MarysLibrary

Housekeeping

I've just finished re-reading Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping. I've also listened twice to the book on my iPod, read by Becket Royce, who does a particularly skillful job.

I read the book back when it was published in 1981 and knew it was extraordinary. I thought about it often over the years, but it was only lately when I spotted it on the shelf of audio books in the library that I decided it was time to revisit Fingerbone, Idaho, and the Foster, Stone, and Fisher women.

Hearing a book read is very different from reading the words on the page, no matter how skilled a reader you are or how carefully you read. When reading poetry, and this book is in my estimation poetry, it's almost as impossible to grasp it all as it is to grasp music or drama when it is read rather than performed.

When I finished listening I felt impelled to read the paper book again, and this time I was able to read it the way I can read the music of say, the beginning of "Rheingold." I can hear that music because I've heard it while looking at the written page. This kind of thing has happened now with Housekeeping.

Then I listened to the book a second time in a month. (Why not? It's already on my iPod and it was that or Moby-Dick.) Robinson's book stands up to this kind of abuse. It grows and flows and throws out things you missed the first and second and third times you went through it.

Everyone by now knows what the book is about. Two young girls are left at their grandmother's house in Fingerbone (read Sandpoint), Idaho, while their mother goes off to drown herself in the lake (read Pend Oreille.) Their grandfather drowned in the lake when the train he was riding went off a long wooden bridge near the town. The lake defines the town and in a sense defines the girls' family.

When their grandmother dies, the girls are cared for by their aunt, Sylvie. People in the town criticize her for being "a transient" - a hobo. The joke is of course that we are all transients, even those of us who don't ride the rails.

There is so much to think about as you read this book I could make a list of 100 major themes and symbols and metaphors and maybe another hundred minor ones. The lake, trains, the bridge, flooding, hair, food, boats, men (or the absence of them), snow, light, and again the lake.

But the most important symbol, concept, theme, and plot fulcrum is housekeeping. Keeping the house, rather than selling it or moving away from it or burning it down. Taking care of the house. Taking care of the family. Keeping the house in order. Keeping the house as a house and not as some other sort of shelter. Being inside the house looking out or being outside looking in.

It should be apparent that I'm writing this for folks who have already read the book. We are a kind of family, we readers of Housekeeping, and these concepts, symbols, themes remind us of what we have read and produce a sometimes sharp emotional response.

If you haven't read the book, you probably haven't made it this far in my review because you ran screaming out of your own house, either to buy a copy of the book or to escape from it. It's that kind of book.

Banville's New Book is . . .

Christine Falls by Benjamin Black This crime novel set in 1950s Ireland is actually written under a pseudonym by Irish writer John Banville, winner of the 2005 Man Booker Prize for The Sea.

"This surely marks the first time any author has followed up his Booker win with a whodunit written under a pen name," says the Seattle Times article where I read about this."

The Times article was pointed out by Fay at Historical/Present.

The Inheritance by Louisa May Alcott

Raidergirl from over at An Adventure in Reading suggested this romantic novel, purportedly the first by Louisa May Alcott. The Inheritance was written in 1849 when she was 17. It's great fun, but Alcott clearly has a long way to go before she will become the writer who produced Little Women and the rest of the books we all love.

Take away the words "tears," "pale," and "humble" and the book would be half the size. The heroine is impossibly good. The villainess annoyingily bad. And the plot hangs on an old man ex machina who holds a sinful secret that will change our heroine's life forever. Nevertheless, I had a grand time with this book and look forward to reading more of Alcott's "other" work.

Like a book mentioned by Elaine from Random Jottings of a Book and Opera Lover, A Double Life, a collection of five of LMA's sensational tales written for Frank Leslie's Illustrated tabloid newspaper. It took me no time flat to read these wonderful stories about the struggle between men and women for Power. Guess who wins every time?

I was very interested to find Shakespeare and the theater running through these tales. The first story, "A Pair of Eyes," begins at a performance of "Macbeth" and the painting of a portrait of Lady Macbeth is crucial to the plot. "Ariel" has obvious connections with "The Tempest." "A Double Tragedy" is about actors and ends with the death scene from "Romeo and Juliet."

"The Fate of the Forrests" has a complicated theme that involves predictions of the future that always come true, a fate worse than death (sort of), poisoning (or maybe not), a lingering death in prison, and the Thugs of India. Beat that for sensationalism. The last and best of these stories - and they are all good - is "Taming of a Tartar," much like "Taming of the Shrew" with the tables turned and the woman bringing the eponymous Russian prince to his knees.

I'm grateful to Elaine and Raidergirl for these suggestions. Now I'm on to the Geraldine Brooks novel, March, suggested by Karen at Cornflower.

The Little Princess

The Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett is the all-time great fantasy book for little girls. Big girls, too. It's a classic riches to rags to riches story and like The Count of Monte Cristo, the all-time great revenge novel, it never ceases to satisfy.

Our heroine is placed in a girl's school by her father, a very rich British civil servant in India. Then he dies and she is thought to be penniless and is treated badly. But no, it turns out, she is really fabulously wealthy and her father's best friend has been wearing himself to a frazzle trying to find her.

Found she is and the book ends with her happily ensconced in the home of this man whom she had never met before her father died. And disturbingly, she doesn't seem to miss her father all that much now that she has another rich man to buy clothes and dolls for her.

Well, we won't dwell on that part of the story. The rest of it is pure and delightful fantasy. A mysterious Indian servant turns her gloomy garret into a little nest with rugs and a fire and a folding camp chair. Lovely clothes arrive mysteriously in the mail. And there's a rambunctious monkey who plays a significant part in the plot. I've always liked that monkey.

Burnett also wrote what may be my favorite children's book, The Secret Garden.

Nancy Drew

There's no explanation for it. My love of Nancy Drew mysteries is irrational. But there you have it.

I've read this one, The Mystery at Lilac Inn (1930) numerous times. I knew a third of the way through the first time who done it, so it's not the mystery. It's certainly not the racism, sexism, and ethnicism. (There are slovenly Italians and Irish in most of these books.)

It must be the roadster, her frocks, the fact that she  wears a hat and gloves whenever she leaves the house. The plucky girl falls back on her extremely influential father only rarely, but of course it's nice to know there's untold wealth and political power there if you need it. Part of the charm is that my book is the original 1930s edition.

No accounting for my love of these mysteries.

Snow

I thought we had seen the last of this winter's snow, but this morning it's back with us and looking more beautiful than ever. This is our next door neighbor's house.

In Today's Mail

I came home from A Grand Yarn this afternoon to find that the book and music fairy had delivered a couple of pacakages while I was gone.

One was the new book by Patrick Anderson, The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks, and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction. The reviews say that Anderson believes genre fiction is the best fiction being written in the US today. I call it crossover fiction: great novels masquerading as murder mysteries.

I'm looking forward eagerly to reading this analysis. Anderson starts with a short history of the genre then reviews some of the most popular writers of mysteries. These aren't the folks he's talking about when he talks about great literature being found in the mystery section of the bookstore.

He is talking about Thomas Harris, George Pelecanos, Michael Connelly, and my favorite, Denis Lehane, to each of whom he dedicates an entire chapter. He also devotes a chapter to "Tom Clancy's Literary Offenses," which should make for amusing reading.

The other package was my new Rosemary Clooney CD. After watching the movie, "Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont," which ends with RC singing "For All We Know," I've been searching for the song on iTunes but to no avail.

Not having found it and being a great fan of Rosemary Clooney and owning only one single CD of her work, I decided I was entitled to buy a whole album, so I did. It's called "For the Duration," and includes, in addition to the target song, "Every Time We Say Goodbye," "I'll Be Seeing You," "September Song," and "These Foolish Things." We have a treat in store.

Behind the Scenes

Somebody asked me what the back side of the stranding looked like on my hat/gauge swatch. Here's a photo of it.

Little Women

I'm tearing myself away from Jo's Boys to write these comments on Little Women, one of the books I've read for the Classics Challenge. You will know how much I enjoyed it when I tell you I didn't pause for a moment when I read the last page to move right along to Little Men. And when I finished that yesterday I started Jo's Boys at once. What's more I requested Eight Cousins from the library and will pick it up tomorrow.

This love of mine for Louisa May Alcott is interesting because there's no getting away from the fact that her children's books are sentimental, didactic, unrealistically peopled with saintly adults and easily molded good-at-heart children, and are ridiculously over pious. 

None of that matters. I repeatedly gulp down these stories with gusto, crying and laughing at the appropriate places, and wish there were more. I think I'm like those goslings who upon hatching fix on the first creature they see, whether it's their mother or an adult male biologist. I fixed on Alcott at an early age and I shall follow wherever she leads.

It's definitely time for me to read a biography of LMA and probably past time to read some of her non-children's writing. I have a hankering to see what those sensational thrillers of hers are like. Excuse me while I nip over to Amazon.com and see what's on offer.

A Children's Book Controversy

A huge controversy has arisen over a single word in this year's Newbery winner, The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron. You can find the whole thing discussed in Publisher's Weekly and in this morning's front page New York Times story about the word that has the children's book world in a tizzy. (It's the number one most emailed story from the online Times at the moment.)

The word is "scrotum." Early in the book Lucky hears a recovering alcoholic tell the story of how he hit bottom when a rattlesnake bit his dog on the scrotum. The man vowed if the dog lived he would give up drinking. The dog lived and the character is now a sober and useful citizen who relies on his "Higher Power."

Lucky wonders about what the word means and thinks it sounds like "something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much." Without that word the anecdote would not be the funny and perceptive introduction that it is to Hard Pan, CA, pop 43 and Lucky's life there.

Would these library folks who object to "scrotum" prefer one of the slang terms for that body part that children hear in the movies, on TV, and from their friends? Do they think the 11-year-olds of American can't handle reading it? Are these adults so immature they are embarrassed to explain it? Don't these people have anything else to do than to create trouble where there is none?

For my review of this book, go to 6 February, "The Higher Power of Lucky"