birds & bees & the city: minot's "lust & other stories"

disclaimer: i wanted to get this review done before leaving for mississippi but, obviously, didn't, what with all the packing and paperwork and all that jazz... so i am sorry this is not as in-depth as i would have liked it to be, but i really wanted to let you know about this book in any case. 

i guess you'll just have to read it for yourself if you want more.

______________

"lust" is another book i picked off the public bookshelf. these are short short stories, and like the title story, all of them are about, well, lust. physical love. how boys and girls, men and women are and are not made for each other, how they click and don't click, how love and Love do not always overlap.

this is from the title story, one in a series of memories of boys past:

You'd go on walks to get off campus. It was raining like hell, my sweater sopped as a wet sheep. Tim pinned me to a tree, the woods light brown and dark brown, a white house half hidden with the lights already on. The water was as loud as a crowd hissing. He made certain comments about my forehead, about my cheeks. (p.4)

minot's narrator is straight-forward, honest, and observant. the book starts out with the narrator's memories of growing up, noticing how boys and men begin to act differently, treat her (and other girls) differently, how she experiences adolescence:

Certain nights you'd feel a certain surrender, maybe if you'd had wine. The surrender would be forgetting yourself and you'd put your nose to his neck and feel like a squirrel, safe, at rest, in a restful dream. But then you'd start  to slip from that and the dark would come in and there'd be a cave. (p.7)

the stories are subtle, yet frank. from teenagers via hipsters to liaised couples and old friends, minot creates and illuminates love in its peculiar and commonplace forms, its complications and effects. this is not a collection of romance stories. it is not sappy. it is also not a sexy sort of book. it is, however, intimate and personal and intensely interesting. 

puppets without strings: the magic toyshop (angela carter)

it's a little ironic, really, that i bought this book in autumn 1999 (when i first came to reading university) just to carry it around with me / have it wait in boxes and on shelves until last saturday, and then read the whole thing in two days. but i am glad it waited for me!

virago edition, "the magic toyshop"
by angela carter

this is quite the book - it really drew me in. the main character, a fifteen year-old english girl named melanie, the oldest of three siblings, is an introvert teenager who longs to figure out her place in the world, who she will be, who she could or should be - and she has, from the outset, quite a specific idea of what she wants from life: 

She stuck moon-daisies in her long hair and looked at herself in her mirror as if she were a photograph in her own grown-up photograph album. 'Myself at fifteen.' And, following, the pictures of her children [...] and pet dogs, and summer-snapped future holidays. [...] the pet dogs, would they be Yorkshire terriers or corgis; or noble, hawk-nosed Afghan hounds or a pair of white greyhounds on a golden chain? 

She said to the daisy girl with her big, brown eyes: 'I will not have it plain. No. Fancy. It must be fancy.' She meant her future. A moon-daisy dropped to the floor, down from her hair, like a faintly derisive sign from heaven. (p.7-8)

melanie is at that point where she wants to shed her childhood self like an old skin. her secretly trying on her mother's wedding gown is more than just a private rite of passage, - her entire life changes from here.  like the wedding gown, the life that she is cast into seems too large, bound to trip her up and take away her freedom of moving, running, climbing. finding herself suddenly orphaned and forced to move, with her brother and baby-sister, to london to live with relatives she has never met, melanie suddenly finds herself in a whole different world, where she does not have her own perfumed bar of soap or even hot running water. the baby and the younger brother are quickly integrated into the new 'family' but melanie feels like an outsider. She feels that somehow she has caused all this.

Eve must have felt like this on the way east out of Eden,' she thought. 'And it was Eve's fault.' (p.94)

the central conflict in this book is - as i experienced it - between melanie and her uncle philip, the toymaker. secretly, he is also a puppeteer, he not only makes elaborate, almost life-size puppets, but also performs plays for his captive family audience. this is exactly why melanie draws his attention on herself - because he cannot control her like, for instance, he controls his wife, who has been mute since the day of their wedding. how interesting is the description of the necklace he gives to his wife on the day they are married:

The necklace was a collar of dull silver, two hinged silver pieces knobbed with moonstones which snapped into place around her lean neck and rose up almost to her chin so that she could hardly move her head. It was heavy, crippling and precious and looked as though it might be very ancient, pre-Christian or possibly even pre-Flood although, in fact, it was not. [...] Wearing the collar, Aunt Margaret had to carry her head high and haughty as the Queen of Assyria, but above it her eyes were anxious and sad and not proud at all. (pp.112-113)

there is so much going on in this book in terms of human relationships, family and love relationships, in terms of symbolism (birds, muteness, etc), in terms of recurrent motifs (dogs, christian references, etc etc), that i don't want to try and touch on all if it, because it would just be skimming the surface while giving away too much of the plot. it is an intense book, without being graphic. this is powerful, startling writing. even though this book has been around since the late 1960s it is certainly no old hat.

She splashed the shreds of the absurd night out of her eyes with cold water. The well-iced shock of water did her good as it took her breath away; it impinged on her, it was palpable. Water is water. You can't argue with water. There it is. (p.182)

melanie herself is like water - when her family is broken up, she goes on, she runs through the cracks, and somehow goes around the obstacles her uncle constructs. in the end, the water runs through his fingers, he cannot hold it. by the time he realizes it, it is too late, and melanie's influence has dissolved the foundations of his regime of terror and forced silence. it is good not to see an attempt at explanation of especially the uncle's behavior. this story is not about guilt and innocence, good or bad. it is much more complex.

this is a coming-of-age story if you want to throw it into a category. i thoroughly enjoyed the book, - it scared me, it touched me, it made me awkward, it made me think. it is also a love story of sorts - not the soppy kind, but an awkward, detached, somewhat apprehensive but curious sort of relationship develops. at the end, we see a changed melanie, one who has taken charge of herself.

dusty answer (rosamond lehmann)

i finished dusty answer, and just in time too - while the book was in impeccable shape when i found it, it had been sitting on shelves in this family for the past 75 years or so and, well, i am guessing that i was its first (and probably its last) reader. the glue of the binding is breaking and the paper cover has begun to peel a little, despite my usual carefulness with books.

anyway, let me tell you about the book!
(spoiler alert: you might not want to read this if you still want to read the book for the simple enjoyment of it, because i am going to tell you what happens and how it ends!)

rosamond lehmann
(1901-1990)

the plot of "dusty answer" is simple, if you like: judith spends the duration of the novel trying to figure out who she loves, should love, should be loved by, or should not be loved by. her fixation is on roddy, although both martin and julian, who also lived next door to her as children, were kinder and nicer to her. when they grow up, judith is in for a bit of a surprise, - roddy sometimes plays along with her secret dreams, but also keeps odd company:

Tony Baring sat opposite and stared with liquid expressive blue eyes. He had a sensitive face, changing all the time, a wide mouth with beautiful sensuous lips, thick black hair and a broad white forehead with the eyebrows meeting above the nose, strongly marked and mobile. When he spoke he moved them, singly or together. His voice was soft and precious, and he had a slight lisp. He looked like a young poet.

so far so good, but -

Suddenly she noticed his hands - thin unmasculine hands - queer hands - making nervous appealing ineffectual gestures that contradicted the nobility of his head. She heard him call Roddy 'my dear'; and once 'darling'; and had a passing shock. (pp98-99)

not that roddy himself acts "unmasculine" - a little later he tells her about his past lovers: he's had "a French, an Austrian, a Russian - countless mistresses." (p.216)

then, there's jennifer baird, a stunning creature she meets at cambridge.

'Have you got a cigarette? Never mind... I've just learnt how to blow smoke-rings. I'll teach you.' More whistling. 'It's terrible to be so swayed by appearances. I'm afraid it's a sign of a weak character. Ugly people rouse all Hell's devils in me. And beautiful ones make me feel like the morning stars singing together. I want beauty, beauty, beauty.... Don't you? Lovely people round me, lovely stuffs, lovely colours - lashions and lashions of gorgeous things to touch and taste and look at and smell.' She flung her head back on its round white throat and took a deep sighing breath. 'O colours!... I could eat them. I'm awfully sensuous - I look it, don't you think? Or do I mean sensual? I always get them muddled; but I know it's unladylike to be one of them.' (pp.121-122)

jennifer's lust for life and her careless spontaneousness mesmerize judith.

'You love somebody, I think. Who is it you love?'

'I love nobody.'

Jennifer must never never know, suspect, dream for a moment....

'You mustn't love anybody,' said Jennifer. 'I should want to kill him. I should be jealous.' Her brooding eyes fell heavily on Judith's lifted face. 'I love you.'

And at those words, that look, Roddy faded again harmlessly: Jennifer blinded and enfolded her senses once more, and only Jennifer had power. (p.134)

when jennifer leaves cambridge, dropping out of school for mysterious reasons (to be with geraldine), she leaves judith a copper bowl that judith apparently had admired, with the comment that it was the nicest thing she'd ever owned, and more:

'It's all of me,' whispered Jennifer. (p.186)

left with questions, the promise of a letter with answers, and a copper bowl, judith focuses on roddy once again. she finally finds out, the hard way, that he is not the person she has been imagining for all these years after he takes offense at her passionate admission of her feelings towards him. after a romantic, secret midnight canoe-trip to a small island where he intends to say goodbye forever, and for some reason tells her he loves her (and they kiss passionately), she sends him a letter, which is causes the following exchange:

'Well,' - he hesitated. 'If a man wants to ask a girl to - marry him he generally asks her himself - do you see?'

'You mean - it was outrageous of me not to wait - to write like that?'

'I thought it a little odd.' (p.235)

they decide to never see each other again. heartbroken, still waiting for jennifer to explain herself in the promised letter, she moves on to martin, who introduces her to his mother and shows her his farm. he shoots a rabbit right in front of her, which reminds her of roddy who, unable to bear her sadness at the sight of a dead rabbit when they were children, buried the creature for her. reduced to a pile of sobbing misery, she lets martin comfort her and when he, too, tells her he loves her, she suggests he marry her, saying she would be his wife.

she knows it is the wrong thing to do, she does not love him, and breaks up the engagement a day later. they part, and never meet again. finally, julian, the last of the boys next door, finds her in paris, explaining that he had been waiting for his turn, and courts her. they have a great time together until they hear martin has died. their ways part. julian writes to her to tell her they also must not meet again.

finally, judith is on her own, and the long-awaited letter from jennifer arrives. jennifer also wants to not see judith again, explaining that while she still loves her, she does not deserve judith's love and concern. judith wants to see her again and they arrange to meet in cambridge. when jennifer doesn't show up, judith realizes she has come full circle and is now free.


i have to say the first hundred pages or so were tedious. the style, the character of judith, her thought patterns took some getting used to. the middle part, where she is at cambridge, is much more readable, more enjoyable because of all the beautiful descriptions and because things actually happen, while in the first part, it's mainly judith thinking about stuff.

why did i read the book in the first place?
because i was curious. the book itself, the physical object, was interesting to me (see previous post about albatross books), and seeing that rosamond lehmann was involved with the bloomsbury group and also quoted by simone de beauvoir made me even more curious. also, i will admit that the comment (on wikipedia) that "dusty answer" was a succes de scandale was a selling point. :)

this book is all about emotions, muchly so because judith is nothing but emotions and wonderings.

the men we meet in 'dusty answer' are unmasculine (tony), plain (martin), and hypermasculine (roddy), its women childlike (mariella, who even after having born her son still acts and looks like a child), unfeminine (geraldine, mabel) and hyperfeminine (jennifer).

judith is trying to find her way through this maze, and it is only toward the end that she realizes how much power she holds over how people react to her, how they see her. in the end, she realizes she as one single person had enough power to break apart the circle of familiar friends of the kids next door.

books from strangers / whistling for elephants

i am reading. a novel. and loving it. i got this book from a complete stranger, via the public bookshelf the mercator foundation set up downtown. the whole thing is simple enough:

it's a simple construction that keeps the books safe from wind and rain, while still letting you see what's there.  people can just take what they're interested in and / or drop of books they no longer need or want to share. of course a fair share of the books are lame old things but i continue to be surprised by some of what i find there. i stop by there at least once a week, have a look and tidy up the shelves a bit. i think every city, every town should have one of these! what a brilliant idea!

anyway, this is what i found on the public bookshelf yesterday:

1967 ladybird book, good shape

which, while fiction, is not the book i was talking about in the introductory sentence of this post. :) but i did want to mention this, because it is a neat little item - i remember when i volunteered at the reading oxfam bookshop we had a number of customers who came in for these little books especially; collectors who were looking for specific editions and many of whom found at least some of what they were looking for on our shelves. finding this on the public bookshelf was a big surprise for me - sure, i can see where the english-language romance novels, thrillers, and chick lit might come from, but to my knowledge these old ladybird books would have come from - a british / anglophile family or collector (more likely a collector, since it is in such good shape). 

anyway, this is the "real" find for this week:

whistling for the elephants
by sandi toksvig

part of what piqued my curiosity here was that i had heard neither the title nor the name of the author before, and it did not look like chick-lit. i opened the book at the beginning and ran into the main character, a girl named dorothy:

I was ten. Almost certainly I was wearing a short tartan kilt (Clan McLadybird), a white shirt, a very neatly tied tie, a blue blazer and a peaked sailor's cap which hid my long curly ginger hair. No-one made me dress like that. It was a kind of school uniform I had invented for myself. In the photos the combination tie and skirt made me look a strange boy / girl hybrid. My face, born with a frown, was obscured by the peak of my hat. I had spent most of my early childhood shielded from a full view of anything. The cap and I were inseparable. I was, even in my tender years, trying to develop a rakish look. I spent many hours trying to persuade people to call me Cap'n instead of Dorothy. It didn't work. Not a popular child. Not even with my parents. 

by then i knew dorothy and i would be fast friends. :) she is a truly intriguing girl who is not so much raised as she just sort of grows and raises herself. her most prized possession is a "piece of illuminated manuscript" that illustrates the structure of the animal kingdom according to (supposedly) 10th century chinese thought. reading up on this just now, i found this is a direct quote also cited by borges (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolent_Knowledge's_Taxonomy to read this thing - quite poetic really!) first it seems that the reason dorothy (never dottie!) sees this item as a treasure is because it was the only gift she ever received that was unasked for, even unexpected, but this whole theme of animals is deeply woven into the fabric of this novel and no doubt will play a vital role in her story. the "real" relationships, actual rapport, happens only between humans and animals here, among people who are just figuring out how to live after WW2.

dorothy's british family move much and, as we join her, have just moved to america, and for the first time, they could become a real family in a real home - maybe. probably not. the relationship between her and her parents is somewhat... antiseptic.

the book is full of great character descriptions and little observations dorothy makes concerning those around her, such as this when she has entered an (assumedly) abandoned grand house and admires a large painting full of animals:

"We shall have a Chinese Garden of Intelligence." I jumped as a voice spoke behind me. I thought for a second it came from the picture. "A Great Menagerie. Like King George at Windsor or the Duke of Bedford. Tropical princes shall come and bring us barbaric offerings of tigers, leopards and creatures no man has ever seen before. We shall have such a collection that the Emperor of Abyssinia will hear of it and wish to come." 

I turned but couldn't see anyone. Then, amongst the great drapes which covered the walls, something moved. A giant insect woman. All in brown. Its wings closed about itself. It spoke to me. 

"No one, not even in Egypt, China, India or Rome, will be able to boast of such exotica."

The huge bug shimmered toward me. She was maybe in her late thirties but when you're a kid everyone just looks old. She was probably as old as Mother, just less set in aspic. 

in any case, since i got the book yesterday i've read almost half of it and can't wait to read on. i am glad i checked the bookshelf yesterday, and - thanks, stranger, for sharing this book with me!

the last taboo? (daughter buffalo)

so this is what i am currently reading. janet frame's daughter buffalo. it's been on my list of books to read for a while now, - about ten years ago i "discovered" frame for myself, when i found one of her books (her first, the lagoon and other stories) in the foreign language section of a german bookstore. i devoured the book and decided to read as much of her writing as i could lay hands on.

i did read a bunch of her books, though by far not all of them. i thoroughly enjoyed the lagoon, - a  collection of very short, intensely interesting short stories, - and fell in love with owls do cry and also with scented gardens for the blind (both novels). her short story collection you are now entering the human heart is also good, though (maybe because it was "first contact"?) the lagoon stories still seem the strongest to me. i got swamped with work somewhere during the adaptable man, and also never finished reading her three volume autobiography. i remember reading her poetry collection the pocket mirror and being a little disappointed - i guess her intense, poignant prose is a hard act to follow. her prose, in itself, is very poetic, maybe that's why.

so now i am reading daughter buffalo. i am noticing more and more that i am getting to the point where, while i can hardly wait to read on, i am also reluctant to read on because it means coming closer and closer to the last page. this happens to me a lot when i read a "good" book. its words and images weave a world around me that i want to stay in just that little bit longer. at times finishing a "good" book can be a real struggle that way - because you know that, while you can of course read it again and again and again, it won't be the same. no two readings are ever the same. finishing a "good" book is a bit like a tiny death in itself. which takes us right into this novel!

talbot edelman, a NYC medical student specializing in the study of death, unexpectedly finds a friend in a random stranger, turnlung, who is a poet from a different place and also deeply interested in death. they exchange the lessons in death education they have had through their lives so far. they take turns in narrating this novel, independently of each other, so we get to see both sides of the encounter. frame is a fine observer of persons and behaviors, and these two characters are more than interesting. and while you may shudder at the idea of a novel all about "death education" and dying, or may already have decided not to read it, it is not really a gloomy book.

how do we talk about death? do we talk about death? do we have our own words for what we feel when someone dies, or when we talk to someone who has just lost someone? when we talk about those who have passed on, - how do we talk of them, how do we think of them? is death part of life, or apart from life? are we curious about it? are we allowed to be curious about it?

death, probably more so than anything else, is possibly the last taboo of our day. on my way to work and back and during any visit to the newsagent's i see so much openly advertised and published that - fifteen, twenty years ago, when i was a teenager - would not have been displayed so publicly anywhere. the only thing you cannot find magazines about at that generic newsagent's is death. there are health magazines, yoga magazines, periodicals on parenting, tattooing, fetishes, growing cannabis, and training your dog, journals for birdwatchers, astrology rags and supernatural magazines, but nothing on death and dying.

are people really not curious? i have to admit that i am. i have been for a long time. and i will also admit that there are questions i ask myself that i have not really dared ask aloud. even simple, technical ones. like, is it true that when people die, in the U.S., they replace the dead person's blood with some chemical to slow down decomposition? how does that affect the environment? and is it true that, again in the U.S., lots of make-up is applied to the corpse to make the person look, well, less dead? and there are so many other questions. but how, who and when do you ask?

in any case, talbot and turnlung have set out, independently at first, to explore death. they make many interesting observations and have different motivations for wanting to know. i will let turnlung introduce himself (taken from chapter 4):

I said that, to survive, from the moment we are born we must be capable of turning against. Before birth, we are against air, against breathing, yet we survive to breathe and love the air, we become turncoats - turnskins, turneyes, turnmouths, turnhearts, turnlungs. And having known life, we are against death even when all messages from the country of death convince us that our final role must again be that of turncoat, turnheart, turnlung. 

but talbot and turnlung are not the only intriguing characters in this novel. we also meet talbot's dog sally, and a headmistress of a northern school who shares her own death education. different types of death are considered: death in youth, in old age, in sickness, sudden and unexpected deaths, literary deaths, anonymous deaths, deaths in the family, and one's own personal death. the passage about literary death, to me, was particularly interesting, since it ties in poetry and how literature can serve in mourning by lending to us feelings we might feel we do not have enough of all by ourselves. how do we mourn? how long should we, could we, may we mourn?

this book gives no answers. it gives no recommendations. it piques your curiosity and lets you look right at death where you would usually feel worried people might think you're staring. it is because of the peculiar character of talbot and because of his detached observations that it becomes ok to be curious - and to maybe learn by proxy. meet talbot. (this is from chapter 1)

I  learned little of [death] in my own home. Our garbage was removed by an automatic disposal unit. Everyone took many baths, drying with thirsty towels which in their turn played the family game by seeming to render invisible all traces of hair, stains of living, dust, sweat. All our happy conversations, our plans lovingly composed together, had no mention of death. In winter, when the snow was deep and the year's leaves had died and were buried, when only a few creatures - squirrels, cardinals, crows - could be seen, you might have imagined that even we would be tempted or persuaded to surrender ourselves or part of ourselves to the surrounding death-light, [...]

Yet each winter we let pass the opportunity to invite death as a rightful guest, without fuss, into our home, and before we knew it the trees had new leaves, the sun melted the iron bars of the winter prison, and death, unfrozen, flew away as a scarlet bird, a golden bee or fly, as if it had never been; and for us, it had not, for us, the sun was like money, always with us and in use.

i am now half-way through this book. i am enjoying it because it deals with an interesting subject in a way i can handle. in a language i understand - the language of experience, image, and poetry. even if i did not know this book was by janet frame, i would have guessed it - the characters, their voices, the detailed observations, all her strengths are there. if you feel up to it, if i have managed to make you at least a little bit curious, go see if your local library has a copy of this book. it's been published a few times since it first came out in 1972 (i have the flamingo edition from 1993) so should not be too hard to find.

the dervish and the homemaker (elif shafak)

"Oh, it's no big deal, " Ella rushed to  explain now. "I'm only a part-time reader for a literary agent."
But David seemed determined not to let her think too little of her new job. "Come on, tell them it's a well-known agency," he urged, nudging her, and when she refused to comply, he heartily agreed with himself. "It's a prestigious place, Esther. You should see the other assistants! Girls and boys fresh out of the best colleges. Ella is the only one going back to work after being a housewife for years. Now, isn't she something?"
Ella wondered if, deep inside, her husband felt guilty about keeping her away from a career, or else about cheating on her - these being the only two explanations she could think of as to why he was now going overboard with his enthusiasm. Still smiling, David concluded, "This is what I call chutzpah. We're all proud of her."
"She is a prize. Always was," said Aunt Esther in a voice so sentimental that it sounded as if Ella had left the table and was gone for good.
They all gazed at her lovingly. Even Avi didn't make a cynical remark, and Orly for once seemed to care about something other than her looks. Ella forced herself to appreciate this moment of kindness, but she felt an overwhelming exhaustion that she had never experienced before. She secretly prayed for someone to change the subject. (pp.6-7)

and this is how it all starts. for her first assignment, ella is to read and critique a manuscript titled sweet blasphemy which tells the story of famed poet and mystic rumi and his friendship with shams of trabriz, a wandering dervish. set in anatolia in the 1200s, this story nonetheless has a very real effect on the life of ella rubinstein, jewish american mother of teenage twins and a daughter about to marry for love. which brings us to the word that keeps popping up in this book: love. this book, in short, is all about love. not in the saccharine sappy sort of way, not in the mere physical sort of way, - this is mystic, spiritual love we are talking about.

... someone comes along and makes you realize what you have been missing all this time. Like a mirror that reflects what is absent rather than present, he shows you the void in your soul - the void you have resisted seeing. That person can be a lover, a friend, or a spiritual master. Sometimes it can be a child to look after. What matters is to find the soul that will complete yours. All the prophets have given the same advice: Find the one who will be your mirror! For me that mirror is Shams of Tabriz.
... It's as if for years on end you compile a personal dictionary. In it you give your definition of every concept that matters to you, such as "truth," "happiness," or "beauty." At every major turning point in your life, you refer to this dictionary, hardly ever feeling the need to question its premises. Then one day a stranger comes and snatches your precious dictionary and throws it away. (p.192)

this book walks a fine line. so much has been said and written about love that almost anything one could say or write now, overtly, about love, would be repetition, or a breach of copyright (who holds the copyright to love?), or wading into cliché. shafak takes the risk, talks about love, introduces us to a number of memorable, strong characters through their own voices and the voices of those who care about them, fear them, love them.

and yes, of course the book talks about the Quran. how could it not, when its central characters are passionate scholars of Islam, of religion, of God. the central theme however are the forty rules of love already mentioned in the title.

i am an unlikely reader for this book, at first glance: impatient (poetry is my fiction! short books rule!), feminist, not interested in history-themed stuff, and the type of person not to pick up anything with "love" in the title. the reason i did read this book (well, i am two thirds of the way through) is that my friend p. gave it to me, saying, "you'll like this." she hadn't even finished reading it yet, but she gave it to me anyway, saying she would read it over again in turkish. :-) thank you, p! this is quite the book, and i am enjoying it very much. i am learning much, and, like ella, i am noticing how the ideas and ideals inside shams of tabriz are getting me to think, to look at things from a different angle. if that's not a good think in a book, in a work of art, then i don't know what is.

elif shafak's forty rules of love is very readable, it is by far not as dark as i feared it might be, in fact it is enjoyable and interesting and thought provoking. spiritually and intellectually stimulating.