Mexican Low

Mexican High was a waste of time. I bought it because I went to a Mexican high school and thought it might be interesting. It wasn't. It wasn't even bad, just boring. The protagonist, daughter of a diplomat mother who's lived all over the world lands in the the wealthiest Mexican high school in Mexico City. She doesn't even bother to assimulate. What impresses her most about Mexico is how much drugs and alcohol you can buy without getting carded. Yawn. There's supposed to be some plot with her searching for her mysterious Mexican father but that's dull too. Don't bother.

Food Matters

OK. I love this man!!! I own every cookbook of his and, unlike Jamie Oliver who I also adore, I use all his recipes. I clip out all his recipes in the Minimalist section in the NYT. I remember as if they were poetry his Cod and Potatoes recipe, his Pork Loin Stuffed with Sage, his Salmon Fillets with Green Lentils, his 1960's Veal Cutlets (which he graciously allows to be done with chicken breasts). His recipes follow the classic narrative formulas so that you can actually remember them, the Exposition of the slicing of the potatoes, the Rising Action of tossing those potatoes in Olive Oil and Salt and putting them into the oven for 40 minutes and then the Climax of the broiler. You can tell them to people without trailing off into uncertainity if it was 2 or 3 tablespoons of creme de menthe.....
He is not a perfectionist and his second How to Cook Everything loosens things up further. Instead of the authoritarian Cod Fillets he tells you any white firm fleshed fish are fine. So this is his new book which sounds vaguely like Michael Pollan's Defense of Food but with recipes. What more can I say? Did I mention I love this man?

Three Bags Full

This was a very clever book: a murder mystery where a flock of Irish sheep solve the mystery of their shepherd's murder. All the sheep have different personalities and levels of intelligence. They use their senses of smell to great effect and are often bewildered by human behavior in a sweet way. Somehow though it stays away from being too cute. Of course perhaps this was because I refused to look any deeper than the surface of the book. I'm sure beneath the surface the author, Leonie Swann, was trying to make all sort of allusions and connections to human behavior. Our tendency to move in flocks, to be herded along willy-nilly without protest because that's just how it's done, I chose to ignore. So I just read a rather clever story of some woolly characters solving a mystery. BAAAAAA philosophical baaaallusions!!!!!

Half Eaten Avocado

This was supposed to be a funny book recently reissued by the NYRB press. The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy is the story of a young American woman living in Paris for a year. It's trying to be a cross between Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim and Breakfast at Tiffanys...I stopped halfway through since the voice of the narrator is annoying and over-arch and I realised I could care less about her or her situation. Humor, I am reminded, is a very personal thing. One woman's ha-ha is another woman's uh-oh.

Assisted Loving

Bob Morris used to write a so-so column in the NYT Styles section called the Age of Dissonance about modern life. Anyway Assisted Loving is a story of his 83 year old father who's been recently widowed and is starting to date through the personal ads while his son Bob is also looking for a partner. The father is this maddening annoying character, explosive, selfish and domineering who somehow has this sweet side that is very endearing. Morris Junior is always worried about his father's stained wardrobe, messy car and house and his obnoxious ways and has all the complex feelings you would expect with a parent starting to date. He wants his father to find someone to make him happy too, someone with social connections and a good second home.
One very compelling piece of the story, and why Senior ultimately was endearing, was the way the father treated his son's homosexuality. At 19 when Junior still hadn't come out of the closet his father marched into the room and essentially brought him out of the closet by affirming that he and the mother suspected and that whatever made him happy made them happy. Later on when Bob Morris finds a partner Senior informs him that he bought Ira a burial plot in Long Island with the rest of the family. Would that all parents were so open and accepting.
The writing is adequate, it was a quick read, I read the whole thing in one day. In the end I thought the father was somewhat nobler than the son, but that's ok. I think the son realised the same thing.

Book of Dahlia

The Book of Dahlia by Eliza Albert was surprisingly good. It's the story of a very angry selfish 29 year old woman, Dahlia, who is diagnosed with a terminal brain cancer and how she copes. There are no feel good messages or uplifting moments so it comes across as a very honest look at what she's made of her life and death. Even though it's about someone dying it is very very funny, Dahlia has the same flip voice and humor as the young woman in the film Juno.

(You may notice from it's bright and shiny cover that I got it from the library. It's the new austerity. I expect I'll bump into Bernie Madoff when I drop it off. Sadly the new austerity was tossed aside for the old prosperity when I ordered a copy on Amazon to send to a friend.)

Anna Karenina in the New Translation

Finished Anna Karenina this morning. Actually I thought I'd finished it the other day when Anna threw herself under the train but ---no---apparently that was not the end of the novel and Tolstoy could only end the whole thing once Levin had a spiritual epiphany in another 60--70 pages. It's interesting that the cinematic ending of her suicide was not the real end-all-and-be-all of the novel. Although it's called Anna Karenina it also is as much a story about Levin who met Anna but once and there was no real narrative interaction between the two other than that they moved in the same circles. Tolstoy just moving on after her death and not allowing us to brood over it was odd. Like Scorcese's The Departed when one of main characters gets shot suddenly and instead of stopping to mourn or take a breath the movie just keeps hurtling on. Of course Tolstoy does not hurtle on, he's more of an ambler but still there is no discussion of her death other than the merest of mentions. No summation.
It was an odd book. I am not sure what I thought.
It was written when a 25 page description of a snipe shooting with absolutely no plot movement or development (except for the snipes) was perfectly acceptable. So many endless descriptions of scenes or encounters just seem superfluous to the story, but then some bits and emotions are so modern and contemporary that they make your heart ache. The self destructive nature of the love in Anna and Vronsky's relationship, the simultaneous warmth and selfishness of Stiva, Levin's complex emotion of pity and fear when his child is born, are all so real and fresh.
All the superfluous description of snipe shooting and political rallies remind me of Jonathan Frantzen's The Corrections with the 35 page description of the knife skills of the chef sister or whatever else he felt like exposing. Or even Philip Roth's exhaustive description of the glove making industry in American Pastoral. So maybe I shouldn't complain, but it seemed that Tolstoy just went on and on needlessly at times and when I could have used some extra detail or discussion---oh say...at THE SUICIDE!!!! he was turned the other way.
In the end what stays with you is the claustrophobia of Anna's choice to give it all up for Vronsky. There is nowhere for her to go in society, she has no outlet, no profession, she's not content as a mother, she has no intellectual pursuits: she's a drug addict, a lousy mother, an adulteress, a flirt ...ultimately there is nowhere to go but under the train. Sadly though a part of your heart goes with her.