The Crimson Petal and the White

The Crimson Petal and the White
By Michel Faber (894 pages)
Published by Canongate Books
Bookish rating: 4

The best word to describe Crimson Petal is bawdy. The novel consists 894 pages of crude, icky, arguably perverse sex. And yet . . .  it's insanely well written.

Set in Victorian London, we meet a prostitute named Sugar. Pushed into the trade as a child by her appalling mother, she's our heroine. We root for her, even as she uses her feminine talents to seduce a thoroughly unlikable, thoroughly selfish wealthy man, William. After all, doing so is a matter of survival.

Though she cares nil for her, um, benefactor, she outsmarts him, ensuring things like clean linens and firewood by essentially playing to his ego. And so it goes for just under a thousand pages.

The narrating point of view is omniscient, entering each character's mind as the narrator wills it, even addressing the reader in a delightfully condescending tone. It works. The narration is wry, often ironic, and hopelessly crude. The end result is disturbing, heartbreaking, and often weirdly amusing. Mostly, the novel takes the reader deep into the trenches of Victorian whoredom, exposing it as nothing short of sex trafficking, child abuse, and horrifying exploitation. Voluntary in a way, yes, but every case Faber shows us stems from the hooker's powerlessness.

I read this book via Kindle during many, many, MANY 2:00 a.m. feedings of my baby girl---perhaps not the most wholesome literature for the wee hours of the morning. You know, when only those awake include whores and sleepy eyed mothers. At any rate, the novel is good. Recommended.

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk
By Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish (304 pages)
Published by Harper Perennial
Bookish rating: 3.5

As you may know, Washington Post columnist Caroyln Hax has the power to affect what I say, do, and read. She's quite powerful. This book--a parenting classic, which I'm certain MY parents never read (but that's neither here nor there)--is one of those parenting books Hax repeatedly recommends during her chats and whatnot. And because almighty Hax rarely leads me astray, I decided to read How to Talk in hopes of gleaning some communication kernels of wisdom to apply to my child who often seems to just not listen to me.

Lesson #1: Charlotte may not listen to me, but do I listen to her? Ruh-roh.

This is one of those books you read that causes an unsettling ick in the pit of your tummy as you realize that you're doing everything all wrong. While I don't agree with everything Faber and Mazlish suggest---for example, some conversation examples are far too wordy for young children--the overall premise is a good one: shut up for a second and LISTEN to your kid.

Doing so, they argue, will bring down the tantrum level and increase compliance. So, I tried this with Charlotte. Currently, my first-born is going through a phase in which she doesn't want to wear pants. It's endearing when she's decorating the Christmas tree, especially if she opts for her Elmo slippers, but it's problematic if we actually need to leave the house.

So, instead of all out war to get her to put on pants, as before, I tried the following:

Charlotte: I don't want to wear pants! [starts crying]
Me: [letting her know I hear her] You don't want to wear pants! Charlotte does NOT want to wear pants.
Charlotte: [stops crying, looks at me, nods while snot and tears run down her face]
Me: [calmly] You don't want to wear pants. I wish you didn't have to wear pants. I wish you could wear just undies ALL day.
Charlotte: [listening remarkably intently]
Me: I wish you didn't have to wear pants, but when we go to church, we wear pants. Mommy had to put on pants, too.
Charlotte: [sniffles]
Me: How about the pants with flowers? Lorelei's pants also have flowers on them today, remember?
Charlotte: [nods and starts putting on her pants]

The idea is that you validate your child's feelings. I admit, this sounds really  . . . . loosey goosey touchy feely. The thing is, doing so works. After all, one of the things that ticks me off more than anything is when I feel like Chris isn't hearing what I'm trying to say, either tuning me out or bypassing a gripe of mine. Then I get frustrated. Really, really frustrated. And a little difficult to live with. Why on earth would a young child be different?

Another tidbit I found useful is how to encourage autonomy and good behavior. Charlotte is fiercely independent, and I need to reign in some of that independence, so she uses it for good rather than evil. What to do? Well, Faber and Mazlish argue you should DESCRIBE what your kid does well rather than just label something as fantastic (or crappy). This one is tricky, because we parents have a knee-jerk reaction to describe everything as just great that our kid shows us or does, but we have to be specific in a way that essentially praises their effort.

So, again, I gave it a whirl. During meals, Charlotte's table manners are less than stellar. She would eat soup with her fingers if allowed. Obviously, meal times have been reduced to a back-and-forth arguments of "use your fork" and "no, I use my fingers!"

What could a new approach hurt? What I was doing certainly wasn't working. This time:

Me: Here's a fork for your cheese muffin [cut up English muffin with melted cheddar].
Charlotte: [eyes it suspiciously]
Me: [sitting down next to her] Mommy has a cheese muffin, too.
Charlotte: Like Charlotte?
Me: Yup. I'm going to eat mine with my fork. [I stab a piece of food.]
Charlotte: [uses fork to take a bite]
Me: You just put that bite on your fork like a big girl.
Charlotte: [grins] I'm a big girl!
Me: I like eating next to you when you eat with your fork like a big girl.
Charlotte: Can I have some milk, please?
Me: Yes. Thank you for asking for milk so nicely. It's easy for me to know what you want when you use your words like that. [I get her milk.]
Charlotte: Thank you. [I shit you not.]
Me: You're welcome, sweetie.
[Daddy arrives home.]
Charlotte: Daddy, I'm eating a cheese muffin with Mommy!
Me: [meaningfully, tone aimed at Daddy] Daddy, Charlotte is using her fork, just like a big a girl.
Daddy: [catching on, thankfully] Good!
Charlotte: All done! [She takes her plate and puts it in the sink]
Me: [catching Daddy's eye] Thank you, Charlotte. That's really helpful to me when you put your dishes away by yourself.
Charlotte: [beaming, returns to her spot and starts talking to herself] Where does this go? Oh, right. [Takes her princess placemat and puts it in a drawer on the opposite side of the kitchen. We have never, ever witnessed her do this.]
Me: You also put away your placemat! Now your spot at the table is all clean. Thank you!

Obviously, there's a major cheese factor in talking to your kid like this, but the thing is, describing the specific things you like and why does seem to work and actually does appear to elicit MORE good behavior later on. Huh.

The book has a zillion other dos and don'ts, along with the reasoning behind them that I can't really cover in this review. And although the authors get a bit long-winded at times, and there's a huge gaping hole in what to freaking do if your kid is completely defiant in a situation, despite your newfound communication skills, this is a parenting book that actually can make you a better parent, not just a more paranoid parent. Recommended for those with kids.

The Gentleman Poet

The Gentleman Poet: A Novel of Love, Danger, and Shakespeare's The Tempest
By Kathryn Johnson (324 pages)
Published by Avon
Bookish rating: 3.75

Bookish ethics require me to disclose that I took a writing course with the author of this novel, which may have affected my impression and subsequent review of it.

Set in 1609, our heroine Miranda--a servant of a bitchy lady--is thrust into a storm on her way to Virginia. (The storm scene is fantastic.) They end up in the Bermudas, and there she takes on the role of cook for the stranded, making the most of her cookery knowledge and the stuff the islands contain.

Meanwhile, she is wooed by a guy named Thomas (whom she shuns), and she develops a friendship with a poet traveling under a different name but whom she learns is Shakespeare.

The Shakespeare aspect is a central part of the novel, but the reader is already completely aware that this man is Shakespeare, so it seems like forever until Miranda figures it out and following her train of thought when you already know where she needs to get to gets a little tiresome. The same issue occurs for her romance with Thomas, but hey, that's just the nature of romance.

That said, the stranded-on-a-deserted-island idea is extremely common, but Johnson's version is genuinely original. The characters aren't stereotypical, the language has a historical cadence without old timey cheese or being overdone, and the text is obviously carefully crafted (if a tad on the bland side) and well researched.

Recommended for anyone with an interest in Shakespeare who is seeking a fun what-if sort of read.

Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne

Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne
By David Starkey (400 pages)
Published by Harper Perennial
Bookish rating: 3.75

One can't spend all her reading time consuming fiction, even if it's literary (or not). No, one must occasionally read nonfiction and glean a fact or two, a sense of a historical era, a grasp of how many freaking people Queen Mary burned for heresy.

Like most, this Protestant ain't a big fan of Queen Mary.

But Elizabeth? Oh, we all love Elizabeth, don't we?

This biography of Elizabeth I is smart, a tad spunky, and deeply researched, but it's also intended for a non-academic audience. It's not a textbook. It does not have the logo of a university press on its spine. It's price point is that of your average paperback.

The text is well written and Starkey successfully gives us a non-romanticized glimpse of Elizabeth. He portrays her as the historical evidence reflects her, which is hugely intelligent, politically calculating, genuinely religious, and probably insanely intimidating. We get a sense of her childhood and relationship to Henry VIII, and even her mother Anne Boleyn. Before, you know, her dad had her mom's head chopped off.

As the book's subtitle suggests, the vast majority of the biography focuses on Elizabeth's path to the throne, which was exactly what I was looking for. Her coronation wasn't easy--or a given, that much I knew. But all that in-between stuff, from Henry VIII's death to Elizabeth's rule was unclear to me. So, I got filled in.

The text isn't a fast read--history rarely is, at least for me--but I'd recommend it to anyone who fancies all that is Elizabethan.

All Souls

All Souls
By Christine Schutt (240 pages)
Published by Harcourt
Bookish rating: 4

Set in 1997 at a prestigious private girls' school in Manhattan, the senior class of 40 girls, plus some teachers, cope with a classmate's rare form of cancer, along with their own angst.

Yes, this is yet another prep school drama, but who doesn't love that genre? This is a very carefully crafted novel--the writing is original, pitch-perfect, and just disjointed enough to make exactly the right point in a non-cliched way. One of my favorite lines was: "Lisa Van de Ven said, 'I can't wait to get out of here.' Then she said college as if she were making a wish, and she shut her eyes" (p. 207). I mean, public or private school, who among us didn't imbue that blessed word with such hope and importance her senior year of high school? Hmmm?

We meet a wide cast of characters, each believable and uniquely drawn. The insecurity of girls is presented in a fresh, poignant way, along with their teachers. Ultimately, the novel feels as though it's written from the teacher's point of view, for better or worse. I think it works, though some of the girlishness and spurts of playfulness that make these girls likeable is portrayed in a sort of wry, distanced way---like: oh, those naive girls listing their inside jokes in the yearbook and getting all emotional at the end of the year, so sweetly silly.

Overall, a huge contribution to the prep school drama genre. Recommended.

The Woman in Black

The Woman in Black
By Susan Hill (164 pages)
Published by Vintage
Bookish rating: 4

I managed to squeeze in one more spooky book before Halloween. The Woman in Black is a the best, most classic type of gothic chiller. The creepiness occurs less in what we see and more in what we don't. Like our narrator, Hill lets our imagination get the best of us--in a very good way.

Arthur Kipps must tend to the estate of an old (now dead) woman who lives way past civilization in a mansion on some goopy marshes. Hauntings begin, of course. Sounds, sightings, general dread and creepiness.

During the book's climax, I was reading while feeding Lorelei in a dimly lit room, as wind and rain pelted and rattled the windows. It was dark outside. Chris had gone to the store with Charlotte, so we were alone and. . . . I might have had to set the book down once or twice to settle my nerves. That's awesome writing, my friends.

This is the perfect sort of pre-Halloween read to get you in the mood for stormy weather (oh, hello, Hurricane Sandy) and spooky autumn atmosphere. Recommended!

The Leftovers

The Leftovers
By Tom Perrotta (355 pages)
Published by St. Martin's Press
Bookish rating: 4.25

This is my first Tom Perrotta novel, and I'm a fan. The Leftovers sort of satarizes a typical suburban family after a rapture-like event takes over the globe, in which people just vanish. Of course, it's not the real rapture, as a bunch of good Christians are left behind, scratching their heads. Nobody can explain it, oodles of cults pop up, and the world sort of kind of moves on. Or tries to.

So, we meet Kevin, the patriarch of his little family who later becomes mayor of Mapleton; mom-and-wife Laurie, who abandons her family to join a wacky cult; older child Tom, who drops out of college and joins the following of a questionable, self-proclaimed prophet with a penchant for child brides; and Jill, the straight-A student now struggling at school and doing charming things with guys in dorm-drama-like scenarios.

We also meet Kevin's love interest, who lost her entire family in the non-rapture. She's by far the msot interesting and heartbreaking character.

Perrotta has an amazing ability to sum up the complex, layered, and often ridiculous nuances of suburban family life--such as the mom who views each task in her day as grains of sand, taking up time, rushing her to uncomfortable efficiency, whether she's vacuuming or having sex, or a 4-year-old's insistence on drinking apple juice in a cup without a lid, letting her, and then going nutso with a touch of profanity when she inevitably spills it--and nobody makes a move to clean it up, assuming Mommy will do it. At the same time, the novel is most definitely comic, poking fun at suburbia with such tiny details as a mom exaggeratedly waving her hand in front of her face near a smoker.

This tension between satire and heart creates a fascinating result: a novel simultaneously deeply amusing, insightful, and utterly heartbreaking. I don't quite know how Perrotta did it--the writing is unlike anything I've come across in a long, long time---perhaps ever.

Highly recommended.