The All Of It by Jeannette Haien

Lately I’ve been reading nothing but Kindle books and needed to feel a real book in my hands.  I searched my shelves and found this little volume tucked behind another row of other books.  (Oh come on, you do it too, double shelve your books for maximum space.)  Anyway, I’d forgotten I had this book, had never read it and apparently purchased it back in 1988 when it was first published in paperback. “Well what ya know?” I muttered to myself.

You see, Ann Patchett single-handedly brought The All Of It back from obscurity and into a new 2011 reprinting.  She hand sells this title to customers at her bookstore, Parnassus Books and she raved about it during a NPR interview several years ago. I also remembered a writer friend, who doesn’t read much contemporary fiction had sung the praises of this small novella.

So I sat down to read, two hours later I closed the book and gazed about in a daze.  I had been gone, transported  by Ms. Haien’s magical writing.  And, oh what writing — long sentences that flow flawlessly and dialogue so realistic you actually seem to hear the characters conversations.

Set in Ireland during early 1900’s, Father DeClan is at the bedside of a dying parishioner who is only able to make a partial confession before he dies.  So it is left to his widow Enda to tell him “the all of it”.

“I appreciate, Enda, that it’ll be no easier for you to tell than for me to hear”, replies Father DeClan.

“You’ll need to be patient Father,” she qualified.

“I will of course, Enda”

And so it begins — and it’s a complex and beautiful story as Father DeClan’s religious beliefs face off with the hard realities of Enda’s tale of survival.  At times both subtle and harsh, The All of It lays bare the complexity of choices made and the consequences of chances taken.

Enda’s tale of hardship and struggle is juxtaposed with Father DeClan salmon fishing on an Irish river bank during a cold and drenching rainstorm.  These fishing scenes add another layer of nuance – is it meant to be a metaphor?  You will have to decide for yourself, but I found the fishing descriptions allegorical as the Father struggles to fish in an unkind river while trying to understand Enda’s sin.

The characters are complex in this largely dialogue-driven narrative — even the dead husband comes alive during his full life.  The Father’s struggles to re-arrange his beliefs, Enda’s lack of shame in her actions — all revealed through dialogue.

The ending is somewhat unresolved, which left me creating possibilities for an ending…mulling it over long after I finished reading. I urge you to find this book at your local bookstore or library and settle down with this short novella, revel in Ms. Haien’s writing and make up your own ending.

 

The Unspeakable by Meghan Daum

This book of essays has gained some excellent reviews … so I was excited when it was my turn for the Kindle library book.

One reviewer said “Daum is her generation’s Joan Didion.”(Melissa Giannini).   I should have clued in to “her” generation’s Joan Didion.  I guess I’m in the actual Joan Didion generation –  she’s one of my favorite writers.  (Slouching Towards Bethlehem is brilliant.)

I also didn’t clue in to the title —  “Unspeakable” — which is truly accurate — these essays are beautifully written and some of her writing spoke right to my heart, but too often her writing made me anxiously squirm in my chair — uncomfortable with her uncensored candidness — as if watching a stranger undress or the Maury Povich Show.

Ms. Daum’s subject matter ranges from a coldly sad essay on matricide with harsh observations about her mother  — to the weird – playing charades with a group of Hollywood notables including Nicole Kidman.

In “Honorary Dyke” she disguises her slight homophobia as flirting with lesbianism.

The whole scene freaked me out enough to make me realize that I was not a lesbian so much as someone who appreciated a good haircut.

(I realized I was) Biologically straight, culturally lesbian.

See? Uncomfortably funny – I bet you’re hoping none of your gay friends see you giggling at this.

In “Difference Maker” Ms. Daum shares her experience of being both a big sister and a court appointed advocate for a foster child.  Her unflinching look at the reality of being a foster teen will break your heart.  She paints foster care, and the children within the system, in the harsh cruelty that it is.  Did you know there are ‘adoption fairs’ where foster children have 5 minutes per couple to plead why they should be adopted?  She nails it by calling this a barbaric form of speed dating. 

Ms. Daum likes to show off her incredible vocabulary using words such as opprobrium, quotidian  and hypnagogic.  Click to get the definitions – I had to to.

Happily, her writing is often thoughtful and quietly disarming. For me, her writing shines when she explores aging and evolving.

How did I get to be middle-aged without actually growing up?

I had not yet figured out that life is mostly an exercise in being something other than what we used to be while remaining fundamentally  — and sometimes maddeningly – who we are.

 To grow up and get to know yourself is primarily an exercise in taking things off the table.

Her thoughts on women’s culture are noteworthy, as in this precise take on the media

…all the crap in the media that suggests that not only are women a special interest group, they’re a group whose primary interest is themselves.

With great beauty, Ms. Daum reveals her uncertainty about getting married (she does) and her choice to remain child free (which she is).  But as I read her thoughtful angst over these major life decisions – I found her both immature and apologetic —  as if seeking our approval for her choices.

Our conversations and our sleep would remain uninterrupted.  Our lives would remain our own. Whether that was fundamentally sad or fundamentally exquisite, we’d probably never be sure. But who can be sure of such things?  And what so great about being sure anyway?

Unspeakable can be light and funny in parts, as in when Ms. Daum talks about not having the least interest in food or the “foodie” movement.

Once or twice my husband has suggested we take a cooking class together.  From my reaction, you would think he’d proposed that we volunteer to pick up trash alongside the highway.

And her secret desire to live at Downton Abbey:

More likely, I’d be dreaming of living at Downton Abbey.  Flu epidemics and abysmal women’s rights aside, I often think living in a Jacobethan mansion in the early twentieth century and having my meals cooked and served by professionals would suit me just fine.  That’s pretty preposterous, however.  In reality it would be a nightmare.  In reality I would be so intimidated by the servants and so awkward in their presence that the relief of not having to cook would be dwarfed by the pressure to make polite conversation.  I’d end up taking dinner in my bedroom every night, like a grieving widow or an unseemly visiting artist.

The final essay, Diary of a Coma recounts her infection with a deadly virus and she takes us step by tedious step through her symptoms and misdiagnosis and eventually being put into a medically induced coma.  Not for the queasy this, but nonetheless she contemplates her life, her judgmental tendencies, her shortsightedness and selfishness and vows to be a better person.  But in the end she knows she can’t be a better person — in fact she won’t even try — she will, in the end, remain the same person.   Her thoughts even as she faces death remain painfully unsentimental.

In summary, I read this collection of essays in uncomfortable but stunned disbelief – at Ms. Daum’s audacity, her often flawless writing, her shameless self-absorption — but most of all at her bravery – writing and exposing her uniquely own “unspeakable” mind.

 

 

My Life in France by Julia Child

Last night, I happened upon Julie and Julia on HBO. Although I have seen the film several times, I couldn’t help watching it again.  It’s a fun, but limited portrayal of Julia Child’s early years in France.  The sadly departed Nora Ephron based her screenplay on two memoirs — Julie and Julia by Julie Powell and My Life in France by Julia Child.

Skip Julie Powell’s memoir (I found it insipid) but if; 1) you adore food and travel, 2) own at least a few cookbooks (maybe one of which is Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking), or 3) need to escape your own, perhaps routine, life for a more exciting one in post WWII France — then get your winter-weary self to your local bookstore or library and get a copy* of My Life In France.  You’ll thank me later.

Julia kept notes and letters, and in the last years of her life, she began to shape this book with her grandnephew Alex Prud’homme.  The result is a brilliant journey with Julia Child — to read this book is to be right with her in France —  tasting the food, smelling the baking bread, walking on the French cobblestones and embracing it all with Julia’s delight and gusto. This is an engaging story of Julia’s early isolation in a foreign country that at once confused but enthralled her, and she faces these challenges with  self-deprecation and charming self-confidence.

There is, of course, an abundance of French food. But there is also hard work  — from her struggles with learning French to outright chauvinism at the male-dominated Corden Bleu cooking school where Julia finally gains admittance.  You get a wonderful glimpse into the private lives of Julia and Paul and their remarkable marriage.  She tells of “making do” in post war France, of having to initially cook on a hot plate (this will not do!), spotty electrical service and need to shop at individual markets for each meal’s provisions.  There is a sober side to her memoir as she and Paul deal with an erroneous McCarthy investigation as a result of his OSS work.

Her struggles during the creation of her infamous two volume cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking (which shot to the best seller lists after the release of the Julie and Julia film) are fascinating as Julia painstakingly tests, re-tests and then tests again countless recipes.  The perfectionism in the development of her mayonnaise recipe caused me to crack open my copy of the cookbook just to read the recipe. (I have plans to attempt it one of these days.)  The differences between flour in France versus America causes great concern for an worthy cross-Atlantic baguette recipe.  She tells of the early troubles with the massive two-volume Mastering the Art of French Cooking — from the many titles considered to publisher rejects and her co-authors dramas.

Julia Child embraced all these experiences – good and bad – as part of a remarkable journey and she clearly loved everyone who accompanied her along the way.  This is not just a book about food, this is a book brimming with life — full of passion, wisdom and creation.  One can learn a lot from such a well lived life.  I hang on to my own copy of My Life In France for gloomy times and a quick dip into its chapters restores my faith in life as an exciting adventure.

 

How I Became a Rose Nerd

I was in Safeway, watching hapless men buy long-stemmed red roses for Valentines Day and silently cried “oh you poor guys, those aren’t real roses!”.  But 20 years ago, that too was all I knew of roses. Then my mother gave me this little book and it changed everything. Therefore, the subtitle for this post is: It was all my mother’s fault.

Once upon a time—before the 1860s—people loved old roses like “Baronne Prevost” “Marchionesse of Lorne,” or “Autumn Damask.” These were roses from the garden, richly scented and overflowing with petals.  The trouble was once cut and arranged, the beautiful blossoms only lasted a few days — oh but those few days were a visual and perfumed delight.  The artists of the time captured such lush rose arrangements even including their fallen petals.

Then some enterprising nursery folks developed the hybrid tea roses (as in those long stemmed red roses at Safeway).  These were easier to arrange (fewer thorns), more dramatic (brighter colors), and longer lasting (an arrangement of store-bought tea roses can last up to two weeks). But the saddest part of these new roses, was they had no scent…highly scented roses tended to be more delicate and less sturdy.  So they bred the scent right out of these florist favorites.  As so the old roses were all but forgotten.

But as In Search of Lost Roses tell us, these gently-hued, richly perfumed old roses made a comeback, thanks to the efforts of a crew of eccentric characters who rescued them from back alleys, ramshackle cottages, and overgrown graveyards across the country. Mr. Christopher recounts the fascinating stories of the old roses—how they were created and named—and the unforgettable people who saved them. We go from Texas to California to the American South to visit the interesting people who love and search for lost roses.  It’s pure adventure as we join a group of “rose rustlers” as they sneak into secreted walled gardens, tramp through abandoned lots, climb over fences and visit forgotten cemeteries all in an effort to take and propagate cuttings from these old roses.

We meet the famous British old rose experts (Graham Thomas and David Austin*) and learn of how American pioneer wives brought rose cuttings from their far-away homes, lovingly keeping them damp during the journey. Even the rose nomenclature is full of politics, lost loves and secrets.  Mr. Christopher’s discussion of rose genetics and propagation was fascinating – well at least to this rose geek. “Heritage’ or ‘heirloom’ roses are defined as those bred before 1867.  No two old roses are alike – they come in all shapes – flattened, quartered petal formation, cupped or “overblown as a crinoline petticoat”.  I devoured this book, taking notes,   and reading bits aloud to my husband who just stared at me quizzically.

Turns out a major hub of old rose fanatics is here out west, where old roses came out with the Gold Rush and were planted around the miners shack doorways, in parks and at loved ones gravesides.  When I closed the book I had a list and my mission was clear     must  — have — these —roses.

My first trip was to the Celebration of Old Roses just across the Bay.

I stopped short, here was a huge room filled with old roses of every color, size, type  — and readers — the scent was intoxicating – my idea of heaven on earth.  Every rose was identified and categorized — China, Moss, Portland — (I could go on but I’ll save you the yawns).  I took notes, talked to growers, got advice for my garden (ocean facing, high winds -not great for most roses but with these hardy old roses, I had a chance), and bought my first old rose bush Monsieur Tiller.  I met the celebrities of the old rose world – Miriam Wilkins  and the infamous Barbara Worl invited me to visit her garden in Palo Alto during the coming month. I came home happy, exhausted and full of plans.  My poor husband quietly mentioned, “but I thought we have a drought resistant garden, roses need a lot of water you know”…I turned a deaf ear and secretly vowed to take shorter showers.

My next trip, suggested by Mr. Christopher’s book was here.

The Sacramento Historic City Center Cemetery.   Leaving home at the crack of dawn (not my finest hour), I joined a rose tour of the cemetery  during which we were allowed to take a few cuttings.  Then a workshop on starting roses from these cuttings -their technique uses zip-lock bags with soil, proper number of days closed and open, then you monitor the root growth …wow sorry — I started to geek-out there.

Soon I was happily starting roses from cuttings “obtained” on our trips. Click on photos to make larger

A climbing rose from an ocean front lodge in Mendocino 

 

 

 

 

 

A ‘found rose’ from a roadside in Croatia.

 

 

 

 

 

I have many David Austin Roses – here’s one of my favorites – James Galway

 

 

 

 

And like all rose nerds enthusiasts, I mess around for hours arranging my cut roses and then walking by just to smell and admire them.

 

 

 

 

 

And so the tale is told, this is the little book that started it all 20 years ago.  Both the back and front gardens boast old garden roses and the deck has potted roses struck from cuttings I’ve rustled.

My name is Book Barmy and I’m a rose nerd.

But all geekiness aside, I dare you to read In Search of Lost Roses and not come away wanting at least one old rose for your garden.

Warning, I have another rose book to share with you at a later date — now that will keep you coming back.

* David Austin has developed a modern collection of old garden roses which are disease resistant, repeat blooming and have divine scents.  I have many of his lovely roses.  For some idea of their beauty click HERE

Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson

I was in need of a book that would give me an escape and make me laugh. That’s when I’m grateful for Bill Bryson.
Neither Here nor There is a book I keep to re-read in just such circumstances and when I opened it again the other day — it did the trick — I immediately started to giggle.

From the back cover:

Like many of his generation, Bill Bryson backpacked across Europe in the early seventies — in search of enlightenment, beer, and women. Twenty years later he decided to retrace the journey he undertook in the halcyon days of his youth. The result is Neither Here Nor There, an affectionate and riotously funny pilgrimage from the frozen wastes of Scandinavia to the chaotic tumult of Istanbul, with stops along the way in Europe’s most diverting and historic locales.

Mr. Bryson starts his mid-life crisis journey in Hammerfest, Norway (as far north as you can get in the world by public means of transport, he says) and re-traces his 1970 trip through Europe encountering language barriers, seedy train station hotels and delightful characters along the way.

I could quote this book for pages but will restrain myself to my favorites, get your hands on a copy and find your own:

The best than can be said for Norwegian television is that it gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience.

Romans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap.

In the evening, I went looking for a restaurant.  This is often a problem in Germany.  For one thing, there’s a good chance that there will be three guys in lederhosen playing polka music, so you have to look carefully through the windows and question the proprietor closely to make sure that Willi and the Bavarian Boys won’t suddenly bound onto a little stage a half-past eight.  It should have been written into the armistice treaty that the Germans would be required to lay down their accordions along with their arms. 

The problem is that the pedestrian cross lights (in Paris) have been designed with the clear purpose of leaving the foreign visitor confused, humiliated, and, if all goes according to plan, dead.

She gave me one of those impassive Gallic (as in French) shrugs – the kind where the chin is dropped to belt level and the ears are pushed to the top of the head with the shoulders.  It translates roughly as ‘Life is a bucket of shit, monsieur, I quite agree, and while I am prepared to acknowledge this fact I shall offer you no sympathy because monsieur, this is your bucket of shit’. 

As you may have now surmised, Mr. Bryson is not afraid to be politically incorrect (he calls France’s population ‘Insufferably French) but he is also a devoted traveler and relishes the wonder and beauty of other cultures and lands.

One of the small marvels of my first trip to Europe was the discovery that the world could be so full of variety, that there were so many different ways of doing essentially identical things, like eating and drinking and buying movie tickets. 

I arose each morning just after dawn, during that perfect hour when the air still has a fresh, unused feel to it, and watch the city (Rome) come awake — whistling shopkeepers sweeping up, pulling down awnings, pushing up shutters.

The Thomas Cook European Timetable  is possibly the finest book ever produced.  It is impossible to leaf through its five hundred pages of densely printed timetables without wanting to dump a double armload of clothes into an old Gladstone and just take off.  Every page whispers romance:  Montreux-Zweisimmen-Spiez-Interlacken or perhaps Beograd-Trieste-Venezia-Verona-Milano.  Who could recite these names without experiencing a tug of excitement?  Who could glance at such an itinerary and not want to climb aboard?  (Sadly, this guide is no longer published or even on-line – they went out of business in 2013.)

This re-read made my travelers feet itchy.  Mr. Byrson travels with open eyes, a sense of adventure, child-like wonder and a marvelous sense of humor.  A required skill set for every traveler.

N.B.  Neither Here nor There is also educational, you’ll learn important facts about each country.  For example, did you know that Liechtenstein is the world’s largest producer of sausage skins and dentures?

N.B.2 Stay tuned, we’re planning a trip to Switzerland  …hmm perhaps this itinerary — Montreux-Zweisimmen-Spiez-Interlacken

 

My Salinger Year Joanna Rakoff

Lets be clear, this is not a memoir specifically about J. D. Salinger, nor another sordid tale of having had an affair with him (thank goodness)–this is a memoir of a young woman working at his literary agency in the mid 1990’s.

Alright I can hear your yawns from here, but I’m always interested in the inner workings of the publishing industry and so I decided to read this memoir by Joanna Rakoff.

It’s the mid 1990’s and Joanna is 23 years old, and much like in The Devil Wears Prada, she really has no experience or interest in publishing but is thrilled to land an “assistant” position at a literary agency – referred to as “The Agency”.  This is one of those classy but underpaid positions that presumably one can brag about at dinner parties.  Ms. Rakoff has never read anything by Salinger and she thinks when agency staff refer to “Jerry”, their star client, they mean Jerry Seinfield.  In fact “Jerry” is their code name for J. D.  (Jerome David) Salinger, the notoriously reclusive author.

This is an old-school literary agency.  Here is a world of richly carpeted offices, no overhead florescent lighting — just shaded lamps, messengers, martini lunches and book-shelved lined hallways.  Computers are only whispered about by the staff.

Joanna is given strict orders to never give out any information on Salinger and the agency must protect his privacy at all costs.  Joanna’s main job is to answer Salinger’s many fan letters with a simple but curt form letter:

“Dear ___________
Many thanks for your recent letter to J.D. Salinger. As you may know, Mr. Salinger does not wish to receive mail from his readers. Thus, we cannot pass your kind note on to him. We thank you for you interest in Mr. Salinger’s books.

Best,  The Agency”

Her boss insists that Joanna type these letters out individually on a Selectric typewriter (using carbon paper) in order to give the fans a sense that an actual agency person has written back to them.  Joanna must also answer her boss’s phone and if “Jerry”calls she is to keep it short and take a detailed message.

Joanna’s personal life is a mess, she lives with a ghastly boyfriend in a run-down apartment with no heat or a kitchen sink (?).  She has, for no explanation, left the guy she really loves and he fled to California.  Her parents have presented her with all her college bills unexpectedly unpaid and used her credit cards to rack up debt that Joanna must some how pay down.  She’s broke financially and in her heart, so the agency is her only solace as Joanna is a lover of books, an avid reader and an aspiring poet.

There’s this lovely quote

 On authors: The strange wonder of powerful writing, engaged in like some act of reflective devotion, and then, sent out, as on the wind, to find some home with unknown readers who in turn receive this revelation and transformation. Literature not as `escape’, literature as engagement.

It’s fun when Joanna steers away from the standard form letter and tries writing personal letters to the Salinger fans – with disastrous results.  She hopes to become an agent and dips into the agency slush pile, finds an unknown author and tries to get her published.  Also in the end, Joanna actually meets Salinger when he make a rare appearance at the agency offices.

That, my friends is about all that was interesting about this memoir. I’ve just saved you the chore of reading it yourselves.   I did find some interesting parts about the inner workings of a literary agency – especially the care and feeding of Salinger himself.    The grand event of finally getting one office computer for everyone to share was amusing and there’s some sly literary name dropping.   This memoir covers a entire year of Ms. Rakoff’s life and it felt equally long to make it through this slow and overly-detailed story.  One of the professional reviewers mentioned that this memoir started out as a much shorter magazine story and perhaps it should have stayed in that form.

Advanced review copy provided by Alfred A. Knopf