I spent last weekend trolling through my Amazon Wish List, which effectively serves as my book queue until I find a better repository. I read the reviews for the twenty something books listed over and over again, trying to figure out which one to read next. I stumbled onto an article about Australia Day (1/26) which led me to a post about Australian authors (Liane Moriarty, whose novel I had just finished, being one), and then found Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project. 

Don Tillman, Simsion’s main character, is a genetics scientist and professor. He lacks heavily in social skills, reminiscent of behavior associated with Asperger’s syndrome, though this is never specified. Tillman embarks on a project he calls “The Wife Project,” in order to find himself a suitable match. This begins with the creation of an incredibly detailed questionnaire. Just as soon as this project commences, Rosie enters his life. Her hair is dyed, she tends bar, she smokes and swears – each of which would have disqualified her from Don’s project. He gets caught up, entranced by her behavior and driving desire to find her father. Soon, the Wife Project is cast aside, Don’s schedule is thrown completely in flux, and Rosie’ project becomes the predominant focus.

Are you sold? I assume not quite yet. Well, have I mentioned that this book is hilarious? At certain times laugh out loud funny. Don’s voice is incredibly unique; he is extremely rational, making it difficult to understand and therefore easy to ignore certain social mores. For example, early in the novel, Don goes to give a lecture in the place of his friend and fellow professor Gene. Upon entering the room, he remarks,

This kind of language and rational is typical of Don’s character, and continues throughout the 300 page novel. The plot flows quickly and Don’s mishaps grow in number and hilarity. The book wraps up quickly and neatly, like the ending of a romantic comedy movie.

I have read quite a few critiques that mention that Don’s actions, especially in the latter half of the book do not coincide with what someone who has Asperger’s would behave. Having been in school with a number of people who do have Asperger’s, I would say that the behavior in the book was not unfamiliar. Don’s character, however, is never actually diagnosed to be on the scale of autism. Additionally, this is a work of fiction. I never felt as if his actions were SO unbelievable as to warrant complaint. The fact that someone with Asperger’s might or might not come to Don’s conclusions if all of this were to happen to them, that really never entered my mind.

I thought this book was pretty good. I wasn't expecting anything very literary or difficult. I knew that it was likely to be light and funny before I even opened the book (figuratively since I read this on the Kindle app – it was $1.99!). This is a nice little novel with some interesting and memorable characters and a voice that will be unlike most you've read before. The ending is too tidy, things wrap up into a nice little bow at the end, but the conclusion didn't bother me. Instead, I simply enjoyed the unfolding of Don’s voice and learning more of his personality quirks. The direction the novel ultimately took was secondary.

The Guardian newspaper recently published an article about a study that found that readers of literary fiction are generally more empathetic. Awesome. That fact I would have easily cast aside, but something that the scientist who ran the experiment said struck me. He distinguishes between two different types of fiction,

This concept comes from Roland Barthes' The Pleasure of the Text, which I should read, but haven't (and probably won't). Liane Moriarty's The Husband's Secret falls firmly into the "readerly" novels category. 

Do you have a guilty pleasure television show (or even a movie), one that you know is silly and probably rotting your brain, but you watch nonetheless?  I'm quite embarrassed to be admitting this, but every time I come across an episode of America's Next Top Model, I stop and watch. Why? Who knows, the dialogue is inane, the plots are contrived, the drama is phony, and yet I can't peel my eyes from the tv. Well, The Husband's Secret is just that.

A friend (hi Sam!) had asked me if I would read and review this book . I know it's a book that has been hyped and that it has been on a number of book club lists, yet I was apprehensive. For one, the cover is awful. I know, I know, don't judge a book by it's cover, but I do, and this one is terrible. Also, the little tagline "The trouble with the truth is that it can change everything..." is also horrible.  Even before opening the first page, I was not off to the best start. 

In addition, any plot summary that you can possibly provide for this novel is  going to make the whole thing sound incredibly stupid. Here, let's try it. This novel is about three women (yep, this is chick lit): Cecilia, whose husband is harboring a terrible secret that could destroy their marriage, Rachel, who still grieves the death of her daughter, and Tess, whose husband just announced that he has fallen in love with her cousin. If I were to tell you more, you might run screaming. If you haven't already that is...

Only, here's the thing. I got hooked. Yes, the plot was really contrived. Yes, in retrospect, everything that happened in the novel was ludicrous and completely unrealistic. But, like those silly episodes of America's Next Top Model, I couldn't stop watching. The minute I'd start to stop and think about how ridiculous the whole thing was, the author would throw in another plot twist and I'd be reeled back in again. This novel might just be the ultimate beach read. The book itself is a little over 400 pages, but I picked this up Monday and had finished by Thursday, reading every chance I could. The ending (and actually probably the book itself) is forgettable, but I'm ashamed to admit, pretty enjoyable.

When I was younger, I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series, the stories of family life in the Midwest in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was these tales of hardship and struggle, frequently punctuated with optimistic aphorisms, which transported me back to another time. The landscape was bleak and scarcity abounded. Yet, the family brought light. The connection between me, the reader, and the characters ignited my imagination and presented a more tangible portrait of the novel’s world.

While reading Hannah Kent’s Burial Rights, I was continually reminded of my first reading of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s various novels. The parallels between the novels don’t extend too far beyond the incredibly bleak landscape and the time period. Kent’s novel tells the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman to be executed in Iceland. Agnes was a real historical figure, and the book contains excerpts from poems and court documents from that time. 

The story matches the landscape it describes, undoubtedly bleak and dark. From the start, Agnes is a condemned woman, living out the remainder of her sentence before her execution. Given lack of funding for public jails, Agnes is placed with the family of a low level government official in a town close to the one in which the murder she is accused of took place. Slowly, however, her story unfolds, with the gently prodding of Toti, an Assistant Reverend, who is to prepare her for death.

Kent brings real dimension to the time and the struggles to survive. As a servant woman, the odds are stacked against Agnes early on. But unlike many others, she survives her childhood, only to bounce from one farm to another seeking work. She lands employment with the man she will be executed for murdering, Natan Ketilsson. Like so many crimes, Natan’s murder has a number of sides, and the complexity of the situation builds as the plot continues. The family that takes her in at first fear and shun her, but come to see her as a human as opposed to the monster that village gossip has conjured.

I loved this book. I know the brief plot summary might not have been the biggest selling point for many, having learned that first hand when I saw the reactions from those whom I told I was reading this. First of all, the experience is very sensory. The writing is such that you can almost feel the cold rattling your limbs and smell the turf from which the homes are made (see right for a photo of one of these traditional homes, taken by the author Hannah Kent). The reader will start to feel Agnes’ frustration and helplessness as his / her own. This doesn’t happen immediately, but as the main character opens herself more to others we start to feel her plight. Second, the book is a great length for the story it tells. A little over 300 pages, the novel builds slowly enough to make the reader constantly wonder what more Agnes will reveal, but not so slowly that the reader gets bored. I often get confused when names sound too foreign, but there are few enough characters with names close enough to ones that I recognize that I never found the language or setting to be a barrier. 

I think this is a wonderful debut novel from a young Australian novelist who chose a neglected topic in history and used it to create a beautiful story and a very compelling read. I continually stopped to consider how tough life must have been for my ancestors, and how far we have progressed as a society in terms of our justice systems and rights for women and lower classes. I can’t tell you that if you pick up this novel you’ll read an uplifting tale, but I do think that you will learn a little bit about Scandinavian culture (while reading a really good book!).

I don’t know about you, but I often find myself bogged down by global news, the constant deluge of information about disasters, natural and manmade, in various parts of the world. It seems that every continent has some corner that is on the brink of implosion. Until last year, I wasn’t paying that much attention to North Korea. But, I picked up Aquariums of Pyongyang, a story of a boy whose family is sent to one of the infamous work camps, somewhat by happenstance. I was hooked. I moved then to Escape from Camp 14, another story about these notorious gulags. These stories of lives torn apart, families punished for generations in the continual assertion of power by the government, sent to horrifying prisons akin to the concentration camps of World War II, were just incredibly compelling.  

After these two, and a brief hiatus, I returned to the topic with Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. As the title suggests, this book does not report stories from the various camps, but instead charts life for ordinary citizens. Demick is a journalist who spent many many hours interviewing defectors and has personally visited North Korea. She tells the story of numerous former citizens of differing social stratas, tracking their lives through the regimes of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il (the book was published before Kim Jong-Un, but does mention his rise to power in the Epilogue). The reader watches as the Communist regime faces food shortages and economic collapses. Mass starvation in the 1990s was a nearly universal condition in North Korea. This is a society that is essentially living in a real life version of George Orwell’s 1984. 

I did not want this book to end. The more Demick brought to light, the more I wanted to know. Most of the action takes place in Chongjin, on the north-east side of Korea. Though the country itself if not large, this city is not all that close to the model city of Pyongyang. Therefore, the stricture of the laws and the impact of the regime were still incredibly severe, but slightly looser than that which residents of Pyongyang would be subjected to.

 We see ordinary workers going to their jobs at various factories, that is, until electricity shortages shut down these establishments. Food shortages begin and the population begins to starve. Survivors travel by foot further and further afield to gather grass and weeds in order to attempt to sustain nourishment. Black market become more important than ever, but supply ebbs and flows; capitalism sprang up in this incredibly staunch communist country as goods were sold and traded for food. 

Demick also explores the culture. Or rather, what behavior becomes the norm when culture is dictated and strictly enforced?  The author takes a look at the dichotomy between North and South Korea after the Korean War in the 1950s. The South becoming much more prosperous and entering modernity, the North basically static in time. Those who defect from North Korea and immigrate to the South are essentially propelled forward half a decade in terms of culture. Technology, of course is notoriously absent in the North; for the most part,  the internet, phones, even simple electronics like rice cookers are unheard of. But, even culture standards are behind, ideas on propriety and appropriateness are stuck 50 years in the past. I thought of it in terms of what if my grandparents were plucked out of the 50s in their 20s, and dropped into reality now. What would they think, how would they cope?

I found each new piece of information, from home life to what preoccupies people's thoughts outside of the search for food, to be endlessly fascinating. I devoured page after page wishing this roughly 300 page novel would stretch on, provide more examples, allow me to know even more.  The read itself is not difficult and the story is such that you'll immediately be drawn in by the complexity and personalities of the various personas profiled.  This is a country that is largely closed off and many of the photos and videos we see about this part of the world are released by the government and therefore staged. But I found the images that Demick creates with her words to be highly memorable, from the orphan children with ill-fitting clothes that linger by the train stations in hopes of procuring food to the many who sit on their haunches on the sides of the road for hours on end, simply waiting. The book creates extremely vivid imagery that will really help to fill the gaps, painting a very visual portrait of life in North Korea.

I would highly recommend this book as an introduction to the situation in North Korea and even to those who know a little bit more.  Also, for those wondering, I have not yet read Adam Johnson's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Orphan Master's Son, but I think now, having a bit more background and terminology under my belt I might start in on it. But really, if you're looking for a work of non-fiction and want to learn a little bit this year, I highly recommend adding Demick's book to your queue. 

I first encountered Donna Tartt in the eighth grade, when my English teacher, a Donna Tartt enthusiast, told us all about a book that she had recently published. I haven’t reread The Little Friend since 2003, though I probably will go back and read it at some point this year, but when I heard about the release of Tartt’s latest book, I knew it would have to go on my list. It took me a little while to get around to actually starting it, mostly because of the mixed reviews and the length (just under 800 pages), but I should not have let either stop me. Donna Tartt’s novels are right up my alley – dark, a little twisted, fantastic writing, and always a compelling plot.

The novel begins with the main character of this bildungsroman, Theo, visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mother. Two sites that Theo views that day play heavily into the directionality of the plot: the first is a young girl walking with an older gentleman and the second is a painting that he and his mother discuss. A bomb goes off causing, well, the chaos you might expect if a bomb were to go off at the Met. Theo decides to take the painting, Carel Fabritius’ The Goldfinch that he and his mother were viewing, giving little thought to the ramifications of pilfering a priceless work. The novel from that point follows Theo as he grows up, adjusting to a vastly changed existence after the attack and maneuvering through life with an invaluable stolen painting. The young girl, Pippa, that he had seen on the day of the attack, ebbs in and out of the plot, a love interest from the moment Theo spots her.

The characters in this novel definitely stand out. Each is vividly written, a unique persona with quirks and flaws not duplicated; each feels real. From Theo's father, an alcoholic with a gambling problem who lives in a large but basically unfurnished house in Nevada with his pill-popping, loud-mouthed girlfriend, to Boris, the Ukranian transplant, who introduces Theo to teenage life, Tartt's characters carry the story. Each has multiple layers and keeps the reader curious and engaged, wanting to know more about their thoughts and rationales. There are dozens of little side stories going on, as the world spins around Theo, and the story that the author weaves is so rich that it's as if any one of these characters could have their own novel.

Let’s talk a little bit about Fabritius’ painting, because it’s very helpful in understanding Theo. I loved the art history tie in and the fact that the details about the artist in the novel were true. Also, for fellow New Yorkers, The Goldfinch is currently on loan to the Frick Gallery until January 19. 

Carel Fabritius was a Dutch painter from Delft (same origin as Vermeer). He lived during the mid-1600s, was an extremely talented student of Rembrandt. He died when he was young in a gunpowder magazine explosion, which also destroyed many of his paintings. The Goldfinch is unique amidst Fabritius’ oeuvre. It captures a living animal, as opposed to a portrait of a single human or a biblical scene. The bird is bathed in a very delicate light, perched upon a box and tethered to the wall indoors by a thin chain. The painting itself is physically very small, only about 13x9 inches, with rough brushstrokes only purportedly noticed when the viewer is close.

There are a number of links that can arguably be made between the main character and this painting. Firstly, the explosion that kills Fabritius himself and destroys most of his work parallels the terrorist attack that Theo experiences. One might even argue that what is left of Theo’s psyche after that day is somewhat like the bird, imprisoned and chained to a bleak and undefined landscape. We could even say, perhaps, that the way other characters see Theo is like observers view The Goldfinch, from afar, he is composed and complete, but up close just a mess of emotions and experiences.

Despite the length, the plot moves quickly as Theo travels about, from New York, to Las Vegas, to Amsterdam. Two parts of this novel bothered me enough to note. Don’t get me wrong, they didn't make me rethink my impression as a whole, which was in the strong-like category, but each was slightly vexing. The first was Theo’s spiral into drugs and alcohol. This honestly was just not a topic I relate to, and I kept wanting to shake him and say “get it together,” always figuring that moment was coming sooner than it was.

The second aspect was the ending, which was not with a bang or a nice little knot, but more of a whisper. There is a surprising lack of resolution for a story that seemed to build to so much. Maybe we can chalk all that up to the post-9/11, ego-centric, and zombified reality that Tartt has created, a neat ending just would not fit in this world. I didn't feel like this story needed the massive zoom-out that it had before concluding, the rehash of Fabritius, the reason for the penning of the tale, Theo's ponderings on what having written all this down will mean.  To me, it felt a little like that section of Atlas Shrugged where you just keep waiting for the author to get back to the story and stop yammering on about this other stuff.

Putting all that aside, if you’re a Donna Tartt fan, of course don’t pass this up.  I haven't read her other two novels in quite some time, so I can't pass judgement on how this one stacks up in comparison. If you've never read her, well, I might recommend starting at the beginning, with The Secret History and savoring over all three. This is an author who has published once every 10 years, and each novel has some heft, but the stories all move quickly. You have to like dark motifs and twisted occurrences though, so if that’s not your cup of tea, you should probably run in the other direction. 

I'll say outright, and before anything else, I did not enjoy Life After Life. I was really excited about Kate Atkinson's latest novel, especially given the hype, and found myself extremely frustrated and not wanting to finish. Despite glowing reviews in newspapers and magazines, as well as on Amazon, I just was not sold.

In this book, Kate Atkinson explores several philosophical ideas from prominent philosophers (Plato, Jung, and Nietzsche notably). Though there are several concepts explored over the course of the novel, the primary question is what would it mean if you could start your life again and again, what would be the various paths you would take, and what would be your destiny?

Sounds alright so far right? The narrative trajectory (I don't want to say story, because really there are countless tales recounted in this novel) follows the Todd family, particularly the middle child, Ursula. The setting is England in the early 20th century; the reader sees the characters pre-, during, and post- both World Wars. Up until this point, I was pretty sold. I like following family life, watching Hugh and Sylvie Todd and their five children (not to mention the household staff and the neighbors), grow older and make their ways through life. Also, WWII is a huge win setting wise in my book, so everything was off to a good start.

But just as soon as it had started, I was confused, frustrated, and bored, all in succession.  You see, here's how that premise of picking up your life again and again works out in fiction:  Ursula is born, but the doctor doesn't arrive in time so she dies. Then a few pages later, there's Ursula again, about to fall out of a window because she's left unattended. But again, next chapter even though she'd fallen a few pages earlier, she didn't actually fall and there she is again. She dies continually (as do other characters, to make things even more confusing), only to be resurrected a few chapters later in another scene (a completely different life often, at times in a new country / setting). 

While this is certainly a nice experiment, I was left befuddled and frustrated with the implementation in fiction. Yes, it's still the same character; however, and yes I realize this is the premise of the book, without the same past experiences, she's not the same person. As the character progresses, it's not like here is Ursula 1 and she had this experience and grew up and did this, and Ursula 2 did this and then that; instead, there were dozens of different Ursulas to the point that I found it hard to keep up with who was doing what after having had which experience. It could have been the case that in my frustration I wasn't reading carefully enough to realize that there were clear trajectories. Either way, I never felt all that connected to any one character given that the circumstances of that character's past were constantly in flux. 

Overall, it's a nice concept to think through, what would happen if you did take this job, or didn't meet that person? It makes you realize there are thousands of possible outcomes that your life can take. However, as a book (and this one's a bit of a time investment at just over 500 pages), I found it tough to keep up with and not all that memorable.