Love and Shame and Love
Release date: 2011 / 448 pages
Synopsis (from Amazon.com): Alexander Popper can’t stop remembering. Four years old when his father tossed him into Lake Michigan, he was told, Sink or swim, kid. In his mind, he’s still bobbing in that frigid water. The rest of this novel’s vivid cast of characters also struggle to remain afloat: Popper’s mother, stymied by an unhappy marriage, seeks solace in the relentless energy of Chicago; his brother, Leo, shadow boss of the family, retreats into books; paternal grandparents, Seymour and Bernice, once high fliers, now mourn for long lost days; his father, a lawyer and would-be politician obsessed with his own success, fails to see that the family is falling apart; and his college girlfriend, the fiercely independent Kat, wrestles with impossible choices.
Review: I just love genre-busting writing and Love and Shame and Love was a refreshing surprise. First, do not be deterred by the length — I’ll admit, after unexpectedly losing the better part of two days to reconstructing my website, I was behind in my review reading and dismayed by the heft of what topped my TBR pile. However, I was able to read Love in just a few fleeting hours: many pages include only a short letter many pages only a few words.
Orner has a gift at creating thoroughly engrossing vignettes — in a matter of a paragraph or two, characters are brought to life, fully realized and utterly knowable. This is key since much of Love involves interconnected literary snippets, loosely strung together through the genealogy of family relationships. Love opens with a young boy, “Popper,” enduring a rite of passage — meeting with a family friend who happened to be a judge, answering a series of questions, passing the muster through a combination of intelligence and wit. This combination of traits is a motif throughout Love — and, by the end, the reader has a thorough understanding of Popper and a higher regard for his strengths and foibles than he does.
Unlike the preponderance of literature set in New York City, Love is unabashedly honest about Chicago. This novel is indeed a love letter to the city of big shoulders, but in an authentic, unflinching, intimate manner that is refreshing as well as authentic. In addition, as a contemporary of Popper who went to college near Chicago and lived in Wisconsin, I loved not only the references to the region but to the time period.
Here is a quick sample of Orner’s unique style:
Title of Chapter One: ”Portrait Of the Artist as a Creative Writing Major in the Autumn of Mike Dukakis, or First Love”
“She rarely calls him Dad. Sometimes she says it with her eyes, rarely out loud. Sometimes she adds it invisibly to the end of sentences.” (433) (Ella is five years old here)
“Midwinter and the lake heaves ice slowly up the beach… The remains of the jagged breakers rising out of the water like broken teeth… The lake is always smaller in January. It doesn’t stretch itself out blue as far as you can see. It’s contained, circumscribed, deadlier. If you fall in, you’re a goner. It happens every year to one or two smelt fisherman, pulled down by the welcome weight of his clothes.” (439)
Again, I love how genre-bending this work is. Although it reads like a novel, Orner has the ear and eye of a short story writer and finds a way to blend the two genres seamlessly. So, I do recommend this work — I’m not sure it would be the best pick for a book club since it is so character-driven, but most readers who love attention to place, character sketches or family epics would surely enjoy Love and Shame and Love.
Interested in winning a copy? Leave me a comment and I’ll choose a winner by the weekend!
I visited downtown Chicago for the first time this past summer and would love this book on the basis of revisiting as well as for the character studies. Please consider me. Thanks.
Sounds like a great read. Would love to read this book. Thanks.
This is on my “to read” kist. Fantastic giveaway. Thanks!
This sounds like an intriguing book. Thanks so much for the giveaway.
I enjoy reading books about other peoples families. And this family sounds very interesting. Thanks for sharing with us.
Sounds wonderful…count me in, thanks.
Sounds like a very interesting book. I’d love to read it!
This sounds like a great read book. Thank you for the wonderful read. One that I would love to read.
Sounds like a good one for our book club. Thank you for offering it. Peg
This sounds very interesting to me. Thanks for the giveaway.
lag110 at mchsi dot com
Sounds great.
What’s not to love about all of these great characters. Will be anxious to meet them!
A book about Chicago, one of my all-time favorite Midwest cities, sounds wonderful! Your review entices…please enter me!
Sounds like a book I would love! Thanks for the review and please enter me in the giveaway!
Would love to win this one – thanks for the chance!