April Reading Wrap-Up
May 5th, 2008 at 12:15 pm (Book Club Selection, General Fiction, Reading Challenges, Religion & Spirituality)
April was a tad on the hectic side, with the addition of my niece and sister-in-law to our household, getting my Relay for Life team organized and ready, and of course, work and all the daily bits and pieces that add up to one busy month. I was able to get a fair amount of reading in thanks to my two monthly book clubs, but fitting in semi-thoughtful blog posts amidst it all was not going to happen. So this is a catch-up post, and I hope to get back to a more normal routine now that things have seemingly settled down.
First was a pleasant surprise from Ron McLarty called The Memory of Running. This novel was chosen by another member of my library book group for our April selection, and this was the first time in a few months that I wasn’t scrambling at the last minute to read the book before our meeting. I started it the weekend before our Thursday meeting and had read it through by Sunday evening. It takes place mainly in Rhode Island, which immediately appealed to me, especially when I was able to recognize many of the names and places we frequented when we lived there - like Horton’s Seafood in East Providence, which if you are ever in the area, you must visit, as they have the most delectable chowder and clamcakes, not to mention their fish and chips. Mmmmmm …..
The story centers on Smithy Ide, a Rhode Island son who early in the novel loses both his parents to a car crash and learns that his long-lost mentally ill sister has turned up dead in a Los Angeles morgue. Smithy, a Vietnam vet, used to be athletic and lithe, a runner, but in the years since he returned from Vietnam and his sister disappeared, he has cocooned himself from the world, becoming an overweight alcoholic. A modern-day Odysseus, he embarks on a journey across the American landscape, alone on a bicycle, and along the way encounters some of the weird and wonderful in humanity. Like the butterfly emerging from the cocoon, he transforms from a depressed loner who’d given up on life into a man fully embracing all that it has to offer.
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, in part because I find the idea of just picking up and going on this sort of journey so enticing (I swear I must have gypsy blood in me), and partly because Smithy Ide is such a likeable character with so many flaws. McLarty delves into Smithy’s past with humor and pathos, particularly in the portrayal of his sister, Bethany, whose schizophrenic episodes enact a devastating and long-lasting toll on Smithy and his family. The Memory of Running will definitely rank among one of my favorite books this year, and I’m eager to read more by this author.
The April selection for my church book club was Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott, a book I’d read and enjoyed several years ago but felt like I needed to reread in order to really contribute to any discussion. Reading it for a second time, I was again struck by her irreverent tone and sense of humor. She is shockingly honest about her life, the poor decisions she made, her insecurities and faults, as she relays her experience in overcoming drug addiction and alcoholism, finding God, and becoming a mother.
I don’t think anyone could read this and not feel some degree of empathy and admiration for Lamott, who reaches out to those of us who may not fit into the image of the perfect Christian woman, those of us who harbor our own insecurities and flaws - which really, is just about everyone, even those who appear to have it all together. Through her own personal journey, Lamott shows us that we all have moments of grace, and are worthy of God’s love not despite our faults, but because of them.
I have refrained from reading anything else by Ian McEwan since I read Atonement a couple years ago, mainly on the presupposition that I wouldn’t enjoy anything else nearly so much. Still, when I saw On Chesil Beach at the library, its compact size and serene cover art appealed to me, so I picked it up on a whim and read it while on a weekend getaway to the north Georgia mountains (OK, so I was able to fit in some fun and relaxation during my busy month). I need not have worried about my second foray into McEwan’s writing, at least with this book, which for all its brevity was a richly layered story with a complexity and detail not found in many books two or three times its size. It is England in the early 1960s, and Florence and Edward are beginning their honeymoon in a hotel room on Chesil Beach. Both have their own expectations and anxieties about this first night of their marriage, but both fail to communicate those emotions to the other, and so begins a night of misunderstandings and irrevocable actions. Watching these two people fumble towards the sad conclusion of their marriage, knowing that they are so close to having such a different life together, is both painful and entrancing. Perhaps I won’t wait so long to read something else by McEwan, since he’s now given me two sublime reading experiences.
Keeping Faith is my second Jodi Picoult novel after reading My Sister’s Keeper a couple years ago, and honestly, Keeper would have probably remained my only Picoult novel had it not been for my church book club, which voted for Faith as our May book discussion. But, although I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m now a Jodi Picoult fan, and I probably still wouldn’t read another of her books unless I have some reason to do so, I didn’t find Keeping Faith to be a reading chore. In fact, although I still hadn’t cracked it open less than five days before our book club meeting, I read it in less than two days. The story centers on Faith, her mother Mariah, and the tempest they find themselves in after Mariah’s divorce, when Faith acquires an ethereal ‘guard’ and begins showing signs of divine interaction, including quoting bible verses in Hebrew, performing miraculous healings, and showing the signs of stigmata. Throw in the obligatory dramatic courtroom scenes (are these a staple of Picoult’s novels?) and the bad-boy love interest in the form of celebrity atheist Ian Fletcher, and what you have is a boiling pot of a novel.
Where other novelists may play with subtlety and shadow, Picoult places her story in neon lights, with giant flashing signs saying ‘HERE IT IS!’ just to be absolutely sure none of her readers mistake what point she’s trying to make or the issue she’s trying to bring to their attention. The characters don’t always behave in ways that are congruous with their personalities and there are several plot points that are left dangling like frayed ends of a sweater, but I can see how people enjoy reading her stuff. Like Grisham, Patterson, and other prolific modern novelists, she packs a lot of action and drama into her fast-moving plots, like Movies of the Week in written form.
These books also helped me check off a couple notches in my reading challenges, including the What’s in a Name Challenge, the In Their Shoes Challenge and the Book Awards Reading Challenge. Hurray!
