Maria and I looked, albeit sporadically, all last winter for a snowy owl.
I had actually seen one years ago one winter afternoon on the road along the dunes to Ludington State Park. It was perched on a pole against a background of cold grey sky and Lake Michigan waves, and it was a perfect sighting, elemental, forever memorable.
We didn't see one last year so were excited when the bird blogs starting reporting snowy owls, first from a friend in Montana, and then several here in Michigan.
They were seen at the Muskegon Wastewater site during the week before Thanksgiving. Deborah, Maria and I almost "chased" them on Thanksgiving day, but decided to tend instead to delicious brined turkey (a la Richard), oyster and sausage dressing, perfect gravy, roasted root vegies, a sublime pumpkin pie and walnut pumpkin butter cheesecake.
So, on Friday, which was unexpectedly sunny, Maria and Richard headed home with a planned detour through the MWW. I decided to caravan with them in my car as far as the Wastewater site in hopes of seeing a snowy. And we did exactly that! The Wetzels were just in front of me as we crept along the north side of the east lagoon. We kept in touch via cell phones with Maria noting the several cars parked on the center dike and wondering what they were seeing. And then, a beautiful snowy owl burst from the weeds on the rocky lagoon edge right in front of their car and flew south, its long broad white wings flapping relatively slowly. Awesome!
I hung around another 30 minutes as it flew back and forth from the west side to the north side of the east lagoon. From a distance, it looked almost gull-like as it sat on the rocks, but when it flew, the huge wings were lovely and distinctive.
So this may be an irruptive year, occurring when lemmings get scarce farther north, and the owls venture more south than they usually do. Pete Dunne describes them as looking like "small, soot-flecked, partially melted snowmen with yellow eyes." We didn't get close enough to see the yellow eyes, but perhaps another time.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Book: Fiction Ruined My Family by Jeanne Darst
Jeanne, her three sisters and her parents move from St.Louis to Amagansett in June of 1976, the beginning of this memoir. Jeanne's father is a writer who is always just ABOUT to be wildly successful and publish a best seller. Her Mother stays at home and cooks and drinks.
Jeanne grows up in this household with these parents and her sisters, becomes a writer and drinker herself and tells her story: witty, poignant, honest, profane.
About her Dad:
"I saw him as a tragic hero. Like all tragic characters, he was trying to do the impossible--write novels, sell novels, make money, keep the drinking under control, get the cracked wife some help, take care of four kids. Like all tragic heroes, he had a fundamental lack of self-awareness."
About her Mom"
"Like a professional chef, Mom was never hungry by the time dinner came around, never really ate a meal with us. She took one bite, lit a cigarette and began a sort of post-shift meltdown.....And she'd weave up the front staircase to her bedroom and shut the door. That was more or less how my mother now said good night..."
But there is a lot of love in this story. At the end, Jeanne writes:
"I have to let my father read this book and it is terrifying to think that I will hurt him with it...Am I saying he put writing before all of us? All my father has done has been to show me wild enthusiasm and encouragement as a writer. I would never want to hurt him. I admire his writing and know I am not half the thinker or writer he is. His support of my writing was never about the writing for me. It was the love from my dad."
From this underlying family history, she emerges with her own voice:
"Things were worse than before I quit drinking. I was now living in a couple rooms with wigs drying on a hanger outside my front door and a restless unpredictable teenage pot-head next door and no bathroom and no money, no job, no ascertainable work skills, all without alcohol."
The book is good because of the love in spite of dysfunction, or can be read just for the very funny scenes describing the ongoing "obsession" her father has with Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald or Jeanne's various misadventures as she constantly moves about and changes jobs and lives the wild life in New York. And it is also a tale of someone who finds she has to write:
"My days so far as a small-time writer have been just that, essential to me as if they are a great masterpiece. Did I just quote Zelda Fitzgerald?"
Jeanne grows up in this household with these parents and her sisters, becomes a writer and drinker herself and tells her story: witty, poignant, honest, profane.
About her Dad:
"I saw him as a tragic hero. Like all tragic characters, he was trying to do the impossible--write novels, sell novels, make money, keep the drinking under control, get the cracked wife some help, take care of four kids. Like all tragic heroes, he had a fundamental lack of self-awareness."
About her Mom"
"Like a professional chef, Mom was never hungry by the time dinner came around, never really ate a meal with us. She took one bite, lit a cigarette and began a sort of post-shift meltdown.....And she'd weave up the front staircase to her bedroom and shut the door. That was more or less how my mother now said good night..."
But there is a lot of love in this story. At the end, Jeanne writes:
"I have to let my father read this book and it is terrifying to think that I will hurt him with it...Am I saying he put writing before all of us? All my father has done has been to show me wild enthusiasm and encouragement as a writer. I would never want to hurt him. I admire his writing and know I am not half the thinker or writer he is. His support of my writing was never about the writing for me. It was the love from my dad."
From this underlying family history, she emerges with her own voice:
"Things were worse than before I quit drinking. I was now living in a couple rooms with wigs drying on a hanger outside my front door and a restless unpredictable teenage pot-head next door and no bathroom and no money, no job, no ascertainable work skills, all without alcohol."
The book is good because of the love in spite of dysfunction, or can be read just for the very funny scenes describing the ongoing "obsession" her father has with Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald or Jeanne's various misadventures as she constantly moves about and changes jobs and lives the wild life in New York. And it is also a tale of someone who finds she has to write:
"My days so far as a small-time writer have been just that, essential to me as if they are a great masterpiece. Did I just quote Zelda Fitzgerald?"
Book: Confessions of a Young Writer by Umberto Eco
By the end of this book I could only think that Eco has a "beautiful mind," and defines the adjective "erudite."
There are four chapters:
1. Writing from Left to Right (literally, he says with tongue in cheek). He also writes here of how he researches his books. For instance, he "went to the South Seas, to the precise geographic location where the book [The Island of the Day Before] is set, to see the colors of the water and sky at different hours of the day, and the tints of the fishes and corals....I also spent two to three years studying drawings and models of ships of the period, to find out how big a cabin or cubbyhole was, and how a person could move from one to the other." In other words, he does intensive thorough research before he writes a novel.
2. Author, Text, and Interpreters.
3. Some Remarks on Fictional Characters.
4. My Lists.
All are chapters in which Eco is revealed as a man who is thoughtful, inquisitive and forever learning. He explores the dimensions of fiction and characters, and it is obvious he loves writing about such. His knowledge is impressive. It is a small, rich book that allows a glimpse into the art of this brilliant man.
The chapter on Lists has passages like the following:
"Anaphora is the repetition of the same word at the beginning of every phrase or of every line of verse. This may not always constitute what we would call a list. There is a beautiful example of anaphora in the poem "Possibilities" by Wislawa Szymborska.
I prefer movies.
I refer cats.
I prefer the oaks along he Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyesky.
I prefer myself liking people to my myself loving mankind
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
And so on for another 26 lines. "
Eco draws from his extensive mental library in this book, and would delight those who liked The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum or any of his other books. He also has a personal physical library of 50,000 volumes according to Wikipedia, obviously a man in love with the written word.
He, BTW, has a new book, The Prague Cemetery.
There are four chapters:
1. Writing from Left to Right (literally, he says with tongue in cheek). He also writes here of how he researches his books. For instance, he "went to the South Seas, to the precise geographic location where the book [The Island of the Day Before] is set, to see the colors of the water and sky at different hours of the day, and the tints of the fishes and corals....I also spent two to three years studying drawings and models of ships of the period, to find out how big a cabin or cubbyhole was, and how a person could move from one to the other." In other words, he does intensive thorough research before he writes a novel.
2. Author, Text, and Interpreters.
3. Some Remarks on Fictional Characters.
4. My Lists.
All are chapters in which Eco is revealed as a man who is thoughtful, inquisitive and forever learning. He explores the dimensions of fiction and characters, and it is obvious he loves writing about such. His knowledge is impressive. It is a small, rich book that allows a glimpse into the art of this brilliant man.
The chapter on Lists has passages like the following:
"Anaphora is the repetition of the same word at the beginning of every phrase or of every line of verse. This may not always constitute what we would call a list. There is a beautiful example of anaphora in the poem "Possibilities" by Wislawa Szymborska.
I prefer movies.
I refer cats.
I prefer the oaks along he Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyesky.
I prefer myself liking people to my myself loving mankind
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
And so on for another 26 lines. "
Eco draws from his extensive mental library in this book, and would delight those who liked The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pendulum or any of his other books. He also has a personal physical library of 50,000 volumes according to Wikipedia, obviously a man in love with the written word.
He, BTW, has a new book, The Prague Cemetery.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Book: Naked Cruelty by Colleen McCullough
Ms. McCullough is/was a neurophysiologist who worked in the Neurology department at Yale's School of Internal Medicine for 10 years. She was born in Australia and wrote, among many other books, The Thorn Birds, which I read years ago and remember only that Richard Chamberlain was in the movie. Ms. McCullough now lives on Norfolk Island in the South Pacific. Her biography intrigued me....
And that was about it. This book is not good. It's about a serial killer who calls himself The Dodo, but uses the old Latin term Didus ineptus as his name. The book opens with a horrific rape.
I gather there is a series of Carmine Delmonico novels (Delmonico is a Captain in the local police department in a Conneticut town.) There are several characters and a lot of plot but it seems that the author had trouble deciding what her storyline should be. Much happens and then is resolved in not credible ways, quickly and simplistically.
Along with the rapes, there is personnel turmoil in the police department; there is the postpartum depression of Carmine's wife, Desdemona; there are the very weird nephew twins of a woman who sells expensive glass and crystal in an exclusive shop in a mall.
My problem is that if I read at least half of a book, I feel compelled to finish it...most of the time. I then often feel I've wasted several hours as it usually even gets worse. This book seemed to wander more and more before the rather abrupt ending. All of the various plots could have been developed (and have been in various novels) into a good novel.
Oh well, such is life...
And that was about it. This book is not good. It's about a serial killer who calls himself The Dodo, but uses the old Latin term Didus ineptus as his name. The book opens with a horrific rape.
I gather there is a series of Carmine Delmonico novels (Delmonico is a Captain in the local police department in a Conneticut town.) There are several characters and a lot of plot but it seems that the author had trouble deciding what her storyline should be. Much happens and then is resolved in not credible ways, quickly and simplistically.
Along with the rapes, there is personnel turmoil in the police department; there is the postpartum depression of Carmine's wife, Desdemona; there are the very weird nephew twins of a woman who sells expensive glass and crystal in an exclusive shop in a mall.
My problem is that if I read at least half of a book, I feel compelled to finish it...most of the time. I then often feel I've wasted several hours as it usually even gets worse. This book seemed to wander more and more before the rather abrupt ending. All of the various plots could have been developed (and have been in various novels) into a good novel.
Oh well, such is life...
Book: The Ask by Sam Lipsyte
The Ask was a New York Times Bestseller but only because the author writes well and is entertaining, not because the book is worthy. It is just one of those wickedly fun books to read..all that edgy, neurotic New York stuff, fast-paced, clever, witty. The main character Milo gets sort of fired from his job in which he has to get money from rich people for philanthropic reasons. They are the "Asks" and one Ask specifically wants to work only with Milo, except now he is fired.
Milo has a wife Maura, and small son, Bernie. He loves them both but his wife leaves him, sort of temporarily she implies, so he is cast adrift in New York, and if you want to laugh and follow Milo around for a few weeks, then read this book. It's about people utterly self-absorbed, generically like you and me, but specifically quite different by virtue of living where they do, when they do.
"Horace lived in a huge room filled with cages. Inside each cage was a young person, a futon or cot, a footlocker, a few milk crates. Bare bulbs on wires hung from fixtures in the high ceiling. I'd read about these places. Kids moved to the city, but there were no apartments left to rent to them, or none they could afford. But on a starting salary, or no salary, you could maybe manage a cage. Several dozen people resided here among the drum kits and guitar amps, the antique film editing deck, a few long tables and spindly chairs, a mini fridge. Power cables streaked the floor under mounds of black and silver tape. Laptops glowed from the cages. Voices rose and fell, rippled about the room, a dozen conversations going at once, or maybe one conversation replicated over and over by feral and beautiful children..."
Milo ends up here for a bit. He bounces around, getting close to his Ask when he is sort of hired back but also keeps wondering about this job or non-job. He schleps Bernie to daycare, has single-man adventures. It's like Seinfeld or Woody Allen with more profanity.
The writing reminds of Nick Hornby's novels but is less sweet and with nothing really to recommend it, except that the author is obviously smart and deft with words and social satire, even though the characters and story are not all that memorable. The Ask is just one more funny, easy-to-read, instant gratification kind of book....not that there is anything wrong with that.
Milo has a wife Maura, and small son, Bernie. He loves them both but his wife leaves him, sort of temporarily she implies, so he is cast adrift in New York, and if you want to laugh and follow Milo around for a few weeks, then read this book. It's about people utterly self-absorbed, generically like you and me, but specifically quite different by virtue of living where they do, when they do.
"Horace lived in a huge room filled with cages. Inside each cage was a young person, a futon or cot, a footlocker, a few milk crates. Bare bulbs on wires hung from fixtures in the high ceiling. I'd read about these places. Kids moved to the city, but there were no apartments left to rent to them, or none they could afford. But on a starting salary, or no salary, you could maybe manage a cage. Several dozen people resided here among the drum kits and guitar amps, the antique film editing deck, a few long tables and spindly chairs, a mini fridge. Power cables streaked the floor under mounds of black and silver tape. Laptops glowed from the cages. Voices rose and fell, rippled about the room, a dozen conversations going at once, or maybe one conversation replicated over and over by feral and beautiful children..."
Milo ends up here for a bit. He bounces around, getting close to his Ask when he is sort of hired back but also keeps wondering about this job or non-job. He schleps Bernie to daycare, has single-man adventures. It's like Seinfeld or Woody Allen with more profanity.
The writing reminds of Nick Hornby's novels but is less sweet and with nothing really to recommend it, except that the author is obviously smart and deft with words and social satire, even though the characters and story are not all that memorable. The Ask is just one more funny, easy-to-read, instant gratification kind of book....not that there is anything wrong with that.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Book: American Boy by Larry Watson
I like novels that are of a piece, with a beginning, a middle and an end. This is a fine novella in that regard.
It begins on Thanksgiving of 1962 in a small Minnesota town. Matt Garth and Johnny Dunbar are best friends. They are teenagers. Johnny's family is upper class; Matthew's father has died and his mother is a waitress. Matt spends most of his time with the Dunbars and then something happens. A young woman gets shot. Dr. Dunbar takes care of her and the story is set in motion. Along the way are vignettes of growing up in the 60s in a small midwestern town.
A few random examples (not especially germane to the story) of Mr. Watson's writing:
"Mr. Veal was a demanding, difficult teacher, and it was rumored that his high standards had put his job in jeopardy. The high school principal, Mr. Linton, had supposedly reprimanded Mr. Veal for the many low grades he dispensed...when a teacher failed...the daughter of the principal...or Bobby Karlstad, the son of the school board president, then that teacher had to be reined in."
"Eventually I settled in a parlor on the main floor, where earlier the entire family--the Dunbar family plus Matthew Garth, that is--had gathered before a small fireplace to take in the doctor's stories of how deep the snows of his childhood had drifted and how far into spring the lakes and rivers remained locked in ice. With the room to myself that night, I sat in the big overstuffed armchair that the doctor had occupied, and tried to situate myself in the chair such that my boy's body could feel and fill the indentations Dr. Dunbar's weight had made in the cushions."
Running like fine rich threads through the fabric of this story are these evocative little passages that make this novel worth reading.
It begins on Thanksgiving of 1962 in a small Minnesota town. Matt Garth and Johnny Dunbar are best friends. They are teenagers. Johnny's family is upper class; Matthew's father has died and his mother is a waitress. Matt spends most of his time with the Dunbars and then something happens. A young woman gets shot. Dr. Dunbar takes care of her and the story is set in motion. Along the way are vignettes of growing up in the 60s in a small midwestern town.
A few random examples (not especially germane to the story) of Mr. Watson's writing:
"Mr. Veal was a demanding, difficult teacher, and it was rumored that his high standards had put his job in jeopardy. The high school principal, Mr. Linton, had supposedly reprimanded Mr. Veal for the many low grades he dispensed...when a teacher failed...the daughter of the principal...or Bobby Karlstad, the son of the school board president, then that teacher had to be reined in."
"Eventually I settled in a parlor on the main floor, where earlier the entire family--the Dunbar family plus Matthew Garth, that is--had gathered before a small fireplace to take in the doctor's stories of how deep the snows of his childhood had drifted and how far into spring the lakes and rivers remained locked in ice. With the room to myself that night, I sat in the big overstuffed armchair that the doctor had occupied, and tried to situate myself in the chair such that my boy's body could feel and fill the indentations Dr. Dunbar's weight had made in the cushions."
Running like fine rich threads through the fabric of this story are these evocative little passages that make this novel worth reading.
Book: In the Sun's House by Kurt Caswell
Subtitled, My Year Teaching on the Navajo Reservation.
Kurt Caswell is a man with an unrequited wanderlust. This is his account of a year teaching at the Borrego Pass School in western New Mexico, near the Continental Divide and approximately 100 miles west of Albuquerque. He wrestles with his commitments to Borrego Pass, to the Navajo kids, to his Japanese girlfriend who comes to visit. Borrego Pass is an isolated community and his 6th, 7th and 8th graders know little of the world outside of occasional trips to Gallup or Crownpoint. Kurt comes with ideals as most of us would, arriving in what we would perceive as an impoverished neglected pocket of the American West. Those poor Native Americans, we would think....we romanticize our intentions, our good intentions.
He writes of hogans and potsherds, of hiking with his dog Kuma, of taking the kids to the Eastern Navajo Agency Spelling Bee in Chinle and of trip to Mission: Wolf (www.missionwolf.com) where he also arranges to meet a group of Navajo kids from another school in Ganado, New Mexico, hoping his students will connect with the Ganado kids, hoping to find ways to enrich their lives.
"Out at the edge of the mesa top, where I could see north into the wide word, I found tires stacked in some places and scattered in others, heavy spikes driven into trees on which things had once been hung, coils of brittle wire and rusted chain, and a red flannel shirt tangled in a juniper flying like a war-wounded flag in the breeze."
"In the quiet under the desert sky, I looked up into the countless stars that graced the inight. It was beautiful."
He becomes a student himself, learning from the land and from his students...humbled by his deficiencies, accepting that he makes only a tiny ripple (if any at all) in the ebb and flow of this remote Navajo community.
"I had accepted this job at Borrego only to continue exploring; I never meant to care. And now that some measure of caring about what happened to these kids and this community had penetrated my defenses, I didn't quite how what to do. Caring just caused trouble for me. I could no longer liver here without caring or leave here without regretting."
At the end of the school year, the class reads Romeo and Juliet and he asks them to write something about the play. "What had I been thinking? I am still failing as a teacher, I thought, at least failing to properly gauge my student's competency level and shoot for something just above it, rather than shooting for the moon." But one student does write what Kurt calls an "eighth-grade teacher's dream...[and] I had not expected to be so happy about Renee's good work. I carried those feelings around for days. That, I surmised was the heart of teaching. Perhaps I'd be a teacher after all."
What I liked was the honesty of this book as he writes of his responses to Navajo culture and his students and of his reluctance to stay in one place very long. I certainly can understand this. For some of us, there will always be a new road to travel, a different river to cross, the next experience. His restlessness bothers him though, especially in his relationship with Sakura. He quotes Bruce Chatwin as saying that we all need a "base" (with a nod also to Maria here...), a place to return TO even as we wander about.
Kurt didn't physically stay in Borrego Pass, but something of him remained and he took something with him. This book is about that exchange between him and a small group of Navajo kids...expressed memorably.
Kurt Caswell is a man with an unrequited wanderlust. This is his account of a year teaching at the Borrego Pass School in western New Mexico, near the Continental Divide and approximately 100 miles west of Albuquerque. He wrestles with his commitments to Borrego Pass, to the Navajo kids, to his Japanese girlfriend who comes to visit. Borrego Pass is an isolated community and his 6th, 7th and 8th graders know little of the world outside of occasional trips to Gallup or Crownpoint. Kurt comes with ideals as most of us would, arriving in what we would perceive as an impoverished neglected pocket of the American West. Those poor Native Americans, we would think....we romanticize our intentions, our good intentions.
He writes of hogans and potsherds, of hiking with his dog Kuma, of taking the kids to the Eastern Navajo Agency Spelling Bee in Chinle and of trip to Mission: Wolf (www.missionwolf.com) where he also arranges to meet a group of Navajo kids from another school in Ganado, New Mexico, hoping his students will connect with the Ganado kids, hoping to find ways to enrich their lives.
"Out at the edge of the mesa top, where I could see north into the wide word, I found tires stacked in some places and scattered in others, heavy spikes driven into trees on which things had once been hung, coils of brittle wire and rusted chain, and a red flannel shirt tangled in a juniper flying like a war-wounded flag in the breeze."
"In the quiet under the desert sky, I looked up into the countless stars that graced the inight. It was beautiful."
He becomes a student himself, learning from the land and from his students...humbled by his deficiencies, accepting that he makes only a tiny ripple (if any at all) in the ebb and flow of this remote Navajo community.
"I had accepted this job at Borrego only to continue exploring; I never meant to care. And now that some measure of caring about what happened to these kids and this community had penetrated my defenses, I didn't quite how what to do. Caring just caused trouble for me. I could no longer liver here without caring or leave here without regretting."
At the end of the school year, the class reads Romeo and Juliet and he asks them to write something about the play. "What had I been thinking? I am still failing as a teacher, I thought, at least failing to properly gauge my student's competency level and shoot for something just above it, rather than shooting for the moon." But one student does write what Kurt calls an "eighth-grade teacher's dream...[and] I had not expected to be so happy about Renee's good work. I carried those feelings around for days. That, I surmised was the heart of teaching. Perhaps I'd be a teacher after all."
What I liked was the honesty of this book as he writes of his responses to Navajo culture and his students and of his reluctance to stay in one place very long. I certainly can understand this. For some of us, there will always be a new road to travel, a different river to cross, the next experience. His restlessness bothers him though, especially in his relationship with Sakura. He quotes Bruce Chatwin as saying that we all need a "base" (with a nod also to Maria here...), a place to return TO even as we wander about.
Kurt didn't physically stay in Borrego Pass, but something of him remained and he took something with him. This book is about that exchange between him and a small group of Navajo kids...expressed memorably.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Book: The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
There are three main characters: Madeleine, Mitchell and Leonard who all graduate from Brown in 1982, and this novel is about their first year after graduation. Mitchell and Leonard are in love with Madeleine. Both are intelligent but with very different personalities. The author writes with that facile grace that seems effortless but probably isn't. The reader gets the nuances and allusions of the early 1980s in clever, often funny, paragraphs about the students with the carelessness and freedom and self absorption of that age. He writes of their respective childhoods, their parents and the immediate few weeks leading to graduation day. It is all easy to read, entertaining, fun....
But then the narrative matures as these kids leave the coziness of the campus for the larger world. Mitchell takes off for Europe and Asia, trying to forget Madeleine, but also seriously seeking a spiritual path. Madeleine goes with Leonard to Cape Cod where he has a biology fellowship, and they live there for several months.
Leonard, it turns out, is manic-depressive, and reading about his struggles is reason enough to read this book. I felt ashamed for the times I have been dismissive of mental illness...not totally, but often enough, thinking about mentally ill individuals in generic simplistic ways.
The book was also satisfying because it had a good ending in that it was time to stop this particular narrative even though life would continue for the characters. Often books seem to have a flat, uninspired ending as though the author doesn't understand denouement.
Few examples of Eugenides' writing:
"And then Phyllida [Madeleine's mother] was there, with a bellman in tow, her clothes neat and her hair in place. Everything Madeline hated about her mother--her imperturbable rectitude, her lack of visible emotion--was exactly what Madeline needed at the moment."
"They stood at the subway entrance, one of the hugging, crying couples in New York, ignored by everyone passing by, granted perfect privacy in the middle of a teeming city on a hot summer night."
Mitchell goes to Quaker Meetings: "As for Mitchell, he didn't say anything at the Meetings. The Spirit didn't move him to speak. He sat on the bench, enjoying the stillness of the morning and the musty scent of the Meeting House. But he didn't feel entitled to illumination."
So while Eugenides can write very well and tells a good story, he also gives us something to think about beyond the material world of his compelling characters.
But then the narrative matures as these kids leave the coziness of the campus for the larger world. Mitchell takes off for Europe and Asia, trying to forget Madeleine, but also seriously seeking a spiritual path. Madeleine goes with Leonard to Cape Cod where he has a biology fellowship, and they live there for several months.
Leonard, it turns out, is manic-depressive, and reading about his struggles is reason enough to read this book. I felt ashamed for the times I have been dismissive of mental illness...not totally, but often enough, thinking about mentally ill individuals in generic simplistic ways.
The book was also satisfying because it had a good ending in that it was time to stop this particular narrative even though life would continue for the characters. Often books seem to have a flat, uninspired ending as though the author doesn't understand denouement.
Few examples of Eugenides' writing:
"And then Phyllida [Madeleine's mother] was there, with a bellman in tow, her clothes neat and her hair in place. Everything Madeline hated about her mother--her imperturbable rectitude, her lack of visible emotion--was exactly what Madeline needed at the moment."
"They stood at the subway entrance, one of the hugging, crying couples in New York, ignored by everyone passing by, granted perfect privacy in the middle of a teeming city on a hot summer night."
Mitchell goes to Quaker Meetings: "As for Mitchell, he didn't say anything at the Meetings. The Spirit didn't move him to speak. He sat on the bench, enjoying the stillness of the morning and the musty scent of the Meeting House. But he didn't feel entitled to illumination."
So while Eugenides can write very well and tells a good story, he also gives us something to think about beyond the material world of his compelling characters.
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