Book reviews
Just completed: Three Dog LIfe (Abigail Thomas)
This reviewer said it well: “Abigail Thomas navigates a life redefined by ambiguous loss-a beloved husband who ‘is there and not there.’ She makes sense of mangled senses where a new logic is encoded; she lets mystery stand where translation is not possible." ~ Amy Hempel
I liked the way she dealt with 'ambiguous loss'. Nothing in the book is linear, and while the prose is crisp and emotive, it is not always easily understandable. Neither is the whole accident and its aftermath.
I was struck personally by the difference in dealing with a brain-damaged adult vs. a young adolescent or child who has been "brain damaged" since birth. Especially when the damage isn't always overtly evident and may be debatable. Like the manifestations of autism and rapidly cycling bipolar disorder.
My son's illnesses often show up in ways uncannily similar to the parnoid rages her husband experienced. Yet social workers and (some) health officials seem to think we should manage him at home. A social worker also proposed that to Ms. Thomas at one point. As she wrote, no one can manage this stuff. It's not a case of bad behavior, not completely. It's just not that simple.
More academically, or perhaps philosophically, some of the narrative in this book echoed stories Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia. One patient he describes lost short term memory and lives in a bizarre disconnect from time. How could Rich remember Abby so clearly, still love her deeply, and yet not remember from minute to minute what he is doing, where he is, or why? The dismantling of the brain is a very scary thing.
With both these books, the potential -- yet unstudied -- implications for autism and/or bipolar are both frightening and intriguing. I have seen mild disconnects like this in my son; read others who noted similar things.
At age eight, my child wanted to "turn back time" so he could undo his bad deeds, and he really believed it was possible to change the time on the clock and make it all go away. When it didn't work he accused me of having the power (I set the clocks, after all) and refusing to do so. Clearly, at an age when most children (in the culture he was raised in) not only understand time as linear but can read analog clocks and know what time their favorite TV shows are on, he had a different understanding of its flow. To him it was a reversible river.
What IS time anyhow?
Just started: We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lionel Shriver)
Wow. Disturbing for me, with the parallels to my last six months and worst nightmares, so far being eerily close.
It's wrong, I try to stop, and it is hard to explain to others, but the Mommy guilt dumped on women in this culture (maybe all, is it hormonal?), leads me to the same sort of musings as this reviewer points out:
"Eva Khatchadourian, Kevin's bereft mother, narrates this novel through a series of compelling letters to her estranged husband, Franklin. She examines her son's life, from conception to his terrible act of violence, trying to understand the why of it. What becomes clear early on is that Eva tortures herself with blame. She is guilt-ridden that her shortcomings as a parent might have caused Kevin's evil act, his violent behavior, his very nature. She must have failed, she must have been deficient as a mother, for her boy to commit such a chilling crime." ~ Jana L. Perskie
Another Perskie quote that runs parallel, disgustingly so: "... Kevin's difficult infancy - he refused his mother's milk and didn't like to be held by her; his total manipulation of his father, who believed Kevin could do no wrong, putting a permanent strain on the marriage; Kevin's lack of empathy and cruel streak, which he blatantly flaunted in front of his mother and hid from his Dad; and Eva's fear that her dislike for her son, which she went overboard to conceal, would damage him - further escalating his already violent nature. "
I'll see if I can finish this one. It's well written; painful and exactingly honest. I like the writer and want to finish but I cried this weekend over the whole thing. Maybe that was the brewing migraine. Maybe that prompted the migraine. Who knows ...
Why read this book at all? In the words of Cameron Woodhead, "What really matters is that Shriver has produced - through the voice of a fearsomely intelligent, self-absorbed, and utterly bereft mother - a breathtaking work of art."