Dancing with Gravity by Anene Tressler

Release date: 2010 / 268 pages

Synopsis (from the back cover): Father Whiting is asleep in his own life. As a priest and head of Pastoral Care at a St. Louis hospital, he’s worried he’s not up to the job and believes his secretary is out to sabotage him…

First Sentence:  Father Samuel R. Whiting stood at the foot of the hospital bed.

Review:  How to review Dancing with Gravity?!  On many levels, this novel felt like an extended short story — a compressed character study, a psychological investigation of the inner life of a priest, a narrative propelled not by plot or action but by personality and interior monologue. I think this would be a great text to discuss in a writing class — and possibly in a book club.

The focus of the novel is on Father Whiting, a middle-aged priest who has just returned from six weeks in Italy — at some sort of conference — and is desperate to escape his “normal” life.  He is disconnected from nearly everyone around him, lost in a myopic, self-centered morass of his own thoughts.  His focus is usually centered on what others might be thinking about him, what he is thinking about others, etc.   Even a momentary encounter with a parking attendant sends Whiting wondering about her appearance, what she might think of him, whether or not she is deliberately trying to irritate him, and so on.  When he is supposed to be supporting parents with chronically ill children, he is contemplating how much longer he has to listen to them and how much he wishes he were anywhere else.  While I felt compassion for his loneliness, Father Whiting exhausted me.

As his one friend bluntly tells him, “You obsess without insight. You dwell on minutiae without contemplating mystery. Sam, you must hold fast to the mystery that brought you to the priesthood. It is a call to accountability as well as vulnerability. You must rise to your vocation.”  When I read this passage, I thought, “Exactly!  Well said, Jerry!”  And I thought, how fortunate we all would be to have a compassionate, yet honest analysis of what most ails us.

Unfortunately, Father Whiting is too self-involved to listen to his friend — even when that friend is focused on him!  So, he attempts to escape his life through imagined love affairs that are ill-conceived, unrequited, and a bit irritating to read about.  I hoped this novel would be a hero’s journey of sorts, and it was, but the vast majority of the narrative focuses on his “descent into darkness” and so much of the soul searching seems in vain.  So, the eventual spiritual awakening is too long in coming and too ineffectual.

So, did I enjoy this novel?  I’m afraid I did not…  But I do believe readers interested in a psychological character study may be quite satisfied.  For more opinions, please check out the other stops on teh book tour.                                         

Interested in winning a free copy? Drop me a comment below and I will choose a lucky winner by the weekend!  Be sure to read other reviews on the tour, too — many were much more positive than my own!

Monday, April 4th:  Well Read Wife

Wednesday, April 6th:  This That and the Other Thing

Thursday, April 7th:  Suko’s Notebook

Monday, April 11th:  Raging Bibliomania

Wednesday, April 13th:  Rundpinne

Tuesday, April 19th:  Simply Stacie

Wednesday, April 20th:  Day by Day in Our World

Thursday, April 21st:  Overstuffed

Monday, April 25th:  Book Club Classics!

Wednesday, April 27th:  Musings of an All Purpose  Monkey

Thursday, April 28th:  Book Addiction

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Dancing with Gravity: Review

The Four Ms. Bradwells by Meg Waite Clayton

Release date: 2011 / 317 pages

Synopsis (from the back cover): Mia, Lainey, Betts, and Ginger, best friends since law school, are gathered for an impromptu reunion as Betts awaits Senate confirmation of her Supreme Court appointment. Nicknamed “the Ms. Bradwells” since their days at the University of Michigan in 1979 — when only three women had served full Senate terms and no woman had ever been appointed to the Court — the group has long supported one another through career changes and failed marriages, births, and deaths. But when the Senate hearing uncovers a thirty-year-old skeleton in the friends’ collective closet, the Ms. Bradwells find themselves reliving a much darker period in their past…

First Sentence:  Betts is sitting alone at a table with two untouched water cups, the pen I gave her the day we graduated from law school, a clean legal pad, and a microphone.

Review:  I’ve been meaning to read The Wednesday Sisters for a while, so when TLC contacted me about reading and reviewing The Four Ms. Bradwells, I agreed and was glad for the opportunity to experience Clayton’s writing.  However, The Bradwells is a novel that I appreciated, more than enjoyed. 

Clayton’s narrative structure is impressive, meting out clues and tidbits of information about a crime that occurred over 20 years ago through a series of flashbacks interspersed with the present day, all set against a Supreme Court nomination. In addition, I appreciated how Clayton was able to balance “message” with “story.”  The four characters each represent different aspects of womanhood and embody a clear feminist perspective – from their insistence on the use of “Ms.” in the first few pages to their choice of wardrobe during the finale — as well as fully realized characters.  I especially loved how Clayton referenced many of my favorite poets, too — from Bishop to Rukeyser to Oliver to Dickinson.  Bits of beloved poems are always such a welcome gift in novels!

However, after I had finished the first few chapters, I wondered if I was reading a sequel without having first read the initial novel.  I even checked to see if the characters were the same as The Wednesday Sisters — but did not find this to be true.  I felt a bit “in the dark” — as if I was expected to know more about each character early on than I did.  Then I wondered if Clayton wanted the reader to feel excluded a bit — intentionally left outside the circle of these four women.  On one level, feeling like an outsider worked well since the four had been close and fairly exclusive friends, with husbands and even children as secondary players.  On another level, this barrier to intimacy was a function of the secret they were harboring — that very few were privileged to, including the reader until the very end. 

But on another level, I realized I simply didn’t feel connected to any of the women even when I turned the last page.  I felt compassion, admiration, certainly bewilderment at times, but never affection.  This, too, may have been due to the narrative serving as a vehicle for the message — which I understood and appreciated, but my enjoyment of the characters and even of the novel itself eventually seemed secondary to the message, too.  At times, even the prose felt a bit distant or intentional as well:

I try to focus on how much I did love this place those first days: the white houses at the public end of the island perched like lilies on a soft summer pond; the boats arriving with their catch, all the men here crabbers; the children luring baitfish into mason jars with bits of bread and lines of string. I recall one mama crying out, ‘Run nor’east, honey!’ to a girl with a kite who changed direction as if she were a compass. I almost wish Willie J and Manny and Gem and Joey were still little like that, still needing me to help them decide which way to run to catch the wind.

But overall I am glad that I read The Bradwells and do believe many readers would enjoy it.  Interested in winning a free copy? Drop me a comment below and I will choose a lucky winner by the weekend!  Feel free to check out the other stops on the tour, too:

Tuesday, March 22nd: Booking Mama

Wednesday, March 23rd: A Cozy Reader’s Corner Reviews

Thursday, March 24th: Luxury Reading

Monday, March 28th: Take Me Away

Tuesday, March 29th: Iwriteinbooks’s blog

Wednesday, March 30th: Bookstack

Tuesday, April 5th: Stiletto Storytime

Wednesday, April 6th: Books Like Breathing

Thursday, April 7th: Book Addiction

Monday, April 11th: Debbie’s World of Books

Monday, April 11th: A Cozy Reader’s Corner Reviews (author guest post)

Tuesday, April 12th: The Lost Entwife

Thursday, April 14th: Colloquium

Thursday, April 14th: Book Chatter

Tuesday, April 19th: My Reading Room

Wednesday, April 20th: Book Club Classics!

Thursday, April 21st: Proud Book Nerd

Friday, April 22nd: Peeking Between the Pages

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The Four Ms. Bradwells: Review

The Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins

Publication date/ Length: 2007 / 318 pages

First line: Let me tell you about the sketch by Leonardo I saw one afternoon in the Queen’s Gallery in London a decade ago, and why I think it haunts me.

Synopsis (from Publisher’s Weekly): The book opens as Wiggins presents her newly completed Curtis novel to a Hollywood agent. Curtis photographed American Indians in the early 20th century, and Marianne attacks the common image of Curtis as a swashbuckler who risked his life to photograph his favorite subjects. Even as she shows that Curtis staged the shots, and was an absentee husband and father at best, the agent is enthralled. Marianne, ambivalent, arrives home to a phone call that her father is in a Las Vegas hospital—the father who has been dead for 30 years…

Review:  This will be a difficult work to encompass in a review since The Shadow Catcher is truly unique – in form, in narrative style, in subject matter, in my reaction.

The “Shadow Catcher” is a photographer, Edward Curtis, who became known for his portraits of Native Americans.  This narrative thread follows what his life and marriage might have been like, based on the research and supposition of a woman who has spent many years in rapt fascination of this man.  Another narrative thread follows the narrator’s quest to have her research come to life – possibly as a film—as well as her quest to solve the mystery of a dying man who claims to be her father (even though her actual father died long ago of suicide).

Now, as confusing as the above paragraph may seem, the actual novel is deftly structured and easy to follow.  Wiggins’ love of the United States is revelatory — especially the glorious and insightful first section.

However, I was never as drawn to Edward Curtis as the writer was and struggled to find a foothold in this storyline.  If Wiggins had actually been portraying what Curtis’s life was truly like, I think I would have been hooked.  But since she was guessing at what he might have been, I didn’t feel the authenticity of this storyline.  In addition, Curtis was not a likeable or sympathetic character and I often felt impatient, yearning to return to the researcher’s life in the present.  But once I did, the narrator quickly became too reflective – too self-reflexive – and lost me, too.

However, I LOVED the first five pages when she explored the power of perspective, of flying, of travelling through the great, glorious expanse of our country.  But after the first section, I never felt as if the novel lived up to its early promise. Curtis was so unlikeable – and while his wife was very likeable, she fell into an extremely ill-conceived marriage that was bound to fail from the first moment – and the author was just too focused on her own thoughts and fears and eventually I found her musings tedious.

So, while I love how truly unique this novel is on so many levels, my experience reading it dragged a bit.  This novel was heralded as one of the very best of 2007, so I would love to hear other thoughts!

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The Shadow Catcher: Review

Home to Woefield by Susan Juby

Release date: 2011 / 306 pages

Synopsis (from the back cover): Prudence Burns, a well-intentioned New Yorker full of back-to-the-land ideals, just inherited Woefield Farm — thirty acres of scrubland, dilapidated buildings, and one half-sheared sheep…

First Sentence:  I don’t know about you, but for me there came that moment during every visit to the farmer’s market when I wanted more.

Review:  I must admit that I’m enjoying the recent spate of “urbanite gone country” books that I’ve had the pleasure to read lately.  Last year I loved Coop and Fifty Acres and a Poodle and now I’ll add Home to Woefield to this list of light, “funny adventures in farming” tales.  As Prudence, one of the main characters, muses mid-way through this novel:

I’d read numerous books in which New Yorkers make their escape from the big city and realize their dreams of becoming farmers. In every case they experience a small but entertaining setback or two, and eventually they become quite successful and never betray their values… Not one of them talked about meetings with bankers or creating fake businesses in order to defer tax and mortgage payments. They certainly didn’t mention getting roped into giving creative writing workshops. (115)

Woefield‘s perspective shifts between four main characters: Prudence, a New Yorker who inherits Woefield from her uncle; Seth, a twenty-something alcoholic and recovering recluse; Earl, an elderly man hiding out at Woefield and harboring a secret past; and Sara — the gem of the novel — an eleven-year-old with a passion for chickens.  The four characters are drawn to Woefield for disperate reasons, but soon become close friends and allies.

Although I enjoyed reading Home to Woefield — a quick and engaging tale of redemption and hope – I did find the characters a bit overwritten at times.  Juby seemed to want each one to be so unique that they occasionally became caricatures rather than living, breathing characters.  However, even this minor complaint seems unnecessary since their quirks and foibles do provide much comic relief throughout the novel.

And Juby is able to create four distinct voices for each character.  I believe I could randomly choose any page and immediately recognize which character’s section the page was from — and I believe most readers would immediately be able to ascertain if they would enjoy her style from random passages, too.  Here are few representative passages, chosen at random:

Seth: “There was something perfect about her gaving the real fancy chickens and chickens who are about the saddest things that ever walked the earth. I mean, those frizzles were a mess. They looked like something J. Lo wore five years ago on her Latin American tour dates. They looked like they’d been bleached and then put in the dryer on high for about thirty-six hours. Their feathers were tattered and hanging off them and they had this very dim expression on their faces, even for chickens.”

Sara: “Being a leader is very tiring but also rewarding. It’s like we learned in Jr. Poultry: The secret for getting ahead is Getting Started. It seems like a lot of adults have trouble Getting Started. Or maybe they just get started on the wrong things.”

Earl: “You know, I been watching TV by myself ever since the old man died. Can’t say as I’ve missed the company. If the kid hadn’t insisted, I’d have said no. But she wouldn’t quit until I come in the house and set down. Said if we was going to care for Bertie [the sheep] proper, we needed to get educated. If you can beat that.”

I’m not sure this novel would lend itself to a sustained book club discussion, but the members of your club would most likely enjoy spending a few hours at Woefield Farm! 

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

Interested in what other’s think?

Tuesday, March 8th: Sara’s Organized Chaos

Friday, March 11th: BookNAround

Monday, March 14th: Colloquium

Monday, March 14th: Amusing Reviews

Tuesday, March 15th: A Bookworm’s World

Wednesday, March 16th: Rundpinne

Thursday, March 17th: she reads and reads

Tuesday, March 22nd: The Lost Entwife

Wednesday, March 23rd: Book Reviews by Molly

Thursday, March 24th: Tina’s Book Reviews

Wednesday, March 30th: Book Club Classics!

Thursday, March 31st: Book-a-rama

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Home to Woefield: Review

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

Publication date/ Length: 2010 / 555 pages

First line: Have I made terrible mistakes?

Synopsis (from the back cover): A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940′s, Alice Lundgren has no idea that she will one day end up in the White House, married to the president…

Review: What a gift 2011 has already been – and I wrote this review on January 8^th!  The first three books I read this year each far surpassed most of what I read last year.  American Wife came to me accidentally.  Nearly every book I had packed for a two week vacation in Florida fell short and I just couldn’t bear slogging through any of them (except one – I loved The Weird Sisters, which I reviewed in February).  So, I went to Millions Books in Palm Coast, FL (where my in-laws live), looking for a long (10 days remaining in my vacation), engaging, character-driven novel.  I found American Wife on a “staff recommends” shelf and decided it fit the bill. 

I had actually bought this for my grandmother as a gift last year – sight unseen – based on glowing reviews and the subject matter of Laura Bush.  My grandmother presumably voted for Bush, jr. and is an avid reader, so I took the rare action of buying a book I had not read for another.  After reading it, she said she very much enjoyed it and thought I would, too. Well, she was right — I loved it.  Initially I was a bit sheepish that I had sent it sight unseen as a gift due to fairly explicit sex scenes at times, but overall this was one of the best novels I’ve read in a long time; I completely understand why it was named one of the best books of 2008. 

American Wife could have gone terribly wrong, so easily, for so many reasons.  Imagine the hubris of publishing a character-driven “novel” about a recent first lady as a work of fiction.  I couldn’t imagine the privacy issues, questions of fact and fiction, and how difficult this would be to do well in our politically-explosive times.  Attempting to write a novel that does not violate the myriad fans of any first lady or incite the scorn of her detractors could be creatively debilitating, at least, to any novelist. 

Sittenfeld does change a few salient facts — the couple grew up Wisconsin (not Texas), which I loved since my husband did, too, and the author’s attention to  the unique strengths and quirks of this state without turning it into a parody was spot-on.  The couple only has one daughter, the ivy league school is Princeton not Yale,  the family business is beef, not oil, etc…  However, the characters are so authentic on so many levels that I actually ended the novel with the gift of greater compassion, not only for both Bushes (who I never voted for), but for any spouse placed in the strange, inimitable world of politics. 

The novel begins with “Alice’s” childhood, moves through the arc of her complex marriage, and ends in the White House with just over a year remaining in the second term.  The novel is 555 pages and is exactly the right length – it never dragged, but ended when it should.  This is truly a bi-partisan look at the life of one fascinating, utterly relatable woman, a complex marriage, and the decisions we all must make when we create a life. 

So, who do I recommend this to?  Any book club and most avid readers – women would probably enjoy it more than men, but many men would too.

I look forward to passing along this delightful novel to a lucky reader, too!  Interested?  Simply drop me a comment below and I will choose a winner soon!

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American Wife: Review and Giveaway