Cannonball Read 3 Review #17 - The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

This was my second time around reading this novel, and it still is one of my favorite novels ever. Eugenides is a first-class writer, and he has a true gift for observation and wit. The Virgin Suicides is the story of the last year of life of the five teenaged Lisbon sisters, narrated by a sort of anonymous "we," a group of boys who live in the neighborhood and are infatuted with the mysterious Lisbon sisters. We know that the Lisbon girls live at home with their strict, conservative Catholic parents, but any other insight into their lives is through other people's sometimes conflicting accounts. The narrators are now older, and they are researching the events of that year that led up to the Lisbon sisters' deaths by going through the "evidence" they had collected as kids and interviewing neighbors, family, and friends for their accounts of what happened. Set in the suburbs of Detroit in the 1970s, the novel is an outsiders' observation of a family's decline over the period of about a year. The novel kicks off with the youngest sister Cecilia's suicide attempt and then documents the narrators' observations and little contact with the sisters throughout the next year. These normal teenaged boys are completely fascinated by and flummoxed by the elusive Lisbon sisters. They can only guess at the complexity of those girls' emotions and struggles within their home. Even so, Eugenides still captures the self-involved teen angst that young girls go through, the kind that we wallow in and think will never pass. When Cecilia is in the hospital after her first suicide attempt, a doctor asks her why she's there, telling her "You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets." Cecilia replies "Obviously, Doctor, you've never been a 13-year-old girl."

Eugenides is creative, wry, and a sharp observer. His narrators take on a sort of collective anonymity, allowing the reader to be one of them, devotedly watching the girls from across the street or asking questions of people who might have had even the slightest contact with the beautiful and strange Lisbon sisters. Piece by piece we learn more about the last days of five girls who slowly get lost in their own unhappiness. So while the subject material is kind of a downer, the author manages to bring humor and imagination to the proceedings, making for a unique and mesmerizing story.

Cannonball Read 3 Review #16 - A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

I suggested this novel for the June meeting of my book club, not because I like hype, because as one could tell from my distrust of Jonathan Franzen and my late-coming to Harry Potter and the Millenium Trilogy, I'm not into hype. I wanted to read the book because I heard it was written from various people's perspectives, over many years, and one of the chapters was in PowerPoint format. That is creative and intriguing, and I had to read it. Oh, and it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, too. That's probably something I should mention, but again, not really my main reason for choosing the book.

The novel is divided into chapters that could almost be short stories from people who are either closely or distantly related from each other. Bennie, a big-shot music producer and Sasha, his long-time assistant bookend the novel and show up throughout, and the rest of the novel is fleshed out by people they are sometimes close with or only tangentially associated with. But even those people distanced from them by several degrees or generations are still shown in vivid close-up. We see intimate snapshots of these people's lives over time and come to know them deeply, even if we're with them for just a chapter. The characters' lives weave in and out of each other's over a lot of time, showing how we change, how our lives diverge from what we expect, and ultimately, how time marches on. Egan uses rock music and technology, even her ideas of where technolog is going and what our future looks like in terms of how we connect with each other personally, as a backdrop for a truly modern reflection on human relationships and how we deal with aging in today's world. That's what Goon Squad is about: about time rushing at us like a bullet train as we sit on the tracks, oblivious, smoking, drinking and having a picnic. We make plans and make decisions that change our lives in big and small ways, and before we know it, it's twenty years later and we're shocked at how we got here. But Egan isn't trying to bum us out, she also uses the story to show how humans connect, and how even the briefest of contact can change us and stay with us over time. In one scene, Sasha's uncle gently tries to reach out to his lost, defiant, friendless niece, telling her "You can do it alone. But it's going to be so much harder." Time flies by, bringing with it unexpected disappointments and surprises. The connections we have with the people around us are what stay with us through it all.

Cannonball Read 3 - Review #15 - The Group by Mary McCarthy

I'm fascinated with women's issues and social history, and especially the plight of the woman in less modern times, because the social constructs of the American woman's role is so complex. The Group is a novel that follows eight Vassar graduates from the class of 1933 and follows them through their lives in New York City from two weeks after their graduation to the funeral of one of their members many years later. The novel isn't in a typical narrative format, rather it kind of disjointedly focuses on each member, some more than others, and shows how they stay in each others lives or drift away over the years. Within the fictional narrative, we also get a really close-up look at the way women lived then, from sexual politics to marriage and their role in the working world. In some ways, their stories are timeless and resonate deeply with me as someone only two years out of college, stumbling around pretending I'm a grown-up when really I'm terrified and completely unsure of where my life is going. Some of these women put on brave faces, thinking they have it all figured out, and they get into marriages that destroy them, involve themselves in political movements they hardly understand, and struggle to maintain friendships with people they only think that they know all the way. It also explores the delicate dynamics of the friendship within a group of women, the power plays, the insecurities and the real warmth that all come into play in such a group. No matter how they change or where they go, in the end, they are always brought together because they are a part of The Group.

Cannonball Read 3 Review #14 - The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese-English writer who is somehow able to completely capture the restrained, reserved English personality while writing complex and developed characters who go through trying ordeals. In Never Let Me Go, the novel was centered around three friends who love and hurt each other while on growing up and then on the verge of their deaths. He expresses their pain, confusion and passion while never being melodramatic or amateur. In The Remains of the Day, the narrator is a proper English butler who has worked most of his life in a great English house for Lord Darlington. Not only is Stevens a stiff-upper-lip Brit, but he is a butler who takes his job very seriously and dedicates his life to serving his master. So when I say that he is restrained, I mean he is really restrained. Yet his story, told in diary form, is so clear and thoughtful and coherent that you don't feel a disconnect. Just because he doesn't flail around or cry out about his feelings doesn't mean we don't feel his frustration at his weaknesses, befuddlement over the housekeeper's mood swings and sadness over the decline of his beloved Lord Darlington. In the present day, it is the 1950s and Stevens works for an American man who has bought the Darlington manor after the lord's death. Stevens sets off on a brief road trip to meet with Miss Kenton, the former housekeeper of the home, and during his trip he thinks back to the days working for Lord Darlington, the height of his career in the years leading up to the second World War. Through Stevens reflections, we explore the ideas of what it means to have dignity, the social constraints of English society, and the complicated relationships in his life, both personal and professional. Stevens is trained to always do the right thing, to be loyal and gentlemanly, and it is interesting to see how he struggles to do his best while others around him falter or try to pull him down. Ishiguro's language in the book, through Stevens narrative, is straightforward and sparse, fully illuminating his narrator as a character. I can't wait to see the film, as Stevens is played by Anthony Hopkins and Miss Kenton is played by Emma Thompson. You can't really get much better than that.

Cannonball Read 3 Review #13 - The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Secret History is a unique novel, a sort of calm and detached telling of a group of strange college students to do evil things. The story is narrated by Richard, a transfer to the fictional Hampden College in Vermont. He itches to get away from his depressing town of Plano, California and get away from his cold parents, so he heads to Hampden, a small liberal arts college in a small Vermont town. He immediately notices a small, close-knit group of students who study Greek and the classics with a strange professor, Julian, who has no small amount of influence on his students. Richard manages to ingratiate himself to Julian and the others, and is allowed in the small, six-person program. He becomes a part of this eccentric group of students and is involved in the murder of their friend, Bunny, which I'm not spoiling, as he mentions it in the first page of the novel. The novel is split into two books, and we know going into it that the group murders Bunny, so the first half is the events that lead up to the murder, and the second half is what happens to the group in the aftermath of their crime.

The novel is an interesting one, as it is not in the form of a typical murder mystery. As I mentioned, we know up front that the group kills their friend Bunny, so the only suspense is wondering why it happens and what happens to everyone afterwards. Though it is never specifically stated, the novel takes place in the 1980s, but the students at the center of the novel have this strange, old-world vibe, and this cold, disaffected air so that the reader is never comfortable with them and never connects with their motivations. It's a picture of how cool and capable evil can be, how seductive and calculating. Only in the aftermath of this horrible act does the reader, and our narrator, really start to understand the scope of what happened and become horrified with how we were lead astray. It was an unexpected book, and I think Donna Tartt is a wonderfully capable storyteller. I'm excited to talk about it with my book club.

Cannonball Read 3 - Review #12 - Bossypants by Tina Fey

There are a few writers who could write about something like salad or the history of calendar publishing and make it hilarious. Bill Bryson is one of them, and even though this is the first book I've read by Tina Fey (her first book ever? Probably, right?) I believe she is another one of those people. She does draw from her own life, which has been colorful and not exactly mainstream, so she has less than boring source material, but even so, the humor and biting wit in her writing makes me confident she could make almost anything funny. Bossypants doesn't read like a typical memoir, and I don't know if it's even marketed as such, but instead Fey tells stories from snapshots of her life from childhood up to the present that paint a picture of her experiences and world view without her having to give a blow by blow account of how she got from here to there. Tina Fey was an awkward child/teenager/adult with a keen eye for observation. She writes in vivid detail and is honest and self-deprecating about her admittedly many faults. She is more than aware of the many things people think and say about her that are unflattering, true or untrue, and she gets her detractors back in the most satisfying way: by being so funny and smart that it takes them a second to figure out that they're the ones being "oh, snapped!" Fey tells stories about her childhood, her family, her early start in improv, the challenges and triumphs of working at SNL during a time of transition, and what it's like to be Tina Fey in all aspects of her life, from work to family. The most satisfying chapters for me were the chapter about her dad and the chapter called "All Girls Must Be Everything" where she talks about the beauty standard for women and the media assault telling us what's wrong with us that we never would have even thought of until they told us. I laughed out loud and even though I'm already a huge fan, I was won over all over again by her self-effacing humor and honesty. It was a really fast read, funny and engrossing. I hope it's not her last.

Cannonball Read 3 - Review #11 - Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

I've read Fahrenheit 451 and I own The Martian Chronicles and plan on reading that, so I know that Bradbury writes some science-fiction, but this book is a simple and beautifully written book that centers around Douglas Spaulding and other residents in the fictional Green Town, Illinois during the summer of 1928. Split into brief chapters, there is no real plot, but rather small stories and reflections of the characters as they go through their summertime lives. Douglas is a sensitive, passionate, and serious 12-year-old boy who treasures the joys of being a kid in a small town during the summer so much that he recognizes how amazing everything is while it is happening, and writes down his discoveries and joys so he won't forget. The reader gets perspectives from young children as well as the old and frail citizens who often are found reflecting on their youth with envy, amusement, and fondness. The whole novel is sort of restless, with a sense of urgency that time is flying by, and Douglas is so desperate to remember the little things that make him happy and the things he learns. One especially beautiful passage is at the beginning, when Douglas realizes that he's "alive." It's something he all of a sudden understands and marvels at, and it leaves him kind of flabbergasted. There is also a part at the end that endears him to me, forever, when an old sort of rambling man of the town tells Douglas how he is one of those children who become sad younger than everyone else. I think Douglas is the 1928, male version of me as a child. Mostly the book is made up of snapshots in the daily lives of these people in a simple town during one summer. People have their petty squabbles and their small worries that don't mean much in the long run, but then there are relationships that form us and genuine moments of love and kindness that stay with us forever. Bradbury's writing in this novel is flowery and lovely, and not something we see much of anymore, as in 2011 readers tend to scoff at the nostalgic or the precious. I, however, loved reading about the daily goings-on of Green Town, and the character of Douglas is a sweet and earnest little hero.

Cannonball Read 3 - Review #10 - Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

I have never read any of Murakami's books, and probably wouldn't have, as there are always too many books to read. However, it is the April selection for my book club, so Murakami it was. Set in the late 1960s in Tokyo, the book is told from the perspective of Toru Watanabe, who is looking back on his days as a college student and the intense relationships he had then. He is drawn to Naoko, a severely depressed friend from his high-school days who was childhood sweethearts with his best friend Kizuki, who committed suicide when they were seventeen. The shared grief over Kizuki draws Toru and Naoko together, and Toru struggles to help Naoko while she struggles with her mental illness. Toru is also drawn to Midori, a spirited young woman he meets in one of his classes, and he tries to navigate these intense relationships and do the right thing while dealing with his own pain and detachment from the rest of his carefee classmates. The characters are all wonderful. There are no "normal" people that Toru is friends with. Everyone from his roommate to his girlfriend all have unique quirks and serious problems, but while Toru acknowledges them, he does not make a big fuss of how strange they are. He calmly loves and understands the troubled people in his life, probably because his own pain makes him more aware and sensitive to that of others, a feeling I can relate to. The novel explores grief, mental illness, relationships, love, and the pain of growing up in a calm and deep way, and no one is a cliche or caricature. We follow the lives of a few deeply flawed people in Toru's life as he tries to love them. Except for many references to music and books from the era, the novel is rather timeless. It's a beautiful story of imperfect people trying their best to be happy, or peaceful, or alive.

Cannonball Read 3 - Review #9 - Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

It took me a while to finish the old boy, but here I am. Catch-22 is a whopper of a satire, and Heller does an amazing job of capturing the frustration and impotence of bureaucracy and the horror and senselessness of war. The novel takes place towards the end of WWII, and centers around Yossarian, an American soldier who is disaffected with the war effort and is constantly trying to figure out how to stay out of harm's way while the powers that be keep raising the number of missions before the soldiers can go home. Yossarian is our eyes as the reader, and seems to be the only one who really sees the stupidity of bureaucratic processes and how ineffectual a big effort like an international war seems from the front lines. While the book is very funny, there is this undercurrent of tension and darkness that really comes to a head towards the end of the book. The reader also gets to know Yossarian's friends and fellow soldiers, many of whom meet less than satisfying ends, as will happen when on the front lines of a major war. I really felt Yossarian's rage and frustration, and his struggle with wanting to save himself while also being loyal to his sense of morality. The book flips back and forth from past to present, sometimes returning to the same event from someone else's perspective, but the timeline is not terribly complicated, so it isn't bothersome. Catch-22 is so expertly written because Heller makes the reader just as anxious and angry as his main character and makes you feel something genuine amidst all that satire. It took me a while to finish, but I'm glad I took the time.

Cannonball Read 3 - Review #8 - Julie and Julia by Julie Powell

So I decided to read this book, too, after reading Julia Child's memoir, My Life In France, and of course seeing the movie Julie and Julia last year. I remember when the movie came out that a lot of people loved the Julia portion of the film, but felt like the Julie character, played by Amy Adams, was kind of selfish and unlikable. Well they will REALLY feel like that after reading the book. Julie and Julia is the story of Julie Powell, a 29-year-old secretary who is dissatisfied with her job and anxious about turning thirty, as she feels directionless and unhappy about where she is in life. She decides that she needs something to work for, a project, so she decides to cook her way through Julia Child's famous cook book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in one year, while writing about it on a blog.

It sounds like a great premise, and I tried really hard to like Julie, but honestly, it was a lot of whining and bitching and passing a lot of judgments on other people whose personalities we only get a shallow glimpse of from her perspective. She's constantly making these jabs at her Republican co-workers, but never really explains why they deserve to be put down, and she just kind of makes these vague "I'm a Democrat, they're Republicans" digs that don't really work. It also doesn't really flow. She'll go from talking about the sex lives of her single friends to making aspic for dinner, and I never really get where she's going. Is that really the best way to liven up the cooking stories? It just read really weird. I like a good memoir, but this wasn't one. She's constantly making life hard for her sweet, doting husband, and she recognizes how big of a jerk she is in many, many situations, only to keep doing it over and over again. Listen, you look like a bigger jerk if you're aware of how horrible you are being and do nothing to try to be better.

I was just really turned off by Julie, which isn't a great thing if the book is in her voice and all about her exploits. If I had just read her blog as this project was happening, then I probably would have just been reading funny stories about her cooking disasters and not as much of the misguided personal anecdotes and hissy fits. Whatever, it only took me a few days to read. Moving on.

Cannonball Read 3 - Review #7 - One Day by David Nicholls

I've been hearing about this book and found out it's been adapted to a movie with Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, and the premise is interesting, so I thought I'd check it out. The story centers around Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, and each chapter shows a snapshot of their relationship on the same day, each year, for about twenty years. The book starts out with them on the night of their graduation from college at the University of Edinburgh, where they hook up at a party. Then their lives diverge, but they stay friends, keeping in touch while Dexter travels the world and Emma tries to figure out what to do with herself. She received high marks in school, but is utterly directionless. Dexter is just as directionless, partying and sleeping with many, many different women. Over the years, we see Dexter and Emma's lives and relationship change, as they are wont to do. Dexter is kind of a cad who gets swept up in the glamour and flash of his career in television, but makes decisions which sometimes leave him in the middle of an empty and unsatisfying existence. Emma is a loyal and grounding presence, who knows everything about him and calls him out on his bad behavior. Emma is smart, romantic, but self-loathing and unsure of herself in her youth. Both see the good in each other that they can't see in themselves, and that is what makes them such necessary people in each other's lives.

One Day was satisfying, without too many cliches, and with well-rounded and realistic characters. I have little patience for the trite novels of Nicholas Sparks and his ilk, and One Day is what all of that nonsense is trying to be. Nicholls writes about this very intimate, important long relationship so well. The changes the characters go through and the hurdles their relationship faces over twenty years are so realistic. I really don't want to give too much away, as waiting to see the changes each year brings on July 15th was a lot of the fun of reading this novel. As Dexter and Emma develop as people, their relationship changes, but they continue to be in each others lives. I hightly recommend this book. I'm glad I jumped on this particular bandwagon.

Cannonball Read 3 - Review #6 - My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme

I grew up with a gourmand as a father. He loves cooking, eating, French wine, and his favorite is French food. I have known who Julia Child was since I was very wee, and my dad's favorite moment from her television show was when she teaches how to buy a proper French baguette from the store. If you balance it over your arm and it droops, it's terrible. That's it I guess. But when she demonstrates this, the bread droops, and she hurls if offstage bellowing in her strange accent, "This is a TERRIBLE loaf of bread!" Everything about Julie is straight-forward, passionate, and joyous. My Life in France is told in Julia's energetic, enthusiastic and bold voice. She lived her life with such forward momentum, and her book is a joy to read.

Child gives a bit of background of her life, but the book really starts when she and her husband, Paul, move to Paris for his government job in the late 1940s. As Julia notes, this is really when her life started. With a lot of time on her hands, and inspired by the delicious French cuisine that she and Paul eagerly consume, Julia decides she wants to learn to cook French food. She enrolls in cooking classes at the famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking school, and learns quickly, practicing at home by cooking for Paul and their friends. Julie doesn't stop her education there, however. She shops with locals, asks questions of friends, restaraunteurs, bakers, butchers, and all kinds of French people about the culture, history, and science of all types of French food. She is bright and inquisitive and passionate about the culture of French food, and it makes her some wonderful friends. Eventually, two of her friends ask her to help them with a cook book they are making to bring French recipes to an American audience. This book is many years in the making, but it eventually becomes her famed "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." This book is what leads her to her career in food television.

The book is amazingly detailed, presumably thanks to the letters she wrote to her friends and family over the years. The book is written in her conversational and frank tone, like she's reflecting with a friend on her many adventures. Her love for food and France shine through in her lovingly detailed descriptions of the places she visits and the food she cooks and eats. Her relationships are shown in detail as well, especially that with her loving and supportive husband, Paul. Julia Child lived a life that I admire and envy. She loved her friends and family, she spent her adult life devoted to learning about food and cooking technique, and she found a place where she truly felt at home. Anyone who loves France or French food should read this book, and if you're interested in reading about interesting and accomplished women, the same. It was a great read.

Cannonball Read 3 - Review #5 - The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

In the last few years, there was a project called the Canongate Myth Series where writers from all over the world updated, expanded on, and/or fictionalized myths in short novel form. The Penelopiad is Margaret Atwood's telling of what Penelope from The Odyssey was up to for the twenty years Odysseus was gone. While Odysseus was fighting in the Trojan war and having adventures on his way home, Penelope was struggling to raise her son and evade the many suitors who wanted to marry her for her fortune. In this story, Penelope is friendless except for her twelve young maids who she raises like daughters. In the evenings, they all sit with her as she weaves a shroud for her father-in-law, gossipping and teasing, keeping her company. At the end of The Odyssey, the twelve maids are all hung for supposed treason. Margaret Atwood tells their story as well, via Penelope's story told from the afterworld.

The book is short, more like a novella, and the tone is very modern and sardonic. Penelope, after thousands of years, is finally telling her side of the story as she floats around the shadowy underworld, as friendless as she was while she was living. She tells about her arranged marriage to Odysseus when she was fifteen, the controlling women in her new home who never let her make and decisions of her own, and the lonelieness and humiliation she felt while her husband was off sleeping with goddesses and doing who knows what for twenty years while she thanklessly toiled at home, keeping her suitors at bay and raising a bratty teenaged son. Atwood's Penelope is self-aware, sad, but strong and smart. She is utterly powerless, as everyone in her life treats her like a prop. She even explains how a quiet death would be of value to multiple people in her life so that they wouldn't have to deal with her and could just have her treasures with no interference. Her only comfort are her twelve young maids who act as her friends and confidantes. But they are unjustly slaughtered while Penelope is sleeping, and she is left alone again.

I love the idea of giving Penelope a voice, a personality, and showing Odysseus' weaknesses as a proud and selfish man. He got to travel the world for twenty years and have songs written about him, and myths told of his exploits. Penelope didn't get any songs, and she never got to leave her castle. But Penelope is the real hero. She was faithful and strong, and she did the right thing, even though no one did the right thing by her. Atwood gives her the chance to get some peace by telling her story, even though it is long after the fact.

Cannonball Read 3 - Review #4 - How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley

There are a lot of people out there who think they're funny and interesting, and they have blogs or Twitter accounts where they write about their lives. Some of them are legitimately amusing, but let's face it, most of them aren't. Both of Sloane Crosley's collections of essays, I Was Told There'd Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number, read like a friend telling you about funny, absurd, and out of the ordinary stories from her life in her twenties...your eloquent, self-deprecating, and genuinely likable friend.

I Was Told There'd Be Cake was laugh-out-loud funny, full of absurd stories of a woman in her early twenties trying to figure life out with mixed results. However, in How Did You Get This Number, there's a little more poignancy with her humor, because as we get older, the stakes get a little higher. Our mistakes carry a little more weight, and we're a little more on our own when things go wrong. I recognize myself in these stories, also as a twenty-something out of college and trying to figure out my life and facing my inadequacies. Crosley is a great writer, deftly weaving so many funny, ridiculous observations into these small vignettes. She writes about searching for the perfect apartment, strangers' bathroom habits, and the fate of her many family pets, but at the same time is telling you so much more about herself, the people she knows, and the people we all know. I don't want to get too detailed about any of the individual stories, because they're so great when you don't quite know what you're getting into.

Crosley's writing is a pleasure to read. She never struck me as smug or self-indulgent like so many can seem while writing about their lives for everyone to read. She's that girl who can give you all of these reasons why she's not cool or together, but really, she's the coolest person in the room. Who wants to hear Elizabeth Gilbert go on about her perfect journey to happiness? A lot of people, apparently, but I like Sloane Crosley and the glimpses into her own flawed, funny, familiar path to being grown-up.

Cannonball Read 3 - Review #3 - The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O'Connor

I have read nearly everything that Flannery O'Connor has written, being from Georgia and then an English major at a Jesuit university. Labeled one of the "Southern Gothic" writers, O'Connor's work is rife with grotesque characters and heavy on religion. She rejected secular ideals and encouraged her readers, through her characters, to reject shallow fundamentalism and self-centered, secular ways and choose the path to God. She was a devout Roman Catholic from Savannah, Georgia, and she died of lupus at the young age of thirty-nine. In my experience, she incites very strong opinions, either enthusiastic interest or shocked revulsion. She does not speak to everybody, I guess, but I admire Flannery and appreciate her work. She doesn't write about religious issues in hushed tones or with rose-colored glasses. She calls out the people who say one thing but mean another, and she gives horrible and disgusting people a chance at grace. Her characters struggle with faith, they get confused, they make mistakes. Her work isn't soothing or cheerful, but it's creative and it provokes. I prefer provocation to platitudes.

Francis Tarwater is a young boy who has been raised by his crazy Bible thumper great-uncle out in the middle of nowhere. His great-uncle has prophesied that Tarwater will become a prophet and baptize his cousin Bishop, the mentally handicapped son of his uncle, Rayber. After Tarwater's great-uncle dies suddenly, Tarwater hitches a ride into the big city to find his uncle Rayber to live with him. Rayber is a schoolteacher, who also briefly fell under the spell of the crazy great-uncle when he was younger, but who ultimately rejected his teachings about Jesus, becoming an atheist. Tarwater's stay with Rayber and his little cousin Bishop is strained, to put it lightly. He is confused, as he was raised by his evangelical great-uncle, and is now being taught the opposite by his uncle Rayber. He desperately wants to be a free man, making his own way in life, but resents both father figures for what they teach him.

The Violent Bear It Away is ultimately about Tarwater's path to his destiny. O'Connor's characters run into their trouble when they actively ignore the truth, or they are ignorant to it. She incites her readers to wake up and look around, to stop being so prideful, but to see God's grace. Her Christian faith is at the forefront of her work, always, and she encourages her characters to choose the complicated and trying, but ultimately rewarding path towards God and salvation.

Cannonball Read 3 - Review #2 - Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

I've said it before, but Lolita is one of my all-time favorite novels. I've heard people say that it's the kind of book English majors love, which, you've got me. I like it because Nabokov can really, REALLY write, and he also makes a disgusting pedophile and sociopath into a sad, almost sympathetic character. That is some skill. So I decided to try another of his novels, and I picked up Pale Fire. The premise interested me. It starts off with a 999 poem in four cantos by the fictional poet John Shade, shortly after his death. Then the rest of the book is a commentary written by his friend and neighbor, Dr. Charles Kinbote. I mean, you can't say the idea isn't original. Nabokov wrote a 999-line autobiographical poem of a fictional man, and then wrote another 230 pages or so of commentary from the perspective of a truly weird and creepy admirer. However, Kinbote, the man writing about the poem, is a weird duck. He spends most of the time commenting not on John Shade's poem about his life, but on three things: the story of the exiled King of Zembla, (the King of where? Exactly.), the story of the King's hired assassin, and then Kinbote's own perspective on his friendship with the poet John Shade. It's disjointed and weird, and although the book only clocks in at 301 pages, it took me a damn long time to get through. From the light research I did on its critical reception, I have gathered that it was met with mixed reviews. I certainly applaud Nabokov's creativity and effort, however it's a very strange and sometimes frustrating read. But the narrator is, in my opinion, most likely a lunatic, so perhaps that was Nabokov's plan after all. I'm going to read Nabokov's novel Ada at some point, so hopefully that will be more on the side of Lolita than Pale Fire.

Cannonball Read 3 - Review #1 - The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa

Yikes, my first CBR review ever! Forgive me. I had to read this book for my January book club meeting. It was suggested by our newest member, who is a college history professor, so even though it wasn't a book I would have ever picked up myself, I'm glad I got the chance to read it. The subject matter is all quite foreign to me, which is always a fun challenge, but it made getting into the novel a slower process. It is a novel that takes place at the real Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Peru, and it centers around a group of teenaged boys who are all in the same section and year at the school. And it's a terrifying world to observe. I'd say the book is half Lord of the Flies and half my worst nightmare. Although they live in a military academy, their behavior is largely unchecked, and there is hazing, boozing, and bestiality galore.

There are the two moral centers of the novel, Ricardo "The Slave" Arana, and Alberto "The Poet" Fernandez. The Slave is meek, bullied mercilessly by everyone at the academy. He is eventually befriended by The Poet, who uses his wit to stand up to bullies and gains their favor by writing erotic stories for them. It's a bleak life in the academy. Then there is The Circle, a group of four boys, led by "The Jaguar," an angry, revenge-obsessed young man who runs things and leads the others using fear. The plot is kicked off with The Circle stealing a Chemistry exam, and then it ripples into something that affects our main characters in huge ways. The book flips back and forth from the plot in the present day academy to the backstories of three of the main characters' paths to the school.

Ultimately, the book deals with truth vs. perception, the true nature of a person, and how in our imperfect world, justice doesn't always come to pass. Vargas Llosa's writing style in the novel flips around from standard prose and dialogue to confusing, claustrophobic, formless pieces of speech and thought, putting the reader in the middle of a complex and chaotic world of angry teenaged boys. It was a fascinating look into very foreign subject matter to this particular obedient English major.