Hogwarts Meets Windowne

Don't pick up The Casual Vacancy expecting to experience anything you've ever felt in J.K. Rowling's previous seven books about Harry Potter. Pagford, the small English town, and its school, Windowne, is not Hogwarts. And none of the teenagers in this new novel by the most-read living author are anything like Harry, Hermione and Ron.

The teenagers in TCV are, however, the most richly described and the most likable characters in this vitriolic novel. The adults are all conniving, spiteful, miserably married or deluded. The only truly good and well-liked adult, Barry Fairweather, dies in the first chapter and haunts the rest of the novel. His goodness serves to reflect the hateful impulses of the rest of the adults. The teenagers have our sympathy and support throughout the book.

I can forgive the teenagers lapses in judgment only because they are hurtful to the parents and other adults who make their lives miserable. Each home in the outwardly charming town of Pagford houses its own terrible secrets and every person is destroyed by those dirty little lies and pretense. Only the ghost of Barry Fairweather (great name!) tells the truth.

The book is also about the smugness of conservatives and the hard reality of the lives of families living in poverty. It’s not an easy book to read. But real life isn’t easy.

I am very impressed with J.K. Rowling for writing this novel. It must have been difficult to depart so resolutely from the audience and the tone of her other novels.  But, of course, if you’re J.K. Rowling,  you can probably get anything you want published. I recommend this book. Even though it doesn’t necessarily have a “happy” ending, most of the plot line is resolved.  Just don’t expect this book to be anything like the J. K. Rowling you’ve ever read before. And be warned: Don’t encourage children under 16 to read this gritty and grimy account of life in a small town.

Books and Their Homes

Thanks to my e-subscription to Shelf Awareness, I just read a delightful column called "People of the Bookshelf" in The Global Mail. Written by one of my favorite authors, Geraldine Brooks, she confessed her secret dedication to preferentially shelving her own personal collection of books.  Brooks said she arranges her books "as she would guests at a dinner party," putting together authors that she thinks might be able to strike up a pleasant conversation. She said she likes to "imagine them, shelved side by side, comparing notes on the mores of their respective eras."   

I just went through a similar dilemma when we added beautiful new built-in bookshelves in our "book nook" at the top of the staircase in my home. I had the shelves built for our collection of children's books. Even though my children are now 17 and 20, I can't bear to say goodbye to books that have been around since my father was a little boy, and I was a young girl. There are books given to my children by their late father and grandparents. These are books I have wonderful memories of reading to my girls over and over. 

Last week, I spent an emotional evening placing these precious books in the new shelves and I must confess I was a bit obsessive about their arrangement. I wanted Maurice Sendak next to Charlotte Zolotow. Then I put all our dog books together; I put Rosemary Wells' McDuff tales next to Alexandra Day's Carl books. I gathered every book about bunnies (and we had a lot) and placed them on the same shelf. My collection of fairy books took a place of honor. And my sister and my beloved Edith, the Lonely Girl, books by DareWright were placed in their own safe top shelf. I found it extremely satisfying to put all these special "friends" together in one place.

Now the rest of the books in the house are not as organized. My husband and I have bookshelves in several rooms filled to bursting and stacks of books on our bedside tables overflowing to the floor below. But if I could just have some more bookshelves built, I could organize the rest of my books…

So I want some feed back from you, my silent readers. How do you arrange your bookshelves? Email me or post to this blog. XOXO

Choices of the Heart

A few weeks ago when Hurricane Isaac was roaring toward New Orleans, I had a strange mix of feelings. I felt regret that I wasn’t there. I missed the adrenaline rush of preparing for evacuation, which I did many times in my years on the Gulf Coast.  I also felt a sense of relief that I was in the orderly, calm city of Houston. At the same time, I felt guilty that I wasn’t in New Orleans for the chaos and recovery after a hurricane. I was conflicted. I guess the strongest feeling was sadness that I wasn’t there to be a part of it all. I decided to re-read one of my favorite books about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina.

First, let me tell you that I love New Orleans like I love my closest friends. I lived in New Orleans for seven years. I was a transplant to the Crescent City, but I had been attending Jazz Fest and visiting the city since I was young. New Orleans captured me during those years and has never let me go. Part of my heart is forever in New Orleans. When I drive into that city, the smell overwhelms me.  It’s an unforgettable mixture of chicory coffee emanating from the Folgers’ Coffee roasting plant on the east side of the French Quarter and the muddy-smelling river water. That smell makes my heart beat a little faster.

The novel, City of Refuge, is both a praise song to the city I love and an editorial about the travesty of Hurricane Katrina. Author Tom Piazza spins of a tale of two different families experiences of the hurricane that devastated the city of New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast. But the devastation of Katrina was not a natural disaster, instead a man-made tragedy. Piazza reminds us that we must never forget the failure on the part of the government and politicians to adequately improve the levies surrounding the city.  The poorest neighborhood of the city, the Ninth Ward, was destroyed with 15 feet of water in some places.  Almost 80 percent of the city received some damage. The city shut down and its residents left – many of them for the first time – and re-located all over America.

The book starts in the heat of that late summer of 2005 with two New Orleans families – one black and one white – facing the storm that inevitably will change their lives.  The families never really meet except by a chance encounter on the first pages of the book, but their lives are intertwined in the storm that will unite the community. The black family is led by SJ Williams, a carpenter and widower lives and works in the lower Ninth Ward. He was born and raised in that community – only leaving for his time in Vietnam. He is a good man, worried about his young nephew and the boy’s mother, his sister. Craig Donaldson, the head of the white family, is not a native New Orleanian. He and his wife, Alice, came to the city by choice from the Midwest.  Craig fell in love with New Orleans on several visits to the city. He was a journalist –primarily a music writer.

Craig’s narrative sounds a lot like Tom Piazza’s story.  The author of City of Refuge had been fascinated by New Orleans most of his life. He finally made it New Orleans for the first time in 1987 for Jazz Fest. He was 31. He had been planning to make the trip for years but had put it off for one reason or another.  He said, “somehow a switch clicked inside me and some spirit of the place entered me.” He fell in love with the city.  He didn’t move there until 1994 and he quickly became a fixture on the literary and music scene of the Crescent City.

Tom Piazza is a Long Island, NY native with an “old-school writer’s resume of ambition mixed with odd jobs, false starts, hard knocks.” After graduation from Williams College, he moved to NYC, already with a good deal of experience in writing, mainly about the blues and jazz music.  Fast forward to Katrina and Piazza’s evacuation to Missouri with his girlfriend. His publisher asked him to write something about the hurricane and Why New Orleans Matters spilled out of his soul in five weeks.  The book was written in response to House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s remarks that New Orleans shouldn’t be rebuilt.

He says that City of Refuge also came from deep within and “insisted on being written.” After writing Why New Orleans Matters in so quickly after the hurricane and traveling around the country speaking about the city, he was burned out on talking about New Orleans. But in the spring of 2006, he had a writing residency in Virginia and while he was driving there the characters in COR began appearing in his mind.  He went on to write ten thousand words, as well as a complete synopsis of the novel, in his nine days of residency in Virginia. He knew then that the book would start about a week before Katrina and just after Mardi Gras six months later. He said he had never had a writing experience like that. “It was like having a high fever,” he said. He went on to complete the book in the next two years from several different places.

City of Refuge is a difficult book to read, yet one you cannot put down. The catastrophe of Katrina is placed along side two very realistic, very human stories. The theme of the book to me is one of hope. Tom Piazza honors the brave people of New Orleans who “comport themselves with a defiant grace when their lives have been pushed to the edge, and then over the edge.”  While it’s hard to relive the horrible images of death and destruction in our own country, Piazza wants us to remember and to cherish every day and honor life. He says at the end of the book, “You’re supposed to dance while you have the chance.”

The book is also about choices we all have to make. The main characters are both forced to leave the city during and after the storm and they both have to later decide whether to return. Piazza pointed out in an interview that everyone who is in New Orleans now had to make a choice to be there and it was not an automatic choice.  My husband and I had to decide whether to go back to New Orleans or not. We were not yet married at the time of the storm.  I lived in Pensacola and he lived in New Orleans. Even though his house wasn’t damaged, he had to rent a place in Baton Rouge because the city was not livable for at least two months after Katrina.  He went back in late October after the storm. However, eventually in late 2006, he chose to leave his adopted city because his young son and the boy’s mother, his ex-wife, had moved to Houston because of Katrina.  We then married and moved to Houston together. Like Craig, we had to choose family and relationships over the city that drew us in like a magnetic force.

We hope to return to New Orleans to live, just as I like to think Craig Donaldson, one of the main characters in COR, does eventually.  Because as SJ, the other main character, thinks when he finally goes back to his battered flooded home, “Here was a center, here was his heart.” This book captures the heart of New Orleans.

Cathedral of the Mind in Seattle

 “A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life-raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen instead”― Caitlin Moran

Libraries have been called the lifeblood of a community. I agree with that and I also believe that libraries reflect the community in which they are located. If a town doesn’t have a strong library, then it’s possibly a weak town. Likewise, I believe a city or town puts its money where its heart lies. Seattle definitely harbors a love of books because its beautiful downtown Central Library, just opened in 2004, is the most amazing library I have ever seen. And I make it a point to visit the library in every city I visit. I’ve toured libraries in Stockholm, Washington, DC, Montreal, Copenhagen, New York City and many more places over the years.

The Seattle Central Library is truly a national, even international, treasure. The library is forward-thinking and innovative for several reasons: the “books spiral” that displays the entire nonfiction collection gently ramping through four floors, the “living room” that stretches 50 feet high, the high tech book handling system that sends books back to their destination, the fifth floor “mixing chamber” with 145 computers available free to anyone with a library card, and much more.

I was eager to see this “hospital of the soul”  on a recent visit to Seattle. I started my tour with a stop at the large, but cozy, first floor Children’s Center where I could hear (but not see) reading hour in a small carpeted room with complete with the sounds of drums, animal noises and much laughter. The walls were covered with fanciful soft sculptures based on folk tales. Then I saw the 275-seat auditorium and watched a video about the book handling system. On the third floor, I visited the Starbucks Teen Center and the gift shop and relaxed for a while at the coffee bar. The escalator led me past the “Mixing Chamber” where I saw almost every one of the 145 computers being used in the darkened room. I then continued on the escalator through the book spiral. My jaw was hanging open in awe by the time I reached the tenth floor reading room and the highest public viewpoint of the library.

 

But this amazing library and many others are under siege due to budget cuts and poor planning on the part of government leaders. The entire Seattle library system will close Monday, August 27 and remain closed until September 4 due to budget cuts. The buildings will be closed. The book drops will be closed. The computers will not be accessible. No programs or events will happen. It sounds like a dystopian novel. But it’s happening at this country’s finest library system next week.

President Barack Obama said, "At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever, for the better.”  Let’s keep our libraries alive for the children.  Support your local library. 

The Boys of Summer

At the start of summer, I always picture long days filled with leisure time for reading all the books I couldn’t get to during the year. It’s always an unrealistic vision.

This summer I once again did not read the copious amounts of great literature that I had originally intended. And I actually started this summer with the Book Expo in New York City and brought home 26 pounds of books. My stack of books is still immense because I had to squeeze reading between active trips to California, Europe, North Carolina and Florida.  I do, however, have two books to share with you.

In the hot, humid days of July I read two books about angst-ridden male protagonists, both first novels written by men.  I first read the highly praised novel, The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach (published September 2011). Then I read my advance readers copy of A Working Theory of Love by Scott Hutchins (set to be released October 2, 2012). Both books were entertaining and satisfying reading, but both lacked female characters of any substance. I have to admit -- I prefer reading about women. It seems a bit shallow to say that, but there you have it. Regardless, I enjoyed these books.

The Art of Fielding was both a baseball novel and a coming of age novel – two of my favorite subjects in one deliciously long book. The twists and turns of a slightly quirky story make this an enjoyable read. The book deals with a college baseball team and one amazing shortstop who eventually has to accept his limitations in life.

A Working Theory of Love has a neat plot about a young man and a computer that has been programmed with his dead father’s journals. He has long conversations with the computer/his dead father and tries to make sense of being a single 30something heterosexual male in Northern California. Watch for this book when it comes out in October. You can say you heard about it here first. And I will continue to read through my stack of books. The next month may be slower as I still dream of hours of interrupted reading time.