The Pure Gold Baby

Margaret Drabble
The Pure Gold Baby

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013

London, early 1960s. Young anthropologist Jess has an affair with a married professor. The affair leads to pregnancy, childbirth of a pretty girl Anna, but the birth of the child in turn leads to a parting with the professor.

Jess keeps the child, explains the situation to the parents, and they generally understand their daughter. Jess in London is surrounded by intellectuals, scholars, poets, TV presenters, young professionals like herself. In her neighborhood Jess is getting acquainted to other young mothers, they walk together with children, take them into the kindergarten. The story is narrated by one of Jess’ friends, Eleanor, a lawyer, now retired. She recalls their youth and tries himself as a writer. Eleanor lived her whole life side by side with Jess. The narrator will notice the difference between 60s and 70s and 2000s.

About The Pure Gold Baby it can be said that this book is heartfelt, but not concentrated. Lying in the heart of the novel the story of a mother and daughter is very touching and humane. Fragile Jess is hardly a strong woman. Nevertheless, she took a strong decision to take care of a sweet but mentally retarded daughter, the pure gold baby from the title. Jess brought up Anna alone without relying on help from someone. All the men in her life were just lovers, romantic interests, flashes of passion, but not the breadwinners, fathers, defenders. Jess alone guarded Anna, making the daughter entirely dependent on her. But Jess herself, unwittingly, has become dependent on her daughter. Jess almost deprived herself of a life - career and possible lasting relationship with a man - for the sake of her daughter. But we can assume that Jess was just afraid to start over, afraid to alienate Anna, let into her life more fresh air.

On the background of relations between Jess and Anna, we read about the changes in England. Real estate prises have risen, manners softened, diet and nutrition appeared. The whole structure of psychiatric institutions changed. State and private investors began to create special schools for people with developmental problems. In place of a madhouse with notoriety came a fashionable clinic, where they began to treat nervous breakdowns and drug addictions. Money of higher classes, suffering from mental health problems, flowed into the clinic.

Drabble on behalf of the narrator then makes digressions from a central plot to insert a reference on Livingstone, television, science, art and so on. These are clever arguments, although they still remain digressions – adding almost nothing to the story.

In addition to the main group of characters the narrator Eleanor focuses on the fate of Jess’ friends, especially to those with whom she was familiar from the hospital. These disgressions are overrepetitious, and none of the supporting characters are really interesting to read about him or her a dozen pages. In fact the entire second half of the novel is more about old acquaintances of Jess, than about her. Anna’s and in some respects Jess’ lives remains static, respectively Eleanor tries to fill this static with the stories. The novel loses his focus, although the end is rather good.

Drabble writes lyrical prose (but without the usually amorphousness), I wish it were more focused. If we return to the title: this is not gold, rather silver.

Want Not

Jonathan Miles
Want Not

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013

The novel consists of three storylines, each of which develops independently, until the very end without overlaying with others. The action of all three stories begins on Thanksgiving Day in 2008.
Not surprisingly, the storylines do not intersect, because the main characters in the novel live in completely different worlds, though in fact reside in the state of New Jersey. Talmadge, a young man, the son of wealthy parents lives in New York. He dropped out from college and was addicted to hallucinogens. After one strong dosage he nearly dies in the cold when he is suddenly rescued by Micah. Mika is a freegan, a representative of a lifestyle, when a person takes from life all for free, living off nature (as far as it’s possible in the city). They illegally are squatting in an empty building in Manhattan, eating what people throw away - live off garbage.

The second storyline tells the story of a doctor and a linguistic expert on dead languages Elwin Cross Jr. This middle-aged man suffers from obesity and loneliness. His wife left him for a chef, calling at three o'clock and notifying about it. Cross needs to visit his ailing father with Alzheimer's, a writer who regularly forgets that his wife had died. With the theme of garbage Elwin connects becuae he takes part in the creation of a container of radioactive waste, which is created in the form of a messege to the future, for future generations. As a specialist in dead languages, Cross writes a message for this container.

The third subplot tells about the family of Dave. He is the boss of the collection agency, a successful businessman, a man who knows how after one phone call to persuade the customer to repay the debt. His wife Sara is a widow whose husband was killed during the 9/11 attacks. Together they raise 16-year-old daughter Alexis, which Dave calls like a stripper (according to Sara) - Lexie. Dave and Sara are of that type that are spending money right and left, buying what you need and what you don’t. Sara's main problem lies in the fact that she does not understand her daughter. Alexis trusts Dave more than her.

Every writer knows the best way to start a book. But many forget that the reader's patience is limited, and if you do not offer something enticing on the very first (and better right on the first one) pages, the reader pages may not finish reading to the end. Jonathan Miles lures you in with the first scene, moreover: each storyline of the novel opens with a brilliant scene. Thus, you can fall in love with the novel three times.

All three scenes as introduce us humane and quirky characters, as convince in Miles’ power of imagination. In the opening scene of the novel Talmadge is rummaging through garbage cans, recalls his uncle’s “cracker-barrel similes” until he stumbles upon a hostile tin cans collector. Dave is first introduced to us in the toilet, where he had taken a dump and is now considering his own feces. His excrements Dave finds perfect and even considers the idea to pick up a bunch with him, but stops at taking the pictures (which he will later show to Alexis). We first meet Dr. Cross when he returnes slightly drunk home and on the road knocks deer off. He takes a dead animal with him, and near the house on the snow begins to slice the deer in the cold , and is joined by Christopher, neighbor’s son.

All three scenes are hilariously funny: on the level of individual words, styles, sitations. And began hilarious, Want Not will remain funny over the entire length. There are also elements of toilet humor and jokes about sex, but they are all funny – that’s the main thing.

What is nice - the book doesn’t fall into a flat parody. It’s funny not because the author scoffs at something, but because the author is able to write funny, transmit humor through words. And despite all the humorous, the novel raises serious themes. Abundance of trash tells not that we need to throw away less, but about something else: there is no garbage in life, everything is needful and everything is useful. All the central characters are in their relations with the theme of consumption: Dave overconsumes, Micah and Talmadge live off garbage and Elwin creates words for garbage.
No garbage also is in the text of the novel. It is vigorously written, in New York style, with neologisms, hilarious metaphors and similes, vivid dialogue, but Miles doesn’t throw away words. Every detail here plays a role, making the characters more three-dimensional.

In Want Not there is none such skewness when the writer is concerned about global themes and the characters is only appendage that serves to convey the author's thoughts. Or the other case, when the writer is interesting in poking at the minds and lives of the characters, and the novel sags on shallow themes. The characters attract our attention immediately, and gradually with background stories within the overall plot Miles talks about the heroes’ past as they become what they are. Even the homeless from the first scene, collecting cans to pay for urinalysis, here is a red-blooded man.

All three storylines intersect in the final, though only tangentially, and Miles deserves praise for the grace with which he’d tied three completely different worlds which his characters live in.

Want Not was released closer to the end of the year, but it should not get lost in the offseason. This is one of the best books I've read in the past year.

The Lower River

Paul Theroux
The Lower River

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012

62-year-old owner of a menswear store in a small town in Massachusetts Ellis Hock's wife gives him a new phone. Gadget unexpectedly for a new owner restores old deleted emails, and among them are plenty off different kinds of love letters to ladies with whom Hock acquainted in the store and then exchanged e-mails. The wife and the husband have a scandal, go to the family counsellor but that leads nowhere, on the contrary, only worsens the situation, and the couple has a divorce. The only daughter asks for her share, and the shop owner is forced to sell his business.

Thinking over all his years of marriage, Hock finds that he hasn’t seen happiness in his life, not experienced love, doesn’t like vacations. The only time he was happy in his life was before marriage. More than forty years ago, young Hock for the four years lived in Africa as a part of Peace Corps, in a small village in Malawi. There, he was helpful and happy. He built a school, taught children English, helped local residents organize a clinic, has become a sort of mythical figure among locals, because he was the only white, mzungu, and the only one who was not afraid of snakes and could tame them. After the divorce, Hock helps a woman with python, which she has found, and feels that he has not lost his ability. This episode with the snake becomes a push to ensure the return to Malawi for a few weeks, to help local people, remember the past, recover from the stressful divorce.

Theroux, who wrote more than one guide, this time has turned to fiction about the harsh Africa. At the beginning of the novel Africa is a paradise that can bring back the past, to give strength, to help find yourself. But more and more it becomes obvious – to the protagonist and to the reader - there is no paradise on earth. Hock himself comes to the conclusion that we doesn’t need to go to Mars to find than different than usual earthly life – «Malabo was more distant than Mars».

Hopes and dreams of the protagonist rapidly break down, but he still has some time living a mirage. It's not easy to break the ideal of the past. The same mirage clouded his vision, only by this carelessness and irresponsibility of Hock can be explained. He could prepare for the trip, learn more about the state of affairs in Africa, to ensure himself, but he did not - he was blinded by the chance to feel happy again.

Life in the village of Malabo in The Lower River appears in all its ugliness. Theroux masterfully conveys the sounds, smells, customs, traditions, motifs of locals. The novel is essentially written in three languages: pure English, pidgin English and the language of Sena, the local dialect. Theroux in detail paints a loss of Hock’s strength, his exhaustion. The heat, the mosquitoes, malaria, dehydration, poor diet, lack of sleep, the most important - stress - Hock in one scene thinks he would be able to recover his health, but food and rest would not be enough, it would take a break from thinking about survival and escape. This novel is not about a Rambo, surviving in the jungle, who breaks a palm with his hand, but about the old confused man.

And yet, for all the time of his captivity Hock never dreams of quick and easy death as a deliverance. It is only a few times he thinks that now they would kill him or he will die in an accident, but with each failed attempt his will to live doesn’t reduce. He wants to live - but in freedom.

«I don't exist, Hock thought. No one knows I'm here, no one knows me, no one cares, and were this flimsy canoe to turn over, or be flipped by a hippo, no one would ever find me; no one would know I died. The world would continue to turn without me, my death would be unnoticed, would make no difference, because I am no one, no more than meat.»

Africa in the novel is a very strange place. Laziness, greed, stupidity destroyed the continent. Even more frightening is that at home the protagonist faced with the same. The difference is that in the U.S. he was home, but a stranger there.

This Theroux novel is an addictive thing. It is not that it is a page-turner, but the book is literally mesmerizing - its style, the atmosphere, the characters, the sense of impending doom. Not that I had read a lot of novels about Africa, but this one is probably the best.

A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism

Peter Mountford
A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism

Mariner Books, 2011

November 2005. Gabriel de Boya, half-Russian, half-Chilean, but educated as American, arrived in La Paz, Bolivia's de facto capital, as freelancer journalist. In fact, Gabriel is working on unscrupulous hedge fund Calloway. Trip to Bolivia is the first task for Gabriel. Stimulated by the $20,000 monthly salary, Gabriel, without giving himself away, must ferret out insider information for Calloway, thanks to which fund will be able to make the necessary transactions, leading to the enrichment of the company. Calloway actively expands in Latin America, looking for any loopholes. Bolivia, with its rich oil and gas reserves, is in the presidential election. The future of the country's industry will depend on the personality of the president.

In the first days in Bolivia Gabriel meets with the 40-year old journalist Fiona, covering the political life of South America for the Wall Street Journal. Acquaintance quickly turns into a sex relationship. However, neither Gabriel nor Fiona do not bind themselves to any promises or declarations.
Gabriel has accidentally got this job. After graduation he worked as a journalist in business magazines, had the experience. He sent resume - and got a positive response. Gabriel realizes that if he does not pass the first test, he will be fired immediately after his return to New York. Not having some sort of attraction to money, but having lived in poverty, our hero wants to work for Calloway for a few years, accumulating millions of dollars, then to once and for ever forget about financial unrest.

This is a strong debut novel with seemingly not too fresh topic, "What has more power, the money or feeling?", but topic really is fresh. Money there has scale, they’re not domestic. There are millions at stake there, plus the stability of the state's economy.

Mountford makes a call to the reader with his main character. Gabriel is a young man, not too experienced; not a predator, greedy for millions; not a villain, ready for any wickedness; nor schemer. He is a home boy, beloved by his mother and raised in kindness and love. Gabriel is just a little man. Fragile cog of the capitalist system. He wants to get rich, but not in order to become rich and enjoy the incredible luxury. He had suffered in his time. He feels the Chilean blood in his veins, blood mixed with the poor. And this feeling of inferiority does not leave him. Getting involved in big financial game, he still does not realize what transformation can happen to him. Maybe he is aware of it - but he did not stop. And his manipulation by rumors leads to quite unexpected results.

The author pumpes the suspence, and we expect that Gabriel is about to make a mistake. He will be disclosed, he will fail, and he’s waited for the shame and oblivion.

And he makes mistakes, but only in the other way: the way of the senses. He, long before fraud, crossed the line that can not be crossed, and did what you must not do. He knew where it all might lead. And now Gabriel is doomed to loneliness.

Mountford makes an experiment on the reader: can a reader feel for Gabriel, sympathize with him? Who is the hero, the lost souls or dark genius, amoral and descended? The reader, of course, will decide himself.

Author of the book does not provide answers to complex questions posed in the book. Does a lot of money exclude love? How far is a man willing to go to become a millionaire? What causes a person to money, genetic predisposition or education? Human being is an intricate structure. And the economy is arranged no less difficult.

Mountford not only got under the skin of capitalism, but also managed to build a tight plot that spans only a few weeks. Transformation of Gabriel performs in a short time. All the characters are in place, every detail helps to reveal a character. Stylistically, the book reminded me of «Snowdrops» by A.D. Miller (there are similarities in composition as well).

It’s a great book about economy and human feelings.

The Wrecking Light

Robin Robertson
The Wrecking Light

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011

This collection by British poet Robin Roberston consists both from his own poems and translations. Among those who Robertson translated, there are names such as Baudelaire, Ovid, Neruda. And if translations are often ploted, Robertson’s own poems are plotless (except for those that are based on myths.)
Robertson's eye is the photographer’s eye, how accurately he captures some part of the nature. Nature, everything that surrounds us, according to Roberston, is ominous and sometimes dangerous. But the poet finds those words that even at the most terrible you look at least with curiosity.


I go to check the children, who are done for.
They lie there broken on their beds, limbs thrown out
in the attitudes of death, the shape of soldiers.
The next morning, I look up at my reflection
in the train window: unshaven, with today's paper;
behind me stands a gunman in a hood.



Roberston is often contemplative, but not a participant. And to contemplate, it is necessary to step back, refuse to contact. Because of that the lyrical hero, sometimes present in the poem as "I", sometimes as a spirit standing behind photocamera, just pushing on the button of the camera, that seems a lonely and sympathetic, hiding his secret desire to get into nature, into the nature of things.


I remember the tiny stars
of her hands around her belly
as it grew and grew, and how
after a year, nothing came.
How she said it was still there,
inside her, a stone-belly.
And how I saw her wrists
bangled with scars
and those hands flittering
at her throat,
to the plectrum of bone
she'd hung there.

When the lyric hero finds himself in his own image as he becomes part of a sinister world, the hero does not experience the illusion of his own purity and integrity. He is as grim as the world around: No light shining back at me, just shame.
Robertson’s poems are not loudly; on the contrary - often full of ominous silence: If you're absolutely silent and still, you can hear nothing but the sound of nothing.
You want to remember by heart the poems from this book, to pronounce privately, but not out loud.

The Needle

Jennifer Grotz
The Needle

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011

In her second collection of poems Jennifer Grotz looks at people and urban landscape of the modern city. In an interview Grotz noted that she’s tried to make this book more objective. Indeed, the poet is almost merges with the world. In the first part of the book most of the poems are about a city, and in them there is almost no "I". City in Grotz’s poetry is not mythologized, it remains what it has in a very material sense: the walls, roads, the smells, the colors, of course, people.

The city would begin as slowly as the old man in a brown fedora
making his way down the street, a walking stick in one hand
and the arm of the elderly woman beside him in the other.

The author has traveled extensively, and this is reflected in Grotz’s poems. Icons, Town Square, a nun, break-dansers, street theater - all this the author brings with her from the travel, putting into verse.

I can't make out their words, but I'm thinking about an actor
who bequeathed his own skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company
to serve as Yorik's in the graveyard scene,

wanting perhaps to serve later Hamlets in this modest way,
having spent many nights holding up a plaster copy
and looking deep into the empty eye sockets, open jaw.

The second part consists of poems about the deseased brother. Grotz writes about it without any strain, with love sometimes not even sister’s but mother’s: «I mothered you, I protected you, you were my baby, my toy». Together with memories of the brother the memories of childhood come. Serenity (not coldness) of poems of Grotz also is in the selected rhythm. Almost all the poems here are written in long lines, with correct, complete sentences. Grotz’s world is not broken, it is too beautiful, though at times is painful, to break down, roll into individual words.

Grotz’s poetry is natural poetry, the poetry of life and prosperity. But the poems in this book were written even with that degree of intelligence, when you look at clouds and see a cat's face, but understand that this is primarily just a cloud.

The Little Prince (graphic novel)

Joann Sfar
The Little Prince
Adapted from the book by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010

Full disclosure: I have not read «The Little Prince» by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

By and large it makes little sense to retell the plot of this book: those who wanted have read the book by Saint-Exupery long ago, and perfectly familiar with the plot, those who have not read, apparently, has never been interested in this book, and no longer interested. In short, the beginning of the story is about that: a military pilot whose plane breaks down makes the landing in the desert. The pilot smokes a cigarette, talking with the smoke from it in the form of a serpent, draws a hat, but insists that this is a snake swallowed an elephant. Then he repairs the plane, escapes from the sun in the shadow of an airplane wing, and at night sleeps there. In the middle of the night a boy with golden hair, huge blue eyes and long green scarf wakes up the pilot and asks the pilot who understands nothing to draw him a sheep.

Sfar in his adaptation uses the banned method: he often shows the little prince in close-up, so that in the page you see only huge blue eyes of the prince and stop paying attention to everything else. In them there are already gone childhood and childhood, which is always with you; thirst to know everything; understanding that there will be no better, but not worse, too; reflections of the non-existent worlds.
The Little Prince almost always looks at the sky, even if he looks at a drawing. When they with the pilot examine star map, the prince could not tell whence he came, he knows only that his planet is so small that it can not allow baobabs grow on it.
In space, there are flying ducks here, on planets there is enough space for only one person (of all episodic characters in this graphic novel the most memorable is the king with a long and strange-snag nose, he is very funny), the fox offers to be friends.

But we need to repair the plane and fly back to where there is not little prince, only soldiers, airplanes, adult life, but if today you are alone, it does not mean that tomorrow you will not meet the boy with the golden hair, who laughs and does not answer to questions. He just has not reached the Earth.

Anterooms

Richard Wilbur
Anterooms: New Poems and Translations

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010

To write poetry in rhymes in English, when it seems all possible prosody have been experienced in a few centuries, one must possess great courage: to save it only can a special feeling of words, even breathing, and your own voice. In his new book, Richard Wilbur, who will soon turn 90, has proved that he didn’t lose his flair for writing good poetry, because he has not lost his own voice in so many decades.

Despite his age, in Wilbur’s poems there hardly the theme of death sounds, only theme of the fragility of life. The poet, who had been at war, whose life had been filled with a lot of big events, is now turning his attention to small things, but not insignificant for him: a worm crawling on the window, the tops of trees, orchard. Small things and small distances which Wilbur measures the long life.

Whatever my kind may be,
It is not absurd
To confuse myself with a bird
For the space of a reverie:

My species never flew,
But I somehow know
It is something that long ago
I almost adapted to.

Wilbur has shortness of breath; all his poems are often stretched for more than one page. Lines end at expiration, so that each poem ends with a whisper. In «Psalm» and «Trismegistus» the poet turns to God, trying to understand what his life was.

Shingles rhyme prevails in Wilbur’s verses, like a way to show: there is a beginning, birth, and the end, death, and life, then, indeed, is in the middle.
Among the translations «Thirty-seven Riddles from Symphosius» stands out, sly look at ordinary things.

Do not stop in the anteroom, come further.

Best American Short Stories 2010

Best American Short Stories 2010
Ed. by Richard Russo and Heidi Pitlor

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010

Guest editor of the new book in well-established series of «The Best American Short Stories» became Richard Russo. And if this year has turned out, whether Rousseau has made such a choice of the already-selected stories, but in the book there is not purely stylistic works. The editors have opted for Story.

I can not say that the stories selected are only with a plot, but in all of them there is well-told story, while the book does not include the stories of so-called genre writers (although there are a couple of science fiction stories here, but they are the representatives of McSweeney's).

The anthology truly lives up to its name: all included in it stories are worth reading, and few of them - admiration.

The collection opens with stories by Steve Almond and Marlin Barton. They at first seem very strong, but once you get to the middle of the book, one realizes that they are not so stand-out: Almond’s story of relations between the two card players, a doctor and a patient, seems a bit artificial, and Barton lacks stylistic depth. Much more powerful looks «The Cousins» by Charles Baxter, and it is, probably, the best story in the book. The story is told from the face of one of the brothers (they are not very similar to each other), and with that Baxter acted very advantageous. The image of himself that the elder brother makes in his own words, in the end is not the same image which it is seen by the others. «Safari» by Jennifer Egan is also a family history, but with more exotic entourage. «Safari» is a more complex story, Egan passes narrative needle through the present and the future of heroes of the story, the father and his two children. Egan's prose here is the melting air, wild and dangerous animals; intoxicate style.

The old man Arty Groys, the meaning of his life had been returned by the young prostitute, is memorable hero of the story by Joshua Ferris «The Valetudinarian». Perhaps the author of this story was too straightforward, not so many tasty details in the story. Had the author more sense of humor, this story would have become a burlesque story. Unusual twist with usual components (husband owns repair shop, he can not longer repair engines, as before, while his wife sleeps with the youngster, who works in this shop; youngster, in fact, is the protagonist of the story) is using by Wayne Harrison in his «Least Resistance». The author has vigorous style, it perfectly matches to the story of how everything is always possible to fix. Rebecca Makkai in «Painted Ocean, Painted Ship» managed to turn usual plot about how a university professor is unjustly condemn for misunderstood words and deeds, in a vivid story, painted colors of love, confusion and sadness. Kevin Moffett played with narrative in «Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events». The narrator writes the story, his father writes the story, and the narrator quotes the six rules of storytelling, which narrator was taught once by his mentor at the university. The comic, laminating one layer of narrative on another, story about fathers and children. The story of Tea Obreht «The Laugh» is with a touch of the supernatural.
The most laughable story in the book is «All Boy» by Lori Ostlund. In it eleven-year-boy lives with his parents on the verge of divorce, likes to read and to his 11 years knows a lot of unusual words for a child of his age. Sarcastic «Raw Water» completes this collection. Wells Tower wrote a satire on the well-fed society, and yes, it's fantastic (and science-fictional a bit)!

Not all stories are equally good: some are overly sentimental; some are like scenarios of a mediocre Sundance movie.

Copious book.