BOOK CLUB CLASSICS!

The Paper Garden by Molly Peacock

Release date: 2012 / 416 pages

Synopsis(from Amazon): In 1772, upon the death of her second husband, Mary Delany arose from her grief, picked up a pair of scissors, and, at the age of seventy-two, created a new art form: mixed-media collage. Over the next decade, Mrs. Delany produced an astonishing 985 botanically correct, breathtaking cut-paper flowers, now housed in the British Museum and referred to as the Flora Delanica. As she tracks the extraordinary life of Delany—friend of George Frideric Handel and Jonathan Swift—internationally acclaimed poet Molly Peacock weaves in delicate parallels in her own life and, in doing so, creates a profound and beautiful examination of the nature of creativity and art. This gorgeously designed book, featuring thirty-five full-color illustrations, is to be devoured as voraciously as one of the court dinners it describes.

Review:  One of the great gifts poets bequeath to their readers is the ability to draw connections between the most disperate objects — to find resonance in discordance — and to then find just the perfect word to express the inexpressible.

This is noticeable early on when Peacock is explaining how the experience of living with an unpredictable alcoholic father eventually becomes translated into her gift for poetry:

By the time I reached high school the routines of our household had frayed, and I had become a silhouette of a person. My outline to the world was efficient and sharp… but the inner world, the place one grows from, lay fallow as all my energy was pushed to maintain that exterior… At the dark hollow of the silhouette of responsibility, something nameless roiled and formed lines: poems… I hadn’t discovered that I could drive this wild whatever-it-was inside me into a sonnet or a villanelle, propelling it into lines, stanzas, and rhymes. I did not yet know that these patterns my grandmother gave me to guide my colored floss into chain stitches and knots (and like the much more fluid, enticing patterns that survive from Mrs. Delany’s designs for embroidered chair cushions, bed curtains, and ladies’ stomachers), were crucial to crafting a poem.

However, as Molly Peacock muses later, “Mere self-expression is not art. Nor is excellent technique on its own.”  Fortunately, Peacock allows Mary Delany’s artistic self-expression to inspire her own and The Paper Garden is truly original and genre-bending.

On one level, Peacock has written a truly liminal biography of Mary Delany, who invented the artform of collage at the age of seventy-two.  Peacock includes thirty-five color illustrations of these collages, which are beautiful on their own, but become incandescent once Peacock draws connections from Delany’s life that become bellweathers when surrounded by Peacock’s prose.

On another, and just as engaging level, The Paper Garden is a memoir.  Although the overt similarities between the writer and artist are few — (yet significant in that they both enjoyed happy, childless second marriages that allowed their souls and art to soar) — Peacock deftly intertwines the story of Mary’s life with her own, seamlessly moving between the two centuries and lifetimes.

Occasionally Peacock makes connections that seem unnecessary: like when Delaney’s beloved sister is dying: “…the doctor was holding a scalpel, much like the scalpel Mrs. Delaney might have used for her collage of the Everlasting Pea...”  Or wondering if the strength and determination Mary exhibited in turning down a winsome suitor presages her later talent: “Is this noteworthy ability to hold a line against such persuasion part of what would allow her to cut those lines in her collages decades later?”

But what Peacock has accomplished in The Paper Garden — bringing Delany’s art and life to vivid technicolor splendor as well as imparting the reader with a quiet wisdom from her own — is so exquisite that the occasional misstep is easily forgiven.

Interested in winning a copy?  Simply leave me a comment below and I will choose a winner soon!

Check out the other stops on the tour:

My New American Life by Francine Prose

Release date: 2011 / 320 pages

Synopsis(from Amazon): Lula, a twenty-six-year-old Albanian woman living surreptitiously in New York City on an expiring tourist visa, hopes to make a better life for herself in America. When she lands a job as caretaker to Zeke, a rebellious high school senior in suburban New Jersey, it seems that the security, comfort, and happiness of the American dream may finally be within reach. Her new boss, Mister Stanley, an idealistic college professor turned Wall Street executive, assumes that Lula is a destitute refugee of the Balkan wars. He enlists his childhood friend Don Settebello, a hotshot lawyer who prides himself on defending political underdogs, to straighten out Lula’s legal situation. In true American fashion, everyone gets what he wants and feels good about it… [until] things take a more sinister turn when Lula’s Albanian “brothers” show up in a brand-new black Lexus SUV.

Review:  
This is the third book I’ve read in the past month that has addressed immigration — this trend is completely accidental, but also serendipitous since I now live near a Sanctuary City and have become fascinated by the complexities of this topic.

I must admit, this novel was a “slow starter” for me, but I received it just last week so I had no choice but to stick with it right away.  I have little knowledge of Albania — where Lula, the protagonist, was born — and Prose’s writing felt a bit stilted — intentionally, I believe, since Lula’s first language was not English.

However, within 50 or so pages, I found myself drawn to her story and the strange events that were unfolding.  I was in the same position as her employer and his son — who also knew little about Lula’s home — so her stories, albeit outrageous at times, were received in the same spirit by all of the hapless Americans in her orbit — including this reader!  After I finished the novel, I read the “Behind the Book” resource included at the end and learned the author traveled to Albania and even had dinner with Albanian political criminals as research.  So, although the stories seemed extreme at times, I can’t help but wonder if Lula’s stories were not so outlandish after all.

This novel was inspired by a story the author heard about a young woman who was taught to drive by Albanian gangsters who drove her to the George Washington bridge, turned the wheel over to her, and insisted she drive.  This is where this novel ends, with Lula somehow finding the courage and wherewithal to create a new life in her new country.

Prose is masterful at creating atmosphere — the stultifying setting of Mister Stanley and Zeke’s home after Ginger, the woman of the house, abandoned them on Christmas Eve is palpable and the perfect backdrop for Lula’s imaginative stories and strange visitors.  And even though Prose leaves a few loose ends (how did the trio of Albanian thugs find Lula in the first place? Why did Savitra suddenly get married? Most of Dunia’s entire life in the U.S…), her take on American life and ability to create compelling characters is worth the ride.

Here are a few of her observations that I found particularly enjoyable:

“She’d seen the guys on Fox News calling for every immigrant except German supermodels and Japanese baseball players to be deported, no questions asked.”

“Mostly, in her experience, country was like religion, an excuse to hate other people and feel righteous about it.”

Interested in winning a copy?  Simply leave me a comment below and I will choose a winner shortly!

Thursday, May 17th: Bookstack

Monday, May 21st: A Bookish Way of Life

Thursday, May 24th: My Bookshelf

Monday, May 28th: Bloggin’ ‘Bout Books

Tuesday, May 29th: Books and Movies

Wednesday, May 30th: Veronica M.D.

Tuesday, June 5th: Iwriteinbooks’s blog

Wednesday, June 6th: Reviews By Lola

Thursday, June 7th: I Read. Do you?

Tuesday, June 12th: Chocolate & Croissants

Thursday, June 14th: Literate Housewife

Falling Together: A Novel by Marisa de los Santos

Release date: 2011 / 458 pages

Synopsis (from the back cover): What would you do if an old friend needed you, but it meant turning your new life upside down?  Pen, Will, and Cat met during the first week of their first year of college and struck up a remarkable friendship, one that sustained them and shaped them for years — until it ended abruptly, and they went their separate ways…

First Sentence: Pen would not use the word summonded when she told Jamie about the e-mail later that night.

Review:  I must begin by admitting that I loved de los Santos previous two novels (Love Walked In  and Belong to Me ) so much I named my puppy after one of the characters: Teo.  (At the time I did not realize that this would mean that most folks would call her “Tail” or “Tee — oh” or “Dao.”   I adored the mix of poetry and characterization in her previous two efforts and when Falling Together arrived — unexpectedly — I hoped I was about to be reacquainted with some of my favorite characters of all time.

Alas, Falling Together does not focus on Cornelia, Clare, Dev or Teo, but on a trio of college friends who reconnect after the husband of one requests the help of the other two in finding his lost wife.  I wish I could praise this latest group of characters as effusively as in my previous reviews, but I’m afraid I cannot.  The trio were criticized in college for their clique-ish-ness and I, too, felt like an outsider.  In addition, I wasn’t as drawn to any of them individually, either.  I found Pen to be disturbingly judgmental throughout — whether describing her ex-lover’s home or her former best friend’s husband or her college pal’s confessions.  Pen seems naive or ignorant of the fact that most college friendships are intense and powerful, since this is the time that individuals first have the freedom to determine identity.  She seems to believe that their trio is unique — yet it echoes the friendships most college educated readers would have experienced during those years.  And, although the narration alternates between Pen and Will, Pen is the dominant voice of the novel and so her opinions color most of the events.  I may have enjoyed the novel more if Will’s perspective had been more prominent — his journey is by far the most fascinating.  Cat, the third friend, is (intentionally?) left largely undefined – a rough sketch of a character — whose purpose is to bring the other two together and drive the narrative through its arc.  Her husband is initially a bit of  a characture, but does become more dimensional as the novel progresses. As with her earlier novels, the youngest character is the most vividly realized and likeable.  A follow-up novel through Augusta’s perspective would be very welcome, in fact.

However, although I was not as drawn to the characters as in her earlier novels, the writing was still original, quirky, and memorable.  De los Santos has a gift with hyperbole.  Who doesn’t remember the intensity of those college friendships that quickly seem to have always been a part of someone’s identity: “Weeks afterward, when their friendship had become an ageless and immovable fact…” (6).  Her eye for imagery and setting is as finely honed as ever: “…the blue-purple hydrangeas and thick, leaning stands of black-eyed Susans, the blown-glass hummingbird feeders hanging from the trees, and, yards away, the vegetable garden looking like a tiny campground, with its stakes and bean teepees… It had been the setting for some intense family ugliness over the years… but the place had itself had stayed pure, clam and unstained.” (29)  She retains her earlier talent at solidifying emotion: “…Pen had tried to keep hatred alive, but it kept losing its firm shape, kept smudging and blurring until it became an immense, black, impossibly heavy sadness that lived inside her body and make it hard to move, so had given it up. ” (41 ). And, most unusual and X of all, de los Santos frequently begins chapters with the use of unclear pronouns, which compels the reader to investigate.  Chapter Two: “Cat would being it: ‘We met cute.’”  Chapter Three: “‘You’ll go,’ taunted Jamie, leaning back in his chair. ‘You know you’ll go.  You know-know-know you’ll go.’”  (Jamie is not identified until later in this chapter, so “you” is unclear).  Chapter Four opens: “Will could still conjure them up.”  The reader does not learn who “them” are for two more sentences.

So, while Falling Together was not as strong as de los Santos’ earlier works, I will continue to look forward to her future works! Thank you to Shelf Awareness for asking me to read and review this!

Interested in winning a free copy? Drop me a comment below and I will choose a lucky winner by the weekend!

In My Father’s Country by Saima Wahab

Release date: 2012 / 352 pages

Synopsis(from Amazon): Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, at age three Saima Wahab watched while her father was arrested and taken from their home by the KGB. She would never see him again. When she was fifteen an uncle who lived in Portland, Oregon brought her to America. Having to learn an entire new language, she nonetheless graduated from high school in three years and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree. In 2004 she signed on with a defense contractor to work as an interpreter in Afghanistan, never realizing that she would blaze the trail for a new kind of diplomacy, earning the trust of both high-ranking U.S. army officials and Afghan warlords alike.

Review:  From an early age, Saima Wahab realizes that her situation in life is exceptional and is determined to fulfill her destiny to serve as a bridge for her two countries: the United States and Afghanistan.

Born in a Kabul to a father who proclaimed at her birth “I promise that my daughter will prove that she is better than many Pashtun sons, and will do more for her people than one hundred sons combined,”  and is then tragically killed by the KGB three years later, Saima moves to the U.S. with her siblings in her teens and chooses to realize her father’s proclamation, despite great personal sacrifice.

Wahab first becomes a translator for the U.S. military and becomes the only college-educated female Pashtun-English speaker in the entire country of Afghanistan.  Quickly realizing how fundamental the misunderstandings are between the well-meaning U.S. military forces and the fiercely proud, intensely private Pashtuns, Wahab’s six month contract quickly becomes a long-term mission as she eventually becomes a “human terrain” specialist, facilitating dangerous but crucial dialog between the Afghan people and the U.S. military:

My personal aim became clear: Talk to Afghans and discover the redeeming qualities of Afghans for which my father gave up his life. But there was a parallel objective as well — to use the knowledge gained in the process to smooth out the discord that was growing — and continues to grow — between my native and adoptive nations.

Wahab’s commitment to her mission is incomprehensible to her traditional mother and uncles, so in addition to facing mortal danger on a daily basis, she must reconcile the personal sacrifices she is forced to live with — broken engagements, tension with her traditional mother, being disowned by the uncles who brought her to the U.S.:

“There are moments when my divided self is more fractured than a Cubist painting: half of me believes that a young woman’s desire to cover her face, to uphold a proud, centuries-old tradition, is touching and sweet — while the other half wants to pitch a world-class Pashtun fit over such nonsensical, gender-based limitation on movement and speech.”

Fortunately, Wahab’s ability to spin a narrative is as captivating as her life story.  A true heroine’s journey, Wahab’s life jumps off the page and inspires as it entertains.  Anyone who is even slightly curious about the complexities of U.S.-Afghanistan relations would find In My Father’s Country fascinating and impossible to put down.  Beyond her desire to facilitate international relations between the two countries, Wahab inspires her readers to consider how they, too, can put their lives to use.

My Father’s Country would be an excellent choice for book clubs and would spark compelling conversation without the aid of discussion questions.  Interested in winning a copy?  Please leave me a comment below!  Feel free to check out the other stops on the tour, too:

Tuesday, April 24th:  Book Addict Katie