Category Archives: Literature in the Lymes

“The Ghost In Love” by Jonathan Carroll

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 “The Ghost in Love” by Jonathan Carroll is an astonishing book.  Our book reviewer Jan Mann, variously describes it as “weird” and a “whirlwind of a book,” but also finds it raises some theological questions “that have stumped mankind for ages.”  As always, Jen has us intrigued.

As soon as I am done writing this review I am going to go pick up as many of Jonathan Carroll’s books as I can.  That is how likable and weird and interesting I found “The Ghost in Love.”  How to even describe such a whirlwind of a book?

A man, Ben Gould, is dating the love of his life, German Landis.  Actually they have just started dating and as he goes to buy her a dog, Pilot, he slips and hits his head on a curb.  The fall kills him.

Wait, the fall is fated to kill him, but he does not die.  How is this possible?  Over coffee number nine after going to a Carole Lombard film, the Angel of Death and a worker angel ponder this very question.

The angel, Ling, who came to trim the loose ends of Ben’s lost life now is a ghost without a country, so to speak.  What to do?  The Angel of Death offers workers compensation, a bonus, if the angel will do the job anyway.  The angel is now watching Ben.  Living with Ben. Falling in love with Ben’s girlfriend.

Well, now it’s an ex- girlfriend.  German and Ben share Pilot so the triangle (quadrangle) is not completely severed. Ben is falling apart.  From the minute he did not die, he has been seeing things.  He has been feeling things that aren’t even his to feel.  He gets into the minds of another fake-dead person.  He starts to have weird dangerous run-ins with strangely familiar people.

Pilot tells him, yes, tells him, that the dog is the reincarnation of Ben’s dead, former girlfriend.  Ling starts cooking amazing meals for German who can not even see them.  Ben sees sea monster goo in his tub.  This is all before things start to unravel.

You have to have a basic familiarity with the main characters before anything else could begin to make sense, so I’ll leave it at that.

Suffice it to say then that this is a tale of wonder and hilarity on the surface only.  Below lurk theological questions that have stumped mankind for ages.  Do we have true free-will?  What can we really control and how does God factor in at all?  What exists outside of our living selves and how much control does it exercise over our destiny?

Jonathan Carroll has some ground-breaking ideas and anyone who has queries or thoughts about what may lie beyond the fray will be overjoyed to find this book.

“A Cup of Tea” by Amy Ephron

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Jen’s book choice this week is, “A Cup of Tea” by Amy Ephron and Jen sensibly suggests it’s a book well worth reading with one, but does venture to warn, “… enjoy drinking it cold, since you will be too engaged to remember it’s there.”  So we’re definitely off to the library for this one, a story of a chance meeting with extraordinary consequences.

What a talented family.  Many of you know Delia from her riotous children’s books and screenplays (How to Eat like a Child, Bewitched, Hanging Up, and more), Nora from her wonderful adult books and screenplays (Heartburn, Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry met Sally,I Feel Bad About My Neck to name but a few), Hallie (Never Tell a Lie, 1001 Books for Every Mood).

Here is yet another gifted sister.  Amy Ephron wrote this book 12 years ago and I am surprised I never found it before now.  “A Cup of Tea” is a rich, quick read.

The main characters find themselves in a situation that goes from innocuous altruism to violent stürm und drang.  One small event catapualts them all into unchartered territory.  If we are not to believe in fate, then this story puts random kindness in danger.
Let’s say its fate that certain things happen.  Things are meant to be or they are not.  Otherwise the fear of the power of our actions could be debilitating.  Case in point is Rosemary Fell.  A life reasonably devoid of calignosity makes her self-centered and unwittingly positive.  Does she have control over her carefully ordered life or is it pre-ordained that the chips will fall where they may?
When she sees a beautiful peer (in age not social stature) in trouble, she offers a hand.
Eleanor Smith takes her hand and there is no looking back.  Rosemary’s fiancee meets Eleanor, as does her best friend, Jane, and wheels are set a-roll.
None of their lives will be the same as they were before the chance encounter of Rosemary and Eleanor.
A simple cup of tea can have unseen, but far-reaching conclusions.  It is an interesting dilemma the reader is offered.  Should Rosemary have offered assistance.  Is this a penalty for its being done in a self-serving vain way?  We wonder if it were possible for Rosemary to alter this path had she simply chosen not to offer Miss Smith assistance.  Is it possible that one small change sends their lives rushing out of orbit and was that moment carved in stone or avoidable?
Surely it would have been in Rosemary’s best interest to do nothing.  Does Eleanor overstep the bounds of propriety by abusing a kindness?  But was she owed a kindness by a woman who has everything, when she herself has nothing?
Would that insinuate that societal structures interfere with basic human rights and disrupt the balance of equals?  Possibly.  A good book is one that raises many questions and is this captivating, despite its length.  Ms. Ephron succeeds in making it both memorable and thought-provoking, whilst keeping the plot moving.
“A Cup of Tea” may be the perfect book to read while having one … but enjoy drinking it cold, since you will be too engaged to remember it’s there.

 

“The Shack” by William P. Young

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Jen takes us to “The Shack” this week and deep into a world of theological and idealogical questioning intertwined with a quest for a peace.  Her review of William P. Young’s recent novel is insightful, inspiring and intriguing, or to put it another way, we can’t wait to snuggle up with this book (and its seasonally-appropriate cover) in front of a roaring fire.

This is going to be hard to do without offending anyone.  Any book that embraces a political, social or religious view will inevitably alienate someone with a different view.

In the interests of exhibiting unbiased book reviewer-ness and maintaining a modicum of personal interest, I will truly try to be non-preachy (pun-intended.)

Heck, this may be too hard even for my formidable talents, so just give me the benefit of the doubt.  To neither an atheist nor a bible-thumper be is my humble intention.As Grouch Marx said, “These are my principles.  If you don’t like them, I have others.”

In “The Shack,” Mackenzie Philips is a 40-something married father of five children.  After barely surviving a terribly abusive, religious, alcoholic (good combo) father, he raises himself and tries to keep his heart open to God.  He is a good man.
Horribly, his six-year-old daughter falls prey to a serial killer and her death trips an internal “Off” switch in Mack.  He enters a period he refers to as the, “Great Sadness.”  Where is his salvation?  How could this be allowed to happen to his daughter?  Where is God?
Mack is very angry with God, although he tries not to be.  One wintry day, he receives a note that will save him.
He is mysteriously invited to the shack where his daughter’s bloody clothes were found.  I hate reading books like this and, as of this point, was not happy to be obliged to continue.
But I did and what he finds is quite something.  Without ruining the plot, he finds the help he needs to be at peace.  He meets entities that have words of wisdom and strength.  Their guidance is hard but necessary and Mack “re-turns” to his heart.
For the record*, I believe in God, but I do not believe that most organized religion is other than a human creation to maintain power over others and, as such, is dangerous.  I do not think God wants us to be exclusionary or hierarchichal within human bounds.  No one is better than any one else and, excuse me, has no one heard of science?  Wm. Paul Young has very strong, clear thoughts along these lines, some with which I agreed and some with which I did not.  If Jesus were the forest, somewhere along the way the forest got lost for the trees.
That aside, “The Shack” is interesting.  No denying that this is an important subject and it is a creative approach.  I don’t like being preached to and I found it a bit pedestrian in its over-simplicity.  Chicken Soup-type stuff.  There is certainly a place for this, however, and it is never a bad book that recommends love, forgiveness, and offers more than the eye can see.
*Good job keeping my thoughts to myself, hmm?  Now you appreciate what my poor husband goes through …

“A World Made by Hand” by James Howard Kunstler

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After the briefest of breaks, our beloved Jen is back and, never one to ease us in gently, she throws us headlong into the new year with a book that makes you sit straight up in your chair and say, “Wow.”  James Howard Kunstler’s, “A World Made by Hand” is a sort of “back to the future” book in revese … if that makes any sense, and we, like Jen, are hooked.

I now feel a bit like the proverbial wolf-crying boy.  If I am effusive about every book, then how on earth can I impress upon you when I really, reallyenjoy a book?  I’m sure you see where I am heading with this self- flagalation … “World Made By Hand” is a good book.

A very good book.

One of my favorites in fact.

It also weirdly ties in with my recent rash of readings.  The postulating I have been doing on the specialness of the trivial aspects of our lives.  The fact that simplicity and appreciation beat a full flush every time.  In times of trouble, less is more.  Is it Divine intervention that these books keep falling in my lap?  Possibly.  I swear I just peruse the shelves and pick what looks interesting, but it seems awfully prescient in our current times.

A mix of Laura Ingalls Wilder and “The Host”, this book is about the future reverting to the past.  Not far in the future, the world has changed radically.  Terrorists have bombed enough major cities that global trade screeches to a halt and America is left alone and in turmoil.  Government implodes as democracy is annihilated by lack of electrical power.  As literal power is rendered obsolete, all communication is impossible.  Without communication there is fear.  Fear creates chaos.  Order on a large scale is obsolete.
As one nation under god becomes divisible, the structured society we spent hundreds of years cultivating is burned to its roots.
Doctors, computer programers, college professors, bond traders et al are now farming the land.  They are operating without anesthesia, building without power tools, and governing without structure.  Everyone who is lucky enough to have escaped the carnage of the cities, the ravishes of both endemic and pandemic disease, and the cruelty of man, is trying to the same way that the pioneers had to live.
Food is home-grown, trading is minimal, clothes are made, and horses are prized.  Without the “necessities” we had come to depend upon, a new kind of need is born.  Music, food, warmth, water, light and friendship.  TV, radio, cars, and modern medicine are all replaced by local churches, candlelit parties, town meetings and musicians.
A prosperous, happy man will be one who tends to the basic needs of his family and neighbors.  People share crops and dairy.  A sweet piece of walnut bread wrapped in cloth is a gift beyond measure.How well we would all do to remember that.
As we follow the major characters through hardship and fears, we find many joys inherent to this simpleness.  People are brought together to survive.  Small town companionship interwoven with reliance is a great gift.  Love born from loss can be magnificently sweet.
The people who persevere are rewarded.  They take pains to maintain fairness and avoid lawlessness.  A new town government is instituted to achieve the original goal of the preamble to the constitution.It seems like small potatoes, but this is the new beginning … “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

“The Confessions of Max Tivoli” by Andrew Sean Greer

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We’re sure panic is imminent since we’re three days late with Jen Mann’s book review.  Blame the weather, the holidays, but whatever you do, do not blame Jen – she’s a constant in a sea of change and is never late. Her book choice this week is “The Confessions of Max Tivoli” by Andrew Sean Greer.

I try to write on these pages about books that have meant something to me and hopefully will to others.  The majority of these books I enjoyed reading, but there are some, such as, “The Confessions of Max Tivoli,” that had beautiful moments amongst bearable sadness.

Like its predecessor, the F. Scott Fitzgerald story, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” this book is about a man who is two contradicting ages.

Internally he a small boy, who lives his life and is growing older.  Externally he is born an old man and looks younger the older he grows.

How sad.  No one really knows him and he can not be what he is.  In fact, his mother and father tell him to be what he seems … “Be what they think you are.”  This is the rule he tries to live by; to be what people want him to be.  To not be his true self.  He is alone in a sea of humanity.  His own humanity is too different to be included in theirs.

As an old shriveled man of a newborn, he stays hidden from the world.  He can not be a carefree child when he appears to be an old man.  He is not an old soul, merely a self-proclaimed monster.

As a teenager, in the body of a 50-year-old man, he falls in love with Alice.  He can not have her.

As a 35-year-old man in a 35-year-old’s body, he can have her.

As a 60-year-old man in a young boy’s body, he must have her in a different way.

His life and travels all revolve around his love for Alice.  The only friend he has ever had, Hughie stands by him through it all and we never see the true beauty of Hughie and his compassion until it may be too late for both men.  Max will die an old old man in the body of an infant.  Hughie will sacrifice too much.

What makes this a book worth reading, despite the sadness, is the beauty hidden among the agonies

Despite his pain, he gets up every day and lives.  He tries to fit in and has a few brief moments of real joy.  His descriptions of the changing world around him are prepossessing.  He sees the world as if through a screen and we are alone with him as the world goes by.  We reach with him for the powers in the mundane.  As with the last few books I have read, there is a message to us.  Do not fail to appreciate what the world has to offer.  For many it is unattainable except in glimpses.

Max says,” Life is short, and full of sorrows, and I loved it.”