Books #38-41
I've been going through some pretty heavy personal shit, so as usual, I'm taking refuge in books.
Book #38 was Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, which I read for Banned Books Week.
From the Publisher:
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison's lyrical third novel, begins with an arresting scene -- a man on a roof threatening to jump, a woman standing on the ground, singing, and another woman entering labor. The child born of that labor is Macon "Milkman" Dead III; Song of Solomon is the epic story of his life-time journey toward an understanding of his own identity and ancestry. Milkman is born burdened with the materialistic values of his father and the weight of a racist society; over the course of his odyssey he reconnects to his deeper family values and history, rids himself of the burden of his father's expectations and society's limitations, and literally learns to fly.
When the novel opens, Milkman is clearly a man with little or no concern for others. Like his father, he is driven only by his immediate sensual needs; he is spoiled and self-centered and pursues money and sexual gratification at all costs. The novel centers around his search for a lost bag of gold that was allegedly taken from a man involved in his grandfather's murder and then abandoned by his Aunt Pilate. The search for gold takes Milkman and his friend Guitar, a young black militant, to Shalimar, a town named for his great-grandfather Solomon, who according to local legend escaped slavery by taking flight back to Africa on the wind. On his journey, under the influence of his Aunt Pilate, a strong, fearless, natural woman whose values are the opposite of Milkman's father's, Milkman begins to come to terms with his family history, his role as a man, and the possibilities of his life apart from a cycle of physical lust and satisfaction.
In telling the story of Milkman's quest to discover the hidden history of the Deads, Morrison expertly weaves together elements of myth, magic, and folklore. She grapples with fundamental issues of class and race, ancestry and identity, while never losing sight of Milkman's compelling story. The language in Song of Solomon, Morrison's only novel with a male protagonist, is earthy and poetic, the characters eccentric, and the detail vivid and convincing. The result is a novel that is at once emotionally intense, provocative, and inspiring in its description of how one man rediscovered the latent power within him.
Song of Solomon is considered to be Toni Morrison's masterpiece and is in the top echelon of literary works produced by any American writer. It is also her breakthrough novel in both critical and commercial success: It was the first African American novel since Native Son to be a main selection of the Book of the Month club and it won the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award among others. The book received a second life, and best-seller status, twenty years after its initial publication when talk show host Oprah Winfrey announced it as a selection for her on-air book club.
I read this for Banned Book Week. I've read Morrison before, and enjoyed her, and I'm glad of both those facts. They are what kept me going through what is a fabulously written, entirely gripping, but sometimes random novel. It's an exercise in WTF?!? much of the time. It's worth the brain cramps, but it can be hard to get into this one and hard to follow the hard lefts and cloverleaves the story takes.
Morrison's a brilliant storyteller, and Song of Solomon reads more like a late-night narrative told around a Formica kitchen table than a straightfoward novel -- something I've noticed about her other writing as well. It takes a bit for this story to sort of warm up -- the first chapters feel at best loosely connected, and I kept wondering when she was going to get to the plot or the central story, because much of the first chapters is all about setting up characters and timeperiod and setting. The story doesn't seem to go anywhere for a long time.
When it does start going somewhere, you are taken on such a breakneck ride that it's hard to keep up. When Morrison introduces the concept of The Days, a group of Black men who kill whites in retribution for the killing of Blacks (like Emmitt Till), the story becomes noticeably darker, and the political undercurrent grabs you unexpectedly. Similiarly, when the central mystery of the book starts to unfold -- the long standing hatred between Macon Dead and his sister Pilate over their father's murder and the supposed theft by Pilate of a hoarde of gold -- the reader wants to keep turning the pages to find out the answer, but is taken down a million backroads of the American South in mid-century.
Morrison is never in too much of a hurry to get to the end of a good story, and Song of Solomon is no exception. It's not until perhaps the last 50 pages that you realize who Solomon is, what the Song has to do with anything, and that ultimately this is a book about the search for meaning and identity, told in the most subtle and beguiling of ways.
I would recommend this one, but would recommend reading some other Morrison first to get used to her cadence, her style, her use of dialect and language. This would be a rough slog if you were not already familiar with Morrison and other Black American writers of her generation, who use many of the same conventions and devices.
Book #39 was Meridon by Phillippa Gregory.
From the Publisher:
Meridon knows she does not belong in the dirty, vagabond life of a gypsy bareback rider. The half-remembered vision of another life burns in her heart, even as her beloved sister, Dandy, risks everything for their future. Alone, Meridon follows the urgings of her dream, riding in the moonlight past the rusted gates, up the winding drive to a house -- clutching the golden clasp of the necklace that was her birthright -- home at last to Wideacre. The lost heir of one of England's great estates would take her place as its mistress....
Crowning the extraordinary trilogy that began with Wideacre and The Favored Child, Meridon is a rich, impassioned tapestry of a young woman's journey from dreams to glittering drawing rooms and elaborate deceits...from a simple hope to a deep and fulfilling love. Set in the savage contrasts of Georgian England -- a time alive with treachery, grandeur, and intrigue -- Meridon is Philippa Gregory's masterwork.
I waited for this book for months. It goes pretty fast on Bookmooch, so when I finally got a copy I devoured it.
It is not Gregory's masterwork. It is an enjoyable story, and brings closure to the Wideacre trilogy, but it's not really that great of a book. I've said before in reviewing the Wideacre books that I suppose I am spoiled by getting into Gregory with the Tudor books, which are so superior to the Wideacre books, and which represent her maturing as a writer. The Wideacre books in general, and Meridon in particular, are very laden with Gothic convention, and are just a littler predictable.
It's a shame, because the premise of the story in Meridon is a good one. The telling is just a little ham-fisted, however. The characters never really seem to be real people, which was a shock. Generally Gregory creates such vivid characters that they can carry a mediocre story -- Beatrice in Wideacre was so beguiling that it was easy to look past a pretty predictable storyline. The sense I got from Meridon is that Gregory was tired and wanted to wrap up ther series, bring closure to the storyline.
There's really no major plot point in the story that comes as a surprise, and quite a few I saw coming from a mile away. The climactic gambling scene where Sarah/Meridon and Will win back the deeds for Wideacre was totally predictable, as is the romance the ensues between them. Perry and Lady Clara Havering are terrible characitures of the Quality. And Sarah/Meridon's sudden conversion from shallow, bitter, cold aspiring Quality to commoner-loving, communal minded, Jacobite is quite simply not believable. She is a characiature at both ends of the spectrum, and it's impossible to believe that someone as hard and cold as Quality Sarah could, on her near-death bed, simply change her mind and become content to live with Will in Acre.
I was so terribly disappointed. This could have been an amazing story, but by the end I was slogging through just to say I'd completed the trilogy.
Book #40 was RubyFruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
From the Publisher:
Rubyfruit Jungle is the first milestone novel in the extraordinary career of one of this country's most distinctive writers. Bawdy and moving, the ultimate word-of-mouth bestseller, Rubyfruit Jungle is about growing up a lesbian in America - and living happily ever after.
Born a bastard, Molly Bolt is adopted by a dirt-poor Southern couple who want something better for their daughter. Molly plays doctor with the boys, beats up Leroy the tub and loses her virginity to her girlfriend in sixth grade.
As she grows to realize she's different, Molly decides not to apologize for that. In no time she mesmerizes the head cheerleader of Ft. Lauderdale High and captivates a gorgeous bourbon-guzzling heiress.
But the world is not tolerant. Booted out of college for moral turpitude, an unrepentant, penniless Molly takes New York by storm, sending not a few female hearts aflutter with her startling beauty, crackling wit and fierce determination to become the greatest filmmaker that ever lived.
Critically acclaimed when first published, Rubyfruit Jungle has only grown in reputation as it has reached new generations of readers who respond to its feisty and inspiring heroine.
"Baby, you can't call yourself queer and a feminist if you haven't read Rubyfruit Jungle."
Those were the words with which my sweetie handed me this classic by Rita Mae Brown. It's a fun read. Molly Bolt is one of the more engaging heriones I've read, and I'm sure she was completely scandalous in 1973 when this book came out. This is a bare-bones story, told in Molly's forthright (I almost said straightforward LOL) voice. She is no nonsense, and this book is as much a manifesto about being who you are and doing so without shame and with as much aplomb as possible, as it is a novel. I can see why this is a cornerstone of queer literary culture.
It didn't blow me away, and I've read more shocking things in the latest ladies' magazines, but I appreciate Rubyfruit for making the last 35 years of queer literature possible. This is one of the mother texts, and I can't wait to read some more of Brown's work. And I can clearly see her influence on my own generation of queer writers.
Molly Bolt, I want to be you when I grow up.
Book #41 was by Joanne Fleischer
From the Publisher:
From 1967 to 1979 Joanne Fleisher led a happy life in the suburbs, a mother of two and the wife of a successful lawyer. Then she fell in love with a female friend and everything changed. Her experiences, as well as those of the women who write to her advice column Ask Joanne (www.lavendervisions.com), inspired her to write Living Two Lives, a guide for women grappling with the difficult process of coming out while being married to a man. Now a licensed clinical social worker, Fleisher has conducted married women's support groups, weekend conferences, individual therapy sessions, and national and international phone consultations for women in this situation. She now brings her wealth of insight to this guide to help married women navigate the stages of coming out: initial feelings of same-sex attraction, telling husbands and children, managing a roller coaster of emotions (grief at the end of a marriage, confusion and anger at the loss of heterosexual privilege, guilt, anxiety, depression), developing a support system, executing the awkward phases of dating, and, finally, moving into a new chapter of life. In addition, Living Two Lives provides resources on organizations for married women, suggested reading, and helpful websites. Married women are a huge but invisible part of the lesbian population, often falling between the cracks of available resources. This book is a welcome tool to guide them out of isolation and into rich, rewarding lives.
My sweetie gave me this book because I'm going through the same experience as Fleischer and the women who read her message board right now -- my husband and I have been together 12 years, and in the last year started a poly relationship which has brought challenges into our marriage and questions into my mind and heart about where I belong.
This book is indispensible for those dealing with this issue, and for those who work in the therapeutic professions who have clients who face these issues. The biggest thing it did for me was convince me I'm not alone and not a terrible person for having these questions and feelings. It also helped me understand my husband's reactions.
Fleischer talked to women who made a myriad of choices -- open relationships, divorce, recommitting to their marriages -- and offers a wonderful guidebook for going through the process of defining yourself and what you need it is not a manual for how to leave your marriage -- though that is an option she discusses. She urges women to focus on themselves and gives journalling exercises and practical steps women can take. She also urges us to make sure to meet our own needs, and not depend on any partner to do so.
This book has made a very difficult time for me much easier. I've been using it in conjunction with therapy and it has helped me through the trauma and fear of this experience.
It could have benefitted from a second proofing, as there are some typos, but the book itself is so incredible and useful and touching that it really doesn't matter. The message comes through.
Book #38 was Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, which I read for Banned Books Week.
From the Publisher:
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison's lyrical third novel, begins with an arresting scene -- a man on a roof threatening to jump, a woman standing on the ground, singing, and another woman entering labor. The child born of that labor is Macon "Milkman" Dead III; Song of Solomon is the epic story of his life-time journey toward an understanding of his own identity and ancestry. Milkman is born burdened with the materialistic values of his father and the weight of a racist society; over the course of his odyssey he reconnects to his deeper family values and history, rids himself of the burden of his father's expectations and society's limitations, and literally learns to fly.
When the novel opens, Milkman is clearly a man with little or no concern for others. Like his father, he is driven only by his immediate sensual needs; he is spoiled and self-centered and pursues money and sexual gratification at all costs. The novel centers around his search for a lost bag of gold that was allegedly taken from a man involved in his grandfather's murder and then abandoned by his Aunt Pilate. The search for gold takes Milkman and his friend Guitar, a young black militant, to Shalimar, a town named for his great-grandfather Solomon, who according to local legend escaped slavery by taking flight back to Africa on the wind. On his journey, under the influence of his Aunt Pilate, a strong, fearless, natural woman whose values are the opposite of Milkman's father's, Milkman begins to come to terms with his family history, his role as a man, and the possibilities of his life apart from a cycle of physical lust and satisfaction.
In telling the story of Milkman's quest to discover the hidden history of the Deads, Morrison expertly weaves together elements of myth, magic, and folklore. She grapples with fundamental issues of class and race, ancestry and identity, while never losing sight of Milkman's compelling story. The language in Song of Solomon, Morrison's only novel with a male protagonist, is earthy and poetic, the characters eccentric, and the detail vivid and convincing. The result is a novel that is at once emotionally intense, provocative, and inspiring in its description of how one man rediscovered the latent power within him.
Song of Solomon is considered to be Toni Morrison's masterpiece and is in the top echelon of literary works produced by any American writer. It is also her breakthrough novel in both critical and commercial success: It was the first African American novel since Native Son to be a main selection of the Book of the Month club and it won the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award among others. The book received a second life, and best-seller status, twenty years after its initial publication when talk show host Oprah Winfrey announced it as a selection for her on-air book club.
I read this for Banned Book Week. I've read Morrison before, and enjoyed her, and I'm glad of both those facts. They are what kept me going through what is a fabulously written, entirely gripping, but sometimes random novel. It's an exercise in WTF?!? much of the time. It's worth the brain cramps, but it can be hard to get into this one and hard to follow the hard lefts and cloverleaves the story takes.
Morrison's a brilliant storyteller, and Song of Solomon reads more like a late-night narrative told around a Formica kitchen table than a straightfoward novel -- something I've noticed about her other writing as well. It takes a bit for this story to sort of warm up -- the first chapters feel at best loosely connected, and I kept wondering when she was going to get to the plot or the central story, because much of the first chapters is all about setting up characters and timeperiod and setting. The story doesn't seem to go anywhere for a long time.
When it does start going somewhere, you are taken on such a breakneck ride that it's hard to keep up. When Morrison introduces the concept of The Days, a group of Black men who kill whites in retribution for the killing of Blacks (like Emmitt Till), the story becomes noticeably darker, and the political undercurrent grabs you unexpectedly. Similiarly, when the central mystery of the book starts to unfold -- the long standing hatred between Macon Dead and his sister Pilate over their father's murder and the supposed theft by Pilate of a hoarde of gold -- the reader wants to keep turning the pages to find out the answer, but is taken down a million backroads of the American South in mid-century.
Morrison is never in too much of a hurry to get to the end of a good story, and Song of Solomon is no exception. It's not until perhaps the last 50 pages that you realize who Solomon is, what the Song has to do with anything, and that ultimately this is a book about the search for meaning and identity, told in the most subtle and beguiling of ways.
I would recommend this one, but would recommend reading some other Morrison first to get used to her cadence, her style, her use of dialect and language. This would be a rough slog if you were not already familiar with Morrison and other Black American writers of her generation, who use many of the same conventions and devices.
Book #39 was Meridon by Phillippa Gregory.
From the Publisher:
Meridon knows she does not belong in the dirty, vagabond life of a gypsy bareback rider. The half-remembered vision of another life burns in her heart, even as her beloved sister, Dandy, risks everything for their future. Alone, Meridon follows the urgings of her dream, riding in the moonlight past the rusted gates, up the winding drive to a house -- clutching the golden clasp of the necklace that was her birthright -- home at last to Wideacre. The lost heir of one of England's great estates would take her place as its mistress....
Crowning the extraordinary trilogy that began with Wideacre and The Favored Child, Meridon is a rich, impassioned tapestry of a young woman's journey from dreams to glittering drawing rooms and elaborate deceits...from a simple hope to a deep and fulfilling love. Set in the savage contrasts of Georgian England -- a time alive with treachery, grandeur, and intrigue -- Meridon is Philippa Gregory's masterwork.
I waited for this book for months. It goes pretty fast on Bookmooch, so when I finally got a copy I devoured it.
It is not Gregory's masterwork. It is an enjoyable story, and brings closure to the Wideacre trilogy, but it's not really that great of a book. I've said before in reviewing the Wideacre books that I suppose I am spoiled by getting into Gregory with the Tudor books, which are so superior to the Wideacre books, and which represent her maturing as a writer. The Wideacre books in general, and Meridon in particular, are very laden with Gothic convention, and are just a littler predictable.
It's a shame, because the premise of the story in Meridon is a good one. The telling is just a little ham-fisted, however. The characters never really seem to be real people, which was a shock. Generally Gregory creates such vivid characters that they can carry a mediocre story -- Beatrice in Wideacre was so beguiling that it was easy to look past a pretty predictable storyline. The sense I got from Meridon is that Gregory was tired and wanted to wrap up ther series, bring closure to the storyline.
There's really no major plot point in the story that comes as a surprise, and quite a few I saw coming from a mile away. The climactic gambling scene where Sarah/Meridon and Will win back the deeds for Wideacre was totally predictable, as is the romance the ensues between them. Perry and Lady Clara Havering are terrible characitures of the Quality. And Sarah/Meridon's sudden conversion from shallow, bitter, cold aspiring Quality to commoner-loving, communal minded, Jacobite is quite simply not believable. She is a characiature at both ends of the spectrum, and it's impossible to believe that someone as hard and cold as Quality Sarah could, on her near-death bed, simply change her mind and become content to live with Will in Acre.
I was so terribly disappointed. This could have been an amazing story, but by the end I was slogging through just to say I'd completed the trilogy.
Book #40 was RubyFruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
From the Publisher:
Rubyfruit Jungle is the first milestone novel in the extraordinary career of one of this country's most distinctive writers. Bawdy and moving, the ultimate word-of-mouth bestseller, Rubyfruit Jungle is about growing up a lesbian in America - and living happily ever after.
Born a bastard, Molly Bolt is adopted by a dirt-poor Southern couple who want something better for their daughter. Molly plays doctor with the boys, beats up Leroy the tub and loses her virginity to her girlfriend in sixth grade.
As she grows to realize she's different, Molly decides not to apologize for that. In no time she mesmerizes the head cheerleader of Ft. Lauderdale High and captivates a gorgeous bourbon-guzzling heiress.
But the world is not tolerant. Booted out of college for moral turpitude, an unrepentant, penniless Molly takes New York by storm, sending not a few female hearts aflutter with her startling beauty, crackling wit and fierce determination to become the greatest filmmaker that ever lived.
Critically acclaimed when first published, Rubyfruit Jungle has only grown in reputation as it has reached new generations of readers who respond to its feisty and inspiring heroine.
"Baby, you can't call yourself queer and a feminist if you haven't read Rubyfruit Jungle."
Those were the words with which my sweetie handed me this classic by Rita Mae Brown. It's a fun read. Molly Bolt is one of the more engaging heriones I've read, and I'm sure she was completely scandalous in 1973 when this book came out. This is a bare-bones story, told in Molly's forthright (I almost said straightforward LOL) voice. She is no nonsense, and this book is as much a manifesto about being who you are and doing so without shame and with as much aplomb as possible, as it is a novel. I can see why this is a cornerstone of queer literary culture.
It didn't blow me away, and I've read more shocking things in the latest ladies' magazines, but I appreciate Rubyfruit for making the last 35 years of queer literature possible. This is one of the mother texts, and I can't wait to read some more of Brown's work. And I can clearly see her influence on my own generation of queer writers.
Molly Bolt, I want to be you when I grow up.
Book #41 was by Joanne Fleischer
From the Publisher:
From 1967 to 1979 Joanne Fleisher led a happy life in the suburbs, a mother of two and the wife of a successful lawyer. Then she fell in love with a female friend and everything changed. Her experiences, as well as those of the women who write to her advice column Ask Joanne (www.lavendervisions.com), inspired her to write Living Two Lives, a guide for women grappling with the difficult process of coming out while being married to a man. Now a licensed clinical social worker, Fleisher has conducted married women's support groups, weekend conferences, individual therapy sessions, and national and international phone consultations for women in this situation. She now brings her wealth of insight to this guide to help married women navigate the stages of coming out: initial feelings of same-sex attraction, telling husbands and children, managing a roller coaster of emotions (grief at the end of a marriage, confusion and anger at the loss of heterosexual privilege, guilt, anxiety, depression), developing a support system, executing the awkward phases of dating, and, finally, moving into a new chapter of life. In addition, Living Two Lives provides resources on organizations for married women, suggested reading, and helpful websites. Married women are a huge but invisible part of the lesbian population, often falling between the cracks of available resources. This book is a welcome tool to guide them out of isolation and into rich, rewarding lives.
My sweetie gave me this book because I'm going through the same experience as Fleischer and the women who read her message board right now -- my husband and I have been together 12 years, and in the last year started a poly relationship which has brought challenges into our marriage and questions into my mind and heart about where I belong.
This book is indispensible for those dealing with this issue, and for those who work in the therapeutic professions who have clients who face these issues. The biggest thing it did for me was convince me I'm not alone and not a terrible person for having these questions and feelings. It also helped me understand my husband's reactions.
Fleischer talked to women who made a myriad of choices -- open relationships, divorce, recommitting to their marriages -- and offers a wonderful guidebook for going through the process of defining yourself and what you need it is not a manual for how to leave your marriage -- though that is an option she discusses. She urges women to focus on themselves and gives journalling exercises and practical steps women can take. She also urges us to make sure to meet our own needs, and not depend on any partner to do so.
This book has made a very difficult time for me much easier. I've been using it in conjunction with therapy and it has helped me through the trauma and fear of this experience.
It could have benefitted from a second proofing, as there are some typos, but the book itself is so incredible and useful and touching that it really doesn't matter. The message comes through.