1216. My Invented Country by Isabel Allende

This memoir was published in 2003, seven years after Allende's first memoir, Paula. The latter is a better and more thorough memoir; but My Invented Country (subtitled "A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile" on the hardbound edition I read) still has something to say. The descriptions of Chile's landscape are thorough, but those of some of the customs and beliefs of Chileans came across a little too much as generalizations or stereotypes.

As with Paula, there is information in this book that provides background for her novels and other books. In particular, I learned that The Infinite Plan (1994), her first novel set in the United States, is based on the life of her second husband (married in 1987), who she discusses more thoroughly here than in Paula.

I liked her distinctions between exiles and immigrants, and her discussion of memory, nostalgia, and imagination, and the parts they play in writing and life. I could draw some parallels to how I felt when I was away from Texas and how I feel now that I'm back (sometimes I think Texas is my "invented country"). Some memorable quotes from the book:

"But that's how nostalgia is: a slow dance in a large circle. Memories don't organize themselves chronologically, they're like smoke, changing, ephemeral, and if they're not written down they fade into oblivion....memory twists in and out, ike an endless Moebius strip." (p. 141)

"When I compare my experience as an exile with my current situation as an immigrant, I can see how different my state of mind is. In the former instance, you are forced to leave, whether you're escaping or expelled, and you feel like a victim who has lost half her life; in the latter it's your own decision, you are moving toward an adventure, master of your fate. The exile looks toward the past, licking his wounds, the immigrant looks toward the future, ready to take advantage of the opportunities within his reach." (p. 174)

"I have constructed an idea of my country the way you fit together a jigsaw puzzle, by selecting pieces that fit my design and ignoring the others." (p. 178)

"'You remember things that never happened.' Don't we all do that? I have read that the mental process of imagining and that of remembering are so much alike that they are nearly indistinguishable. Who can define reality? Isn't everything subjective? If you and I witness the same event, we will recall it and recount it differently....Memory is conditioned by emotion; we remember better, and more fully, things that move us...When we call up the past, we choose intense moments--good or bad--and omit the enormous gray area of daily life." (p. 179).

© Amanda Pape - 2007 - e-mail me!

1215. On Beauty by Zadie Smith

I read this book for the book club I'm trying to become more involved with in the town where I now live. They meet once a month on Tuesday nights, which is when I usually work (at least during the long semesters), so this was the first time I was able to attend. I wasn't real impressed, but then only three other people showed up (less than usual, I'm told), which may be partly due to the fact that no one seemed to like this book.

In many respects this book is your typical middle-age life-crisis story. Smith says she based it on E. M. Forster's Howards End, and, according to an Amazon.com editorial review, took that "tale of class difference, and upped the ante by adding race, politics, and gender." The title comes from Elaine Scarry’s essay, “On Beauty and Being Just,” as well as the poem "On Beauty" by Nick Laird, Zadie Smith’s husband (and the poem also appears in the book, disguised as a work by one of the characters).

This book is full of numerous other literary and art references (the lead character is a Rembrandt scholar).  Looking at the art works that were discussed in the book really helped make sense of some passages.

We might have had a more meaningful discussion if the whole group had seen such a guide (or any reading guide) in advance. It probably would have been better if everyone had read the whole book (only two of us had; another had started it but did not finish, and the last one read the wrong book). But that's been typical in my ongoing book club; there's always some that don't read the book (although often they don't show for that discussion either) and some that have not finished it. I'll give this new group a few more chances; next month's book definitely looks better.

© Amanda Pape - 2007 - e-mail me!

1212 - 1214. Books Read January - May 2007

I was inspired to read Paula after hearing Isabel Allende talk about her daughter at the Texas Library Association meeting in April 2007. Allende shares the story of her life through 1992, including the military coup disposing her uncle Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. Paula is Allende's 28-year-old daughter, a newlywed in a coma from inherited (from her father) porphyria. Allende interweaves the story of her life with the story of her daughter's last year, spent in a hospital in Spain and Allende's home in California. Moving and magical.

Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs: I read this "memoir" with a mixture of disbelief and disgust. I would have stopped reading before finishing it if not for my long-time book club. I hated this book. It comes across as making the mentally-ill mother look even worse because she trusts an even-more mentally-ill psychiatrist. According to Wikipedia, parts of the book may be untrue (shades of Frey's A Million Little Pieces?). Perhaps some memoirs should not be advertised as such, and should be marketed as fiction, when that is what they are. There are some similarities to Eugenides' Middlesex, but I thought the latter book was FAR better.  

Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya: I enjoyed reading this book as it really illuminated cultural practices (such as curanderas) in the Southwest in the mid 20th century. I found it especially interesting that there were cultural differences even within the protaganist's family, his mother's Lunas (moon) versus the Marez (the sea) of his father.

A student where I'm a librarian (Tarleton State University) wrote a thesis on this novel (which I also read), the premise being that Rudolfo Anaya used the main character of Antonio as "a window into his [Anaya's] progressively developing world view" to "describe the events he [Anaya] encountered which oriented, disoriented, and reoriented him into the world" (Cruz-Solano, Minerva Maria. Rudolfo Anaya's Bless me, Ultima : reshaping the "Dusty relics of distant memories," Thesis (M.A.)--Tarleton State University, April 1996, p. vii). 

Examples of the orientation are the Catholic faith Anaya (and Antonio) grew up with, as well as the Aztec and Mexican myths and legends (on the creation and destruction of man, curanderas and brujas or witches, La Malinche and La Llorona, and Coyolxāuhqui) that they heard growing up.

Examples of disorientation are their questioning of their Catholic faith and the storytellers' tales, the educational system (particularly going from a Spanish-speaking home to an English-speaking classroom, and hearing the fables and fairy tales of the predominant culture), and conflicts in his parents' family traditions (farmers versus cowboys - believe me, a BIG issue here in the Southwest at that time!). 

The reorientation is how Anaya and Antonio come to terms with these issues, for example, accepting aspects of both the Catholic and a more naturalistic faith (as represented by the golden carp in the book).

You don't have to be Catholic to understand the book, but I do think it makes some of the author/main characters' motivations easier to understand if you are. One also notes in the book that the river has a "presence" or alive-ness to it that I have often felt around rivers.

© Amanda Pape - 2007 - e-mail me!

1050 and 1051. Two Award-Winners

The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron:  I read this book because I think I need to as part of my job - it's a controversial award-winner. This 2007 Newbery winner has quirky characters: a 10-year-old motherless girl named Lucky, and her two friends, knot-tying Lincoln (whose mother is a part-time librarian in the nearest larger town, and whose dad is 23 years older), and Miles, who lives with his grandmother (since his mother is in jail) and wants to read/have read 1960's Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman over and over. Lucky lives in trailers with her young French guardian (her father's ex-wife) in a remote town, population 43 (apparently mostly members of 12-step programs) at the edge of a California desert. The controversy about the word "scrotum" on the first page of the book is overblown, but the story probably is not appropriate for children under 12 anyway. It's a heartfelt tale with an ending that brought tears to my eyes, but most 9- to 11-year-olds, the book's target audience, may not "get" it.

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan:  I was impressed with how Egan made me care about the people in this book, and followed their stories through the various events and circumstances in the first 40 years of the 1900s. I've been to the southern edge of the Dust Bowl (in the Texas Panhandle) and the descriptions of the settings are quite accurate. I experienced my first dust storm on February 24, 2007, and it gave me a taste (literally) of what it was like for those folks. Well written and educational.  Egan and The Worst Hard Time won the 2006 National Book Award for Nonfiction and the 2006 Washington State Book Award in History/Biography.

© Amanda Pape - 2007