

So many authors today write what they apparently perceive to be epics and leave no room for a reader's imagination. In 500, 700, 950 pages and more, they share every detail -- past, present and future -- with the reader, leaving little, if anything, to the imagination.

The imagination is what allows intelligent people to disagree at times about parts of a book's plot, to wonder what happens to the characters after the work's final page, to have differing interpretations of an ending.

The imagination is what allows a child to read C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia solely as fantasy. It is what allows that same person, once an adult, to read the same series for biblical themes as well as fantasy. Imagination is what left me grasping for more information, searching the Internet for clues to the meaning of the ending of Audrey Niffenegger's wonderful novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, and to wonder even more about the symbolism, if any, in her adult graphic novel, The Night Bookmobile.

A long book is not necessarily bad anymore than a short one is necessarily good. I've read excellent long books. But I've also read some that could and should have been shorter. I liked Stephen King's 11/22/63, for instance. But I also thought it was excessively long and repetitious. Just as a good reporter is not necessarily a good writer, an author who excels at plot is not necessarily a good writer.

The Cat's Table is not a book I expected to like but ended up thoroughly enjoying. A man named Michael and nicknamed Mynah narrates the story. He recalls a three-week voyage from Sri Lanka to London that he took as an 11-year-old boy along with two other young boys. Aboard the ship, the youngsters were relegated to eat, not at the captain's table, but at the less-desirable "cat's table." While at sea, the youngsters did as many unsupervised little boys might do -- they snooped around, got into trouble and played in places that were off-limits to them -- the ship's upper-class swimming pool, for example.

Along the way, the boys encountered a bizarre group of passengers: a woman who stashed pigeons in her pockets; a botanist; a prisoner escorted in chains; a pretty cousin who sparked Mynah's sexual desires at a time when he likely was entering puberty; a murder at sea; a savvy thief who uses the little boy to crawl through small spaces to steal expensive items from the rooms of first-class guests.

Ondaatje, who also wrote The English Patient, has said he took a similar voyage when he was a lad. Yet, his book includes a disclaimer saying it is not autobiographical. With his own memories for inspiration and his talent for story-telling and writing, Ondaatje has created a book that is believable yet incredible and also restrained. With the last, he has allowed the reader to wonder about his story's unanswered questions and to wish the novel had not ended.

Coming Up & What I'm Reading Now.....

Now reading: Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, essays by Anna Quindlen, one of my favorite authors.

Coming soon will be thoughts on:

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman.

Messenger of Truth, a Maisie Dobbs mystery.

Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading by NPR's Maureen Corrigan.
Writers on Writing, essays first published in The New York Times.

Soon to read: Room.


And more.

A Note to Readers

Books I discuss on this blog often have already been reviewed by many others. So, I tend to offer more personal thoughts about the books I read than traditional reviews. While I generally say whether I like a book and why I feel that way, I often write about what the book meant to me or aspects of writing and life that it brought to mind. I hope you enjoy the entries and offer your own comments as well.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo & Sequels by Stieg Larsson

After an almost all-night reading session and with a bit of sadness, I wrapped up the final novel in Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. The book is, of course, a sequel to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire, all set in Sweden and all dealing with corruption and crimes against women, especially one tattooed, anti-social computer hacker named Lisbeth Salander.

I say I concluded the series with some sadness because I know there will be no other sequel -- at least not one by the Swedish author. He suffered a fatal heart attack after climbing seven flights of stairs shortly after he turned the trilogy into a publisher and never got to see his books hit the bestseller lists and stay there. Already, the first novel has been made into two movies, one Swedish and one American. Another movie is planned.

While the third novel's ending is such that I doubt Larsson planned another sequel, he clearly could have written another one if he had wanted. It would be nice, after all, to know how Sander -- aka the girl with the dragon tattoo, the one who could defend herself quite well with a gun, a golf club or a carpenter's nail gun -- adapted to society among other things. It would also have been nice to know the whereabouts of her twin sister -- a major detail Larsson never addressed. It seems odd he would have repeatedly mentioned the sister if he never meant to let the reader meet her or even know if she is alive or dead.

I immensely enjoyed all three books, and I don't usually read crime fiction. I am fully aware of the criticism that Larsson's books are packed with graphic violence, especially sexual violence mainly against women but also the reverse in a couple cases. Yet the novels never condone or glamorize the sexual violence. The rape scenes comes across as twisted violence, not sex. And that is to Larsson's credit.

Larsson also includes statistical information on violence against women in Sweden and refers to other gender discrimination, albeit less violent. Near the end of the final novel, the lead male character, investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist, tells his sister, "When it comes down to it, this story is not primarily about spies and secret government agencies; it's about violence against women, and the men who enable it." Indeed, that theme seems to permeate all three books.

The trilogy also abounds with consensual sex -- of various flavors. Blomkvist is a bit of a 21st Century James Bond. Perhaps not coincidentally, Daniel Craig, who portrays Blomkvist in the American movie version of Dragon Tattoo, is also Hollywood's latest Bond.

The books depict Salander as far more than a sexual victim. Though seriously lacking in social skills, she is a survivor not to mention a genius. The daughter of a not-so-nice Russian defector, Salander is prone to violence herself when she's provoked. She's also equipped with a photographic memory, computer skills that would make Microsoft and Apple look like newbies, and an ability to plot her every word and action, even in a crisis.

Larsson's books reflect significant research and a talent for creating intricate plot lines with countless subplots. While his occasional plot summaries are at times helpful, they more often are annoying and unnecessarily repetitive. The first and third books also take more than a few pages to gain the reader's interest. Larsson could have written more concisely, and his editor should have done more editing.

Still, anyone with the talent, the drive and the ability to write three novels that have captivated so many diverse readers around the world deserves applause. I just wish Larsson could have lived to hear it.

Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante

Imagine a murder mystery narrated by the chief suspect. Imagine the suspect is a Dr. Jennifer White, once an expert hand surgeon in Chicago, now a retired surgeon suffering from Alzheimer's. There lies the basic plot of Alice LaPlante's first novel, Turn of Mind.

White, the main character, has good days and bad ones. She cannot remember from one day to the next, though, that her longtime friend and neighbor Amanda is dead. Nor can she remember if she killed Anna.

The book is appropriately not divided into chapters but into four distinct parts of White's life after the killing in an upscale neighborhood near Lake Michigan. After, all Jennifer White's life is no longer clearly divided. At times, she thinks she is a teenager; at other times, a new mother eager to give up breastfeeding and return to her surgical work.

At one point, she vividly recalls her late husband James' shady financial dealings as a lawyer for the richest white-collar criminals. At other times, she believes her 30ish son Mark to be James. And there are the many times she believes James is once again late, a no-show. She must grieve her husband's death over and over -- each time she is told anew that he has died.

LaPlante takes care not to paint any of the characters -- the key suspect or the victim -- as all good or all bad. The same goes for the supporting cast -- the less-than-successful Mark and his younger sister Fiona (the one who so often covers for others' misdeeds).

Could one of White's adult children have been the killer? Might Fiona have covered for her mother? Might Mark have killed for the money he's always needing? Or did the chief suspect, Dr. Jennifer White, commit the crime but face no fate worse than the one she already faces in the few remaining years of her life?

The book is far more than a murder mystery. It also is a virtual diary of a brilliant surgeon's deteriorating mind as well as the story of a woman who learned early on to adapt, whether to a marriage gone awry, to a lavish lifestyle unjustly earned, to a friend's betrayal and finally to the betrayal of her own mind.

Oldies But Goodies -- Alice, Let's Eat & Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Only recently did I get around to reading Calvin Trillin's Alice, Let's Eat and Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. The book by Trillin, who still writes for The New Yorker, was published in 1978, four years after Dillard's collection of nature essays came out.

Both authors were ahead of their time. The TV Food Network didn't exist. And except for the likes of Julia Child, food writing wasn't the big seller it is now when Trillin wrote of his adventures as a "Happy Eater" -- adventures that took him from Paris to Kansas City.

When Dillard's book was published, DDT was fortunately a thing of the past, albeit only recently, and global warming wasn't even a part of our vocabulary yet. It would be a long time before Americans once again focused on nature, from tiny insects to tall mountains. But Dillard was already there with the essays in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book -- works that explores such oddities as the sex life of a praying mantis, the eating habits of a honey-loving wasp and the art of a snowflake.

I liked Dillard's book but found it tedious at times.

Trillin's writing, however, is a fast and light read. His humor is self-effacing. And while he loves a good soupe de poissons de roche, rouille et croutons dores and knows what all that boils down to (fish soup), he also appreciates good barbecue, scrapple, country ham and my personal favorite: red-eye gravy. But what most shines through in this pre-Food Network book is the one thing that clearly supercedes Trillin's love of a good meal -- his wife Alice. ... But then again, she never made him choose.