SING, UNBURIED, SING - Jesmyn Ward

Among other things, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a book about closure--the desire for it, the impossibility of it, and the ultimate realization that the things we anticipate may not arrive as we expect, but that does not mean they fail to arrive altogether. The book was heavier to read than I thought it would be. Because I now have a child? Because the horizon of the book feels so bleak? ...And why shouldn't it, with this opening sentence: "I like to think I know what death is." 

To steal from this one: the interruptive presence of the past in the form of ghosts. Already know who will be ghosting my next book. Waiting for more late night divinations to breathe more life into this story in my head. 

LINCOLN IN THE BARDO, George Saunders

If George Saunders' humility is as genuine as it appears to be on the "Bookworm" interview with Michael Silverblatt, then I may be truly in love. Not only is he the most badass short-story writer and truly unique and experimental novelist, he's also...so....normal. Well, like a brilliant, understated, matterlightblooming version of a normal person.

So, Lincoln in the Bardo. I remember another badass influence in my life, Elissa Marder, challenging us to think about the signified in the title, Madame Bovary. In Lincoln's case, it isn't THE Lincoln, but THE Lincoln's son, Willie. And the Bardo is a word for purgatory that refuses to let the reader slip into the association-laden term we all know.

Told by ghosts and historians intermittently, the book is bizarre and amazing and worth the read. But the part that brought me to tears was the ode to life that it stages toward the end. In the voice of roger bevins iii, "Though the things of the world were strong with me still. Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-tilted streetlight; a frozen clock, bird-visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; toweling off one's clinging shirt post-June rain.....Tying a shoe; tying a knot on a package; a mouth on yours; a hand on yours; the ending of the day; the beginning of the day; the feeling that there will always be a day ahead" (335). It's all just so...human. So banal and ordinary and full of life.

Loneliness - WHITE OLEANDER

Hannah Arendt made loneliness the condition of totalitarianism, as well as its consequence. Janet Fitch knows loneliness to be the very wind that blows through existence. In Los Angeles, it goes by the name of the Santa Anas--the gust that opens White Oleander and continues to blow until you are immune to it, or it swallows you whole, which pretty much amounts to the same thing.

Somehow I missed this book in 1999 when it came out. So, belatedly...like most good things in my life. Everything is steal-able in this book. But two lines I dog-eared:

"Save your poet's sympathy and find some better believer. Just because a poet said something didn't mean it was true, only that it sounded good" (349).

And,

"I couldn't stop thinking about the body, what a hard fact it was. That philosopher who said we think, therefore we are, should have spent an hour in the maternity ward of Waite Memorial Hospital. He'd have had to change his whole philosophy.

The mind was so thin, barely a spiderweb, with all its fine thoughts, aspirations, and beliefs in its own importance. Watch how easily it unravels, evaporates under the first lick of pain....The body was the only reality. I hurt, therefore I am" (401).

Finally, back to my own writing after such a long hiatus...

Origin Stories - AND I DARKEN

Besides the addictive opening hook to this story--a gender-bending tale of Vlad the Impaler's history, re-imagined as the female badass, Lada the Impaler--the book does so many things well. Kiersten White is just a solid writer who tells a layered story. And neither the strong female protagonist or her brother, who questions his own sexuality as he discovers his love for another man, feel gimmicky. In fact, all the characters seem completely authentic, and their development is slow--in a good way--and considered.

But what I most want to steal from this book, besides the feel of something epic and gathering, like a storm, is the haunting presence of origin stories. Mehmed, heir to the Ottoman sultan's throne, explains to Lada why he must conquer Constantinople.

He says, "My whole country was founded on a dream. Less than two hundred years ago we were nothing but a tribe, running from the Mongols, with no home of our own. But our leader--my ancestor--Osman Gazi dreamed we could be more. He saw a moon rise from the breast of a great sheikh and descend into his own. From his navel grew a tree, and its branches spread to cover the world" (370).

I want the entire tone of my next work to be that lush mythological imagining.

Confessions - TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

Ok, this is not something to admit out loud, but I'm in a confessional mood, so here goes... I never read Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird in school. Either we weren't assigned it, or I cliff-noted my way through it. In any case, I'm so happy I didn't, because I just got the chance to experience it for the first time--as an adult and an aspiring writer--and I'm just blown away. Besides amazing dialogue and a protagonist to make you weep, laugh out loud, and actually give a shit about the story, there are a few things I want to steal from this book.

1. Few adverbs. Maybe it's because I recently finished Stephen King's On Writing, which should be required reading for every writer (and he loathes the adverb with a kind of religious fervor), it's hard not to be indoctrinated. So I was on the hunt for adverbs in this book, and happy to find that they didn't clutter up the sentences like they're wont to do.

2. Bookends. The beginning and ending of this novel are in perfect communication with one another. Go back and re-read the opening after you finish the book, and you can see the work of a skilled storyteller. Everything feels necessary without being heavy-handed.

I have a feeling I'll be plundering the gems of this book for a while.

The Righteous Feeling of Being Wronged - BIG LITTLE LIES

Ignoring the fact that every book these days seems to have the words "Lies/Liars" or "Girl" in the title, Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty was a super fun read. I'd never read anything by her before, but walking around with the book, I was shocked by how many friends said, "Oh, I read every single thing she writes." So, clearly, I'm late to the game.

One of the things Moriarty does so well - besides humor (and sentiment without being sentimental) - is cut to the chase of certain, fundamental human behaviors that feel familiar, even if you've never been in the exact position as her characters.

For example:

"He turned off the bathroom light. They both went to opposite sides of the bed, snapped on their bedside lamps and pulled back the cover in a smooth, practiced, synchronized move that proved, depending on Madeline's mood, that they either had the perfect marriage or that they were stuck in a middle-class suburban rut and they needed to sell the house and go traveling around India."

...and kinda just perfectly captures the pendulum swing that the mind is capable of depending on the vagaries of mood. So, yeah, I'll steal that.

And this one:

"It was over now. There would be no further recriminations about the party. In fact, the very opposite. He'd be tender and solicitous. For the next few days up until he left for his trip, no woman would be more cherished than Celeste. Part of her would enjoy it: the tremulous, teary, righteous feeling of being wronged."

The Righteous Feeling of Being Wronged. Yes, who hasn't milked that feeling for all it's worth at some point or another?! So, I'll take that one, too.

Restraint - WE WERE LIARS

Thinking about my next book project, and the first ideas that come to me are not about plot, but about atmosphere. A book that is pared down. A book that makes inferences rather than hits you upside the head with information. A book that is closer to abstract painting than photorealism.

Something about We Were Liars by E. Lockhart captures this. There is an economy of language. Short sentences. Concise paragraphs.

"Next day Mirren and I take the small motorboat to Edgartown without permission.
The boys don't want to come. They are going kayaking.
I drive and Mirren trails her hand in the wake.
Mirren isn't wearing much: a daisy-print bikini top and a denim miniskirt."

And it goes on like this. Sentences that say more than they say. And that's important in order for the book to pull off its final reveal.

I'm hoping to channel just a bit of that quiet, confident sense of language that trusts the reader just enough so that the reader rises to the occasion.