Category Archives: Literature in the Lymes

‘Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater’ by Frank Bruni

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Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater is a good book.  Frank Bruni was the food critic for the NYT until May 2009.  He held the post for five years replacing Biff Grimes who replaced my favorite, Ruth Reichl.  Bruni wore many hats as a writer and reporter over the years and this is his first autobiographical food book.

He is an extremely likable guy.  His accounts of growing up in a large food obsessed italian family are tactile.  You expect, indeed hope, to be passed a sandwich at some point.  He relates how hard it has always been for him to reconcile his need to be fully sated by food with his gastronomic appreciation of it as an art form.
Food appeals to Frank on so many levels that it becomes confusing and as he loses his way (weigh), he gains weight and loses his self esteem.  It is marvelous to bear witness to his climb back to his real self.  We have all had these weights upon us in one form or another and can all feel his genuine pain at being trapped within himself.
The food critic posting becomes an ironic savior.  He learns that food is not a temporary entity to be hoarded but an eternal offering to be savored.
This said, I would like to have had more accounts of his travails as the NYT food guru and less dating accounts.  It isn’t that I don’t care, and am not thrilled for him to be in love and happy, but that I would prefer more information about the life of a critic.   Possibly I have been irretrievably spoiled by MK Fisher, Ruth Reichl and Jeffrey Steingarten, but there you are.
I look forward to more of Frank Bruni.  Go for a long run, head to Fromage and get some cornichons, Stinking Bishop and sesame flatbread, and then pick up the book.

The Stacks in Jen’s Life

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Our much missed and absolute favorite book reviewer is back – hooray! Jen returns with a review with a difference … rather than one book she considers her stacks.  Hay stacks?  Chimney stacks?  Wrong and wrong again … curious?

This is so weird for me—this feeling of being literally unable to even remember a book that I have read when I sit down to review it for you.

I have read tons and tons and tons lately, but I can’t seem to tell you what any of them were about.

Maybe just telling you what I am reading can count as a review?  A little blathering about my stacks?

Excellent choice, thank you.

The downstairs stack is as follows.

I am reading Putt To Death by Roberta Isleib.I just finished Six Strokes Under by the same woman and will read A Buried Lie next.  If you like golf, all are good.Then Carl Hiassen’s The Downhill Lie.

I am also staring at The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickenson and Closing Timeby Joe Queenan.Next up is Born Round by NYT food critic, Frank Bruni.Geraldine Brooks, March and People of The Book will be shortly thereafter.

Committed by Liz Gilbert sounds good, but I’m not in a “committed” mood at the moment.

Maybe someone has a book about beating something to death with a pan?  Kidding.  Ignore that.

As you certainly deserve more than this mindless drivel, I will try hard to pay attention.Truly truly.  I won’t bore you but a little family drama goes a long way, even for your fearless book reviewer.  It renders me mindless, but sadly, not speechless, which is an unfortunate combination.
Hopefully next week I can elaborate more, but if not, I’ll tell you about the upstairs stacks …
Jennifer Petty Mann grew up in New York City, moved to London, England, then back to Boston, and is now happily ensconced on the EightMile river in Lyme with three little ones.  A former teacher, window dresser for Saks, and designer, she is taking her love of books to the proverbial “street.”  

‘Little Chapel On The River’ by Gwendolyn Bounds

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Fact is often better than fiction.  Have you ever looked at a brightly colored fish or flower and thought, “It is not possible that that just appeared in nature.  I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it.”

Fact is like that too.  Imagination is contained by our perceptions so it makes sense, but some plots are so wonderful you think they must have been monkeyed with.  “Little Chapel On The River” is true.  What a wonderful thing that Wendy Bounds is articulate enough to have captured such a true moment in the world.

After evacuating their apartment across from the World Trade Center on September 11, Wendy and her girlfriend have to move on.  Literally and figuratively, they must find safe ground from which to grow new roots.

Fatefully, Garrison, N.Y., is waiting.  Unbeknownst to Wendy, it will save her and transorm her life.  She, in turn, will return the favor.

Guinan’s General Store and Pub is a long standing bastion of comfort, safety and beer in a tough world.  The more things change the more they stay the same at Guinan’s and this is the gift.

Wendy befriends a wonderfully honest, grizzled, kind, amusing group of people.  All real, all amazingly human.  As she bartends, opens the store for the 5:07 a.m. commuters, listens to stories and winds her way into the hearts of the Pub, Wendy blossoms from a Wall Street Journal writer to a woman of many talents.

Each new door that opens bring her back to the gifts of her childhood and the joys of life she has been stepping over and around to get to work.  Her truest self is re-emerging and she and the town are delighted.

Her sense of belonging to something larger than her self was in dire need of Guinan’s.  We all are and through her book we find it.  Much like my thoughts on “World Made By Hand”, the things we need the most are seemingly small, often overlooked and right there for the taking if we simply open our eyes.  We all have the spirit of Guinan’s within reach if we know where to look.

‘I Capture the Castle’ by Dodie Smith

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Jen is here this week with a book written by the author of the much better known “One Hundred and One Dalmations.” Dodie Smith’s “I Capture the Castle” is sometimes compared to Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” and yet is something altogether different but equally—if not more—enjoyable.

Nothing like a good book to cheer one up. This is like a grown-up version of Mandy (Julie Andrews) and The Secret Garden (Francis Hodgson Burnett).  I adore those two books, so what a treat to find this.  Originally published in the late 40s, it was hard to come by for a while. Thanks to the book fairies, it was reissued.

The heroine is a teenage girl living in a castle in England in the 30s.  Cassandra Mortmain (fun to look for hidden meanings in that name!*) is remarkably even-keeled and cleverly perceptive despite being between a rock and a hard place.Her mother is dead, her step-mother is not much older than Cassandra’s sister, her father is a famously screwy novelist and they have no money.  No money.  They don’t have food, heat, much clothing or any intention of paying their rent on the castle.

But it is not depressing.  Like a fairy tale there is a plethora of hopefulness.  I never worried that anything really awful would happen because Cassandra doesn’t.  She has that glowing, occasionally dramatic teenage stamina that never questions the power of love and magic.
Love and magic abound.  The castle itself is a mix of hundreds of years of additions—towers and moats and druid mounds.  Cassandra is in love with it all.  Years of poverty have stripped the family of its possessions and the castle of its furnishings, but we still feel Cassandra’s love of it all.
As she comes of age and searches inside herself we are lucky to be privy to her musings.  She describes herself as, “a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.”  How clever.
She pines for love and for security.  She wants to find true love and happiness for herself and those around her, but she will do nothing at the expense of something else.  No bit of goods is worth the sacrifice of one’s true self.
What I like best is that she ultimately gets everything she wants but realizes that the wanting is often better.  She is a better person for having wanted and struggled and she knows that the joys in life are from the journey as much as from the arrival.*Cassandra: in Greek Mythology she was a princess of Troy who was given the gift of prophecy by Apollo.  When she spurned him he cursed her.  She would be an unbelieved seer.
Mortmain: (Fr. dead hand).  Also a legal term regarding ownership in perpetuity of real estate.  So, Cassandra, the only one who truly sees the castle around her, will own it in her heart forever.  Cool, huh?

Jennifer Petty Mann grew up in New York City, moved to London, England, then back to Boston, and is now happily ensconced on the EightMile river in Lyme with her three little ones.  A former teacher, window dresser for Saks, and designer, she is taking her love of books to the proverbial “street.” 

“Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides

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We love it when we’ve read something before Jen – a rare event to be sure – but it makes us feel extra-knowledgeable about her review. And, as this is the case with her book choice this week—”Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides—we can say with complete confidence that, yet again, her review absolutely hits the mark. 

I am speechless.  Could be the early hour.  Could be the end of my mental faculties – if indeed that wasn’t years ago.  It could be Middlesex.

I liked it.  It wasn’t mind-blowingly fabulous.  It wasn’t riotously funny or life-changing, but it did make an impression that I am hard pressed to articulate immediately.  One would argue that I shouldn’t start typing until I am able, but that’s no fun.
Middlesex is a good, good book.  A man looks back on the family history that has helped him reach this point in his life.  He starts with the small village life of his grandparents (maternal and paternal).  We travel with them to America where they set their wild recessive genes free and the results is our hero.Our hero is also our heroine.  Cal/Callie Stephanides is a hermaphrodite.

What I liked about Middlesex was its non-voyeuristic presentation of Cal … ( there’s your hint where this ends up).  We are not scadenfreudistic.  We are in Cal’s head and it’s a terrific place to be.  I really liked him.  And her.
The book’s narrative is well done.  I am surprised that I didn’t like it more because there is no tangible reason why I wouldn’t.  Callie is great.  Her grandparents are interesting and likable, as are her other relatives.  The settings are both familiar and unfamiliar and well-blended.  The descriptions of growing up in the 60s and 70s are right on (no pun intended).
Eugenides has a very vivid, extraordinary mind (like his stunningly beautiful, androgen-insensitive mermaid Zora) and I think therein lies my problem.  Possibly spoiled by Mark Helprin (3.15.08), I expect more of the magical unreality that lies just off the page in Middlesex.  It reads as a different but relatively unremarkable story in spite of its broader issues. (hermaphroditism, teenage drugs, sex, family jealousy, cultural differences, social change etc.)  They all carry more weight than what is delivered.  There may be too many interesting issues to develop so sadly we don’t see any fully developed.
With regard to the issue of hermaphroditism; the differences approached by my friend Norah Vincent in Self-Made Man (1.29.09) would be fascinating to hear from Cal/Callie’s perspective.  If we are going to learn what this means to Cal/Callie, we need to hear more than hair sprouting on the upper lip and Adam’s apples.  There is more to being both sexes than this.

I’d love to hear what happens after Callie runs away in more detail.  How does she change from a girl to a man without serious psychological problems?

When we don’t hear what we want to, then Callie’s sexual organs become not as interesting as her Uncle’s racist aspirations.  Other issue entrance us like the unfair practices of early car makers toward their culturally exceptional employees and the Black Muslim racism of Detroit that we briefly see through Desdemona’s eyes.

I wanted to see more of what Uncle Zizmo was transmogrifying into.  How on earth did he end up where he did?  What was the story with Dr. Philobosian once he reached America?  How did he reconcile his grief with his new life?  How did father Mike live his double life under our noses with such horrific consequences.

 
Middlesex is more about the periphery of Cal’s life and his/her place in it than the fact that there was a his/her issue at all.  Eugenides presents both and doesn’t give us enough of either.  I like him as an author and love his ideas.  Hopefully we can see more of both in his next book.