Category Archives: Literature in the Lymes

Why I Read

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Be warned, dear readers, you’re in for a surprise this week when you click to read Jen’s book review.  OK, we’ll spill the beans – there is no book!  Yes, this week Jen analyzes why, in her opinion, she is the most voracious reader that we’ve ever had the pleasure to meet … and of course, it makes fascinating reading.

I thought this week might be a good time to monopolize your attentions with a lecture.  The teacher in me just can not resist the rapt attention of a room full of vacuous, drooling students.  Oh, no offense.  I refer to other students I have had.  You all are a lovely, quick, intellectually-emboldened bunch.  Cute too.Anyhow, I am not yet finished with the book I am currently reading, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbary.  It is really good and rather than rush through it (too many big words to do that anyhow), I thought about why I like reading so much.
Many obvious reasons leap to mind.  The stories are usually compelling.  I want to know what happens to whom and why … and what shoes they have on.  I like figuring out who dunnit.  Did Holmes really get pushed off Reichenbach Falls?  I like visualizing the colors and styles of settings.  A feast of lobsters on the shores of Maine with a bottle of whisky.This leads to an escapism, which is another very persuasive reason to read.  A book takes you to a different place.  A world unlike your own where only you are going.  Sometimes it is familiar, sometimes not, but it rarely matters.
It is fun though, if one’s real life is less than exotic.  No time-travel, no murder, no espionage, very little actual French cooking. But of course, no tropical paradise in Jimmy Choo sandals can out do the sheer pleasure of emptying the dishwasher again before 8 a.m., but we have to try.And the idea of murder is always appealing early in the morning.  One child on the 7 a.m. bus, two more on the 8:20.  I do laundry, breakfast, kitchen, school snacks and shower for work while my husband is leisurely picking out his tie and watching Matt Lauer.  People have been killed for less, but I digress.*

Reading can take you out of your physical situation but more importantly out of your mental situation.  Many places you could not find yourself emotionally are within reach.  What would you feel like if your parents died ? (awful – I speak from sad experience).Or what if you were transmogrified and attacked by crazed villagers (also awful ).  What if you were born old and aged backwards?  How about being a woman in the 40s?  Or married to that icky Frank Lloyd Wright?  Or fighting for your life below the streets of London?  What would it feel like to be the Prince of Wales and fight for your life with crazed bikers in a marsh in New Jersey?Isn’t it marvelous that we have the means to answer these queries at our fingertips?

The more I can read, the more I can learn.  The more I can learn about other people and other places, the better chance I have of formulating a coherent grip on my immediate life.  The more I know about myself, the more use I can be to others.
As Elizabeth Gilbert points out in Eat,Pray,Love … she can not change everyone but if she starts with herself, she can make a very positive impact on others.  In whatever free time I have, I choose to read to make myself a better person.  So far so good , I think**
* In all fairness he then leaves and works a much longer day than I do.  I manage to fit in a fair amount of thumb-twiddling, but I have to maintain my nasty attitude for appearance’s sake.
** Reminds me of a joke … Descartes is on a plane and the stewardess offers coffee or tea.  Descartes replies,’I think not,” and promptly disappears.

‘The Story Sisters’ by Alice Hoffman

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Shouldn’t we all be enjoying these last, lazy hazy days of summer before school starts next week by kicking off our shoes, relaxing and doing nothing much of anything? Not our Jen. She stayed up all night reading this week’s book pick – that’s how compelling she found “The Story Sisters” by Alice Hoffman.

Alice Hoffman is one of my most-beloved authors.  She is consistently good.  Often, great.  “The Story Sisters” is a case in point.  I stayed up all night reading it.  Even exhausted, I couldn’t stop.

Three sisters are growing up on Long Island.  They live with their divorced Mother and each face horrible challenges.  In the face of traumas they grow closer and farther apart.  Each has a proverbial cross to bear and we are enraptured and horrified.

The eldest, Elv, keeps a terrible terrible secret that almost destroys her.  The youngest, Claire, shares it with her and it links them in very destructive ways.  The middle sister, Meg, tries to extricate herself from a situation she doesn’t understand.  The mother, Annie, is sadly excluded from a situation she could support.  The girls turn inward when they should seek help and it almost kills them.

Each sister is remarkable and heartbreaking without losing our admiration.  How could we turn away from such gravitas?  Such extraordinary circumstance can be a seed for growth or destruction.

Alice Hoffman takes us into an almost magical world that the sisters create to survive.

As they grow and things fall apart, there are several characters who can save them and we hope and pray they can.  We stretch our hearts to seek the light they crave.  In New York and in Paris there are opportunities for redemption that they must recognize or die trying.

Like all of her books, the world is just withen our reach and we enter without a second thought.  “The Story Sisters” could be a disturbing book of pain and loss, but Alice Hoffman ‘s gift is hope.  There is an undercurrent of strength and love that we expect to prevail.  Like, “Neverwhere” ( Neil Gaiman), “The Story Sisters” tells a story of great heartache resulting in great release.

Books offer us the gift of living vicariously through others and learning their lessons.  “The Story Sisters” is a momentous immolation.

“Neverwhere” by Neil Gaiman

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Published 08/14/09

While the cat’s away, Jen will play.  But Jen is a good girl, and seeing as our editor has been in London, England, for a while, Jen dutifully read a book about London in her absence.  However, “Neverwhere” by Neil Gaiman is not about the London tourists see … well, actually, it is in part, but it is the “London Below” that is gripping.

Whilst our fearless editor was gallivanting around London and we were all home pining for her, I thought a book about the timeless city would be appropriate.

“Neverwhere” by Neil Gaiman is really neat.  (Hey, I could have said NEAT-O, so leave it alone).  I really enjoy the inner machinations of Neil Gaiman’s brain.  He has written some really interestingly strange books.  “Coraline”, which was just made into a Tim Burton film, and “Stardust” to name two.
He has a definite dark side that takes us far far away from real life and almost, but not entirely, brings us home again.

“Neverwhere” is the story of two Londons.  One up above with which we are all familiar and then the London Below with which we are not.

Richard Mayhew plods along in his routine ‘London Above’ life.  He has a fiancée, a job, an apartment.  He expects, and indeed hopes for, more of the same.

Guess what?  I know you know.  He not only does not get it, but seemingly no longer wants it.

He meets a girl named Door who lives in ‘London Below’.  Door is from a very dangerous, very exhilaratingly different London.  Richard is sucked in and can not extricate himself.  He meets the wildest characters.  An infamously selfish hunter, two outrageously creepy henchmen, an Angel and loads of rats.
Richard finds himself fully engaged in a new way.  He is terribly afraid he will not get his old life back.  He is terribly afraid he is in mortal danger.  In this, he finds himself more alive than ever.  What part of his other life is as deeply fulfilling as constant fear and his mastery over it?  Complacency is rarely the path to true happiness.  Great trials reap great rewards.  It works this way in our world too, people, so pay attention …
Gaiman’s talent for presenting the outlandish is well restrained.  It seems quite feasible that this world should exist.  These people could quite possibly be in our peripheral world.  At the end of a lovely summer, it is always nice to have one last little vacation … especially if it is in your own head.

“Pushing Up Daisies” by Rosemary Harris

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Published 08/02/09

It’s summertime – it is honestly, despite the weather, and our ever optimistic Jen has a wonderful book suggestion this week for those lazy, hazy days we’re spending on our beach towels … or rather (hopefully) about to spend. It’s the garden-themed mystery, “Pushing up Daisies” by Rosemary Harris 

Just back from a marvelous vacation where I read not a word!  Horrors.  But I did carry this book around with me just in case.

It really is fun, even lonely and covered in sand, it made me happy.  Now that I have had a moment, I will say it is a great fun summer read.  I finished Harris’ second book, “The Big Dirt Nap,” and had to go find this one.

They are part of a new mystery series about Paula Holliday, an ex-TV exec, who now owns a gardening business.  A Dirty Business.
She is great fun to tag along with, as are the other characters.  Set in the fictional Springfield, Conn., ( I am guessing Stamford or Cos Cob), she keeps stumbling upon mysteries that only she can figure out.
There are local police, friends, a groovy diner owner and some love interests, but Paula is the main dish … and she’s great.  The plots are clever enough to whisk you along and while it certainly is not Kafka – who cares?  Do we need to metamorphasize on our beach towels?  I think not.
I look forward to more.  Like Janet Evanovich, Sarah Graves, Nancy Atherton et al, Rosemary Harris is a treat.

“Midsummer” by Marcelle Clements

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This weekend it is the Midsummer Festival in Old Lyme. So why not prepare for the splendid event by reading “Midsummer” by Marcelle Clements. It might not be quite as upbeat as the festival but, as our resplendent reviewer Jen Mann concludes, it is nevertheless, “a beautiful book.”

This is a beautiful book.  Rather depressing, but still beautiful.

A group of friends rent a lovely old house in the Hudson River Valley for the summer.  They are all a bit lost in their lives and hope that the joys of summer will revitalize them.  We do too.  They all seem to be nice people who could use a break.  What we get are some magical descriptions of summer and some insight into the troubled mind.

Happiness should not be as elusive as it seems to be for them.  Maybe they are drinking too much to find it.  Cocktail hour seems a bit pervasive.  Anyhow, in the midst of their dreams and introspection there are some jewels to be found from the writing prowess of Ms. Clements.

Kay starts to open up, but decides that magical thinking is not possible (I disagree), “Everything considered magical exasperated her.  It was interesting, but only as a curiosity.”

There is happiness to be had but they don’t quite know how to approach, much less hold onto, it … “The beauty (was) a kind of pain”.

It took them , “years to get rid of excessive idealism.”  What they unconsciously want is to get it back.  “The visions of the Hudson at dusk, the rose garden, the crickets in the lawn, are all vehicles to find their way back, but they can’t.”

Each of the six main characters wants, needs, to feel love and joy again, but they have lost the ability to hold on to it.  It is right in front of all of them.  We see it, but they let it waft away and it is too sad.

If the reader can hold on to it.  If the reader can see it and not let go the way the characters do, then the book is worth the read.  Please, you think, never let it slip away completely because all you’d have left is an empty shell and it breaks your heart to see them live that way.