Gossip

AUTHOR: Beth Gutcheon
PUBLISHED: 2012
GENRE: Fiction

This is what Amazon had to say about this book: “Gossip is a tale of intimacy and betrayal, trust and fidelity, friendship, competition, and motherhood that explores the myriad ways we use and abuse "information" about others—be it true, false, or imagined—to sustain, and occasionally destroy, one another.”

Ummmm… maybe I accidently read a different book.  Maybe someone at the library switched the dust jackets on me.  But let’s put it this way: remember that time your best friend Jessica roped you into going with her to her grandma’s house upstate, but once you got there, Jessica totally ditched you for her cousins and left you to listen to her very sweet but kind of lonely grandma’s life story?  It was an okay story, with some interesting bits - you could tell she was probably pretty fun at one point - so you managed to keep your listening face on the whole time, but you were still pissed on the way home?  That’s exactly what this book is like.   

Gossip is the story of Loviah French.  Loviah seems like a very nice woman.  An uninteresting woman, but a nice woman.  Loviah’s narration begins in the present with a titillating tidbit of something juicy* and then goes back in time to Loviah’s first days at boarding school.  It’s at boarding school that she meets the other central characters of the story, Dinah and Avis.  Together they grow and mature, building families and careers, encountering setbacks and experiencing the wonders life has to offer.  Sound boring? That’s because it is.  It tries to be exciting – the Manhattan high life!  Fan-cy! – but no amount of talk about exclusive society clubs and martini-drinking, Pucci-wearing Upper East Side hostesses can combat multiple chapters about the inner workings of the personal stylist’s booking system at Bloomingdale’s, or, worse, the long conversations between Loviah and Avis about how maybe Avis should take a cottage on the Maine mainland instead of an island because, you know, her hips just aren’t the same anymore.  Add to that pages and pages of Loviah playing peacemaker between Dinah and Avis – or, really, justifying Dinah’s bitchness towards poor, bland Avis**.  It’s fascinating.  NOT.

Like a pair of Iowa tourists on their first trip to Times Square, the story wanders aimlessly forward in time until we arrive back at the present and at the horrific event first introduced 200 pages before.  When the BIG SURPRISE! finally comes, and Dinah’s son Nicky finally murders his wife – who also happens to be Avis’s daughter – it’s a welcome end to the slog (and to poor Grace).  And as you could probably guess, the BIG SURPRISE! isn’t much of a surprise, since the couple has been miserable for years.   But then again…everyone in this book is unhappy.  Dinah worries she’s too fat and she isn’t important to society anymore.  Avis has a bad relationship with her daughter.***  Loviah’s boyfriend isn’t around as much because his invalid wife suddenly decides to move back up from Florida.  (Even before that, Loviah always seemed slightly peeved with society for having to sneak around.  Keep in mind, this guy is in his 70s.)  With all this lingering hostility, it’s a wonder someone hasn’t killed before. 

In between all this are various detours, some of which reappear, some of which are never referenced again. These  detours, which presumably are meant to add meaning to it all, instead just add to the irritation.  Nicky kills Grace because she’s cheating on him.  But the author has also been hinting that Nicky is really gay for like, 150 pages.  So… is that supposed to have something to do with him killing her?  Was it really resentment about lost opportunities and the life he was supposed to lead?  (Note to Ms. Gutcheon: it’s never a good sign when the reader is left trying to scotch-tape together random bits of the story.)  A few chapters before, the story is moving along with some speed when September 11^th happens.  The author shoe-horns it in by having Dinah’s ex-husband have an office in the towers, but there is no reason to reference September 11^th other than to be able to say, see?  It’s New York.  They’re New Yorkers, which is completely unnecessary and totally jarring, especially when she doesn’t reference any other such historic happenings. It’s just all over the place.

Then there are the moments where you almost wonder if the whole stuck-with-Jessica’s-grandma feeling was intentional – times when Loviah is in the middle of a story and the author stops the forward momentum to have Loviah tell the reader, “it was 1956.  I just got out my yearbook and checked” or “I found the ticket stub just the other day.  It was in my winter jacket”.  After that, you expect a pat on the hand and an offer of a cookie.  The point of this all is, it’s not a bad story per se.  It’s just a lot to try and stay interested in, especially when there are no cookies, and no Jessica to be peeved at on the way home.

LENGTH: 288 Pages
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: It’s a new category: old lady lit!
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Not unless you really liked those trips upstate.

*Well, it’s supposed to be titillating and juicy. But really it’s just vague.

**Because back in boarding school, Dinah made some minor social faux pas and Avis saw it.  She didn’t say anything about it, mind you, or ever tell anyone about it.  But Dinah hates her nonetheless.  What a pleasant character she is!

***Primarily because when Grace’s miserable drunk of a father finally keels over in his recliner, nobody called her up at school for a couple of hours.  This ruins her already strained relationship with her mother, who, by the way, has wordlessly put up with the drunk for like, 25 years, so maybe we should cut her a little slack?

Fifty Shades of Grey: Fifty Shades Darker, or, Fifty Shades of Grey: Fifty Percent More Stalking!, or, Fifty Shades of Grey: What the Hell Am I Doing Here Again?

AUTHOR: E.L. James
PUBLISHED: 2012
GENRE: Fiction

I don't know how I've ended up back in this place. It was a place to which I never intended to return, and yet...yet...

After the horror that was the first Fifty Shades book, I swore off the rest of the series. These people - characters and author alike - were obviously unhinged, and not in a fun way, or even a so-bad-its-almost-good way.1 But there were the next two books were on the shelf, Vintage having spit them out so fast behind the first that they might as well have published it as one giant orgy, and I couldn't help but think, I wonder what kind of crap she managed to shove in there this time. My curiousity beat out my logic center (remember the awful plot?  The awful characters?  The awful writing???) and the next thing I knew, I was reading it.

And let me tell you.  For sheer what-the-(beep)-itude, it did not disappoint.

Last time we left our intrepid sex monkeys, Ana had left Christian and his red room of pain behind, unable to be his submissive.2 When the second book picks up, it's only a few days later, and Ana is already noticably withering away, what with the unstoppable crying and all. But she's determined to soldier on without him, until... until... he emails her asking if she needs a ride to her friend's art show.  Which leads us to...

PROBLEM NO. 1 - INSANE CHOICES. This is how Christian decides to worm his way back into her life - "hey, you need a lift"? And she says yes! Because you know, she's a grown-up. She can handle it. She hasn't eaten in three days and can barely function because her soul yearns for him, but riding with him does mean she doesn't have to take the bus. That really sounds like a solid choice.  Her inner goddess agrees!3

Of course, it takes but a proximity of 3 blocks and a smoldering look and the two of them are all over each other like two sheep during mating season. She misses him! He misses her! There's lots of murmuring and lip-biting and sighing and before we know it they're back in bed. But once the sex is over, old problems rear their heads, namely:

PROBLEM NO. 2 - THAT'S NOT LOVE, THAT'S STALKING. Their post-coital bliss is ruined when Christian insists on honoring the ridiculous check he gave her for her old car, going so far as to call up her bank with her banking account number and depositing the money himself. Because he stole her banking account number. And the kicker? He has no idea why she's mad about it. The man completely hacked her life, complying a dossier on her that's so specific it practically details when she poops. He gifts her a car, a computer, an I-Pad, and a blackberry, and proceeds to use them to document her every move. Because that's what boyfriends do, isn't it? That's not weird at all, is it? No, it's criminal. It's called stalking. And Ana gets furious about it! For five seconds! Which leads us to...

PROBLEM NO. 3 - IF YOU'RE GOING TO GET MAD, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, OR DON'T BOTHER! These two infuriate each other on a regular basis. This is the worst thing they could ever do, damn it! And then two pages later they're back to the sexcapades and the overwrought don't you know how much you mean to me??? histrionics. It's like an episode of one of those MTV teenage dating shows where you spend the whole time feeling superior and tsking, what a douche, to no one in particular, except with whips and chains and severe, severe child abuse.

And:

PROBLEM NO. 4 - WHY ARE YOU SURPRISED BY THIS, AGAIN? How could he violate her privacy like that! How could she go get her own lunch like that! Except... as intensely irritating as it is, that's exactly what he would do, and exactly how she would act. So what in the hell are they so surprised about? Have they learned nothing from the whopping week and a half this torrid love affair has been going on? How many times can they act completely in character and yet be SHOCKED! A lot, apparently. 544 pages worth.

On the other hand...

PROBLEM NO. 5 - SHE REALLY IS A BAD LISTENER. Ana works as an assistant at a publishing house and thus, had plenty of time all day long to spend emailing dirty things to her boyfriend.  Christian - in a rare few pages of sanity - begs her repeatedly to not email him from her company email, but rather from her blackberry.  Not so he can track her - he's doing that anyway - but because, as I'm sure many of us have realized the hard way, emailing private stuff on your work email is not a good idea.  Especially dirty private stuff.  And yet, for some untold reason, she refuses to stop emailing from her work account and gets them both in a buttload of trouble.  Enough trouble to set up a whole other book, apparently!  Seriously?  The work email-private stuff thing is pretty common knowledge!4  When you can make the stalker boyfriend look like the rational one... that's an accomplishment, let me tell you. 

But love acts in strange ways. So strange, in fact, that Christian is willing to give up the scene to be with Ana.. Which means happily ever after, right? RIGHT?

PROBLEM NO. 6 - SOMEBODY NEEDS A DALE CARNEGIE SEMINAR OR SOMETHING. These people have the worst self-confidence, like, ever. They profess their feelings for each other incessantly and yet are forever on the edge of falling apart because one that doesn't feel they deserve the other, or one can't possibly fulfil the needs of the other. Does it occur to no one that perhaps, just maybe, someone needs to take a step back? Maybe breathe a little bit? And stop overreacting about everything?

Another relationship issue they might want to address:

PROBLEM NO. 7 - SEX, WHEE! INNER GODDESSES, GIGGLE! MASSIVE CHILDHOOD TRAUMA... WHOO? Christian is a mysterious one, we all know. We learned in the first book that he had a really bad childhood.  We learn in the second book just how bad: his mom was a crack whore with a crazy pimp who regularly wailed on both of them.  When he finally beats the mother to death, the guy leaves her body - and poor terrified little Christian - in the apartment.  Where no one finds them for 4 days.  So it's understandable that the guy has issues.  But things go completely off the rails when he reveals to Ana that not only is his lifestyle his only way of dealing with all this but that he picks brunettes for his subs because they remind him of his dead, crack whore mother.  And Ana's just fine with this!  So happy is she to have been let into his inner world, she ignores the fact that this guy - who has already displayed some pretty intense stalker-control freak tendencies, who refuses to form real relationships, who refuses to be touched! - has just admitted that when he humiliates and dominates his sexual partners he's really trying to punish his dead, crack whore mother.   But no warning signs there!  No, not at all!  Her stupid freaking inner goddess is too busy doing triple sow cows to notice that maybe, just maybe, this guy needs a little more intensive therapy than he's getting.  (Or, even better, to think about her role in this insane relationship.) But who cares!  Let's just continue with our oppressive, hyper-emotional, if-you-leave-me-I'll-kill-myself fueled relationship!  And have more sex!

In the meantime, there's a crazy ex-sub girlfriend on the loose, a creeper boss trying to feel Ana up at every turn5, Christian's adoptive family - who thinks Ana is just the loveliest thing ever, isn't it so nice to see Christian happy - and the omnipresent Mrs. Robinson6, together with all that constant, high-strung emotion, and you just feel exhausted by the time it's all over. 

So it begs the obvious question: having read - and been horrified - by the first one, why in the hell did I read this one?

Because, as much as I hate to admit it, James hit upon something.  People who like the books would say it's that untapped market of housewives who still want to be sexy, darn it.  People who hate the books but read them anyway (I'm assuming there are others and it's not just me) would say that that the unbidden response it provokes - whether that be ooooh, baby! or are you (beeeeeeeeeeeping) serious??? - is too much to be resisted.  It didn't take a brain surgeon to know that Ana and Christian would get back together - and I, for one, just couldn't bear to miss the complete train wreck that was sure to follow.  I'm not proud of it.  But I think I've suffered enough for my sins, thankyouverymuch.  I read the book, after all. 

LENGTH: 544 Pages
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: Do I really need to answer that?
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Do I really need to answer that?

1Not even in a Tyra Banks, why-do-I-kind-of-feel-worried-for-her way.

2Despite having been more than adequately warned about it all - you might remember the 15 pages of contracts from the first books.

3Oh, her FREAKING inner goddess.  James apparently studied up on ice staking techniques for this book, because whenever Ana accomplishes some sexual feat, her inner goddess does a sow cow or an axle or whatever.  It's beyond ridiculous.

4Then again, we must remember that in the first book, Christian gifted her with that most rare creature, available only to the richest and most powerful: the email address.  GAH.  Why do I do this to myself?

5 Christian automatically assumes the guy's a creeper, and of course, because you're either boring or a sex pervert in these books, he is.  So Christian uses his millions to buy the publishing house where Ana works and get his IT guys to monitor her every email and his security guys, her every move, and, eventually, to get the guy fired.  Because that's just what loving boyfriends do! 

6Who appeared in the first book as the woman who introduced Christian to the lifestyle.  When he was 15.  And she was like, 35.  Interestingly, this is the only time Ana seems to register a red flag, namely, that 35-year-old women shouldn't be having bondage sex with emotionally-damaged 15-year-old boys. 

The Land of Decoration

AUTHOR: Grace McCleen
PUBLISHED: 2012
GENRE: Fiction

The Land of Decoration sounds like fun, right?  A witty novel on the lives of interior designers, or how a jewelry maker found love, or maybe even how one pre-school teacher used dried macaroni and glitter to teach her young charges the importance of learning.

Yeah, not so much.

Judith McPherson is 10 years old and awkward.  It’s a social situation that isn’t helped by the fact that her father belongs to a group of Christians who believe that Armageddon is nigh – like, any-day-now nigh.*  The majority of her time is spent proselytizing their unenthusiastic neighbors and pondering the Bible.  Her father, suffering from an extreme case of stiff upper lip Brittishness and the loss of his wife, takes little note of the pre-teen troubles of his only child.  It’s a lot for a little kid to handle.  To deal with it all, Judith builds herself a new world, quite literally: made of scraps of fabric and pop tops and a hundred other different kinds of trash, the Land of Decoration is a vast landscape so big she often must climb the furniture to navigate her room. 

The Land of Decoration is just for fun. That is, until she starts to use it for other means.  See, she needs a miracle to avoid a Monday-morning meeting with a bully and a dirty toilet, and isn’t above appealing to the Almighty for help.  She even creates a snowstorm of cotton balls and tissue paper in the Land of D to show God what she was looking for.  If He could build one just like it, she would be eternally grateful.

The thing is… it works.

The freak snowstorm in October convinces the 10-year-old that she is a miracle worker.  When God starts speaking to her – well, that just seals the deal.  She suddenly has the power to make things happen.  All she has to do is change up the Land of Decoration to suit her needs.  Make a little orange cat, and her neighbor’s kitty comes back home.  Take away the cotton balls, and the snow stops.  Smush a little pipe cleaner figure… well, she wouldn’t be that.  She doesn’t want to abuse her powers, after all.  She is completely unprepared, therefore, by the repercussions of her actions.  God, who insists that she not speak of this to anyone - is of little help, leaving Judith with the overwhelming question of how to make it all stop.

It’s a strange story, and yet, it works.  Judith makes perfect sense, given her surroundings – raised without a mother by a very religious, very distant father, she is left with only a rampant internal world.  McCleen’s prose sometimes gets a little overwrought – Judith spends a lot of time sweating and hyperventilating and experiences such swings in body temperature that the reader might begin to wonder if she has a neurological disorder.  Perhaps more importantly, despite McCleen’s descriptions, the Land of Decoration remains hard to picture.  McCleen seems to have sensed this, and thus includes a few little recipes for creation – how to make a little figurine, for example, right down to the white-out face.  Unfortunately, the recipes just seem to emphasis the mystery of it all. 

In the end, the “big” questions – is she speaking to God? If she isn’t, then whose voice is that? – become almost secondary, which is good, because they don’t get answered.  The only thing that really matters is Judith, and how she will find her way back.  Thankfully, when it comes to her young protagonist, McCleen makes the picture perfectly clear.

LENGTH: 320 pages

MAINSTREAM OR NOT?: No, Armageddon is generally not a big public concern.
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT?: Yes.  Unlike so many other fictional kids nowadays, Judith is not just bearable, but someone you can feel for.

*Don’t-make-plans-for-next-week nigh.  Don’t-shop-for-more-than-a-few-days-worth-of-food nigh.  Don’t-bother-to-mow-the-lawn nigh.  I could go on for days. Except, you know, limited-amount-of-days nigh.

The Destiny of the Republic: A Tale Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President

AUTHOR: Candice Millard
PUBLISHED: 2011
GENRE: American History

Say the name James Garfield to someone, and they are likely to stare back.  Unless you are talking to a history major, in which case you will very likely get this story: that when newly-elected President James Garfield was shot by an insane assassin, Alexander Graham Bell was brought in to use his newly-invented metal detector to find the bullet and save the president's life.  Only problem was, Garfield was lying on a metal table.  Stupid nineteenth century doctors, huh?

I'm not sure what is worse: that the entirety of what is commonly known about this man can be wrapped up in an embarrassing and sarcastic anecdote - or that the anecdote is this close to being true.

But let's go back.

James Garfield never wanted to be president.  A Civil War hero and long-time senator from Ohio, he was only at the 1880 Republican Convention to give a speech nominating Senator John Sherman as the Republican candidate.   But when the convention deadlocked over the most popular names, the one or two votes cast in his name suddenly began to grow, until - despite his protestations that he would not vote for himself, that he would not run - he was the Republican nominee.  A year later, he was the twentieth president. 

Alexander Graham Bell never wanted to be famous.  Despite his penchant for inventing, his first and true love had always been teaching the deaf.  But that required funding, so in 1876, Bell travelled to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia with a novel creation: the telephone.  Relegated to a small booth away from the main floor, the exposition judges would have passed Bell by - if not for, of all people, Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, who knew of Bell and forced the judges up the stairs to experience the telephone.  Almost overnight, Bell became the most well-known inventor of his time.  This fame and his newest invention -  the induction balance machine, better known as the metal detector -would bring him to the White House, in a last-ditch effort to save the president. 

Charles Guiteau, on the other hand, wanted to be famous.  And if not president, he wanted to be important - Ambassador to France would be fine, as he repeatedly wrote to Garfield's Secretary of State, James Blaine.  He had, after all, been instrumental in President Garfield's nomination - and Blaine's, and Vice-President Chester Arthur's - and would undoubtedly became a crucial figure in American history.  These accomplishments were, of course, solely in Guiteau's head.  He was in reality an utterly unaccomplished, sad-looking man, suffering from mental illness and living a life of graft and lies.  When Blaine, after months of incessant calls and visits, bluntly told Guiteau that he would not now and nor ever be receiving any sort of government posting, Guiteau snapped.  Garfield had been compromised by those around him, Guiteau decided.  It was, therefore, necessary for the survival of the nation that Garfield be removed.  On July 2, 1881, Guiteau shot Garfield twice, as the President waited for his train.

The intersection of these three men - the reluctant politician, the reclusive inventor, the insane megalomaniac - is a fascinating story, and one that is crucial to the development of an America still reeling from the Civil War.  Garfield himself is a tale onto himself - born into absolute poverty, he was nonetheless an avid scholar and devoted reader.  He was also an abolitionist who not only fought for an end to slavery but actively and vocally demanded real and tangible equal rights for African-Americans.  Between Garfield, Bell, and Guiteau - plus a whole host of other characters, from Vice-President Chester Arthur to Garfield's physician, Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss*, to Guiteau's beleaguered sister, Francis Scofield - the author had a toy box full of fascinating characters to draw from. 

But it's a lot to fit into one story, and at times, quite honesty, it starts to feel it's all never going to end.**  Millard could have removed entire portions - Bell's childhood and home life, or really, most everything about Chester Arthur - and still had more than enough information.  She could have even limited her story to Garfield, the shooting, and the results of his medical care - especially since it's this care that proves far more fatal than anything from Guiteau's gun.  I know why it's all in there: every one of these people deserves to have their story told, but it is the reality of the publishing world that the story of someone like  Chester Arthur - hell, even James Garfield - isn't going to get published unless it's a subplot to the assassination story.  It's one of those chronic problems of historical writing.  Unfortunately, this means all that fascinating information gets dumped on the reader at one time, which makes all the more unlikely for the non-obsessed history buff to even experience it. 

My point, to circle back around, is that there is a far greater story here than the silly tale usually remembered.  But since I brought it up: the President survived for three more months after being shot, time enough for Bell to invent his induction balance machine and test it on Garfield.  The test didn't work.  Part of the problem was Garfield's doctor was convinced the bullet was lodged near Garfield's liver, and thus had Bell scanning the wrong side of his body.  The other problem was that, underneath Garfield's normal horse-hair mattress, was a very new product: a box spring, with metal coils.  It was so new that no one thought of it when Bell said all metal needed to be removed from the room.  It was these coils that interfered with Bell's machine, and that gave rise to the gee-aren't-they-dumb metal bed story.  But if this is story that keeps Garfield's legacy alive, and gives authors like Millard the chance to get his story out there, then so be it. 

LENGTH: 432 pages
MAINSTREAM OR NOT?: Given that American students routinely fail their history exams - and claim it as their least favorite subject - I'm going to say no.
SO, SHOULD I READ IT?: Yes.  Garfield deserves more than to be remembered as the unfortunate victim of a sad joke.

*Yes, his parents named him Doctor Willard Bliss.  Talk about some serious career pressure.

**Horrible, I know, but my reaction when Garfield finally succumbs to his wounds was, "OH.  Finally.  He's been dying for like, TEN CHAPTERS", which I'm assuming is not what Millard was going for.