A Little Guide for Your Last Days, Jeffry Hendrix

The title is accurate. It is a little guide. It runs under a hundred pages. The margins are wide and the print is large. The book's target audience is, indeed, those who are facing their last days. Those who are battling a terminal illness. As was Hendrix.

It sounds really depressing, doesn't it? The thing is, it isn't. There are big questions to face at the end of one's life, but are the answers so difficult? You don't need to by dying to appreciate much of the Little Guide. The messages are simple. Are they too simple when we're well? Don't we all have a tendency to make too many things in life so difficult? Hendrix issues a straightforward reminder of what's really important as well as useful guide to dealing with those final days, no matter how many of them remain.

Hendrix was a convert to Catholicism, and his faith was the guiding principle in his life and provided the answer to his questions. However, this isn't a book for Catholic audiences only. The essential question in A Little Guide for Your Last Days is, "Why am I still here, and what am I supposed to do with the time I still have left?" His answer? "You may as well take advantage of the opportunity to do what you really, truly want to do at the very core of your being," and assures that, "before the end, I trust, you will know and be glad."

Reading a book that is so upfront and insistent about facing one's mortality can be difficult, or uncomfortable at the very least. Hendrix evinces optimism but also acceptance that in no way equals surrender. His advice is practical (go on retreat, don't leave burdensome debts for your family) and wise. One piece of advice, in particular, has stuck with me:

"don't go round to acquaintances, friends, relatives, or perfect strangers looking for sympathy, understanding, concern, or anything else. Simply do not do it. They will not give it to you to the degree to which you are seeking. Even if they do, you will end up resenting their attempts....Again, you will end up feeling worse than you did before you went looking for what they really and truly do not have to give you.

Take from people what they can give and let the rest go. What a difference that can make, no matter how long your life.

Hendrix says, "Life is terminal. You want to make the most of it, even and especially now." To be reminded of our mortality now and then is not a bad thing, and Hendrix shares beautifully the lessons he learned.

Jeffry Hendrix died on June 28, 2011.

Emerald City and Other Stories, Jennifer Egan

A few years ago at George Mason University's Fall for the Book Festival I heard Jennifer Egan read an excerpt from the new novel she was working on. I was enthralled by the quirky characters and well-told tale and anxiously awaited her book. This is not it (that's A Visit From the Goon Squad which I hope to read in the next few weeks), but that's okay because this collection of short stories is fantastic. The first story, "Why China?" is about a well-to-do family on vacation in China who encounters a man who had swindled $25,000 from them a few years earlier. As I began the story, I was wary. What did I know about people like this and why should I care about them or what they do? Like a good storyteller, Egan shows you why. Story after story, Egan introduces disparate characters and situations that are real, recognizable, and resonant. Some people love short stories, love how you can read an entire story start to finish in under an hour in many cases. I don't. I like to immerse myself in a novel and live with it for awhile. What I like most, though, are stories that move me and stick with me. Emerald City and Other Stories did just that.

The Song is You, Arthur Phillips

Music is the soundtrack to our lives. It's a cliché. We know that. But for many of us, it's very true. The right song can take you to a place and time you thought you'd forgotten and uncover memories long buried. It's certainly true for the protagonist in Arthur Phillips' The Song is You:  "Julian Donahue's generation were the pioneers of portable headphone music, and he began carrying with him everywhere the soundtrack to his days when he was fifteen." Julian, separated from his wife, becomes enamored of a talented young singer named Cait O'Dwyer after happening into a bar where she is singing one night. Cait is on the cusp of stardom while Julian has accepted where he is in life. He remembers the ambition of his youth but somewhere along the way he lost the desire to pursue it. Phillips slowly reveals the heart-breaking details leading to the breakdown of Julian's marriage. We learn about the relationship with his brother and their divergent memories of their father (where Julian gets his deep love of music).  All the while watching as Julian and Cait communicate (will they ever meet in person or won't they?), inching closer to each other, sharing bits and pieces of themselves and their lives with each other.

You don't need to share Julian's taste in music to understand the effect it has on him. The experience and wisdom won in life sometimes come at a heavy price, as Julian has painfully learned. Cait's youth, determination, and bright future full of possibility are a striking contrast to Julian's fractured marriage, deep pain, and successful mediocrity, and we understand their attraction to each other. Julian is entranced by the possibility he sees in her, and Cait needs Julian's wisdom and insight. Can they sense the futility in their desire? Perhaps, but it doesn't change the attraction. Add Julian's father, brother, and wife to the mix and the result is a funny, poignant story about possibility, chance, and consequence. This book is good. It's a well-told, engaging story that's a pleasure to read and satisfying, too.

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini

I loved The Kite Runner.  Thinking about parts of it still chokes me up.  It made me think about the meanings of friendship and character, loyalty and love.  I vividly remember sitting on my deck peacefully reading The Kite Runner and then sucking in my breath and bawling over what I had just read.  Luckily only my husband was witness to that full-on ugly cry moment.  I had to stop reading because: 1) the emotion was overwhelming, 2) I had to take a moment to absorb what I had just read and, lastly, 3) I had to explain to my husband, between hiccuping sobs, what the heck I was crying about.  (The movie adaptation was such a disappointment because it failed to convey the emotion that made the book so breathtaking.)  Halfway through The Kite Runner, I bought A Thousand Splendid Suns, ready to immerse myself again in a wonderful story.  Despite several starts, I hadn't made it past the second page.  I think it was the dedication "to the women of Afghanistan" that held me back.  I was worried Hosseini might be attempting An Important Book and that gave me pause.  In an effort to outsmart myself, I took this book and this book alone on a six-hour car trip.  I resisted for a few hours before boredom got the better of me.  It took a chapter or two before I was fully engaged, but once that happened it was lasting.

A Thousand Splendid Suns tells the story of Laila and Mariam, but also in truth it is the story of "the women of Afghanistan." The story begins in 1959 and continues through the recent history of that land, from Soviet invasion to Taliban rule to the present.  At times the story feels contrived and the ending is perhaps overly idealistic and idealized.  It's hard to fault Hosseini for this, though.  The love and affection he feels for Afghanistan is obvious on every page and is conveyed skillfully to the reader.  One of the most striking aspects of the book is his ability to make a changing Afghanistan come alive for the reader.  You'll feel that you've been there, that you've felt the heat, smelled the flowers and the aromas of the food, and experienced the anonymity found behind a burqa.  I recommend this book, but I recommend The Kite Runner more.

Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis

This was on my son's summer reading list last year.  He wasn't enamored of it, and I'm not sure he even finished it.  I feel compelled to finish reading books, even if I don't like them.  Perhaps I felt sorry for poor Babbitt, with it's bookmark stuck 73 pages from the end, and that's why I picked it up.  Whatever the reason, I'm glad I did.  It was written in 1922 but still feels relevant today.  Businessman George Babbitt wants to get ahead, and he's willing to bend the rules a bit -- that's just how business runs, he justifies -- to succeed.  As Lewis states, "He serenely believed that the one purpose of the real-estate business was to make money for George F. Babbitt."  Style is preferred to substance, and success is measured in money and social capital.  George is no deep thinker, but he does notice the emptiness that lurks about him and his life.  Babbitt has a poor understanding of the reasons for his unease but an all too keen perception of its effects. Stepping even just an inch outside the norm is a societal taboo.  In Zenith, "they all had the same ideas and expressed them always with the same ponderous and brassy assurance."  To be conventional is to be accepted.  To think or act differently is to invite suspicion and, heaven forbid, ostracism.  Babbitt is ridiculous but pitiable, but Lewis allows the reader to sympathize with George and root for him, turning the farce of George's life into a touching story.

Babbitt snuck up on me, and I was surprised to find how much I was enjoying it.  I understood George, the emptiness he felt, and also the fear of stepping outside the established bounds.  I understood, also, why he made the choices he did.  Lewis captures his time but also manages to capture our own as well.

On a side note, I highly recommend the film adaptations of two of his works:  Dodsworth, one of my favorite movies and showcasing a fantastic performance by Walter Huston, and Elmer Gantry, which has great performances by Burt Lancaster.

The Passage, Justin Cronin

A government experiment goes badly awry and virals (vampire-ish creatures) are released into an unsuspecting world, creating havoc to say the least.  Is there a hero that saves the world?  Most everyone left alive is too focused on merely staying alive.  Well, there is a little girl.  As Justin Cronin begins:

Before she became the Girl from Nowhere--the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years--she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy.

 Amy, you see, was one of the subjects of the experiment.  She's a strange and vulnerable little girl who for some reason wasn't destroyed or disfigured like the others.  The first half of the novel is destruction.  The second half is the realization that the status quo is unsustainable.  There is continuous juxtaposition between journeys and imprisonment.  What is safe?  Where is safe?  Can safety be counted on when the barbarians are always at the gate?

The Passage was heavily promoted this past summer, and I bought into the hype (I'm so weak) and ran out and bought a copy.  Am I glad I did?  Ye-es.  I missed the whole dragon tattoo craze (and I have no intention of catching up), so I thought I'd get ahead of the game with The Passage before the movie comes out (the rights have been sold already).  It's a long book, and I read it over a long weekend.  I was sick at the time so perhaps I didn't appreciate it as much as I might have if I were feeling more like myself.  That being said, it was a good story and Cronin is a good storyteller.  There was only one point - during an "is he dead or not" section - that I thought a good editor should have suggested that Cronin make some changes because he and the story are better than what's on the page.  It's a quibble only.  I do have a heads up, though.  This book is reported to be the first of a trilogy, which I didn't know until the last page, and then I wanted to throw the book across the room.  It's not exactly a cliffhanger, but the end is a shocker.  Chances are pretty good I'll be back for part two.

Bad Things Happen, Harry Dolan

At the start of Bad Things Happen, Harry Dolan introduces David Loogan by telling us he "looks nothing at all like a man heading off to dig a grave."  We're not sure exactly who David Loogan is, but we want to find out.  As the story begins, Loogan submits a story to a mystery magazine and is subsequently given a job as an editor and befriends the publisher.  There's a murder, and David is a suspect, along with several other people.  In this literate, well-told tale--which had me stopping frequently to marvel over a well-crafted sentence or phrase--police detective Elizabeth Waishkey tries to discover the murderer and the unravel the mystery of David Loogan.  I don't know that I was very surprised at outcome, but I absolutely enjoyed the journey.  I don't often read mysteries, but I highly recommend this book.

Excellent Women, Barbara Pym

I discovered Barbara Pym’s name on a list of authors you should read if you love Jane Austen. I love Jane Austen, so I made a beeline for my local library to find some Pym and Elizabeth Gaskell, another author mentioned in the list (I loved the TV productions of Gaskell’s North and South and Cranford). I’ll get to Gaskell in another post.

In Excellent Women, Mildred meets her neighbors who have some marital strife, her minister becomes engaged, and Mildred listens sympathetically, shares her observations with the reader, and makes tea. That's pretty much it.  Mildred is the same person at the end of the novel as she is at the start. There is never a point in the story where she has to make a serious decision or face more than a minor upset of her routine. Rather than a story arc, it is a story (straight) line. I looked in vain for that moment when Mildred’s story reveals something about the human condition or opens a new way of looking at a subject or…something. Mildred likes the life she has chosen. Good for her, but why should I care?

Excellent Women in written in first person narration.  It's Mildred's observations that we're meant to care about, but they did not seem especially keen or insightful.  Perhaps if the story were told in third person narration, the focus could have been pulled back and Mildred’s world expanded.  The reader would then be privy to the motivations and desires of some of the other characters and the story might have been richer. As it is, three-quarters of the way through I was ready to give up. The only thing that kept me going was the (futile) hope that Mildred would finally have some kind of revelation. Sadly, no.

Excellent Women is reputed to be wickedly funny. I don’t think so. I'll stay with Jane Austen. This book is also a reputed classic, and there was a time when I would have found a way to like it for that reason.  Happily, that day has passed.  I did not wholly feel that I had wasted my time with Barbara Pym and Excellent Women, but I am sure there are other authors whose work I will appreciate and enjoy more. I am also quite sure that I will not be reaching for anymore of Pym’s work.

My Life in France, Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme

The movie Julie & Julia brought Julia Child back into mainstream consciousness, (although I can still find her on my PBS station at off-hours). That’s a good thing. A friend had the movie tie-in edition of Child’s memoir, My Life in France, which she graciously lent to me. I had just watched the movie (really liked the Julia part; the Julie part needed more food shots—who cares about the lobster? I want to see the Lobster Newburg!). I was interested to know more. That often happens to me. I watch the movie and want to know the real story. I was only a few pages into the book when my stomach started to rumble and I felt like pouring myself a glass of French wine.  That feeling never really left me for the remainder of the book.

Julia Child’s tone is casual, but her approach to food is anything but. Listening to her awakening to food—good food prepared well—and accompanying wine is a delight. Her voice is strong and clear, and her enthusiasm, knowledge, and commonsense burst from every page. As a bonus, most pages are full of accounts of delicious food and memorable meals. My favorite is the description of her husband Paul’s fiftieth birthday dinner:

amuse-gueules au fromage (hot pâtes feuilletées topped with cheese, served in the living room with Krug champagne); rissolettes de foie gras Carisse; filet de boeuf Matigno (served with a nearly perfect Bordeaux, Château Chauvin 1929); les fromages (Camembert, Brie de Melun, Époisses, Roquefort, Chèvre); fruits; rafraîchis; gâteau de demi~siècle; café, liqueurs, hundred-year-old Cognac; Havana cigars and Turkish cigarettes.

 I don’t speak French and don’t know exactly what it all means, but I know enough for my mouth to water. I have no problem understanding how Julia and Paul ended up with digestive problems, living on a diet like that. I’m also inspired to copy the framework of this menu for my husband’s fiftieth birthday dinner celebration. And then he can copy it for mine. Many years from now.

There was one jarring note in My Life in France for me. Child’s life took her in a different direction from her parents, and those differing experiences showed her a different view of the world and led to different opinions, beliefs, and politics. That’s fine. However, I sensed rejection not just of her parents’ politics but of them too. I found that sad and disappointing. These references, which are sprinkled through the book, are jarring in their shift of attitude but are not numerous enough to spoil the appetizing journey Julia Child leads.

Child was committed to creating good food and, through her cookbooks, the ability to create it again and again. Her kitchen was her laboratory, and she was committed to excellence. It is said that you shouldn’t wait for a special occasion to open a good bottle of wine because when you open a good bottle of wine, the occasion becomes special. Julia Child’s life and work show that this belief is just as appropriate when applied to food.

Stone Cold, David Baldacci

Dear Mr. Baldacci,

I recently finished your novel, Stone Cold, the first of your books that I have had occasion to read. The plot was exciting and, despite a brief lull in the action, I found the story entertaining. I found myself rooting for your characters, even those with questionable motives, decisions, and actions. Stone Cold also helped pass a few long hours on I-95 in Virginia and for that I am sincerely grateful. Most enjoyable for me, though, was recognizing the many DC area locations in which the story is set. (Every day I drive past the seedy motel that the Finns stay in, and I have eaten at that McDonald's, too.  Also, I used to get my car inspected at the gas station where Stone calls for a cab.) I think one of your greatest successes in this story is establishing a sense of place and creating characters that are products of their environment and interact realistically with it. I would love to gain more insight into your ability to do this so effectively and to share with you more of my thoughts on your novel. I’m sure it would be edifying for us both. I remember reading that you are an enthusiastic patron of Restaurant Eve in Old Town Alexandria (mmmm, Lobster Risotto), and I think that establishment—rather than the McDonald’s up the street from the seedy motel—may be an appropriate place for what I’m sure would be an enriching and enlightening literary and intellectual exchange.

Cordially,
Amy P.

I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, Nora Ephron

This book is properly titled because these really are “thoughts.” They are amusing but more thought than deeply considered idea. Ephron’s ideas and opinions breezed into my own mind like a gentle breeze and drifted out just as quickly. I was ready to classify the book as a pleasant diversion, a not unsatisfactory way to spend several hours. On the way to my smug and certain opinion that Ephron had nothing of substance to offer me, she threw me two curves that have stuck with me. Writing of the illness and death of a friend, she says, “Death is a sniper.” Wow. Exactly, I thought. This image of death as a sniper is comforting to me. By identifying death as a sniper (I see the Angel of Death with a high-powered rifle coldly drawing a bead on someone, a precise but telling red dot from the laser sight on an unsuspecting forehead. Was it the hair, the clothes, the personal hygiene that prompted the decision?). If that’s the case, then the selection is less caprice and more impulse and there is an underlying spur, no matter how slight. I find comfort in that.

The second line is about grown children: “Meanwhile, every so often, your children come to visit. They are, amazingly, completely charming people. You can’t believe you’re lucky enough to know them. They make you laugh. They make you proud. You love them madly. They survived you. You survived them.” As the parent of a teen-ager, there are some days that I clutch this thought to my chest as if it were a life preserver, and I pray (and sometimes believe) that it may perhaps be true.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

An epistolary tale? What a novel idea. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) The format seems quaint and brings back unwelcome memories of college and slogging through Les Liaisons dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos (but I like the movies versions Dangerous Liaisons and Valmont), La Nouvelle Héloïse by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and (shudder) Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. I heard recently that there was an epistolary novel not of letters but text messages. I can’t even begin to fathom it. I inevitably think at the end of such stories of how much more engaging they might have been if they were told in a simple narrative. So too with The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It feels old-fashioned. That can often be a good trait, but here I think it merely shows the slightness of the story. It is the story of a writer who, post World War II comes to the island of Guernsey, which had been occupied by German soldiers throughout the war. This part was interesting to me. I had no idea that this had happened and wondered at the conditions that the residents must have lived under. This book only scratches at the surface of it. Instead, it focuses on an intrepid group who manage, by accident, to form a literary society, one where, as luck would have it, every member, no matter their station or education or ability, manages to find the perfect book not just to enrich their lives but to see them through the war. Oh and there’s a rather predictable love story thrown in for good measure. There is the laundry list of stock characters: the sympathetic gay man; the understanding German officer; the selfless and brave islander ready to sacrifice herself for others; the orphaned, precocious child; the quiet, brooding hero; the rich American; and Oscar Wilde. No kidding. I read it in about a day and half, so there is not much time commitment to give to it or to rue having wasted at the end of it.

That Old Cape Magic, Richard Russo

What a great book to start the year! I'm a fan of Richard Russo, especially The Whore's Child, and I was eagerly looking forward to this book. I have to start with Griffin's parents. What sad, repugnant, fascinating, believable people. I spent so much of the book analyzing Griffin and how his behavior and actions were influenced by his parents. Of course his mother is in his head! Whether our parents are with us physically or not, some part of them is always rattling around in our brain. As the novel progresses, Russo skillfully reveals how a son's memories and perceptions may not necessarily contain the whole truth and reality of a person or an event. This is a lesson he needs to learn, and it is a difficult one for him, considering the certainty of opinion that his parents have ingrained in him. Griffin's parents are full of pride and intellectual arrogance, but by the end of the novel I felt sympathy and pity for them, something I would have not thought possible earlier in the story.

One scene in the book really stuck with me. In it, Russo neatly captures how a relationship can change in an instant--satisfying and happy one moment and fractured and anguished the next--unspoken resentment, suspicion, contempt erupting from the smallest of fissures. This scene between Griffin and his wife, Joy, threw me for a loop because I didn't see it coming at all. I should have anticipated it--the foreshadowing was there--but I guess I didn't want to see the signs (gullible romantic that I am).

Griffin's life is in motion. He is a man on a physical journey and an inner journey as well. He moves east to west and back again, not satisfied with where he is or what he is doing. His parents, Joy's family, and his job are all sources of anguish for him. Satisfaction is elusive. Cape Cod, however, holds a special place for him and his parents. It holds the mythic pot of gold at the end of the rainbow--the elusive summer cottage--if they can only find the right one, which unfortunately all too often fall into the one of two categories: "Can't Afford It or Wouldn't Have It As a Gift." It is only right that Griffin returns here to put the past to rest and start anew.

I laughed out loud in parts and also felt the bittersweet pain of dreams lost and hopes smashed. The characters were real and their decisions and actions believable--sometimes maddeningly so. The best part of the book was the least surprising, having read other stories by Russo, and that was that the feelings engendered were true and earned.