Review: Different Seasons by Stephen King

Stephen King is one of my favorite writers, and my favorite work of his is, surprisingly, not a horror novel.  It is not really a novel at all.  And it is number 54 of my books for the year.

In the afterword of the book, Stephen King states that Different Seasons, an anthology, rather than a novel, was created from four short stories (or novellas) that he wrote after finishing some of his hit novels such as Carrie and The Shining.  He writes about his concerns of being typecast in the afterword, and that the idea of the title "Different Seasons" was to show that he could write something "different", something that wasn't horror.  Each of the four novellas represent one of the four seasons, and all are strikingly different in nature and tone.  Three of the four have been made into films.  I just read the fourth one today for the first time.

1. Hope Springs Eternal: Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.  Andy Dufresne is a young banker who has just received a life sentence in Shawshank Maximum Security Prison for a crime he claims he didn't commit.  Told through the eyes of "Red", one of his fellow inmates, Shawshank Redemption is a tale about a human being who refused to let his hopes be killed, and who inspired many to follow along with his philosophy.  It is probably the most recognizable film adaptation of the four novellas, The Shawshank Redemption starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman.

2. Summer of Corruption: Apt Pupil.  The only one of the stories to be told in the third person narrative.  Twelve-year-old Todd Bowden discovers that his elderly neighbor is the fugitive Nazi officer Kurt Dussander.  Intrigued, Todd blackmails Dussander to tell him stories about the internment camps and the Holocaust...but over a period of months, Todd realizes that he is no longer the one in control.  Made into a film several years ago starring the late Brad Renfro and Ian McKellan.

3. Fall From Innocence: The Body.  Four boys strike out on a hiking trip in search of a dead body.  The most classic coming-of-age tale possibly ever written.  Made into a film in the 1980s called Stand By Me, starring the late River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Will Wheaton, and Jerry O'Connell.

4. A Winter's Tale: The Breathing Method.  The protagonist, a businessman named David, is invited to a gentlemens' club where the members tell each other tales.  One Christmas evening, one member, a doctor, tells a group of his contemporaries the story of a young woman's determination to triumph over the adversity she has encountered.  Not made into a film to date.

This anthology is a winner.  All four of the novellas are brilliantly written.  I couldn't pick a favorite, but if I had to, it would be a tie between Shawshank Redemption and The Body.  The first I think is just an incredible story of hope and justice.  The second I have personal ties to; it was the first of these stories I ever read.  The Breathing Method was difficult for me to get into before now (the first twenty pages or so are relatively dull), but once I got into it I had trouble putting it down.

Having read several of Stephen King's books (including Dolores Claiborne and 'Salem's Lot, to name two), I have to say that I like this anthology better.  I love King's prose and his open, imaginative style.  I would give five stars to Shawshank and The Body, four and a half to Apt Pupil, and four to The Breathing Method, so we'll put this in at four and a half stars.  Great book.

Rating: **** and 1/2

Review: Shine by Lauren Myracle

It's really hard to believe that I'm already almost halfway to my goal!  In December I decided to set myself a goal of reading 100 books in the year 2011.  This averages to just a little under 2 books per week, every week, for a year.  There were many times in the early months that I thought is this possible?  Am I going to fall ridiculously short?  I don't mean to get cocky (after all, I'm not even halfway, let alone close to finishing)...but I'm doing better than I thought I would!

Btw, kudos to those fine ladies who are already wayyyy ahead of me in this area!  You are an inspiration.

Book #48 for the year is quite popular lately, and I managed to snag it from Amazon.com for $2.99 during their Sunshine Sale.  I believe the sale ends on June 16th, so if you haven't gotten to it yet, go snag yourself something good for your Kindle!

Lauren Myracle's Shine is set in Black Creek, North Carolina -- a backwoods, rural community near Asheville.  A teenage boy is discovered brutally beaten at the local gas station where he works, with a gas nozzle rammed down his throat -- the victim of a hate crime.  His former best friend, sixteen-year-old Cat, is determined to weed out the culprit who did this to her friend, especially since the authorities are doing next to nothing.  Her odyssey takes her around and outside their little backwoods town, into a web of lies and drugs and whispers.  Cat realizes that in order to find her best friend's assailant, she must confront her own demons -- and possible enlist them in the search.

I was surprised, at first, to discover that although this book is listed as "Young Adult", it deals with some very harsh and adult topics, such as sexual orientation, prejudice, hate crimes, drug use, and sexual abuse.  The story takes place in an area I am not familiar with (although I have been to Asheville, NC, it is only used for one scene in the book) and in a culture that I am also ignorant of.  Many of the townspeople in Black Creek, NC are ignorant of the gay culture, failing to understand that Patrick, Cat's friend, is not flawed or "deserving" of the abuse thrust upon him.  They judge him for his sexual orientation, even if they admit that he was a great guy and a good person.

In Shine, the futures of most of the characters are bleak.  Even Cat admits that she does not believe she will ever leave Black Creek, or the stereotypical backwoods people that inhabit it.  The language is common and the accents stressed.  Cat is the only young woman in the book with morals or standards -- the other girls depicted in Shine are common, ignorant, self-absorbed, and deceptive.  The boys -- with the exception of one or two -- are no better.  There are so many characters introduced early on that I wondered where they were all going and what they had to do with the story.  But Myracle ties them all together beautifully (in the end, there was only one character who I felt was truly irrelevant to the plot).

The book is well-written and beautifully sad, in parts, and the uncomfortable feeling of entrapment and futility is woven through the book artfully.  A good read, and perhaps a re-read in the future.

Rating: ****

Review: The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

Warning: There may be spoilers in this review.

I almost didn't read The Memory Keeper's Daughter.  It was something I picked up on PaperbackSwap, and I debated for a few days before requesting it.  I wasn't sure about the subject matter, it was an author I was unfamiliar with, etc.  But I finally requested it, it came in, and I read it from cover to cover in 24 hours.

I love this book.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter begins on a winter evening in 1964.  When a freak snowstorm derails his colleague, Dr. David Henry is forced to deliver his own children with the aid of a nurse, Caroline.  With his wife in a drug-induced sleep that leaves her with no memory of the birth, David safely delivers twins -- a healthy son, and a daughter with the symptoms of Down syndrome.  Anguished, David makes a hasty decision that will haunt him the rest of his life.  He hands his little girl to Caroline and tells her to take the child to a home for the disabled, so he can spare his wife from years of heartache.  Caroline, in turn, makes her own decision.  Instead of taking the baby girl to the home, she leaves town and adopts the child as her own.  Decades pass, and the decisions leave indelible impressions on the two families involved.

This book hit home for me in a number of ways.  When I was fourteen I found out that I was "missing" a sibling (I won't go into it here, since the story is personal), and it's truly amazing the impact such a thing can have.  In the past thirteen years I've found myself wondering a lot of "what ifs", and how would my life have been different, and what would have changed, if this person had been a part of my life.  When I found out (as an emo teenager), I was stunned into crying, and wondering how the hell my parents had been able to keep this a secret from me for over a decade.  The pain that David Henry goes through in Daughter is palpable on every page.  Although he tries many, many times to finally confess to his wife Norah that their daughter didn't die at birth, that she had Downs syndrome and he gave her away, he always gets cold feet at the last minute and can't bring himself to do it.  I found myself practically screaming at the pages Just do it!  

The writing style was beautiful and completely rife with sadness.  I could relate to Norah the most at the beginning, but her character development turned me off later on.  I liked her most in the first few years after the birth of her children (and supposed loss of her daughter) as she constantly comes to grips with the loss of someone she never even truly knew.  I loved Paul (the son)'s character.  I pitied David so much throughout the book, as he goes through the years of struggling between leaving his life the way it is, and wondering constantly if he made the right decision.

I'm not going to lie; I'm sure that my own personal history has colored my view and love of this novel.  But it is really a masterful piece of work, altogether haunting and tragic and beautiful at once.  Loved it.

Rating: **** and 1/2

Review: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

I love a good three-day weekend.  And I can't tell you how excited I am that after today, I won't be in the office again until Tuesday.  It's been a rough few weeks here at work, between being sick and just not feeling it, and being stuck in a rut.  It will be good to get out this weekend.  Plus, it's David's 26th birthday tomorrow!  So lots of excitement happening over the next three days.  I'm going to be very busy, but I can't wait.

And...I finished another book!  Number 44 for the year...we're getting to the halfway point!  No hopes of getting to 50 before the beginning of June, but I'll definitely be there (or past there) by the month's end!

Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is by far one of the quirkiest, most bizarre novels I've ever read.  Our heroine, Rose Edelstein, is only nine years old when she takes a bite of her mother's special chocolate lemon cake, and realizes that she has a strange gift -- the power to taste the feelings of other in the food that they prepare.  Daunted, Rose treats her secret like the affliction she believes it is, feeling utterly alone in the world and in her special knowledge that she find herself incapable of sharing with the world.  But through the years, Rose begins to understand that she is not alone with her "gift".  Though she believes it to be a curse, Rose realizes that there are many, many people who have abilities that they cannot share with others.  The book begs the question of the reader...is having a special power or talent a gift, a burden, or a liability?

To say that I found this book bizarre is a rather large understatement.  When I picked it up and began reading it, I believed that I was reading contemporary literature.  Yet by the end I realized that I was reading contemporary fiction with a touch of fantasy or the supernatural -- not something I was expecting.  Bender's writing style is very fluid and elegant -- I was reminded of Janet Fitch's White Oleander several times -- and my one complaint is her lack of quotations, a la Frank McCourt, of which I have said before I am not a fan.

The twist in the plot really stunned me, to the point where I was thinking I must be crazy, this isn't where this book is going, is it?  Am I nuts?  When I finished Lemon Cake, I hopped onto Goodreads and checked the other reviews, and lo and behold, I was right.  Bizarre, but interesting. 

This is a book really requires a second reading.  Unfortunately, with my goal to read 100 books in 2011, it's going to have to go on the shelf until 2012 along with my other "to be re-read" books, such as The Hunger Games series, Bumped (I feel like I missed a lot when I read it the first time around, and I want to check and make sure I didn't miss stuff) and Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (which I just loved).  Fifty-six books left to go before I can re-read.

Rating: *** and 1/2

Review: The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

Disclaimer: I am not a fan of "chick-lit".  Which probably meant that my POV regarding this book doesn't count.  But.  I'm going to give it anyway.

I don't think I really need to give much of a summary, do I?  The premise of The Jane Austen Book Club is fairly straight-forward, and unfortunately, it's been done before.  A group of people who seemingly have nothing in common except their one singular passion (in this case, the novels of Jane Austen) come together to explore their interest together, when in reality, they're all really trying to come to grips with the unspeakable tragedy or unhappiness in their lives.  

The whole thing just felt so played out.  The idea of people coming together to forget previous tragedies through their hobby has been done to death (re: The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood or The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs), and it doesn't seem that Fowler has anything new to add, except for the plot twist of involving a male character.  This piqued my interest; unfortunately, the characters never flesh out.  Fowler chooses to divide the book into a series of vignettes about each character, leaving little room to explore each personality and providing little to no character development.  Just when I would start to get involved in a character's personality and story, WHAM!  The chapter is over, we've moved on to the next character...and I'm left wondering what the hell just happened.  So little time was spent exploring each personality, that I could not bring myself to care about any of the characters.

Then I am forced to ask: why Jane Austen, again?  Don't get me wrong, Jane is a phenomenal writer, as I've written before.  HOWEVER, today, nearly 200 years after her death, it seems that everyone is jumping on the Jane Austen (or Mr. Darcy) bandwagon.  The author (presumably an Austen-aficionado herself) sprinkles references to Jane's famous works throughout the book...but they don't tie in very well, and when they do, the transition is sloppy at best.

I could not relate to the characters and due to the quick transitions, I found it hard to even develop an interest in any of them.  I didn't care who was romancing who and whose marriage was ending and who was dating who by the end of the book.  I think if Fowler had chosen to flesh out the book a little more, spend more time on her characters, developing their personalities, and put in a little more action...I might have enjoyed the book more.

Oh, and if she had provided a translation for the character that consistently (and obnoxiously) speaks in French phrases.  I can read a little French, but the content was beyond my scope, and I constantly felt that I was missing something.  Very unfortunate.

Rating: * and 1/2

Review: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

I had a "frenemy" in high school.  Her name was Kim.  Kim and I were, for all intents and purposes, almost exactly alike.  We even looked the same (except I wore glasses 24/7 back then and she did not).  We both had long brown hair, we were both tall for our age, we were both readers...we both liked the same guy.  Hence our status as "frenemies."  Even though we knew (and acknowledged) that we could have been best friends if we didn't both like the same guy, we insisted upon having a love-hate relationship from sophomore to senior year of high school.  She dated him, and then I dated him, and he was a jerk to both of us.  

In early spring of 2000, when Kim and I were in the same English class, she told me that she had just read an amazing book, and wanted to loan it to me, since she knew that we had similar literary preferences (to this day, I will take her book recommendations over everyone else's, she knew me that well).  That book was Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha.

Sakamoto Chiyo is only nine years old when she and her sister are cruelly ripped from their parents'  home in the little poverty-stricken village of Yoroido, Japan, and taken to Kyoto -- a city rich in culture and famous for its geisha ("artisans"), ladies who are trained in the arts of dance and entertainment, who are mistresses of some of the most famous and powerful men in Japan.  Little Chiyo, noticeably beautiful (especially for her blue-gray eyes, unlike any other eyes in Japan), is sold to the mistress of an okiya, where she is expected to begin training in the arts of being a geisha.  Poor Chiyo is homesick for her parents and her older sister, and tries desperately to return to Yoroido for years, before a chance encounter with a wealthy businessman alters her life -- and her dreams -- forever.

Years later, she is the beautiful geisha Sayuri, caught between the life she is expected to live -- that of the obedient geisha -- and the man she has fallen in love with.  Set against the backdrop of Japan during the Great Depression and World War II, Sayuri must learn to balance the flow with the tide that her life has become, and to find a way to be both a successful geisha and not give up on her dreams.

The writing in this book is, in my humble opinion, what makes it so fabulous.  I don't know what an American writer has to go through, or how much he has to immerse himself in the culture, to make his writing style sound like that of a Japanese geisha writing down her life-story, but somehow Arthur Golden succeeded.  Even now, eleven years after the first time I read Memoirs, I still feel transported to Kyoto, Japan, every time I read it.  I can see the beautiful kimono, hear the bells ringing at the Shinto shrines, and imagine the cherry blossoms swaying in the breeze as Sayuri so beautifully describes each detail.  The writing style is almost lyrical, and so beautiful that I never grow tired of reading it.

Although it has come to light that Golden's story about the lives of geisha in Japan in the 20th century is not completely accurate (Mineko Iwasaki, the geisha whom Golden interviewed for his research, was reportedly furious because she felt Golden portrayed geisha as little more than prostitutes), the reader who chooses to indulge him or herself with Memoirs purely for the beauty of the writing will not be disappointed.  Those who are better-versed in the history and lifestyles of the Japanese geisha will certainly see more inaccuracies than I did.  To me, it's just a beautiful story.

And (for those of you who really care and might be wondering) -- what happened to Kim and I?  I'm pleased to say that after three years of being "frenemies", we put aside our differences right before graduation, became best of friends...and years later (in 2004 and 2010, respectively) were bridesmaids in each other's weddings.  Kim has now been happily married for nearly seven years and is the mother to three little girls (ages three, one, and with another one due later this summer), and lives in Rhode Island.  We still talk on the phone several times a week, and she is one of my best friends.  So our story had a happy ending as well.

Kim (left) and me on my wedding day, Nov. 5, 2010

Review: A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

A Million Little Pieces may be, at this point, one of the most famous contemporary American novels.  Its cover (the hand coated in sprinkles in front of a Tiffany-blue background) is easily as recognizable and famous as the  Twilight hands holding a red apple.  At this point, is there anyone who hasn't heard of James Frey's "memoir" of drug rehabilitation and the ensuing chaos that followed after the Smoking Gun revealed that he had fabricated some of his story?  Especially after Oprah brought him on her show and rolled him over the coals for "conning" her?  

I must admit that it was partially the drama that piqued my interest when it came to A Million Little Pieces.  Yet, having finished it, I have to say that I'm in no way interested in the possibility that Frey embellished his memoirs.  Because at the end of the day, it didn't change my opinion of the book, one way or the other.

James is 23 years old when he wakes up on an airplane, his face beaten and some of his teeth broken and missing, on his way to drug and alcohol rehabilitation.  He has been drinking since he was a child and doing drugs since his early teenage years.  He is, as he puts it, "an Alcoholic and an Addict and a Criminal" -- addicted to booze and drugs of all kinds (especially crack cocaine) and wanted in three states.  He is told that his body is in such rough condition that, if he chooses to use drugs or alcohol again, he will be dead in a matter of days.  Faced with the choice of death or attempting rehab, but having little to no faith in the AA "Twelve-Step Program", James begrudgingly agrees to give sobriety a chance.

This is not light reading.  Not even close.  James' story is gritty, and it's raw, and it's really tough to read at parts.  The chapter about his oral surgery (performed without any anesthesia or painkillers, since he is in rehab) was particularly graphic, and I had to skim those pages to keep my stomach from flipping over.  The writing style is..."different", I guess, would be a good word.  Like Frank McCourt, Frey chooses not to use quotation marks (or any punctuation, at times), which can make reading difficult at times, particularly when he's describing conversations between multiple people.  Yet, although the subject matter is tough at best, it is not a difficult book to read, and it does go relatively fast.

And though I think as a memoir (real or embellished) it's well-done...I can't really understand the huge buzz around the book.  I never personally felt the "can't put it down" pull to finish it the way I do with many books that I love.  Pieces gets easier to read, the more progress James makes, and towards the end I was finding it easier and more enjoyable to read.  I can't say I ever felt the obsession that Oprah and millions of other people claimed to have over this book -- which may be the reason why I can't understand what the big deal was that James Frey embellished the truth.

Review: The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

I'm tearing through books as quickly as I pick them up, which is a nice change from the slow, tedious slog that was the past few months.  I'm also really enjoying contemporary literature more than I have in years.  Plus, the faster I read these, the sooner I can justify spending money to get more books, right?  Right.

Bernhard Schlink's The Reader is told in three parts from the POV of Michael Berg, a young man growing up in the tumultuous 1950s in post-war Germany.  Michael is fifteen years old when he becomes desperately ill en route to his home, and he is rescued by the kind help of station employee Hanna, a woman in her mid-thirties.  When Michael goes to Hanna's house to thank her for her assistance, the two begin a long, passionately obsessive love affair.  Then one day, Hanna disappears, without leaving a forwarding address.  Years later, while in college and taking a seminar on the legal system, Michael encounters Hanna again -- this time, while she's on trial for a terrible crime connected to the Holocaust.  As Michael watches the trial unfold, and witnesses Hanna's silence and refusal to defend herself, he begins to discover that there's a deeper secret that Hanna's been hiding -- from her legal team, from the prosecution, and from Michael himself.

This is one of those books where I thought I could predict the ending before even reading it.  I haven't seen the film adaptation that gave Kate Winslet her long-awaited Oscar, but after hearing enough about it, I figured I had the story adequately summed up.  Still, the way that the story unfolds sets you up, and when the ending that I was expecting did happen, I had already been lulled into a false sense of security, of thinking that I'd been wrong.  NOPE.  It hit me like a full-on slap in the face.

The story is sad, it's dark, and it can be slow at times, but that is in its nature.  Schlink is writing a story illustrating the general reaction of the German people to the Holocaust, years and years after it happened.  While Hanna struggles with what she has allegedly done, and Michael attempts to come to grips with his emotions regarding their defunct love affair, post-war Germany struggles with its identity.  How to react to a crime so large and unimaginable?  How to preserve your face as your reputation shreds itself at your feet?

Rating: ***

Review: Testimony by Anita Shreve

Moving really does wonders for my reading and nothing for my knitting.  I haven't picked up a knitted object in three weeks...but I'm tearing through my books.  All three of the books I picked up at Goodwill last Thursday are things of the past now.  And I've loved every single one of them.  I'm dropping off some donations at GW tonight, and you bet I'll be checking out the book section again.

Testimony, by Anita Shreve, reads like a Quentin Tarantino film.  When you begin the book, the main event has already occurred.  A Vermont prep school is at the center of a sex scandal that has spiraled out of control.  Worse still are the teenagers at the center of it -- three basketball players, one the quiet child of a local farmer, and an underage girl.  The story is told by the points of view of those involved -- the teenagers involved, their roommates, their parents, their teammates, and even the headmaster of the school, who has had his own part to play in the scandal that has torn the school, and the town of Avery, Vermont, into pieces.

As I stated in my Book-Related Pet Peeves post a few days ago, I'm not usually a fan of books where there are multiple first-person POVs.  But Anita Shreve does this masterfully, like Jodi Picoult in My Sister's Keeper.  I didn't have too much confusion with the characters.  The book also shows, not tells, the bleakness of the main characters following the events chronicled in Testimony, but in a surprising twist, not in the way I expected at all.

This is my first Anita Shreve book, but I plan on reading some of her other work in the future.  Definitely good contemporary literature.

Rating: ****

Review: The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

I'm coming to you today from our NEW APARTMENT!  We got cable in this morning, and in a little while my father's coming over with his truck to help me move the bed and other pertinent pieces of furniture, so we can spend the night here.  I am so ridiculously happy to finally be in the new place...well, as much as we are, which isn't much (we have a TV in here, and a cable hook-up, and our bathroom articles, and that's...about it).

I'm irritated with myself, that I never checked out the bookshelves at our local Goodwill before.  I scored three books (all bestsellers) the other night, for $3.50 (and one was hardcover)!  I'm definitely going to be doing that more often.  Cheap (practically free) books that I love?  Hell yes!  One of these is a re-read from high school, and I'll be reviewing it today.

The Joy Luck Club takes place in San Francisco in the late 20th century.  Four Chinese women, who all emigrated to the United States as young women, have formed friendships over the years and created what is called the "Joy Luck Club".  On evenings they meet, play mah jong, and tell stories, to laugh in the face of tragedy, to forget the unspeakable pain they've endured.  When one of their number passes away unexpectedly, the elder ladies of Joy Luck band together to help her misfit daughter, Jing-Mei (or "June"), return to China to realize her mother's long-cherished wish of being reunited with the twin daughters she was forced to leave behind.

The story is not Jing-Mei's and her mother Suyuan's though.  The book is not so much a novel as a series of sixteen vignettes, told from the points of view of each mother (Lindo, Ying-Ying, An-Mei, and Suyuan -- through Jing-Mei's eyes), and each daughter (Waverly, Lena, Rose, and of course Jing-Mei).  Their vignettes chronicle the ongoing struggles between mothers and daughters -- the mothers' desire to raise their daughters with proper Chinese pride, motivation, and respect, and the daughters' struggle to find their own identities, separate from their families and their heritage.

Amy Tan focuses on the Chinese heritage and family, but she might as well be writing about any mother-daughter relationship.  The crux of the message is always the same.  The daughter needs to fly.  The mother needs to hold.  The mother-daughter relationship is tenuous, heartbreaking, difficult, and precious.  This isn't Gilmore Girls; it's real life, within these pages.  The struggle between love and independence is a tale as old as history itself, and Amy Tan's work is beautifully real.

Rating: ****