Then We Came To The End - Joshua Ferris

Everyday I sit in my little office typing on my computer. Sometimes I go to meetings and sometimes I take coffee breaks to gossip with my co-workers. It's all very mundane. But, then I watch movies like "Office Space" or television shows like "The Office" and I realize that this experience is so common to so many people, and yes, there are actually many aspects of it that are quite humorous. Ferris's novel is along these same lines. His characters work for a large advertising agency that is going through a severe downsizing. The characters scramble to look busy, spread rumors about each other, and then descend like vultures on the worthless items left behind by those who are given their notice. Style-wise, I found it interesting that Ferris chose to write his novel in the second-person. Everything is told from the perspective of "we" and "us" and we never find out who the actual narrator of the novel is. I thought it gave the book an interesting feel. Many of the little interactions between the characters are clever and made me smile thinking of someone in my own office who behaves the same way. But, the plot drags and gets a bit tedious at times. I actually think this book would be better presented as a movie, but then again, maybe too similar to the working drone productions already out there.

My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult

I have really been in a reading funk lately. I started about four different books last week and couldn't make it past about page 20 in any of them. So, on a quiet Friday night, I decided to turn to an old favorite - Jodi Picoult. Picoult usually writes about adolescents (I actually think this one was in the Young Adult section at the library), deals with family turmoil, and has a very easy to get into writing style. She reminds me a lot of Chris Bohjalian. My Sister's Keeper is about a young woman named Kate who is suffering from a rare form of leukemia. She is diagnosed at age 2 and when her older brother does not turn out to be a genetic match for purposes of bone marrow donation, Kate's parents decide to get pregnant again - through invitro fertilization so that they can control the genetic make-up of their new child, Anna. Anna is a perfect match and from the day she is born, she is poked and prodded with needles and undergoes painful operations, all in the hopes of saving her sister's life. But, when her sister needs a kidney transplant, Anna takes a stand and hires an attorney to fight for her medical emancipation. Her mother is horrified, accusing Anna of signing Kate's death warrant. But, Anna's father is unsure, believing it's time they let their daughter take control of her own body. As Kate waits precariously in her hospital bed for the court's ruling, Anna is torn between her love for her sister and her family, and her desire to be seen as something more than simply a vessel for harvesting. This is a painful read - there are the obvious bio-ethics question about creating a child like Anna in the first place - and then the questions of how far one will go to save a child - even at the expense of the children who aren't suffering from catastrophic illnesses. I found the descriptions of the medical procedures a bit too graphic, but overall, this was a thought-provoking and engaging read.

The Red Queen - Margaret Drabble

A modern-day researcher discovers the 200 year old memoirs of a Korean princess. The memoir recounts daily court life, the constraits of society, her devotion to her mentally ill king, and the constant political maneuvering within the court. The book then turns back to the researcher and her growing obsession with the memoirs. The subject matter of the Korean court was in general interesting to me. The writing, however, was superficial. The story was rambling and repetitive and did not give the reader a very good sense of the urgency and anxiety felt by this princess. This book reminded me of Anchee Min's Empress Orchid about an impoverished Chinese girl who rescues her family by becoming a concubine in The Forbidden City. The difference is that Min created a character that I actually cared about and presented the secrets of the royal family with such drama and importance that I felt as if I was really being allowed behind the curtain. Drabble's narrative fell flat and by the time I got to the second part focusing on the researcher, I simply could not wait for the book to be over.

The Gathering - Anne Enright

The Gathering received the 2007 Man Booker Prize. In general, I find the Booker winners extraordinarily written and incredibly boring. Enright is the first one in awhile to hold my attention. After the death of the closest of her nine siblings, Victoria gathers her family together for an Irish wake. In bringing her brother Liam's body home, Victoria is reminded of her childhood, growing up mostly unsupervised by a mother too distracted by her never-ending pregnancies. As she confronts the horror of a secret she stumbled upon as an unsuspecting 8-year old, she is forced to acknowledge the reasons for her brother's wayward life. This is a brutal portrayal of a family torn apart by neglect and abuse, though at times I felt Enright was too straight-forward about what was going on - as if she did not trust her readers to read between the lines. Not much happens in this book plot-wise, but as a character and family study, I found it thoroughly amazing.

Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

After several so-so books in the past couple weeks, I stumbled upon this gem set during the Nigerian civil war in the 1960s. The book focuses on five main characters, a 15-year old houseboy (Ugwu), his revolutionary and anticolonial master (Odenigbo), twin daughters of a wealthy politician (Olanna and Kainene), and a white researcher desperate to gain acceptance in the African community (Richard). As each character struggles with his or her individual identity - and their relationships among each other, the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria secede to form the independent nation of Biafra. The ensuing civil war takes the lives of hundreds of thousands (depending on which side's statistics you believe), as Ugwu attempts to avoid conscription, Olanna discovers that her one-time wealth cannot save her from starvation, and Odenigbo fails to see that all the intellectualizing in the world cannot prevent the murder of his family. Adichie's writing and her ability to bring painful histories to light has earned her the title "Africa's next Chinua Achebe" (author of Things Fall Apart). Purely as a work of fiction, I found the characters rich and believable, if not frustrating in their set ways. As a piece of historical fiction, this is a devastating, yet illuminating introduction into yet another tragic chapter of Africa's history.

Happy Valentine's Day - with help from James Joyce

Mostly I read to myself. But, every once in awhile, someone reads aloud and I am reminded of how beautiful language can be and that in the right hands it can capture inexplicable emotions. In high school, my English teacher played a recording of T.S. Eliot reading from my blog's namesake "The Wasteland," as well as "The Hollow Men." It was the first time I truly appreciated poetry and I can still hear Eliot's raspy voice warning, "This is the way the world ends..."

But, more importantly, and fitting for today...when I was in my last year of college, I took my favorite 19th Century Victorian Novels class. This is where I learned to love Austen, Dickens and Thackery, and developed my dislike for George Eliot. My professor (the brilliant Robert Polhemus) was also a Joyce scholar. I had studied Joyce during my summer in Dublin, and struggled mightily through Ulysses, which I appreciated, but could never quite follow.

On Valentine's Day (1997), Professor Polhemus stopped class to read Molly Bloom's soliliquy from the book's final chapter in which Molly (Penelope) welcomes home her long-adventuring husband Leopold Bloom (the wily Odysseus). And now when I think of returning and what it means to fall in love, I think of Professor Polhemus reading Molly's words:

"I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

Wishing everyone a very happy valentine's day (and in a leapyear, no less)!!

The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-exupery

The Little Prince is one of the best-selling books of all time. It is often presented as a children's book, and I first read it many many years ago. Re-reading it in a short sitting today, I believe it's one of those stories that was enjoyable to me as a child, but much more meaningful to me as an adult. The narrator of the story is an aviator whose plane has crashed in the desert. He meets the Little Prince, an extra-terrestrial of sorts, who reminds him of the wisdom of looking at the world through a childs' eyes. The Little Prince relays to the narrator the story of his travels across the universe, to various planets with serious adults, and the important lessons he learns - the most important being that "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." The author also illustrated the novella, and the drawings add much to the enjoyment of the story. The ending is a bit sad, but The Little Prince overall is filled with valuable observations and hope.