Purity

Purity by Jonathan Franzen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I should have known better, having read Freedom, that Franzen would write a book on purity without a single redeeming character. This book is fraught with narcissistic and sociopathic characters with Oedipal and Elektra complexes so that nobody can have anything other than dysfunctional relationships. Each chapter delves into a different character, and inches the plot along, so that it reads almost like a series of interconnected short stories. So you get a break from one unlikeable character to meet a new one. Perhaps the best(?) character is Andreas Wolf, who starts out horrible, is transformed by love, kills to save her, and then slowly evolves into a purely evil character as a result. When Franzen writes about Wolf there is an energy and vitality that makes him more real than the other characters, even as he becomes a caricature of himself in the end. There are a lot of relevant issues brought up...privacy, information vs. entertainment, feminism, student debt, but any point Franzen is trying to make becomes subsumed by the tediousness of the relentlessly awful relationships.

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Pip nodded, but she was thinking about how terrible the world was, what an eternal struggle for power. Secrets were power. Money was power. Being needed was power. Power, power, power: how could the world be organized around the struggle for a thing so lonely and oppressive in the having of it?

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Everyone I know raves about this book with such an awkward title. I think I put off reading it because it couldn't possibly be that good. And it's not the most remarkable book I've read, but it is charming, the antagonist is delightful without being grating, and the history of war on this little English island was enlightening, as well as the attitudes and emotions of the people who survived the war and tried to put their towns and lives back together. I never love epistolary novels because the voices of the different writers never seem different enough, and the details are suspiciously excessive and include quotes, which seems unlikely to me that every writer would do so. Still, definitely worth the read. Quick, informative, funny, joyful.


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Fosse

Fosse by Sam Wasson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was an interesting biography of a sometimes inspirational, mostly tragic life. Wasson does a good job of finding enough sources to show a charismatic charmer, paranoid perfectionist, humble and hardworking aspirant, and a dissatisfied egomaniac. His constant search for perfection and his desire to create better, new, different was truly inspiring. The fact that he never felt satisfied with what he had done or what he had, his constant search for approval (and being depressed when he got it), were tragic. I couldn't help comparing him to Steve Jobs a little bit: both driven to genius work in their field by a pervasive sense of inferiority. Wasson does a good job of including good details and some editorial commentary to help explain some of his actions. He does assume the reader is already a Fosse fan and already knows the basic storylines and plots to his better known musicals and films. I did enjoy reading this on my iPad, so I could immediately refer to dances and scenes on YouTube.


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No one is Contented With the Exact Truth

The truth, my darling,
no one wants to know.
They don't want to know
last night I dreamt
my children were dying,
but still I didnt want to wake up.
They don't want to know
skin sags without the fat;
to pay Paul you have to rob Peter;
pain continues after the baby is born.
They don't want to know
what is in the closet,
or under the toilet lid,
or in the back of the fridge.
They don't want to know
the reason, they just want it to
STOP.
They don't want to hear
the cacophony before the symphony.
The truth is
I killed those baby
birds so their parents
would quit shitting on my stoop.

No One is Contented With the Exact Truth

The truth, my darling,
no one wants to know.
They don't want to know
last night I dreamt
my children were dying,
but still I didnt want to wake up.
They don't want to know
skin sags without the fat;
to pay Paul you have to rob Peter;
pain continues after the baby is born.
They don't want to know
what is in the closet,
or under the toilet lid,
or in the back of the fridge.
They don't want to know
the reason, they just want it to
STOP.
They don't want to hear
the cacophony before the symphony.
The truth is
I killed those baby
birds so their parents
would quit shitting on my stoop.

Counting by 7's

Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Delightful book about how we all effect each other, and can make each other's lives better. It is a story of resilience and hope. Quick read with wonderfully developed characters.

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The story of my teeth

The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Absurdist fiction seems to be back in style. I'm not sure I like it. My brain keeps trying to find the meaning behind it, but perhaps I am not clever enough. Or there is no meaning? That isn't to say that there aren't some good laughs in here. the last narrative chapter adds some much needed grounding and helps redeem Gustav Sanchez Sanchez, but still doesn't unravel the relationship between him and his son. The afterword mentions that Luiselli wrote this as a serial, to be read in a juice factory that also owned an art gallery, and she used the workers input to shape the novel. Only problem is, after so much absurdity, I can't quite believe it. Maybe that is why absurd fiction is growing...between Facebook and prime time news, what can you believe?


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