by Jonathan Safran Foer
ages: adult
First sentence: “What about a teakettle?”
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Huh. I heard so much good about this book, the people over at the Nook (that’s my online book group) are basically raving about it, and all I can come up with is… huh.

For those of you who don’t know (all five of you), the story revolves around nine-year-old Oskar Schnell whose father, two years before, died in the World Trade Center Bombings. Oskar has become increasingly fearful: of heights, elevators, people that look Arab and more and more neurotic, wearing only white, writing letters obsessively to famous people (mostly asking to be their protégé). Then, in his father’s closet, he finds a key in an envelope marked “Black”, and begins searching New York City for the owner. Somehow, he feels, this will help him learn more about his father and give him some kind of closure. Interspersed with Oskar’s story are letters from his grandparents: ones from his grandfather to his father explaining why he left and wasn’t there while his son was growing up. And ones from his grandmother to Oskar, explaining what happened with her husband and why she is leaving now.

It’s the combination of Oskar’s pretentiousness (and “wise innocence”) and the use of graphics — pictures or red markings or — that give this novel it’s unique feel. Sometimes, that’s a good thing. Sometimes, I thought, all of the novel ideas in this novel actually worked. I enjoyed the photographs; they gave an interesting perspective into Oskar’s world and his journey. It’s a depressing subject, 9/11, and I thought there were moments when Foer got grief, got incompleteness, got searching for closure just right. There were chapters that hit me powerfully — the letter from the grandmother about her reaction when she realized her son had died in the towers, for instance — and the ending is, ultimately, hopeful. Which is a good thing considering the scope of the tragedies in the book. It could have been a horribly depressing book, and it wasn’t.

But, there were also moments when the pretentiousness — of both the novel and of Oskar — drove me absolutely batty. I spent too much time trying to figure out the red editing marks on one of the grandfather’s letters, trying to figure out what it all “meant”. And the letter from the grandfather that began with numbers — he was trying to communicate on the phone without speaking — and ended in pages of black ink drove me batty. (Yes, I did try to figure out what he was saying. Argh.) Perhaps, for once in my life, I was over thinking a book instead of letting it wash over me. But perhaps, also, all the uniqueness and all the pretentiousness negated each other: there was too much of a good thing in this book, and in the end I was left with an empty void of Huh.

by George Bishop
ages: adult
First sentence: “Dear Elizabeth, How to begin this?”
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Review copy provided by TLC Book Tours.

Elizabeth, 15 years old, has taken the car and run away after a heated argument with her mother, Laura, which ended with Laura slapping Elizabeth. All Laura can do, now, is wait and hope and reminisce about her own adolescence. In a letter to her daughter, Laura lays her past out before her, hoping that somehow it’ll help the two connect.

And, thankfully, while it’s not a happy, pretty past, it’s also not something that’s truly horrifying. It’s honest in it’s reflections of the teenage years from an adult perspective. Nothing is sugar-coated, but there’s a reflectiveness to the prose, a weightiness that makes the actions of Laura’s youth — from her first, and only it seems, love affair to the loss of that love in Vietnam to her impulsive decision making to her strained relationships with her parents — seem less angsty.

It also helped that the book was one long letter from mother to daughter. It would seem, with something like this, that there would be a self-help feel to it: Bishop, after all, is exploring the relationships between mothers and daughters and (as I well know being on both sides of that equation) that is a tricky one. There is a need to be a parent, to set boundaries, to make sure that your daughter is safe. And yet, there’s is a desire to connect as women, as people who have gone through (or will go through) many of the same experiences. It’s this tension that Bishop is exploring, I think, and the letter format pushed that tension more into the background and less of a central theme. It’s still there, it’s still present, but the book reads less like a “what to do when you’re girl goes astray” and more like a memoir, which helped.

And Bishop writes quite elegantly, as well. It’s a slim novel, and never did a feel that there was more — or less — than should have been told. As a reader, you only find out about Elizabeth through incidental comments Laura makes, and that’s as it should be. It’s Laura’s story, Laura’s memories, and Bishop doesn’t do anything to take away from that. He also quite skillfully handles the passage of time, both flipping back from the present to the past as well as Laura’s traveling through high school. It didn’t feel choppy or jumpy at all.

It was a surprisingly good novel, one that I can see myself dipping into and out of as my girls get older (and perhaps passing on to them).

by Oscar Wilde
ages: adult
First sentence: “The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.”
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If I’m being completely honest, I wanted to read this book because of the movie Dorian Gray that should be coming out sometime this year (at least in the US). It caught my fancy, and I realized that while I’ve seen several adaptations of The Importance of Being Earnest, I’ve never actually read any Oscar Wilde. Shame on me.

And, after finishing this, really shame on me. Wilde is a superb writer. Terribly funny — that wonderful British dry wit you have to love, self-deprecating and dismissive — and, at the same time, incredibly thought-provoking. I found that I couldn’t stop thinking about this book.

For the three of you that don’t know the plot, I may just have to spare you. I’ve tried writing a plot summary of the book, but it’s not working. It’s about the characters — Dorian, the young innocent, who wants to stay young and beautiful, and, in the end, is willing to sell his soul to do so; Basil, the painter who paints the portrait, who pins all of his artistic hopes on Dorian; and Lord Henry, the worldly, snide, philosophic man who leads Dorian — whether intentionally or unintentionally — into a hedonistic lifestyle that ends up corrupting Dorian.

It’s also about the ideas: the place of beauty and art in our lives, the purpose of beauty in our lives, in addition to the moral weight of art, as well as whether or not we should be asking art to carry our morality or for artists to express our morality. It’s heady stuff, ideas that begged to be discussed long and thoroughly over a good dinner. (Hmm… food’s still on my mind.)

That’s not to say Dorain Gray is an easy read; it’s not. It can be funny — Lord Henry, with his posturing and glib opinions often made me laugh — but it’s also incredibly creepy and highly disturbing. Which, honestly, is as is should be. If it were just glib and funny, then I think much of the impact of what Wilde wanted to get across. I can see how this would not have gone over well in Victorian England; Wilde is putting forth ideas that are challenging to our expectations of art and morality, and challenges of that sort never go over well.

Still, it’s an incredible book, a fascinating book. And I can only hope the movie can begin to do it some justice. (*fingers crossed*)