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.

Into the Shuffle - THE PERFORMANCE

As my first novel, No Winter Angel, comes to a close, there is one outstanding debt that I have not written about here--in part, because I read it so long ago, but it has stayed with me, probably informing lots of things I don't even realize.

It's a short story by Arthur Miller called "The Performance," and actually, I discovered it by way of a song that I heard in 2003 by Erin Mckeown, entitled "An Innocent Fiction." She'd read Miller's story and wrote this beautiful homage to it.

"The Performance" is about a Jewish tap dancer from the United States who travels to Europe in the 1930s and winds up dancing in a private show for Hitler, who subsequently falls in love with the performance without realizing that the performer is Jewish. Just the idea itself is so powerful. And I was--and continue to be--struck by the "breathtaking idea of a government" taking interest in a dance. And how intoxicating that must feel to the dancer, even if the government is repugnant and vile.

I had to explore the complex way this must play out in the artist's mind. When you read the dance scene in No Winter Angel, this is the image I want to convey. The terror and the power and the intoxication that make any simple moral judgment suspect.

And this image of Hitler, almost childlike in his awe and carnal in his enthusiasm, stays with me: "The troupe went into the stomp, shoes drumming the stage floor, and Hitler seemed transfixed now, swept up in the booming rhythms, both clenched fists pressing down on the tabletop, his neck stretched taut, his mouth slightly agape. 'I thought we were looking at an orgasm,' Harold said." Indeed!

The Game Is Never Over - READY PLAYER ONE

I could not put this book down. Ernest Cline is a kick-ass writer who tells one compelling story. A month ago, I got the chance to play with an HTC Vive virtual reality visor, and when I told the guys who owned it that I was doing "research" for my book, they said, "WHAT!? You haven't read Ready Player One!" So, off I went to read it in hopes of not being an ignoramus. And now all I want is a haptic suit, gloves, and my own private bay to explore the OASIS.

The cover says Willy Wonka meets The Matrix, and I was like, "um...that sounds ridiculous." Actually, it's kinda spot on and the scavenger hunt for James Halliday's golden egg has you turning pages like you're reading for your life.

Thievery for the day: keep the stakes high, folks. The book doesn't pull its punches. Players die. Avatars die. Love is found and love is lost and you hold your breath until the bitter end.