Fall Book Reviews: 2 of 3
Another batch of strong woman stories and a folksy book club read.
THE DUTCH HOUSE by Ann Patchett
This is the story of a house and the family, the Conroys, who lived in it. “The Dutch House” looms as a metaphor throughout the novel for what was and what could have been. Patchett’s description of the brother-sister relationship is the crux of the story when their father dies and the evil stepmother kicks them out of the home. The book got better as it trotted along through decades of the family’s ups and downs. Patchett nails the undercurrent of dread roiling beneath the skin of these characters. It’s one of those tales—about motherhood, abandonment, sacrifices, affluence, and forgiveness—that make for a great book discussion.
Favorite line(s): There are few times in life when you leap up and the past that you’d been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you’re suspended, knowing nothing and no one not even yourself. It was an almost unbearably vivid present I found myself in that winter when Maeve drove me to Connecticut in the Oldsmobile. She kept meaning to get rid of it, but we had so little from the past. The sky was a piercing blue, and the sun doubled back on the snow and all but blinded us. In spite of everything we’d lost, we’d been happy together that fall we spent in her little apartment.
CLOTHES CLOTHES CLOTHES, MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC, BOYS BOYS BOYS by Viv Albertine
Ever heard of the girl band, The Slits? They were part of the 1970s-80s punk explosion in England. Their peers, Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, Mick Jones from The Clash, are predominant characters in Viv Albertine’s gripping memoir about that gritty time as the lead guitarist for The Slits. None of it was pretty. Like feral cats, Albertine and her bandmates had to claw their way into the studio to record, “Cut” their album regarded as a classic from that era. Albertine tells of the struggles to be taken seriously in an industry run by men. The anxiety every time she got on stage. The dangers of looking and acting different (the members of the band routinely were beaten up). As interesting as the first half of the book is, it is the last half that I found riveting. What happens to a woman who bucked convention only to find herself married with a child fighting loneliness and depression. I loved this memoir so much I went on to devour her second book, too. See the review below.
Favorite line(s): Me and Zaza run down Clarendon Road in Turnpike Lane, away from my tiny two-up two-down red-brick council house, past the iron gasworks and abandoned cars, towards freedom and adventure. It’s the summer holidays and we’re going to Amsterdam, on our own. Our rucksacks—with just a spare T-shirt and a packet of crisps at the bottom (we’ve forgotten to pack toothbrushes)—bounce up and down against our backs. We own one pair of jeans each—straight-legged Levi’s—which we’re wearing. I’m sixteen, she’s seventeen. We get to the corner and look up and down the high street, wondering which way to go.
Me: ‘What country’s Amsterdam in?’
Zaza: ‘Not sure, Belgium, I think. Or Holland.’
Me: ‘Hang on, I’ll ask Mum.’
I run back to the house and knock on the door.
Me: ‘What country’s Amsterdam in?’
Mum: ‘Holland.’
I run back to Zaza, shouting, ‘Holland!’ We turn onto the high street, with its boarded-up shops and piles of rubbish stacked around the lamp posts in search of a bus, a train, anything that will take us to Holland.
TO THROW AWAY UNOPENED by Viv Albertine
Oh, this one was a delicious read, too. It is the perfect sequel to Albertine’s “Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys. It picks up after her punk days as the lead guitarist for The Slits and slides right into middle-aged angst. Albertine looks back at all she’s been through. Infertility, IVF, various operations, cancer, and divorce. Interspersed through the narrative is the story of finding her parents' diaries and the steady decline of her mother’s health. Both propel the author to examine her family from the opposite end of a telescope after years of blazing forward without ever looking back. With all that she’s endured, Albertine finds her peace with her nonconformity, her quiet life of introspection, and writing. Art, anger, passion had been shoved aside for the obligations to others. Not anymore. I can’t wait to read about the next chapter in this woman’s fascinating life.
Favorite line(s): In the whole of my childhood, my mother never once suggested that I should aim to be happy. No one discussed happiness at home or at school in those days. We were taught and brought up by people who’d lived through the Second World War, and they were brought up by parents who’d survived two world wars. You don’t go around asking each other ‘Are you happy?’ after a war. “Are you surviving?’ is more like it. Because I wasn’t burdened with trying to look and be happy . . . there was plenty of space in my mind for me to respond to my mother’s encouragement to lead an interesting life instead.
VIRGIL WANDER by Leif Enger
I liked this one better than Enger’s debut bestseller, “Peace Like a River.” Virgil Wander’s car skids off the road and takes an icy dive into Lake Superior in the opening chapter. Virgil suffers a concussion and hallucinations but decides he’s been given his life back and takes in Rune, a kite-flying Norwegian looking for information on the son he never knew. Set in the seen-better-days town of Greenstone, Minnesota, Virgil, the owner of the town’s only movie theatre, narrates the backstories and motives of the various inhabitants while pining for Rune’s son’s widow, Nadine. It’s their story, Virgil and Nadine’s, that drew me into the book. I kept waiting for the nefarious Adam Leer character to contribute something more than the question of why he was in the book to begin with. Maybe because there’s always a Leer in every town? It’s a folksy tale reminiscent of “Empire Falls.”
Favorite line(s): Unfortunately, I lost the book.