Books – Page 38 – …on the B.L.

Bridges

October 6, 2017 RaeAnna

Read No
Length 194
Quick Review The plot is flat, and the characters are superficial at best. For having a grammar police of a main character, the syntax is riddled with errors. The cover is incredibly misleading. Overall, it reads like a sub par young adult novel.

Bridges by Maria Murnane is a novel about female friendship. Three women, who met in college, are in very different points in their lives. Told through the eyes of Daphne, a divorcée, mom and aspiring novelist from Ohio; she meets her friends in New York City for a long weekend. Daphne celebrates the impending marriage of the successful and perpetually single Skylar along with KC, the hottest, youngest grandma there ever was. Though they are close, they still have things to learn about each other, which could bring them together or drive them apart.

The story centers around three women in their forties, but the cover is incredibly misleading picturing three women looking to be in their early twenties. Not only is the cover mismatched but the title, as well. I have finished the book, and I still am not quite sure where Bridges comes into play.

Murnane tries to tackle the complexities of female friendship but falls short. Her characters are hollow. Their friendship feels incredibly surface. One of the largest contributing factors to this is the dialogue. Murnane makes a concerted effort to keep the dialogue light and true to how people talk; however, it doesn’t flow naturally. She tries too hard to make the dialogue witty and interesting. There are unnecessary characters, who do nothing to further the plot. Murnane is trying to stay relevant by using Lokai bracelets, but it’s kitschy and overdone. She also tries to incorporate internet dating through an irrelevant side character. The “horrifying” dating experiences she comes up with may have been avant garde in the 1940’s, but they’re nothing to bat an eye at for any actively dating woman under the age of 45.

Daphne seems to be a fictional version of Murnane as an aspiring novelist. The other characters are always referring to Daphne as something of a grammar police. She shows her knowledge of grammar in ludicrous ways, which add nothing to the story except irritate and distract the reader. After constant mention of being the perfect icon of grammar, the novel itself is riddled with grammar mistakes and odd word choices.

Overall, the novel could be something really interesting, but, as it stands, Bridges is a let down falling short of a the complexity that is female friendship. I would be happy to recommend you better novels about female friendship. Just let me know!

Memorable Quotes
“… love is completely random. There’s no rhyme nor reason whatsoever to where we’ll find it, or how.”

Title: Bridges
Author: Maria Murnane
Publisher: Self-Published
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9780980042511

Books, Fiction

Children of the Jacaranda Tree

October 3, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 285
Quick Review The complexities of being a parent making choices forever impacting children, and children forever remembering and reeling from their parents’ choices.

Delijani begins Children of the Jacaranda Tree with a booming voice describing a mother’s love and desperate journey for survival. With moments of roman á clef, it is evident the topic of the novel is very near to Delijani’s heart.

The novel is about children growing up against the backdrop of Iran in the midst of the war with Iraq and struggle with the revolution during the 1980’s as well as the early 2000’s. The adults are revolutionaries in prison or raising the children of revolutionaries in prison. The children are grown up trying to piece together the meaning of their lives in relation to their parents and their home country.

The jacaranda tree is in the backyard of a grandmother. Every character goes in and out of this woman’s house. Some stay longer than others, but the tree plays a very small role in the book. Though it becomes a powerful symbol for each person; though, to each person it symbolizes something different.

Delijani is able to write with a palpable sense of fear as it permeates every main and supporting characters’ life in Iran as women, as men, as people, as revolutionaries. The adults fear for their lives and their freedom; they fear how to explain reality to their children. Though the children are too young to comprehend, they are able to sense fear. Every parent must explain the revolution and Evin prison to their children, but each struggles to explain it in a different way. As every parent must explain struggle and hardship, they do the best they can.

History repeats itself. Though decades separate the struggles of the parents and the children, they end up fighting the same battles with the same repercussions always with a sense of fear they will end up in Evin prison, where their parents once were imprisoned. The children repeat their parents’ hopes, actions, lives, and even mistakes. Some children know the details of their parents’ pasts, and some do not. The actions and pasts of their parents belong to the children in one way or another impacting their lives.

Every character in the story is trapped. Some are physically bound, and others are restrained psychologically. They are trapped by past, by grief, by tradition, by prison, by family, by responsibility, by secrets, and more.

Delijani writes a vibrant and emotionally charged novel about a subject so often forgotten, glanced over, or blatantly ignored. It is difficult to imagine this being the reality children had to grow up in less than thirty years ago. Delijani is able to bring that reality to life by telling the stories of so many children left behind.

Memorable Quotes
“It was important to her to know that she could choose those dresses, that this choice, although hidden from view, was still hers.”
“He was no longer anywhere.”
“The past is slippery, unreliable, like melting snow on marble stairs.”
“For secrets steal your childhood away from you.”

Title: Children of the Jacaranda Tree
Author: Sahar Delijani
Publisher: Atria Paperback (Simon & Schuster)
Copyright: 2014
ISBN: 9781476709109

Books

Cancel the Wedding

September 30, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 416
Quick Review After her mother’s death, a young woman realizes how little she knows about her mother and herself. She goes on a journey to find both with her niece by her side.

In Dingman’s debut novel she writes a sweet novel filled with family ties, mystery, love, history, and southern small town charm. It’s an easy read which screams to be read on the beach during a hot summer vacation.

Olivia has it all a stable fiancé, a high powered career, a life in Washington DC, and now a wedding date. When everything in her life couldn’t seem more stable, she decides to head south to a small town in Georgia with her niece to discover the past her mother left behind a long time ago. She has no idea what she will find and even less of an idea of how to find it. Guided by a short note in her mother’s will and determination, she sets off on what was meant to be a long weekend.

Behind the sweet façade of a story, Dingman explores the complex issue of a mother-daughter relationship. She uses Olivia and her sister, Georgia, to look into the relationship daughters have with their mothers as adults, and Georgia and her daughter, Logan, to show the difficulty both daughters and mothers go through to establish a sense of self and a link to one another.

As the title suggest, Cancel the Wedding, delves into idea of a wedding and a marriage being linked yet separate identities. So often, it is easy to focus on the traditional steps of creating a life – meeting, dating, engagement, buying property, wedding – that one can forget the life after the wedding, and also lose oneself in the planning. Because life isn’t simple, Dingman is able to complicate her characters’ lives, so they have to sort out what means the most.

Cancel the Wedding is not a literary feat, but it is a great first novel appealing to a wide scope of readers with a penchant for romance and mystery.

Memorable Quotes
“You really only have a passionate row if you feel completely confident that you can get through it, or if you’re using it as the hand grenade tossed over your shoulder on your way out the door.”
“It took a lot of smoke and mirrors and subterfuge to make the world see you the way you wanted them to.”
“I was starting to get that prickly feeling again about not wanting to get married.”

Title: Cancel the Wedding
Author: Carolyn T. Dingman
Publisher: HarperCollins
Copyright: 2014
ISBN: 9780062276728

Books

Blackass

September 25, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 272
Quick Review A modern retelling of Kafka’s Metamorphosis exploring identity through race in Lagos, Nigeria after a black man wakes up as a white man.

A. Igoni Barrett brings a new depth to a classic novel by diving into the complicated issue of race in Nigeria as well as the power of perception. Barrett writes with incredible wit.

Furo wakes up one morning to discover his once dark skin is now very pink and pale. Blackass follows Furo as he navigates the world he was once familiar with through very different eyes.

Furo is a young man in his early thirties. For the young and all ages in between, Twitter and Facebook have become incredibly integral parts of our lives, and Barrett is able to incorporate these aspects into the narrative. An entire section of the novel is dedicated to sleuthing through tweets, as we have all cyberstalked someone once. Barrett also describes the difficult challenge of trying to shut down a Facebook page and needing Google to find the answer. Technology has permeated every aspect of our lives including our literature.

Barrett explores how truly powerful perception can be both in favor and against a person. As people, we immediately begin sorting people into different classes by the way they look. Though we do our best to fight it, it is an intrinsic quality we have. Even the Nigerians tend to prefer whiteness to blackness in everything they do from the little things from bleaching cream to deferential treatment to blatant statements that white westerners are more together than black Africans.

The most interesting aspect of the novel is how well Barrett is able to capture the depth and range of the female experience in such a short novel. There are several women who weave in and out of Furo’s story. Each woman is able to portray a different woman’s part in society. In moments, I was astounded at the depth of understanding Barrett had for the female condition. It is powerful and moving in its unwavering honesty.

Barrett writes a captivating novel from beginning to end.

Memorable Quotes
“Then again, she had never faced the parental pressure he did – a woman can find a husband to take care of her, but a man must take care of his wife…”
“… I was already trying to say what I see now, that we are all constructed narratives.”
“A white man in Lagos has no voice louder than the dollar sign branded on to his forehead.”
“No one asks you to be born, to be black or white or any colour in between, and yet the identity a person is born into becomes the hardest to explain to the world.”
“Who I was as a person was more than what I looked like, but then again, how people saw me was a part of who I was.”
“Womanhood comes with its peculiar burdens, among them the distant reminder of subordinate status whose dominant symptom was uninvited sexual attention from men.”
“Pity the man who never becomes the woman he could be.”
“‘And you’re a white man. You don’t have to fuck anyone for favours.’”
“No one’s path is laid out from birth, we must all choose our own through life, and what greater gift is given a person than the chance to see the destinations where the roads not taken might have led you.”

Title: Blackass
Author: A. Igoni Barrett
Publisher: Graywolf Press (Vintage/Penguin Random House)
Copyright: 2015
ISBN: 9781555977337

Books, Fiction

Blueprints for Building Better Girls

September 21, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 288
Quick Review A collection of eight stories loosely connected exploring the pressures of being female in a rapidly changing world.

Elissa Schappell tries to approach the issues of modern womanhood with her collection of Blueprints for Building Better Girls. She approaches issues concerning women: sexual assault, rape, motherhood, working, miscarriage, marriage, education, and eating disorders. The women in Schappell’s stories are post-modern women trying to carve out their own paths, but are constantly bombarded with advice from the old guard. Many women eventually succumb to the roles their mother’s filled. Even the characters who go against the traditional have a subconscious voicing the opinions of the older generation. This voice comes out in their opinions of other women; always critiquing and judging other women on their appearance, look, and life choices. The stories are all told from the female perspective. Motherhood, being the perfect mom. The story also explores the complexities of a mother-daughter relationship from both viewpoints of mother and daughter. It also has a brief glimpse into the influence men can have on women as husbands, fathers, brothers, and people in society.

Schappell writes with moments of true insight into the essence of womanhood. She crafts some truly lovely sentences, which scream to be quoted. The stories are loosely linked as some characters or their actions show up in the stories of others. I enjoyed this component of the book, but I also found it highly confusing. Anytime a character was named, I was trying to figure out where I had, if I had, seen them before in the book; it encouraged active reading, but also created a sort of chunkiness to the flow. There were stories with a high level of interaction with the book as a whole; while others called their real importance into question for the collection as a whole.

One of my favorite stories was “Out of the Blue and into the Black.” The main character, Belinda/Bender, is a young woman in college trying to find her own way in the world while figuring out how to live her life on campus after her friend, a main character from another story, was raped by a fraternity boy. Bender was there the night her friend was raped; she feels like she is the only one who remembers her friend and her struggle. The most interesting part of this story was when she calls attention to the fact her guy friends were in an uproar when they found out about the rape. The guys said they would go and beat him up. Another said he would talk to the fraternity president because they needed to know. After time passed and nothing happened, Bender realized it was just male bravado. Men act upset but never actually do anything. The friend who said he’d talk to the president kept brushing it off saying it was a “private issue.” I think this moment in the story makes a point about how swept under the rug and how common place and how ignored and how accepted rape is by the gender who commits it the majority of the time.

The stories take place in different time periods with different aged protagonists from different backgrounds. The majority of the women were educated, middle-class women, all assumably white. The perspective and narrator differs from story to story. This allows for each story to stand apart from the other, but it causes some difficulty with cohesiveness.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book. I don’t think it makes sense entirely as a whole. Each part is really wonderful. Schappell brings attention to a lot of important issues women deal with throughout history and will continue to experience for a long time to come.

Memorable Quotes
“If I stopped him, we’d have to talk. The last thing I wanted to do is talk.”
“I don’t know why he’s so desperate to name me.”
“The label was slut, not charity worker.”
“People have always hated strong women. They fear we’re one turkey-baster away from abolishing men.”
“At least she’d lost weight. Ten pounds in three weeks. What did her mother always say? You have such a pretty face.”
“What did a woman who didn’t want children want? Or what did she want more than children? It was creepy.”
“Still, it wouldn’t be the worst thing to never see my mother again.”

Title: Blueprints for Building Better Girls
Author: Elissa Schappell
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Copyright: 2011
ISBN: 9780743276702

Books

Bringing Up Bébé

September 8, 2017 RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 266
Quick Review Druckerman describes her experiences living in France as an American and a new mother. She navigates the challenges and the positives of raising children in a foreign culture.

I read Bringing Up Bébé several years ago while I was in college. I don’t make a habit of reading parenting books, but I do enjoy reading cultural critiques of France as a francophone. I had lived in France for a time, and I had many of the same observations Druckerman makes throughout the book.

Druckerman moved to Paris to be with her, now, British husband, Simon. After the birth of their first daughter, she quickly realized the vast difference between American and French parents as well as American and French children. She set out to investigate the roots of these differences and how French parents managed to have such well behaved children and lives not over run by their prodigy. Druckerman does focus on motherhood, both French and American mothers, more than fatherhood because she is a mother herself.

Druckerman realized French families are not at the beck and call of every child in France. Instead parents are able to exist with their children in a familial “rhythm.” The French have an emphasis on the rhythms of children and paying attention to those; however, they believe children need to fit into the rhythm of the family as well. Druckerman was shocked at first to never see a screaming child in France. Instead, she saw a country full of children eating the same foods as adults, functioning independently, sleeping through the night by four months, reacting appropriately to being told no, and more. She strove to find and emulate this sense of calm French families possessed.

Druckerman quickly learned there is a more laid back attitude as parents. In the US, there is a never ending scrutiny parents live under, a sort of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The French base their parenting off science and common sense; whereas to Druckerman, it seemed the US emphasized the latest fad book or parenting theory. Some revolutionary and new parenting ideas to Druckerman were seen as so common sense the French parents forgot to even mention them. The French system is designed to aid parents instead of tear them down or hinder them.

Druckerman gives background information on many French parenting mainstays such as the crèche, the cadre, and more. She starts the book off with a dictionary of terms necessary to every parent in France.

Druckerman presents the French way of parenting in such a positive light, I came back to the book several years later. I have never been on the I want children bandwagon, but her book makes parenting seem less horrific. She is able to capture the dichotomy that is american parenting and showcase the positives France has been able to carefully cultivate over the centuries.

Druckerman writes with a sense of humor poking fun at both herself and the cultures she inhabits. Reading through Bringing Up Bébé you get a sense of who she is as a person and as a parent. It is easy to identify with her struggles and desire to be a good mom to her children. I highly suggest this book to any already parent, soon-to-be parent, and those who just want an insight into parenting in a different country and culture.

Memorable Quotes
“Of course American parents want their kids to be patient. … But patience isn’t a skill that we hone quite as assiduously as French parents do.”
“Setting limits for kids isn’t a French invention, of course.”
“I seem to have a philosophical problem, too.”

Title: Bringing Up Bébé; One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting
Author: Pamela Druckerman
Publisher: The Penguin Press
Copyright: 2012
ISBN: 9781594203336