I had quite a stack of books to read, but I picked up C and an hour and a half later, I was engaged, finally making myself put it down shortly before midnight. I picked it up again this morning, and I hardly ever give myself permission to read during the day! This should say a lot about how I am loving the weird and unusual and captivating C.

Now, how lucky am I to open the Internet while ago only to learn that C has been shortlisted for England’s prestigious 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction? In fact, it is favored 2 to 1 to win! WOW! So, it won’t be long until I finish this one! By the way, the Englishman McCarthy is already popular for his first novel Remainder, which I’m now sure I will also read. He also wrote Tintin and the Secret of Literature.

In a nutshell, and I am only halfway through C, keep in mind, the novel revolves around a very dysfunctional early 1900s English family, in which the parents pretty much let the young daughter and younger brother choose their activities without any supervision. The father teaches deaf children at their estate by instructing them how to recite classical literature, particularly the tales of Persephone and other gods and goddesses of the classical Greek underworld. In fact, once annually, he stages a Greek pageant in which the pupils, who are fully costumed by the deaf mother of the family, slowly and painstakingly recite their assigned lines. All the parents of the students attend, being oh-so-proud of the progress their precious, previously non-speaking children are making. One more thing about the very strange mother, she is also highly involved in the cultivation of silk worms, who feast on the mulberry trees on the English estate, and she even chooses native berries to dye the silk all sorts of vibrant colors, and she likes poppies the best!  So, the preteen daughter and younger brother have free reign, so to speak, their parents being highly involved in their own interests, both being non-traditional parents. The housekeeper is the one who seems to watch over the children at all, this being very sporadic, at best.

As the years pass, the reader watches the highly intelligent young girl, now a mature teenager, develop an extreme and detrimental interest in bizarre science experiments and in the natural science field in general, including beetles and all kinds of botanical growth, while the brother “Serge” becomes equally enamored of the telegraph and the use of the Morse code, so much so that he communicates with the entire world! Tragedy strikes, which I will not let out of the bag, and Serge is sent to recuperate at a European bath which is run by a mad doctor.

This is how far I have reached! Stay tuned for the final blog on this remarkable and provocative novel whose vocabulary, setting, plot, and character development serve to make me realize  the merit of its nomination for the Man Booker! How glad am I that C jumped out of the stack at me last night!

Click here to read Part 2 of Nan’s blog

-Nan

I was very excited when I heard that Sara Gruen had a new novel coming out this fall.  I loved Water for Elephants and I know that many of you did also.  I began to read some of the reviews coming out about Ape House and they were very mixed…some loved it others hated it.  Being a bookseller as long as I have been I knew that they only way to know about this book was to read it myself.  Last week I got my chance because I got an advance copy from my lovely reps from Random House.  I went home on Thursday, ate some dinner and started reading and I finished Ape House on Friday!  I thoroughly enjoyed myself while reading  this book.  Do I think that everyone that loved Water for Elephants will love Ape House?  No, they are very different novels but I do think that everyone should give it a chance.

This is the story of a family of Bonobo Apes.  Sam, Bonzi, Lola, Mbongo, Jelani and Makena are part of an experiment to study their capability to have relationships with each other and humans.  In fact they have been taught American Sign Language and can communicate with Isabel, a scientist at the Great Ape Language Lab.  There is an explosion at the lab that injures Isabel and “liberates’ the apes.  After she leaves the hospital Isabel begins her search for the apes and comes to find out they have been purchased by man who has started a reality show called Ape House.   Isabel realizes that to save her “family” she must enlist the help of those she has never been able to fully connect with…her own kind, humans.  She enlists the help of a lab assistant, a reporter, a vegan protestor and a ex-porn star with plans of her own.

This is an article I found with Sara Gruen about why she wrote Ape House:

Sara Gruen on Ape House

Right before I went on tour for Water for Elephants, my mother sent me an email about a place in Des Moines, Iowa, that was studying language acquisition and cognition in great apes. I had been fascinated by human-ape discourse ever since I first heard about Koko the gorilla (which was longer ago than I care to admit) so I spent close to a day poking around the Great Ape Trust’s Web site. I was doubly fascinated–not only with the work they’re doing, but also by the fact that there was an entire species of great ape I had never heard of. Although I had no idea what I was getting into, I was hooked.

During the course of my research for Ape House, I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Great Ape Trust–not that that didn’t take some doing. I was assigned masses of homework, including a trip to York University in Toronto for a crash course on linguistics. Even after I received the coveted invitation to the Trust, that didn’t necessarily mean I was going to get to meet the apes: that part was up to them. Like John, I tried to stack my odds by getting backpacks and filling them with everything I thought an ape might find fun or tasty–bouncy balls, fleece blankets, M&M’s, xylophones, Mr. Potato Heads, etc.–and then emailed the scientists, asking them to please let the apes know I was bringing “surprises.” At the end of my orientation with the humans, I asked, with some trepidation, whether the apes were going to let me come in. The response was that not only were they letting me come in, they were insisting.

The experience was astonishing–to this day I cannot think about it without getting goose bumps. You cannot have a two-way conversation with a great ape, or even just look one straight in the eye, close up, without coming away changed. I stayed until the end of the day, when I practically had to be dragged out, because I was having so much fun. I was told that the next day Panbanisha said to one of the scientists, “Where’s Sara? Build her nest. When’s she coming back?”

Most of the conversations between the bonobos and humans in Ape House are based on actual conversations with great apes, including Koko, Washoe, Booey, Kanzi, and Panbanisha. Many of the ape-based scenes in this book are also based on fact, although I have taken the fiction writer’s liberty of fudging names, dates, and places.

One of the places I did not disguise or rename is the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They take in orphaned infants, nurse them back to health, and when they’re ready, release them back into the jungle. This, combined with ongoing education of the local people, is one of the wild bonobos’ best hopes for survival.

One day, I’m going to be brave enough to visit Lola ya Bonobo. In the meantime, in response to Panbanisha’s question, I’m coming back soon. Very soon. I hope you have my nest ready!

Meet Lola, a Filipina nanny working in California to send her daughter back in the Philippines to medical school, while her husband waits patiently at home, an executive for Hallmark. Ruth, an immigrant as well, is Lola’s “teacher of America” and runs a placement service for nannies.

“Three women one baby. Usually it is the other way around,” Lola remarks to her nanny friend, though she knows well the challenge from raising her own children in a close knit community of the Philippines.

Lola works for Claire, a middle-aged mother of William and wife to Paul who is an aspiring comedic writer with one toe in Hollywood’s door. While Paul works many long hours, Lola is hired to help Claire, a composer who reflects deeply on her role as a mother and artist: “Music was all or nothing. Art gave no B pluses, no credit for trying. If I couldn’t make that, I’d be better off tending my son or working in a hospital. I still didn’t know if I could make that. And I was almost forty.”

While the relationships Mona Simpson explores are reminiscent of The Help in the complexity of paying someone to basically care and love for a child while parents pursue dreams closer to their own terms, one of the biggest differences is that the female role has been liberated from the stay-at-home fragile female with mothers like Claire pursuing professional careers. Claire is very aware of the choice she has made but still does not feel the freedom to seriously continue her creative work as a composer. At one point she admits to her husband, “I wanted to be a father.”

The chapters alternate between Lola and Claire. These two women and the choices they make stay with the reader long after finishing the book.

Though we may have long forgotten the freedom our first generation immigrant ancestors felt, you will think about the abundance of choice we have in the United States and how it must feel for a new immigrant like Lola. You will think about the choices your mother made, the choices you have made with your own children. I don’t have children but the novel still affected me deeply as women seem driven by an invisible force to fulfill as many roles as possible, making them central to the intricate relationships of the family.

As Lola explained the Filipino language to a child very dear to her: “Lola is grandma. Yaya for nanny. Ate, older sister . . . Tita for auntie . . . Inday, little sister . . . They are names but they are not exactly names. They are positions . . . Then we say the rosary.”

Mona Simpson will be at Lemuria for a signing (5:00) and reading (5:30) on Wednesday, September 15th.

This is a long rambling blog, but this time I promise that the picture has something to do with the blog – it’s supposed to “capture the absurdities of contemporary life”

It’s funny. Even though I am constantly thinking and talking about books I hate reading reviews. I generally scan over them to see what is getting the press. I may skim the ones about the books I have read or plan to read to see if they are favorable, but I rarely actually read a review. You would think that it would help me at work to read them (you know – so I can sell the books) but I really don’t think it does help. For one thing – and I don’t think this is a revelation – but, they generally ruin the plot of the book for the reader. Or at least they effect the way you read a book. You know, this one is about a family, or this one is about terrorism – when in fact the reviewer may have missed the point. And of course sometimes the plot of a book isn’t really the point, but still…

I’ve been watching the reviews of Jonathan Franzen’s new book Freedom though and I think I’ve been interested for a couple of reasons: First, the media buzz around The Corrections in 2001 was such a big deal that everyone seemed to have an opinion about Franzen – you know, he’s the one that snubbed Oprah. I personally thought that it was a good idea to snub Oprah, but the novel itself fell flat. But he made such a bang that you couldn’t help but watch. After all, what else in the literary world does anyone other than us care about. (I liked his essay from Harper’s) The second reason that I have been watching for reviews of Freedom is that I actually really liked the book. I read it on vacation and just ate it up. I liked it, but I’m not really sure why – maybe some of these smart people who get paid to write reviews can help me out, right? Well, the first one I heard was on NPR one day – the reviewer said that he didn’t like the book because of Franzen’s disdain for his characters. I’m not sure if I like that as a reason to give a book a negative review, but I guess I see his point. I’m not sure I agree – the characters are definitely imperfect but I’m not sure that I think Franzen himself dislikes them.

This week the print reviews hit in the New York Times and the cover of Time. The Time piece describes Franzen’s self consciousness  – I happen to suspect that it’s a bit of an act – he’s just the to perfect nerd hero. (nerdy glassed, mussed hair, professor jacket, memoir about birding)

Here’s a quote from the NYT’s review: “it felt, at times, as if he were self-importantly inflating the symbolic meaning of his characters experiences”. Interesting and I guess I agree but don’t really mind. I think one of the most helpful thing I’ve read is that Franzen is trying to write the big American novel. It’s big and sprawling and covers a lot of ground. Again from the NYT’s review – Franzen’s characters capture “the absurdities of contemporary life”. Maybe it’s as simple as that – I like this book because I can relate. I’ve often suspected that a big part of the reason that I like books so much is a simple curiosity about other people.

With John Brandon’s Citrus County being this month’s First Edition Club pick (and his first novel Arkansas being a big-seller too), I thought now would be a good time to introduce (or remind) everyone about McSweeneys–how wonderful it is AND how you can buy all sorts of McSweeneys publications right here at Lemuria.

So, first things first, the introduction.  McSweeneys was started in 1998 as a literary journal edited by Dave Eggers (you know Dave Eggers, the author of What is the What, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, The Wild Things, Away We Go, You Shall Know Our Velocity and Zeitoun) that only published works that had already been rejected by other magazines.  Since then it has evolved with authors now writing stories that are intended specifically for McSweeneys.  The company has gone from being just one quarterly journal into a small publication house that not only turns out the quarterly, but also has four other imprints and two monthly magazines (the Wholphin and The Believer).

Now that you know a little bit about McSweeneys and its beginnings, take a look at this list of my personal favorite authors who have been published by McSweeneys in one way or another:  Aimee Bender, Michael Chabon, Joyce Carol Oates, Ann Beattie, Per Petterson,Stephen King, and David Foster Wallace.

And guess what.  We have a little of everything here at Lemuria–books published by McSweeneys imprints, McSweeneys quarterly, issues of Wholphin, and issues of The Believer.  You should come by and take a look.  I’m afraid this little blog post doesn’t do them much justice.  -Kaycie

As I was driving home one night last week, Mississippi Public Broadcasting was replaying the morning edition of “Fresh Air”, so I got to hear the excellent review of Gary Shteyngart’s new novel Super Sad True Love Story. Readers will remember him from the 2002 publication of Russian Debutante’s Handbook and the 2007 release Absurdistan, both of which Lemuria readers liked, according to our computer files.  I’m predicting that Super Sad True Love Story will be a big hit as well.

Since the review on MPB had already piqued my interest, I wasted no time in opening this novel. At the start, the protagonist, a thirty-nine year old Russian immigrant to America, is playing out his last days of a year long sojourn back in his home land, where he has been unsuccessfully trying to recruit clients for his business, “Post Human Services, which specializes in immortality. Yes, I did say, “Immortality!” So, I have let the cat out of the bag. Yes, this is a dystopian novel, but not like Margaret Atwood’s. Perhaps think of the impression you, reader, had of the near future as you once read George Orwell’s 1984, or maybe Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

Back to Super Sad True Love Story………The business which Lenny Abramov tries to market and recruit for only wants those best specimens of human beings who have not only the intellectual, but also the physical attributes,  to endure forever. A one night stand with a 22-year-old  gorgeous Asian girl named Eunice Parks, a selfish, totally contemporary global prototype, throws Lenny into a helpless state of love. The word itself “love” rarely exists  in this almost apocalyptic America. Once back in New York, Lenny texts and emails Eunice, whose luck is running out in Russia, and who feels compelled to return to help her physically abused mother and sister, offering Eunice a place to stay.

This austere novel could be seen as a satire on technology taken to its ultimate extreme, depleting and horrific. All human beings wear “apparrats” which hang from their necks, constantly recording multiple amounts of data of everyone walking by, even their cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Equally shocking is the fact that their sexual desirability, personality attributes, and all sorts of physical  sustainability quotients are also projected for the entire wireless connected world to view. So, actual human contact, or even normal conversation, rarely occurs since basically everything one wants to know about another human being is literally at his or her finger tips. Actual love between one person and another, a dying art, rarely occurs; however, Lenny sees the possibility with Eunice and actively pursues her.

As the novel progresses, New York deteriorates and  National Guard tanks clutter the streets. Lenny, desperate to keep his job, worries about his credit score, which can be seen on every corner of the city on credit towers, along with other passerbys who also have equally troublesome scores. Eunice, who is staying for free at Lenny’s apartment and ultimately using him to her ultimate advantage, worries about her raging father who is abusing her mother and sister. Her powerful assertiveness, in which she “minored” in college, threatens to squash Lenny, who has the “savior complex.” An old fashioned book lover, Lenny hopes futilely to have a relationship in which he actually reads literature and poetry to his beloved. He treasures his first edition Chekhov collection of short stories, which a young  international traveler noted “smelled bad”.

As far as predictability, Super Sad True Love Story, may take the prize; yet, I will keep reading to see how Shteyngart plays it out. As far a contemporary language and futuristic devices, the author excels. The colorful jacket says it all graphically: the multicolored  “buttons”, a symbol of the high tech world of mobile devices, are all bright colors, except for the one circling the word “sad”, which is stark black. The irony is inescapable. The title would have read, “Super True Love Story”—how sad!  -Nan

I have been on a historical fiction kick lately this summer and it is no wonder because both Alison Weir and Philippa Gregory have new novels out and both are really good and fun to read.  Both of  these books are about strong women who will do whatever they can for their sons to have what they deserve.  At least what they think they deserve.

Captive Queen by Alison Weir is about Eleanor of Aquitaine, who is one of the most admired females in medieval history.  Eleanor was a heiress in her own right with her duchy of Aquitaine which was transferred to France with her marriage to King Louis VII and then to England with her marriage King Henry II.   Captive Queen is mainly about the tempestuous relationship between Eleanor and Henry and the power struggles and rivalries between Henry and their children which include Richard the Lionheart and the future King John.  Eleanor is ‘held captive’ by her love/hate relationship with her husband, Henry, and then finally after betraying him to have her favorite son, Richard, put on the throne of England she physically becomes his captive.

Philippa Gregory has started a new series, The Cousins War, that encompasses the War of the Roses. These stories are about the Plantagenet cousins, the Houses of York and Lancaster, whose claimants and Kings ruled England before The Tudors.  The first of the series is The White Queen which I do recommend reading first and it has just come out in paperback.   The White Queen is Elizabeth Woodville, who captures the heart of the newly crowned young king and marries him in secret.  She and her family, The House of York rise to power and her two sons become a part of one of  history’s biggest unsolved mysteries, The Princes of the Tower of London.  The Red Queen is the story of the Lancaster family during The War of the Roses.  Margaret Beaufort is the heiress to the red rose of Lancaster and she never falters in her belief that her family is the true heir to the crown and after being married to Edmund Tudor and giving birth to Henry, the hope of the House of Lancaster she has a vision that he will one day be the King of England.   After being widowed twice, she marries Thomas, Lord Stanley, who is nicknamed ‘The Fox”.  Margaret has been separated from her son Henry for most of his life and is now putting all her hopes in her third husband to help her bring him out of exile to England to fulfill his destiny, bring down the House of York and become the King of England.

How in the world did August get here so fast?! I have been trying to carve out some reading time of late and catch up on some books that I have wanted to read.

I loved hearing Audrey Niffenegger when she was at Lemuria a couple of weeks ago. I have to say that Time Traveler’s Wife was not a real favorite of mine. I felt like if she had dropped about half of the jumping back and forth it would have been much more manageable and enjoyable because the premise was really great. So, when her next novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, arrived, I glanced at it but never read it. After listening to her, though, I was intrigued and picked it up….I am LOVING it!! It is beautifully written and has a very unusual and intriguing plot. I feel like Niffenegger never set out to have a blockbuster of a novel but Time Traveler’s Wife became just that. It’s not her style. She’s not flashy but Fearful Symmetry, seems to be much more of who she truly is….a gifted writer who researches and labors over the details and truly crafts her art. She is a bookbinder and visual artist which fits with her thoughtful and somewhat subdued personality. I am sure she is pleased to death with what her success with Time Travelers Wife brought but I would imagine she is enjoying this latest book in a much different way. She is just so good.

I also have just finished Troy Carnes book, Rasputin’s Legacy. I have known Troy for years from his coaching several of my girls in basketball at Jackson Prep and honestly picked up his book to be nice! I didn’t put it down for 2 days! It is fast paced and well thought out. I am so happy for him and hope many readers will pick up his book. I love stories set in and around WWII and have read just about every Holocaust book out there and this book has all of that but while it reads like a fast spy novel it also has huge heart. A great read.

More reviews and comments on Rasputin’s Legacy

More reviews of Her Fearful Symmetry

Over the past while I have been hearing more about the name David Mitchell. He had a front page review in the Times by David Eggers that was really good for The Thousand Autums of Jacob De Zoet, Susie has written two blogs on him already having read Thousand Autumns and Ghostwritten, his first. The result has been this resounding thought in my head: “Read David Mitchell.” So I picked up Cloud Atlas, his most well-known work to-date, and started it a few nights ago.

When I first pick up a book by an author I’ve never read I’m not quite sure at what level/arena I’m going to relate. Will it be on the “entertaining storyline” level? the “this is well written” level? the “this was a really good book” level? or the “…um…uh…wow this book is blowing me away at a level I can’t quite put my finger on but my life is probably going to change by the time I get through it” level. The last is for a select few authors in my brief reading career: Melville (putting salt in my veins), Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (they might know me better than I do) , McCarthy (he just stuck his boot up my all-knowing arse and I’m so thankful), etc…It’s the same with musica: Shostakovitch, Beethoven, Bach, Part, and Messiaen….

I got about fifteen pages into Cloud Atlas and had a moment of, “wait a second…this is really good but I think this guy might be brilliant.” So I took a break, found the dictionary and encyclopedia app on my phone and had a little recap only to confirm, “yes…this man is in fact quite brilliant.” One really doesn’t put authors into that last category, they created it and then take it by force, never to let loose their hold on you. David Mitchell is already establishing himself on my conscious in this way. I hope he continues to stake his claim in this arena as I go through the work.

Cloud Atlas is composed of a series of stories that span time and are all wound into a beautiful novel. I have completed the first two. The first is an account of an American traveling from the New Zealand area of the Pacific back to America in the mid 1800s (Melville’s blood is pumping throughout). In the first twenty pages he is able to firmly establish a blender in which he throws Western Christian thought, the savage native, and the pure native. It was a nice stretch of the mind, having a incredible “zinga” of a passage in there. The second is about a wild young musician that is broke and running from debt collectors, finding refuge at the estate of an unsuspecting famous elderly composer. Here he dug a place in my heart with an incredible grasp and use of a musical education and temperament.

It is incredible when an author is able to lay such a broad foundation so naturally through the eyes of individuals that are no less than owned. So far, Mitchell seems to me a untamed literary beast that is able to wield not only his words and characters but also the styles and words of others, and moving them to a rhythm to say something purely his own. I am trying to hold on to this wave, and allow myself to continue to hear what he is saying. I’m sure I have rambled in extremes my whole way through this post as is my tendency, but–whateva man–I get excited and this is the best my unfiltered young mind could muster. Who knows, maybe I’m just impressionable. Great works, the likes of which this book is moving towards, in any artistic medium usually leave me with my mouth open only wishing to express my gratitude for their hard work and time they spent to give me this experience.

READ DAVID MITCHELL

-John P.

by Kelly Pickerill

I spied a good looking book on Joe’s desk a few months back; it was the review copy of Howard Norman’s new book, not due out till July.  Well, it’s July!  And not only has his book arrived at Lemuria, but Howard Norman himself will be here on Friday, the 30th!

I really enjoyed reading this book.  At the start, Wyatt Hillyer sits down to write a letter to his adult daughter whom he hasn’t seen since she was very young.  Though Marlais doesn’t know her father and may never be close to him, Wyatt wants her to know what happened to him in the five years before she was born, the years when, during World War II in Canada, he participated in a violent crime that changed his life.

I loved the tone and texture of Norman’s novel more than any other aspect.  Because it’s a letter, the events Wyatt recalls are a mixture of memory and fact.  The dialogue can lack verisimilitude, though that’s forgiven because Wyatt is recalling conversations that took place more than twenty years previous.  But Wyatt is a careful wordsmith, meticulously choosing how he relates the events that eventually lead to his daughter’s birth — his parents’ simultaneous suicide, when he’s eighteen, because they are in love with the same woman, the secret infatuation Wyatt harbors for his cousin, Tilda, once he comes to live with her family, Tilda’s affair with a German student and the uproar their relationship causes in the small town of Middle Economy, and the events of the war which the citizens of Canada are finding more and more distressing, especially Wyatt’s uncle.

In the review in the Washington Post by Ron Charles, he points out that the epistolary style results in an “odd disconnect between the novel’s sober tone and its outrageous plot” making for a story that “seems shocking only in retrospect.”

At the time, you lean in, trying to catch every word, lulled by his voice as he describes the most ordinary lives that just happen to be punctuated by macabre accidents and bizarre acts of violence.

Come out to Lemuria on Friday starting at 5 to hear Howard Norman read from What Is Left the Daughter.