Brother, I'm Dying

I had read Edwige Danticat a long time ago and thought her writing a bit too self conscious and ----dare I say it?---lyrical. But someone told me to read Brother I'm Dying and I did and rather liked it. It's a memoir of Danticat's father and uncle; her father goes to the States with her mother and leaves her behind with her younger brother at her uncle's in a poor neighborhood in Haiti. The uncle is a very good person, a pastor in his church and very close to his brother. The whole tone of the book is dispassionate and precise: no preciousness, no lyricism.

Unlike most current memoirs there is no incest or abusiveness, just loving and responsible adults caught in a terrible economic and political situation. It's actually quite good for giving a picture of growing up in Haiti. The odd thing is that the focus is primarily on the men and the women, her mother and her Aunt Denise, are giving scant attention. I imagine she has a memoir planned about the women and the absence was deliberate. The book serves as a just tribute to the two men in her life though.

Of Webs and Butter

Since we were in Maine, E.B. White country, I thought the spider who made this web may have been one of descendents of Charlotte and her web. Alas, I was unable to verify it for literary historical purposes.

Also while in Maine we bought some heavy cream at the little farm stand and made our own butter. Basically the recipe calls for heavy cream and a pinch of salt and a jar to shake it in. With the leftover buttermilk we made pancakes the next morning which those not on a diet covered with pats of our homemade butter. It prompted an interesting discussion on the chicken and egg theory.

I'm sorry we didn't make our no-knead bread to go with the butter. It's the sort of thing the River Cottage people would have approved of. But this is a very nice cookbook for kids or adults . It's British (I think you knew that by looking at their rather poncey names) and written with the same sensibility as Jamie Oliver.

Kidnapping, Runaways and Mistresses

Yes, I've been reading children's lit again. Well, I know why kids don't read Kidnapped anymore. Great story but the language is impenetrable. All the Scottish dialect is exhausting to read. With dialect you can't read it in a normal way, you have to manufacture a little "reading aloud" voice inside your head and sound it out loud. But with this I sat on the beach whispering out "Ah, but I'll begowk ye there! cried the gentleman" in my best Scottish burr....and still had no idea what it meant.
From kidnapping children to runaway children....on a recent drive Olivia and I listened to the audio version of From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler which I adored when I was young. Claudia and her younger brother run away and live in the Metropolitan Museum for a couple of weeks and solve a mystery of an unattributed statue. When I was young I loved the book and Olivia loved it too the other day. But this time I had a different reaction, while Claudia and her brother were taking baths in the fountain and sleeping in the antique beds I was sick to my stomach thinking of their parents worried to death about them. This had never occurred to me when I was young, all the adventure had gone out of it for me. Just the horror left!
Someone on the Nancy Pearl book podcast, which I am fond of, mentioned Madensky Square by Eva Ibbotsen as being a book she often re-read, Nancy Pearl raved about it too (she raves about most books actually, she just loves them all in their own little way). Anyway it seemed to be out of print and classified as a Young Adult novel by the library system. I duly ordered it and duly received my gravy stained copy from the library. Not sure what the young adults are up to these days but perhaps the story of a turn of the century Viennese dressmaker who is quite happily a mistress to some sort of Field Marshall will inspire them. It is actually a cozy little book and quite innocuous.

As the Vineyard Bookgroup Goes...So Goes the Nation

So once more a book plucked from obscurity by our fearless twosome catapults up the Best Seller List on the NYT. Number six for The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/books/bestseller/besthardfiction.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Not sure why though. Neither of us liked it much. Both of us agreed that it was overlong, one of us thought it had too much happening, the other that not enough happened. And what's with all the natural disasters? The tornados, the wind spouts, the fires? We spent a whole week on the Vineyard and were spared a typhoon apparently. Not Edgar---he got them all. He should move to the Vineyard.

We both slogged through though. The individual characters of the dogs we thought were nicely drawn and there was one very engaging character who belonged in another book or in a short story all his own. The dog training is never fully explained so it's a mystery what was so special about the dogs. The author has this annoying tendency to get all vague and "writerly" when something important happens so you're never sure exactly what happened in the important bits (like a murder say) but in the 'whelping pen' it's all clarity and boring detail (unfortunately).

Some of the language was a bit too precious..."the egret rose, white and archaic." Now I'm sure the egret was white but archaic? Other than that he liked the sound of it, it's complete nonsense. Having said that however, one of us who suffered greatly from mosquito bites over the last week forgave him all when she came to his rapturous descriptions of insect repellent that populated the portion when Edgar and his dogs live in the woods. Off! "the magical elixir" Mr. Wroblewski called it and she nodded her head sagely. He could do no wrong there, a master of prose. But then it's away from the glories of OFF! and back to that infernal whelping pen and a complicated bit with syringes, old letters and some natural disasters that neither of us could quite figure out and then it was over. Phew.

Anyway too late now for us to do a recall on all those copies sold. Our Oprah like powers have been unleashed. There is no turning back.

Martha's Vineyard's Bookgroup Meeting

A bookgroup composed of two members will be meeting shortly on the Vineyard. This is their annual meeting and the book of choice is The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Last year's book Eat, Drink, Stink, Love catapulted to superstardom so expect the same with this years choice. Their meetings are few, but their powers are legend in the literary world.