The Good Daughters, by Joyce Maynard

Two girls are born on the same day in a small town in New Hampshire. This book follows their lives, and their families, as they grow up to be adults. Dana Dickerson's family consists of her brother, Ray; her father, George; and her mother, Valerie. George goes from one get-rich-quick scheme to another over the course of years. Valerie is distant from her family, an artist of some talent (she is a painter), who has little time for her children. George is always leaving for the next big thing.

Ruth Plank's family is quite different. She has four sisters. Her father, Edwin, is a farmer. They live on the farm that has been in his family for many generations. Her mother, Connie, is a hard-working farmer's wife with a strong religious faith.

The story is told in chapters labeled either "Ruth" or "Dana." Most of the time these simply alternate back and forth, in first-person narrative from each point of view.

This is another excellent and completely engrossing novel by Joyce Maynard. As the story of these two women unfolds, a great mystery is revealed, and not fully solved until nearly the last page.

A Spool of Blue Thread, by Anne Tyler

Haven't read anything by Anne Tyler in years. I'm looking forward to this.

And it was not a disappointment. The story of the Whitshank family, with special focus on Abby Whitshank and her son Daniel--though we feel very well acquainted with all other family members by the book's end, both the current and past members--is, in a way, nothing special, and at the same time it is devastatingly extraordinary, particular, and fascinating.

New York Times review.

Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen

Patty Berglund (nee Emerson)

Walter Berglund Patty's husband
Richard Katz Walter's friend, and at times Patty's lover, but that's complicated.

Joey Berglund
Janice Berglund ... son and daughter of Patty and Walter

From p.200 , on which Richard (a successful musician and songwriter currently broke due to his own behavior) is being "interviewed" by the son of a wealthy customer for whom he is building a rooftop deck in Manhattan:

Q. What do you think of the MP3 revolution?

A. Ah, revolution, wow. It's great to hear the word "revolution" again. It's great that a song now costs exactly the same as a pack of gum and lasts exactly the same amount of time before it loses its flavor and you have to spend another buck. That era which finally ended whenever, yesterday--you know, that era when we pretended rock was the scourge of conformity and consumerism, instead of its anointed handmaid--that era was really irritating to me. I think it's good for the honesty of rock and roll and good for the country in general that we can finally see Bob Dylan and Iggy Pop for what they really were: as manufacturers of wintergreen Chiclets.

Q. So you're saying that rock has lost its subversive edge?

A. I'm saying it never had any subversive edge. It was always wintergreen Chiclets, we just enjoyed pretending otherwise.

Q. What about when Dylan went electric?

A. If you're going to talk about ancient history, let's go back to the French Revolution. Remember when, I forget his name, but that rocker who wrote the "Marseillaise," Jean Jacques Whoever--remember when his song started getting all that airplay in 1792, and suddenly the peasantry rose up and overthrew the aristocracy? There was a song that changed the world. Attitude was what the peasants were missing. They already had everything else--humiliating servitude, grinding poverty, unpayable debts, horrific working conditions. But without a song, man, it added up to nothing. The sansculotte style was what really changed the world. 

I read this book slowly, from about the middle of January to yesterday (5 March 2014). It is, I think, a fairly decent characterization of our time. The characters are a little bit unbelievable, perhaps a little too cardboard-cutout for their own good, but nonetheless they all represent a bit of what makes up America in the early 21st century. The plot is well done, made up of the points of view of the main characters in a way that kept me interested -- because each of these people are quite intense, and they can begin to wear you out.

Should there be anyone here to read it, this book might be a good reference for future inhabitants of Earth.

The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen

A novel. Copyright 2001 by Jonathan Franzen.

Among other things, this is the story of the Lambert Family, of St. Jude, a fictional place that may be intended to make us think of St. Paul, MN. Alfred and Enid are the parents of Gary, Chip, and Denise. This novel moves back and forth in time, seemingly without effort, and illuminates the corners of all their lives, from the time when Alfred and Enid were very young to when they are, in the end, rather old.

This is a thoughtful and well-written story of American culture and life, and a useful picture of the world and the USA at the beginning of the 21st century.

I look forward to reading more from Franzen.

Here's a review from the NY Times dated, ominously, 9 Sept. 2001.

Thanks to William Lychack

My heartfelt thanks to Mr. William Lychack (author of The Wasp Eater, about which I wrote some inadequate words last year) for his very nice letter. He didn't even mention that I called him "John" in the title of that post. Please excuse the errors of the elderly, sir.

I am very gratified that what I wrote was pleasing to you, Mr. Lychack. Your book held me in its spell when I read it, and for that experience thanks are hard to express. When I find a book with characters that come alive in that way, that takes me into its atmosphere so completely and makes me care about what happens in its pages -- well, that is what I'm looking for when I read. The end of such a book always leaves me a little sad that I have to leave that paper world and search for another.

Furthermore I can't tell you how pleased I was that you actually read this little blog -- having been read by a "real writer" has gone irrevocably to my head and I shall be impossible to live with henceforth.

Please give us more, Mr. Lychack. And thank you, again.

EL

The Wasp Eater, by William Lychack

The Wasp Eater, by William Lychack. Houghton Mifflin 2004.

Principal Characters:

Daniel – son

Robert “Bob” Cussler -- Dad

Anna – Mom

Joelyn – cousin

Divorce ravages the “traditional family” in our culture today. Statistics are available to bear this out.

Once the stuff of scandal and whispers-behind-hands divorce is now commonplace. We are so used to being surrounded by broken families and broken promises that we forget that these phenomena have their consequences.

“She became a widow well before his father died.” Thus begins The Wasp Eater, by William Lychack. This little novel (164 pages in a 5” x 8” format) tells the story of a broken marriage in the later 20th Century, how the couple's one child understands his parents and their problems, and how he deals with all of it.

This book was a prize won browsing the “new books” display at the library. When I noticed that the author was a contributor to This American Life (Ira Glass, Public Radio International) I had to give it a try. I'm glad I did.

Daniel's father, “Bob,” is a strong yet unstable character; he's a window washer in a New England mill town. We hear Anna's complaint on page 7: “It wasn't the waitress in bed with him; it was the shit-eating grin that made her insane, the way he couldn't seem to wipe that smirk from his face.” As the story begins, Anna has thrown Bob out of the house, scattered his belongings on the front lawn, hung his clothes from tree branches. She is through with him, but he won't go away.

Daniel, ten years old, is visited at night by his father. Bob stands outside the boy's bedroom window, smoking, talking. He leaves money, and tries to convince Daniel to let him in.

Over time an uneasy truce between the separated partners develops. Daniel spends time during the day with Bob, helping him wash windows. He is taken along to bars with his father, given quarters to play pool, and returned home late.

Some of Anna's history is revealed. She is from New York, her family once well-to-do middle-class fallen on hard times (like the New England town in which she now lives), caught up in romantic love with Bob. Now her marriage is broken by his disloyalty and she seems profoundly depressed. She can hardly maintain her daily existence and care for her young son.

In the course of the story it is revealed that there was once a fight between Anna and her niece Joelyn regarding a ring, her mother's wedding ring, which has fallen into Joelyn's possession. This ring becomes the symbol of what once was Anna and Bob's marriage, and Daniel sees in its recovery the answer to fixing the breach in his family.

The story is so extremely well-written that it makes me despair trying to describe it with my own clumsy words. Lychack has a knack for a spare and precise turn of phrase. The portrayal of young Daniel and his parents is believable and heart-breaking, but Lychack ends his book with perspective and hope.