But if posts had the tags ‘alligators’, ‘distasteful sexual content’, ‘creepy’ and ‘Florida’ –both Swamplandia! by Karen Russell and Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks would rock the google results. Which, no doubt, is incredibly helpful to you because I’m sure you were recently on a similar search for your next novel, yes?

These two books share something else. And it’s not Russell. They have been highly acclaimed by the reviewers that have read them. When Swamplandia first hit the scene,  the NYT splashed it across the front page of its book section. Fantastical! Magical! An amazing debut novel! the reviewer raved. (May I please point out this was reviewed by Emma Donohue, another creepy author of the novel Room?) They named Swamplandia! to their 100 notable books of 2011 and added Lost Memory of Skin to join it. And then, I found myself staring at Swamplandia again on the elite list of the top 5 fiction titles of 2011. These books are exceptionally well liked. (you can feel the lingering ‘but…’ that is coming).

Here’s the conundrum. Is life long enough for TWO Florida books with creeps, sexual predators and the icky sinking feeling that goes with it? Err, sorry, me thinks not. In fact, even starting with Florida in a novel can be enough. (God bless you Zora Neale Hurston & Their Eyes Were Watching God. Still cool, sistah. Still cool.)

So here’s the deal: you gotta go with Swamplandia if you’re limited in your Everglades appetite.

Swamplandia! is exceptionally well written and its narrator Ava Bigtree relays the view of her family’s alligator theme park in the Everglades through her 13-year-old lens. Her mother, the belle of the park, has astonished audiences for years soaring off the high dive into a shallow pool of alligators and swimming to safety. It is in the shadow of her mother’s death that we watch Ava, her sister Osceola (Ossie), her older brother Kiwi, and their father Chief BigTree try to survive a rapid decline in the park’s attendance.

The ‘reality’ half of the story is adventure enough. Kiwi leaves home and takes up a minimum wage job at a ‘competing’ tourist attraction at the satirical World of Darkness. His navigation of ‘mainland life’ is complicated and only serves to show just how isolated their childhood has been. The financial difficulties and pain that Chief Bigtree faces are credible and understandable. In its simplest form, it’s a story of watching a family trying hard to not come completely unglued after the death of its matriarch. Fair enough.

But the story is paired with a fantasy story line where Ava’s big sister has disappeared and run off with her boyfriend, Louis Thanksgiving, who is a ‘ghost’. (This, I realize, is quite complicated to explain). Ava pursues her through the swamp, naively led by a letch named The Bird Man. What’s real and what’s fantasy is complicated. What is very clear is that you don’t want this young girl with this freak out in a desolate swamp. Sadly, your instinct proves correct.

Lost Memory of Skin is weightier and more thought-provoking in present day terms. It is grounded in a harsh reality, which is how society treats our sexual offenders. “The Kid” lives under a causeway in South Florida which is strategically located 2,500 feet from any school or where children play. It’s the only location in the area that meets the terms of his probation and, as a result, his neighbors in the encampment are a collection of child molesters, sexual traffickers and derelicts. They’re stuck together, sexual miscreants in their own outcast community.

The Kid’s major transgression is lots of internet porn and obsessive masturbation. He was bounced out of the Army for distributing porn tapes, …but his conflict with the law happens when he meets Brandi18 online. A sexual conversation ensues, and then a scheduled rendezvous at Brandi’s house. Ironically, the Kid is a virgin and he is incredibly nervous to meet Brandi in person. When he arrives at Brandi’s house with porn, beer, and condoms — he is met by Brandi’s father and the cops. Ouch. He learns that Brandi is 16 and he finds himself booked as a sexual predator. At 21 years of age, he has 10 years ahead of him with an ankle bracelet and a record in the national registry of sex offenders. The future doesn’t seem so bright for The Kid.

The trajectory of the story follows with his near friendship with “The Professor”, a mammoth sized sociologist at the nearby university and proclaimed local genius. The Professor wants to research sexual criminals and the relationship with homelessness. He begins to interview the kid. He helps him maintain relationships with his pets, as he thinks it promotes optimism and happiness. He provides financial support and safety in a storm–both figuratively and literally.

But The Professor is not who he seems. In a kooky twist, he reveals his past to The Kid, which is utterly confusing as the boy tries to sort through what in fact is the actual truth. It leaves The Kid in a state of loneliness that definitely triggers empathy. But the reader can’t help but feel a bit frustrated that Russell Banks slapped nearly another story onto what had up to then been a pretty good novel.

While Lost Memory of Skin poses some interesting ethical questions about reform, humanness and our own societal responsibilities — the writing isn’t nearly of the quality of Karen Russell’s. Yes, Russell Banks has been up for the Pulitzer Prize twice, but there is a reason why Karen was named to the New Yorker’s “20 Writers Under 40“. She’s talented and compelling and for that reason, I’d prioritize reading Swamplandia. If alligators and swamp fantasies aren’t really your thang–no doubt she”ll have another gem forthcoming.

She’s definitely one to watch.

Sure, we can start with the home town writer thang–that the Virgin Suicides looked eerily constructed on a crazy Detroit suburban reality does appeal in a sick sense. And Middlesex was the next street over from where I grew up (only those in the know got the double entendre. we are that cool, people.)

He’s an amazing writer. He’s a talent. His view is out there. He crafts a plot line which can be as narrow as a group of sisters tantalizing the high school boys over months on one square block and as far reaching as a Greek tale moving across generations, gender and geography. This guy is good, he shows range.

But do not (do not!) get suckered into the best of lists and buy this one.
This is not one of the best books of the year. Is not.
Not with a fox. in a box. in a house. with a mouse. Nope.

See, my intention is to not even dissuade you from reading this. I don’t even think that is my job. It’s not awful. It’s worse than that, it’s mediocre. It doesn’t offend really. I’m just going to release the air out of this hype balloon. Like Franzen’s Freedom, we waited a long time for Jeffrey’s reprise….so I don’t want to deprive you. But where Franzen delighted us and reminded us why we have missed him….this books makes you question if the magic is gone?

Three college students at Brown. Madeline, a NJ suburban gurl and Victorian novel intellectual falls in love with the alluring but bi-polar Leonard. Completing the love triangle is the loyal Mitchell, who is a dear friend of Maddie’s but missed his chance sophomore year when he didn’t jump Maddie at Thanksgiving. He leaves after graduation to travel the world and pursue his quest for full spirituality, while Maddie marries Leonard and makes a mess of her life. Mitchell’s letter back to her (DON”T DO IT MADDIE, DON”T MARRY HIM!) conveniently never reaches her.

At which point I find myself saying: god, am I that old? Is early twenties love that interesting? Didn’t this very story happen in 1989 at, say, a campus in Virginia? Didn’t we all miss that ridiculously nice and awesome potential future boyfriend/girlfriend while we made out with the bad apple that was clearly not a wise choice? (Mom: don’t answer that with some crazy story about Jeff D. I hear you. But don’t use this as your blog participation opportunity. Really.)

Okay, maybe the marriage part didn’t happen. But seriously, didn’t every one of us endure this (MB: charlie? JW: Ted? and JuFor and Nad, I am sorry to say I can’t even dig up the names of those boys you nearly married. Sheez, super close call.)

Here’s my point: the quality of the writing is far, far better than the quality of the story.

And so–I say reject this as a best book of 2011.

Do this instead: call an old college friend and tell twenty minutes of stories about the kook you fell in love with until the tears roll down your face at the insanity of your 20 something mind. Better use of time.

But I couldn’t ignore any longer The Paris Wife by Paula McLain sitting on the best seller list for weeks on end.

First: rock on Hemingway.
You were quite a hottie in all the right circles.

Second: damn good. one of the best books I read this year.

Recommenders of this book treaded lightly–I guess they feared I would pan it. However, I ravaged this book in 3 days and thought it was a complete delight. If you read this review by the NYT, you can see that makes me a complete dolt. Apparently, it kind of stunk. But I disagree. It reminded me a bit of Loving Frank about Frank Lloyd Wright. Fiction, but closely tied to the truth in a way that made it captivatingly voyeuristic. I am enraptured with Paris and the “lost generation” too, I suppose. I just couldn’t put this book down.

The story is told in the voice of Hadley, Hemingway’s first wife. This passionate soulmate falls in love with Hemingway and is with him in the early years as he struggles to find his voice and talent. She dutifully supports his moody, jealous and brooding days of journalism and poetry and short stories and ultimately, his publishing success with The Sun Also Rises. We ride shotgun through the early years of their marriage and the birth of their son and ultimately, the demise of their relationship because of Hemingway’s wandering eye. It is painful and sad and human and personal. We don’t end up loving Hemingway–and yet we cut him slack as a tortured, brilliant artist. Hadley earns our respect as she walks away. Her voice and story is strong. She will likely love Hemingway til the day she dies, but she can’t endure the crash crash of a life.

The Paris Wife led me next to A Moveable Feast by Hemingway himself.  As all of you might be able to remember from 11th grade high school english (I couldn’t), AMF was published after Hemingway’s death and never quite completed. It’s a collection of stories of his life in Paris and a fantastic pairing to the book. No doubt MacLain used this in her research, as there our moments which occurred that are now told from Hemingway’s point of view. One of the most painful in the Paris Wife is when Hadley leaves all of Hemingway’s manuscripts on the train (or they are stolen), including the originals. It is heartbreaking for everyone and only made all the more powerful by reading of this terrible tragedy through the eyes of Ernest himself.

Along with Hemingway, both books give you ring side seats for the most amazing players–F. Scott  (a sorry drunk), Zelda Fitzgerald (crazy), Ford Maddox Ford (emerging), Ezra Pound (sensitive), Picasso (fascinating) and Getrude Stein (domineering)…they’re all there.

In Paris.
So cool.

Ignore that impulse. Please. Read this book.

Which I did for really only reason–it was written by Geraldine Brooks. There is no secret here: I am a huge fan. (Proof from past BookSnob post). It was Mother’s Day and well, it’s hard to find something my mom hasn’t read. It was a safe choice: my mom put me onto March most recently, and now that I think about it, was also the one who had recommended our book group read Year of Wonders. I knew it would be a hit if I could just get into the mail in time.

It wasn’t just a hit, it was a home run. My mom loved it, my sister raved about it. Jane Smiley gave it the NYT review of approval. I had book envy. But no worries, because Mom mentioned it was coming my way via mail. But then it got passed to a series of neighbors and arrived in my mailbox months later.

We should discuss momentarily the insanity of this, really. I buy a hardback book, a gift, for $25 which got at least 4 reads in the midwest before returning to me by ‘book rate’ third class mail–(I am pretty sure my father is one of 7 people in the country who still uses this, such a cool, retro frugality) and I get my own gift back at a price of $6.35 to them. Nice. Not to mention that I do own a kindle and could have downloaded the book in the interim while I endured everyone raving about the damn book that was with Nancy, then Jan, then blah di blah and Mrs. Yoo Hoo and then the inevitable oh-we-can’t-get-to-the-post-office-because-we’re-golfing. It’s inexplicable why I waited for a gift I had given to come back to me. Except the sheer delight of opening a book in the mail or maybe the communal nature of the experience.

Anyway, I digress.

Caleb’s Crossing not only does not disappoint, it impresses. Fabulous.

Geraldine Brooks is proving herself as one of the strongest storytellers and serious fiction writers in our country at the moment. How is that for bold BookSnobbish proclamations! All of her stories are based on going deep into a single fact or situation in history and researching in painstaking detail the historical context to spin her fiction around. No doubt this incredible skill was honed when she served as one of the first female foreign correspondents for the Wall Street Journal before she set the literary world alight.

(BTW, you go Geraldine girl.)

This time the story is based on a single kernel: Caleb, the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College in 1864. The story is told through the eyes of Bethia Mayfield, daughter to the minister of Great Harbor, Martha’s Vineyard. They become friends–both taboo and a great irony as Caleb comes from the Wampanoag and worships many gods and the wonder of nature and Bethia is raised to be seen not heard and adhere to the rules of a strict Calvinist upbringing. What they share is a deep intellect and a desire for knowledge. Which it would seem neither could pursue, as a native indian and a woman. It’s fascinating to watch how Caleb gets this education at Harvard, though he didn’t ask for it and only achieved this through the ‘benevolent’ missionary work of Bethia’s father. And yet Bethia wants this more than anything and repeatedly has to repress this desire even to allow her dimwitted brother the chance.

If the thread around intellect and education is a good one, the narrative around religion is even better. As 12-year-old friends, exploring beaches and forests and all nature has to offer, Caleb casts a doubt (unintentional or not) for Bethia on the God she believes in by simply worshipping beauty and other gifts in a different way. The book is fraught with scenes about the natives struggling with customs of their past and the threatening and alluring missionary work of their new white neighbors. Though the discussion takes place in the 1600s, we are not frozen in time. The issue of racial and religious superiority fills our newspaper pages daily. It challenges your own intellect to determine what is really ‘right’.

Like the inside cover, I am not sure I can do this book justice. But suffice it to say that Geraldine Brooks has delivered a great reprise to her Pulitzer Prize winner, March. The storytelling is superb, the historical context perfectly painted and the intellectual challenge satisfying. Really very difficult to put down.

This book has communal roots, so the first one to comment below, gets this pooch in the mail (book rate!).
Let’s let this one travel as far as the book snobs can make it go.

It’s a tough list to build.

But here’s an obvious one: Phillip Roth.
Well, duh.

Roth was one of the first that comes to mind. In fact, I honestly don’t know if there is another author I have read more of…I mean, have I really read more than 6-7 books of one incredible author? Nope, not Hemingway even. Conroy? Nope.

There’s Goodbye Columbus. Portnoy’s Complaint. Sabbath Theater. The Human Stain. American Pastoral. More, I am sure, more Phillip Roth I have read.

Roth just won the 2011 Man Booker International Prize a month or so ago. Hurray for him, I thought.
It’s like that lifetime achievement award at the Oscars–the film clip is sure to bring a smile. But his award also prompted me to rummage through an overflowing bookcase to find Nemesis, his most recent novel. I can’t recall reading a review and I think my mom passed it along at some point…but I didn’t care. It just sparked the instantaneous desire to read it.

Ooh ooh ooh. A good find. Phillip Roth has still got it, people.

No doubt, Roth will not win any awards for his upbeat themes….but it was a great, tasty book. It’s complex, but elegant and not intimidating. It’s rich and descriptive, but not exhausting. It’s intellectually engaging. It reads quickly.

And the story is beautifully intertwined. Bucky Conroy is 23 years old. In 1944, he is one of the few men of his age who isn’t serving America in the second world war–on account of bad vision. Instead, he’s a playground director in a jewish neighborhood in New Jersey. Where soon enough–irony is intentional!–he’ll be fighting his own battle as polio wages a war against the children who play ball on his fields. “Because this was a real war too, a war of slaughter, ruin, waste and damnation, war with the ravages of war–war upon the children of Newark.”

This conflict takes its toll on Bucky. For the obvious reasons of watching premature death and disability, but also because Bucky is fighting his own private war. He is guilty because his own friends are off fighting and he is not, and he is battling prejudice in his neighborhood as neighbors blame the Italians, the homeless derelicts, the guy who runs the hot dog shops and ultimately, the Jews –for bringing this polio to the unassuming masses. Fear reigns. Both in the neighborhood and in Bucky’s heart–as he contemplates if he will get to see his fiancée who is in the cool reaches of the Poconos mountains, safely ensconced as a camp counselor.

See her he does, by fleeing the city of Newark, quitting his job and taking a plush job as waterfront director at the summer camp where Marcia works. He quenches his fear but unleashes a guilt that’s unmanageable. Angst is Bucky’s M.O. and Roth deals with this in an expert manner, creating a tension in the second half of the book that only an idiot could miss that bad luck is on the horizon.

And bad luck, or ‘circumstance’ is what Roth plays on in this book. Miss the war, hit the polio epidemic. Leave the polio epidemic, find the ______. Well, you’ll have to read it to find out. But Roth says: “Sometimes you’re lucky and sometimes you’re not. Any biography is chance, and, beginning at conception, chance–the tyranny of contingency–is everything.”

If you are looking for lighter than air for your summer reading, Roth isn’t likely your Man of the Year. But Nemesis is beautifully written. You feel the extreme fever, the brutal sun and blistering heat of Newark in a way you can touch in the first half of the novel–only to be showered my mountain rivers and cool evenings and crisp starry nights in the mountains in the second half. Roth carries you along. You want to hear Bucky’s biography, even if the angst persists and Phillip Roth refuses to tie it up with a nice neat bow.

78 years old.
30+ books.

Seriously?

He’s worth a second, third, fourth, fifth dip.
Cuz this guy has staying power.

P.S. If you haven’t read Nemesis or even Phillip Roth…answer me this…what authors living today will have literature that outlasts us? Who has and will endure? 

P.P.S. Working on changing the site. Come check it out. 

It’s called the Snow Leopard.

Favorites.of.all.time.

Read it.

And I’ll be back soon.

Promise.

Okay?

Hugs.

The shwag here was o-plenty: posters and stickers and t-shirts and pens and stuffed Angry Birds.

With pride, I can honestly claim my company was the only one giving away superhero underwear (which is, my friends, a story for another time but I can assure you, a true crowd pleaser).

Typically, a business card from a social company is enough to secure the goods…but, in this instance, I have to credit my trusty BookSnob site in securing my SxSW Shwag Grand Prize:

A spankin’ new copy of Awkward Family Photos by Mike Bender.

Simply put, this guy slays me.

I had seen the website months ago. Sitting in front of my computer, my hubbie and I clicked through the pictures, tears streaming down our face with laughter, elbowing each other: Oh no! Seriously? OMG!

You see what I mean?

“This is me at our annual family vacation- it was the NC mountains. Note the bear less than 20 feet behind me. It just raises all kinds of questions. And explains a lot.

“The whole family seems to be so content as I choke off to the side… this is the epitome of my life. No big deal. I am alive and well now – no thanks to any of my relatives ”

Awkward Family Photos reveals and documents the absurd family dynamics we enjoy in great humor writers like David Sedaris, Jonathan Franzen, and Jonathan Tropper. He puts in pictures what we relish in words. He sparks our nostalgia—and not the sentimental woebegone perfection, but the cringe of our less than stellar moments. He triggers relieved guffaws. We are comforted that maybe our family actually was.not.so.bad.

He’s a genius.

Because in this day of digital photography, awkward family photos are quickly becoming a collector’s item. With today’s cameras we can crop and delete these moments that are the truth. The moments we are silly and incomplete and well, awkward.

If he’s a hilarious guy, he’s understated too. Mike sat rather quietly on his barstool as our group engaged with theirs, swapped superhero undergarments until his friends egged him to reciprocate with his book (freshly printed). Maybe said book blog made me somehow worthy.

So he willingly shared and told me about the inspiration for AFP—which was an absurd ski vacation family photo his Mom showed him. He shared it online and the rest, is well, digital history. Photos started pouring in from all over the world. I think it’s fair to say he’s the world’s curator of awkward family photos.

There are so many reasons I love this idea: the humor, the possibility, the online spontaneity, and above all, the humanness of it all.

Who can’t relate?

We all have our version of braces and acne and bad hairdos, insane fashion, crazy uncles, and moments of misguided exuberance. Embrace them! Love them!

My grand prize was complete with the inscription:

“To Katy, thanks for spreading the awkwardness”.

Was it the flash gordon underwear? Me? My outfit?

Um, well, I guess I’m gonna to just have to take this as a complement.

But Conroy feels nostalgic to me, in a way that no other contemporary writer does. His name surfaces time washed images of Oldsmobiles, guess jeans, bad haircuts. Family vacations.

Like I can remember watching the movie The Great Santini–the entire family–and cringing as the father bounced the basketball off the back of his son’s head taunting him to keep playing, to win. How old was I? Old enough that it was a probably a rare occasion for my parents to go to a movie with their teenage daughters.

Or maybe I have glorified the Prince of Tides as a book that showed up when all four of us were actually reading similar things in our family. Because we all read it. And argued about it. And agreed, disagreed. Understood each other–maybe–all the bit better because of it.

So we read more Conroy. Went back and read Lords of Discipline and Water is Wide.
Moved forward and read Beach Music. I think I was the lone man out in 2009 when he released South of Broad. I could tell by my sister’s tone of voice that perhaps the magic was gone. Conroy was a good shared past.

Admittedly, I had to wikipedia when this all was. Because I know my sister and I were in high school years or making the turn to college. In my mind, we feel young. There were cigarettes and boys in convertibles and too much make up and…well there weren’t just books. (But my mother reads my blog so let’s just leave it at that.) But somehow, I sense this was at the start of becoming an adult.

It’s for this reason that Pat Conroy’s place in the family memory is profound.
He showed us all what a skilled storyteller could do for an audience of all ages.

Or perhaps we were grateful. Because he opened our eyes to the first time what a family could look like when it wasn’t a pretty darn solid, loving and funny Midwestern family. It was an abusive father, a military family transience, loneliness. It’s rare for a 17 year old to feel fortunate with their family. Was I sensible to know it then? Nah, doubt it.

Well, I digress.

The point is that for those of us who love to read (who love love love to read) Pat Conroy’s new non-fiction book, My Reading Life is an *INSANE* pleasure.

I want to buy 50 copies and send it to everyone that has always loved to read in a way that is impossible to describe.

No need now to try–because Conroy does it so well.

His writing, as always, is effortless. His passion is manifest. His memories sprinkled with literature. He shares a memory of his mother reading Gone with the Wind every year to his siblings. He recalls a high school librarian who had no love of books; an abusive, critical agent who insisted he read Lord of the Rings; a famous bookshop owner in Atlanta.

Pat Conroy’s life story is about devouring books and creating them in an effort ‘to save himself’.

“This book demonstrates again and again that there is no passion more rewarding than reading itself, that it remans the best way to dream and to feel the sheer carnal joy of being fully and openly alive.”

It’s a simple premise and while it does get repetitive in parts, it feels highlighter worthy (yes! yes! in the margins) for those of us with a deep passion for reading.

“Here is what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of the writer’s heart. I want a novel so poetic that I do not have to turn to the standby anthologies of poetry to satisfy that itch for music, for perfection and for economy of phrasing, for exactness of tone. Then, too, I want a book so filled with story and character that I read page after page without thinking of food and drink, because a writer has possessed me, crazed me with an unappeasable thirst to know what happens next.”

“Here’s what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, writers of the world. Make me Muslim, heretic, hermaphrodite. Put me into a crusader’s army, a cardinal’s vestments. Let me feel the pygmy’s heartbeat, the queen’s breast, the torturer’s pleasure, the Nile’s taste or the Nomad’s thirst. Tell me everything I must know. Hold nothing back.”

Indulge yourself.

Of if not, just give Conroy a nod when you cross that bridge or climb that hill and whisper to yourself: “Lowenstein”.

Book covers always seem to arrogantly predict that a book will be with you for a long while. Hey, we know I’m a skeptic. Not many reverberate thaaaaatttt loonnnnggg. But this one has an echo and I can’t help but wonder if a second reading would yield even more enjoyment. The book packs a dense punch. It’s short. But it takes some concentration to wade through. The writing, as we can count on from Cunningham, is very very good.

We join Peter Harris in Mahattan. Forty-four. Married to the beautiful-but-maybe-fading Rebecca. Father to a disgruntled 20-something named Bea. A well-respected art dealer.

“Here they are: a middle-aged couple in the back of a cab (this driver’s name is Abel Hibbert, he’s young and jumpy, silent, fuming). Here are Peter and his wife, married for twenty-one (almost twenty-two) years, companionable by now, prone to banter, not much sex anymore, but not no sex, not like other long-married couples he could name, and yeah, at a certain age you can imagine bigger accomplishments, a more potent and inextinguishable satisfaction, but what you’ve made for yourself isn’t bad, it’s not bad at all.”

So if Peter is bumping along in a not so bad way, it will take a complication to make this story interesting. To make his life interesting.

And the complication does come–in the form of Rebecca’s much younger brother Mizzie. (Nicknamed Mizzie as in the Mistake, as in an unexpected child). Mizzie is a 23 year old drifter, a Yale dropout, a potentially reformed drug user, and gorgeous. Rebecca is a good sister and near mother who wants to help with positive options for her younger brother. While setting some limits.

Well, Mizzie creates a car crash for Peter while Rebecca is oblivious.

Without ruining every twist and turn, Peter is attracted to Mizzie. Physically, emotionally. It’s a good shift on an old concept of the midlife crisis. And while a homosexual affair threatens throughout the book, Cunningham handles this with complexity and nuance. We can’t be sure Peter is really attracted to Mizzie in this sexual way. It could be that Mizzie is a younger, perfected version of the woman he once married (the similarities are profound); it could be that he is chasing a relationship that is absent with his daughter; it could be he is seeing his career for the first time through the eyes of a young person pursuing ‘the arts’ with a skeptical glance.

But mostly, it seems through the undercurrent conversation in the novel about art is that we prize beautiful objects. Peter is an art dealer. He trades in beauty. He struggles in his career to balance pushing art that has commercial value and those pieces which are profound works of beauty (which may not sell at all). Mizzie is an experience of art.

It’s a tense story.

We are empathetic to Peter. He is awkward and vulnerable. Confused and suddenly adrift.
We are angry with Mizzie. He is manipulative and reckless. Unaware. Selfish.

But we definitely aren’t left unaffected.

And so yes, the story does stay with you a long time. And might even prompt a second reading.

Well, that’s not quite right.
I read it, and read it fairly quickly.
Because, sadly, it was captivating.

It was captivating like a car crash we crane our necks to see on the freeway….but then find ourselves disgusted by our own baseness and then shuddering periodically throughout our day recalling the horrible images….so I found Room.

This was one of the New York Times‘ five best books of the year. We aren’t talking pulp fiction here. Serious critics loved this book.

These reviews aptly point out that to write from the voice of the five year old Jack is an incredible talent. Which is true. I can’t deny that Donoghue has created a compelling, poignant and in some ways unprecedented voice of a child. In fact, I can’t recall a child narrator that is much younger than the teen Holden Caulfield. My memory goes blank.

Courageous I grant her.

And creepy.

Because while the 11 foot by 11 foot Room is safe for Jack, it is a prison for his mother. They are held captive by a sexual predator in a locked shed in this lovely man’s back yard. The story translates too easily in a world where Jaycee Lee Duggard can live in Garrido’s backyard for nearly two decades.

Blech.

I can tell you this if you are inclined to pursue it anyway. The writing is very good and the plot does get more complex and interesting (SPOILER ALERT) after the mother and son re-enter the real world. You understand the judgments made by the outside world about Jack’s long hair and the ongoing breastfeeding, but you find yourself with a fierce loyalty to “Ma”. She is, above all, a survivor. She IS resiliency. She creates a world of normalcy for her son when none should be possible. She contains her own rage and wanting and depression and hope and futility.

Hell, I can sometimes lose my noodle playing three board games in a row on a rainy day. So believe me, Ma gets my vote. Definitely.

While I can appreciate that critics call it a story of the ‘beautiful relationship between a mother and her son’…. well, okay. I guess.

But I say the real world is creepy enough. I don’t need it in my fiction, people. I can just pick up that SF Chronicle and read all about the bizarre, unfortunate and insane–and spare myself the 200+ pages.

So if you find that the subject matter is making you a bit squirrely, I wanted to let you know that BookSnob read this one so you don’t have to.

Forge on to some other literary crisis that’s easier to stomach.