Confession

When you buy a used book you hold an object with a history you will never know. How many people have held and read this book before you, and what was going on in their lives as they read it? I asked myself those questions when I opened a used copy of The All of It by Jeannette Haien. Here's the inscription I found on the inside cover: “Hannilie – This is a quince of a book – one of a kind like Isak Dinesen's. I hope the hurting has stopped & that you can savour this timeout. Pick”. Wow! First of all, what kind of names are Hannilie and Pick? How can a book be like a quince? And was Hannilie hurting because Pick had just dumped her (euphemistically known as a “timeout”), or was she taking time off from work to recover from foot surgery and her loyal friend Pick was providing her with reading material? And did she in fact “savour” this book?

Well... she might have. This slim volume (145 pages) is really a long short story. And 'story' is definitely the right word for it, since the bulk of the book is the story that widow Enda Dennehy tells Father Declan as they sit by the body of her late husband Kevin in the remote village of Roonatellin on the western coast of Ireland, where the couple has lived for over 50 years. Except that Kevin is not her husband. He has revealed this secret to the priest on his deathbed, but it is left to Enda to tell “the all of it” as they sit through a long afternoon waiting for mourners to arrive. Bracketing Enda's story is another one that at first seems unrelated. Father Declan is attempting to catch a fish. It's a cold rainy day, the midges are biting, and the priest is using every lure in his arsenal to try to land a salmon. His reverie as he fishes leads us into Enda and Kevin's story, and near the book's end we are returned to the priest on the riverbank. He struggles to balance his sympathy for Enda with his need to condemn her sin.

Haien's style is subtle and elegant. She asks hard questions about what it means to lead a moral life, and about what compromises life can impose. There is also much humor in the book, and beautiful descriptions of rugged coast of County Mayo. I don't know what “hurting' Hannilie was hoping to escape, but I think this book has the subtle power to distract her from pains, whether physical or emotional.

Through the Eyes of a Child

If I could remember the source that directed me to this book, I would definitely go back for more. Call It Sleep by Henry Roth is an extraordinary book on many levels. Roth came to the US in 1909 when he was three and lived in the slums on the Lower East Side. He attended City College of New York and published this novel in 1934. But that was a time when books were hard to sell and, despite critical acclaim, the book virtually disappeared. For reasons that I didn't explore, the paperback version was published in 1964 and sold millions of copies. It was the first paperback ever to be reviewed on the front page of the NY Times Book Review.

No surprise: the narrative is set in 1907 - 1909 on the Lower East Side. For 441 pages, we follow the fortunes and misfortunes of Albert and Genya Schearl and their son David. They are recently arrived Jewish immigrants. Albert is angry and brutal; Genya mild and loving. You wonder how they came to be wed - a secret revealed toward the end of the book. The narrator is 7-year-old David. Roth has done a masterful job of taking the reader inside David's head to view the world in all its terror, magic and mystery as seen by a young boy. Many passages read like a stream of consciousness moving, leaping in half completed phrases from one thought to another. If you have been the parent of a boy this age, you will know just how accurate this is. More than once I found myself smiling with recognition.

It's a wonder that any child survives the cruelties of his fellows and even of adults. In his efforts to fit in to his new country and to find friends, David has been hurt and disappointed so many times that his mantra becomes: don't trust, don't trust, don't trust. His only solace is from his mother (and hers from him).

I should pause here to say that one of the significant features of this book is the way in which Roth succeeds in portraying the many language variations in this population. Imagine trying to write the sounds of broken English with a New York accent. It is really quite funny - and fun - to decode the meaning. It is almost like translating a foreign language. And then, when David goes to Hebrew school, there really is a foreign language. A knowledge of Hebrew and Yiddish would definitely add another level of enjoyment to reading this book but there is more than enough to satisfy the non-Jewish reader. As David is introduced to some of the biblical stories, we see him struggle to understand the concept of God and angels. For any adult working with young children it is a caution to keep in mind how literally a child hears and interprets what we say. For a sensitive child with an over-active imagination, there can be dangerous consequences. For David, it came with the story of Isaiah. In seeking his own religious experience, in trying to find the "light", David risks great physical harm. Roth's language and technique in this episode are quite literally poetic.

For all its length, this is a book that can make the hours of a long flight fly by (no pun intended). And in the Afterword, there is a very interesting discussion of the difference between bilingualism and diglossia! Although Roth published other works much later in his life, this is his masterpiece. I am so glad that I found this book.

Killing Mom Was Easy

Alice Sebold’s first novel “Lovely Bones” is the story of the rape and murder of a young girl narrated by the girl herself from the grave. This novel was very well received and although I liked the novel, most people and critics really loved this book. Her second novel “Almost Moon” deals with a topic as difficult as "Lovely Bones". Alice Sebold has a knack of drawing you into her stories from the very first page. “Almost Moon” begins with the sentence, “When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.”

The story takes place over 24 hours, as Helen Knightly, the narrator and divorced mother of two grown daughters, begins by relating how this gruesome act of murdering her mother came to be. From there, she begins to reflect on her strange life and how it brought her to kill her mother. It is an interesting, if not sometimes incoherent story. Poor Helen grew up in a house with a mother who never left the house without blankets or towels over her head and that didn’t happen unless absolutely necessary, and a father who adored his wife, spent time in a psychiatric facility and ultimately killed himself in front of his wife. Growing up Helen glibly referred to her mother as “crazy”. But, when Helen had to confront a group of angry neighbors, alone, for something unspeakable that her mother had done she found refuge with the kindly neighbor, Mr. Forest. He gave the sixteen year old Helen a drink and told her, “You know, Helen, your mother is mentally ill”. It was the first time Helen could put a real name on what was wrong with her family.

What Helen did after she murdered her mother becomes somewhat bizarre. She puts her mother in the freezer, calls her ex-husband in California who immediately comes to her rescue after many years of separation, and has sex with her best friend’s son. Helen is on a roll, and we’re not sure where she is going with all this. There is definitely an element of suspense in this story as we wonder whether Helen will get away with this strange murder. The story itself is Helen looking back on her life and trying to justify what she did. But as the events unfold and the reader comes to the end of the story the only thing that emerges as true is that Helen killed her mentally ill mother because the Helen we have come to know is as mentally ill as her mother. After reading Alice Sebold’s two novels I have come to the conclusion that Ms. Sebold is clearly dealing with some demons of her own.

Remembering Adolescence

Lorrie Moore is a writer recommended by Louise Erdrich, and this summer I read her book, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? The title alone made it worth reading and this short novel has both fans and critics. Berie Car, in the midst of a failing marriage, remembers her best friend Sils, and their last summer together in a small Adirondack tourist town. Life was thrilling, ordinary, sweet and bitter, all experienced in a "bleakly funny state of suspended collapse." As an awkward, skinny, yearning 15 year old, she rejects her family, and idolizes Sils, who is sassy, prettier, and sexually precocious. Berie recalls Sils in a series of flashbacks. They work together in an amusement park, Berie as a cashier, Sils as Cinderella. They are irreverent, wild, curious and rebellious, stealing in to a local bar, sneaking cigarettes. When Sils becomes pregnant, Berie develops a plan to fund the inevitable abortion. But she is caught filching money at the amusement park and is shipped off to a summer camp. We then fast-forward abruptly to her adult life in a failing marriage, and this brief part seems disconnected and unrelated to Berie's adolescent feelings and perceptions.

Moore's writing, and the clarity of Berie's memories, from cottage cheese for breakfast, to the emotional details of Berie's experience of lost innocence is the writer's strength. She uses droll wordplay humorously at times and also evokes genuine sadness. It's a bitter, often funny hymn to lost adolescence and a poignant tale. Moore skillfully illuminates an awareness of how life's significant events can often prove disappointingly anticlimactic. I thought about her memories and perceptions of these events for a long time after reading this book, remembering my own adolescence. As a result, I look forward to reading more of Lorrie Moore's books.