Lydia's Party

Lydia's Party
By Margaret Hawkins (304 pages)
Published by Viking
Bookish rating: 3.5

If nothing else, this book has a pretty cover design, right?

Honestly, after I checked this book out from the library, I almost returned it without reading it. The description sounded a tad sappy on second read, and how many books depicting "women's friendships" can you read before they start to seem . . .  the same?

I decided to read it, and I'm glad I did. I do think the novel has value. Plot: Lydia throws a "bleak midwinter" party each year after Christmas. This year, she has her big announcement that she has cancer and it's terminal.

Hawkins actually dodges sappiness here. Which was a relief.

The dynamics among the women vary in their amount of interest and originality. The point of view of the artist friend is the strongest and best defined, and here is where the novel is raised a level. Blending art and creation of art amidst death? Well, yes. A good move.

A strange "spirit" of Lydia in the final chapters doesn't come through as believable to me, and I think it could've been omitted. I mean, that's the tragedy of someone's death, right? Their sheer absence? Also? WAY too many characters with not enough to distinguish them. Several morphed together for me.

Overall, not amazing, but not crappy. To use my friend Lauren's phrase, quasi-recommended.

Dancing Through It

Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet
By Jenifer Ringer (257 pages)
Published by Viking
Bookish rating: 4

I love dance autobiographies. I always have. And lo and behold, newly retired Jenifer Ringer, former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, produced a book I hoped would give insight into the more current, post-Balanchine NYCB inner-workings and dynamics.

Ringer doesn't disappoint. Now, this book has been crucified by reader reviews, because she pretty much blindsides the reader with a declaration of her uber Christian faith, followed by lots of Christian-ese sprinkled throughout. I get the outcry. You think you're picking up a book about the dark underside of the dance world and instead you get a soliloquy about a personal lord and savior.

However.

As someone who has studied autobiography pretty intensely, I tend to let a LOT slide when reading autobiography. The reason is that the author is deliberately making choices as to what to include, what to omit, and the way in which she presents it. To boot, a reader audience is constantly lurking, and this soooooo shapes the writing. Therefore, I find most writing decisions, both lovely and cringe-worthy, at least interesting.

So, then. Ringer's faith is central to her story: her raising, her struggles, her healing--her overall narrative. Why not include it? Yes, I cringed at the choice of language. As someone raised in a conservative, evangelical tradition, I deeply dislike its lingo. So, yes. I got uncomfortable reading so many "Daughter of the Lord" or "Child of God" phrases, complete the excessive capitalization such lingo generates. I just don't care for it. But my, it tells us much about Ringer, yes? And therefore, I'd argue it's an appropriate inclusion in her autobiography.

In many cases, the writing was a tad bland, even through the "darkness" of her disordered eating. And the story of her courtship with fellow NYCB dancer was like something out my childhood church's youth group's "Sex and Dating" series (which can pretty much be summed up as no sex, if you must date). But hey, it's how she rolls, and she's happily married and she and her husband appear to be intelligently and thoughtfully raising two children.

There's a purity in Ringer's writing: her love of ballet, a bit of innocence. In a strange way, it was sort of refreshing.

Where Ringer shined most was in her descriptions of various ballets, particularly Jerome Robbins's Dances at a Gathering, which serves as something of a symbol for her story in dance. Ringer describes choreography beautifully, making it very fun reading. You can see dances performed as you read. Also, Ringer's genuine love of ballet and performance shine through her writing. Her book is not a brag-fest, as dance autobiographies often are. I very much got the sense that Ringer was sharing a story.

Finally, she ends the book with a short chapter titled "The Mirror," which details a lovely, touching scene with her joyfully naked 4-year-old daughter, herself, and a mirror. I'll let readers discover it for themselves, but the scene ended the book perfectly, summing up her new role as mom and responsibility she feels to raise her daughter with a strong sense of self.

So, ignore the reviews that bitch about the Christianity part. This is a good dance autobiography. Recommended.

Housekeeping

Housekeeping
By Marilynne Robinson (219 pages)
Published by Picador
Bookish rating: 4.5

Housekeeping is something of a bildungsroman, a novel of a girl coming of age. Also author of the oh so good Gilead, Robinson is a mind-blowingly gifted writer. Her words and images contain so, so many layers, and all the while she keeps moving the novel forward, almost with the sense of water lapping at a shore--a tide, perhaps.

Which is appropriate, because water is a big 'ole symbol in Housekeeping, as Ruth and her sister Lucille dwell near an enormous lake, complete with a bridge. And trains.

After Ruth's mother dies, she's raised by her grandmother and finally her aunt, Sylvie, who is distant and weird but kind. Housekeeping toys with the idea of impermanence, the body or the home as the tangible shell of what holds before you cease to exist, time, God, and death. And, well, life, really.

Highly, highly recommended.

Dear Committee Members

Dear Committee Members
By Julie Schumacher (180 pages)
Published by Doubleday
Bookish rating: 4

First, let me say that this book reinforces my view that academics are the WHINIEST bunch of folks in the world, after toddlers. I mean, I get their disillusionment to a point: they toil and study and get degrees and become experts, harboring a vision of striding across a Cambridge-esque campus, revered as the scholars they view themselves as.

Of course, colleges and universities paying little and hiring too many adjuncts, not to mention the unpreparedness of millions of students who can barely formulate sentences, let alone original thoughts---well, it's small wonder academics feel a bit pissed.

This epistolary novel, written in letters by a ticked off lit ad creative writing professor, Jason Fitger, is snark perfected. He's insanely jealous of the Economics department, feeling obsolete and failure-like, and prickly. Prickly, prickly, prickly. The novel is hilarious. Brilliantly so. But it also contains an undercurrent of Jason actually giving a hoot about his students.

Oh, academia. I shall never manage to really pity those who have made careers in fields they adore, or have professed to adore. Oh, sure, it must be soul-killing to have a doctorate in English only to teach remedial writing 101 on the basics of what makes a thesis statement, or why a complete sentence requires both a subject AND a verb. But what redeems Jason Fitger is that he actually does care. Very much, despite claiming WTF and alienating himself from everyone in his effort to be an asshole. Recommended.

The Lifeboat

The Lifeboat
By Charlotte Rogan (274 pages)
Published by Little, Brown
Bookish rating: 4

I love survivor stories, fiction or nonfiction. Remember the Andes plane crash survivors in Alive? Riveting.

In The Lifeboat, Rogan brilliantly merges high drama and psychological and moral complexity with spectacular writing. Usually, you get one or the other with survivor stories. Rogan gives us both.

Set in 1914, an explosion sinks a Titanic-esque ship. Grace, our narrator, makes it onto an over-filled lifeboat. Some will have to die, especially as hope of rescue fades.

Oh, yes. HIGH DRAMA. The story is utterly absorbing, pushing the reader, like all survivor stories do, to wonder, What would I do?

The novel opens with Grace being prosecuted for murder, so it's no secret that not everybody lives. My only quibble with the story is that trial-related scenes can't hold up to the immediate drama of the lifeboat scenes. I can't think of a way to avoid this except to shove the trial to the end of the book instead of sprinkling scenes throughout, but of course doing so would've undermined Rogan's exploration of memory, psychology, and morality.

On a note unrelated to the actual story, my Charlotte spotted her name on the cover of this book. So, I flipped to the inside flap of the back cover and showed her the author's photo, where her name appeared again. "When I grow up, I want to be like that Charlotte," she said.

"You want to go to Princeton and write books?" I asked.

"Yep!" she said, blissfully unaware of what either requires. Of course, seeing the name "Charlotte" on the cover in a lovely serif type bizarrely pleased me. My, Charlotte has a beautiful, beautiful name.

My Bright Abyss

My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer
By Christian Wiman (178 pages)
Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Bookish rating: 5

Despite only 178 pages in length, this book takes considerable time to get through--the writing is dense, poetic (literally---but can "poetic" BE literal? a question for another day), and theologically and philosophical and literarily packed. Speeding through is a waste of time. One must absorb this book slowly.

In the face of death, as Wiman dealt with a severe and weird and unpredictable cancer, Wiman's meditations explore the holes of faith, the edge of meaning, the terror of nothingness. He is unsentimental as he does this task; no feel-good fluff here, which I found liberating and interesting. He uses poetry--his own and others'--to make particular points about faith (or lack thereof), and I absolutely adored this marriage of literary art and theology--or, philosophy. Or . . . whatever. You get my point.

Very much aware of the body, ill as he is, Wiman brilliantly toys with the physicality of reality, arguing that Christ "speaks the language of reality--speaks in terms of the physical world--because he is reality's culmination and key" (p. 90). Chew on THAT for a bit!

A good 100 pages in or so, I was pondering Wiman's writings and expounding on his brilliance to Chris, who politely listened as he tossed a frozen pizza into the oven. "The focus on the physical aspect of faith--it's genius and, I think, accurate. But you know what?"

"What?" Chris asked.

"Since forever, women have always been associated with the body, with the physical--and that has been deemed LOWER than the mind, than God. Like, since people could think or make art or tell stories."

"Uh huh."

"And does Wiman make that connection? NO. No, he does not, because HE'S A DUDE."

I should have read further. I was utterly schooled on page 153. There, Wiman secured his genius status, which, admittedly, he had probably already obtained when Farrar, Straus & Giroux decided to publish him. FSG doesn't publish idiots. Anyway, page 153. Wiman writes:

"...if this consciousness I'm describing is gendered (and I think it is), it is clearly feminine. The single most damaging and distorting thing that religion has done to faith involves overlooking, undervaluing, and even outright suppressing this interior, ulterior kind of consciousness . . . In neglecting the voices of women, who are more attuned to the immanent nature of divinity, who feel that eruption in their very bodies, theology has silenced a powerful--perhaps the most powerful--side of God."

Read that paragraph again. Let it sink in. I'll wait.

Obviously, that passage floored me. BECAUSE IT'S ENTIRELY TRUE and brilliantly written.

Beyond my inner feminist jumping up and down in delight, I loved Wiman's exploration of meaning. He's a poet, so he articulates the limiting nature of language and symbol in a poignant, topsy-turvy way that pushes language and words and grammar to their very limit, mimicking the mind's inevitable circumscription--it can only go so far, understand so much.

Finally? Let's end on this little nugget: "Faith is the word 'faith' decaying into pure meaning" (p. 139).

Artistically, intellectually, and spiritually satisfying--wholeheartedly recommended.

The Winter People

The Winter People
By Jennifer McMahon (336 pages)
Published by Doubleday
Bookish rating: 4

This is a satisfying read. Set in current day and in the very early 1900s in Vermont. A literary ghost story, with diaries, mysteries, and heartbreakingly too-strong bonds of parental love . . . oh, and death. Because it's a ghost story.

McMahon's novel is absorbing, escapist, not TOO spooky yet still adequately haunting-esque. Characters, particularly the historical Sara, who gives us some first-person narrative via diary, have depth and voice. Mysteries abound.

But really? I can't write too much that wouldn't undermine the joy of reading the story, so just go read this wintry ghost story already.

Recommended.