Sunday Salon

This morning I finished a really interesting book, Ideas of Heaven, by Joan Silber. It was recommended to me by someone (a lovely woman who works with my husband) who had studied with Ms. Silber. The book's cover says the book is "a ring of stories", which is an apt description. It's one of those books of stories that are connected, a construct I am coming to really appreciate. This book is really cleverly done. The stories are all linked in some way, and the last story connects to the first, making it a "ring", as the cover says. I loved the writing, and the way the writer takes us all over the world and all through time with these stories, yet keeps them accessible. I'll have to write up a review soon.

I am planning to read Mona Simpson's My Hollywood next--I'll crack it open tonight after the kids go to bed. I probably wouldn't have picked this one up on my own, but a friend I trust recommended it, and said it was a quick and enjoyable read. I have to see what Simpson's Hollywood is like, as I live very near Hollywood myself(my neighborhood is sort of south of Hollywood and west of Koreatown). I'm betting my Hollywood is nothing like her My Hollywood, but I'll let you know.

And then on to Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, Oprah's choice (ah, the symmetry) for her book club, which will most likely be the choice for my book group as well. One of my go-to bookish friends really loved it, so I'm really looking forward to starting it soon.

What are you reading this weekend?

Sunday Salon: In my head

The front page of the New York Times Book Review has a really nice review of Alice Munro's new story collection, Too Much Happiness. It's a book that I covet. And now that my birthday has come and gone, I have a couple of book store gift certificates that I can use to buy it!

The review, by Leah Hager Cohen, starts out saying something that I often talk about in relation to my favorite books--that sense that the author is speaking words you might speak, or at least is writing about things you've thought about. It's a wonderful feeling when it happens, and it happened to this reviewer when she read this book of Munro's. Cohen writes, "...the sensation, when reading, that your own mind is giving birth to the words as they appear on the page. Such is the ego that in these rare instances you wonder, 'How could the author have known what I was thinking?' Of course, what has happened isn't this at all, though it's no less astonishing. Rather, you've been drawn so deftly into another world that you're breathing with someone else's rhythms, seeing someone else's visions as your own."

I love when this happens. It doesn't happen for me with many authors, but with some. For me, it happens with Lorrie Moore, and Laurie Colwin, and Alice Munro. Raymond Carver, every once in awhile. Less so with authors who wrote before the 20th century, because their language is so different than that which I use myself, even though I may get caught up in the poetry of it.

Which, if any, authors do that to you?

I'm in the middle of Nicholson Baker's novel The Anthologist, which I'm really liking. There is a similar sensation reading this book. I think it's because it's a stream-of-consciousness novel to begin with, and Baker has been able to really draw me into his main character's head. He doesn't think exactly the way I do, but I like the way he thinks, and it makes the reading experience very enjoyable.

I would imagine that being inside the head of a character you don't like or relate to would be excruciating. I can't remember any reading experiences like that. Do you have any painful stream-of-consciousness reading experiences?

Balancing on the Edge of the World, by Elizabeth Baines--a review

Elizabeth Baines' collection of short stories, Balancing on the Edge of the World, is a slim volume, but what it lacks in heft it makes up for in emotional power. The stories themselves are often quite short--some might even be considered micro-fiction--but there is nothing small about what they have to say.

Here are some of the stories in a nutshell:

A group of young people, drunk, go out for a pizza, and realize they are not much better off than the beggar they meet outside the pizza shop.

A struggling writer realizes she is being conned by a flashy film producer, and a power struggle ensues between them.

A privileged teenaged boy grows up perhaps more quickly than expected when he is held up at knifepoint.

A child experiments with her "powers" as she watches her father leave their family.

One of the most touching stories, called "Compass and Torch", is about a boy who lives with his mother and stepfather who goes camping with his dad. The boy's vulnerability and the father's inability to relate to the boy are so true, and so heart-breaking.

"Going Back" shows the mix of exhaustion and hysteria that characterizes new motherhood.

"Into the Night" is about a man and a woman who meet at a reception, and have sex--and afterward, the woman debates leaving before he wakes, leaving the experience unadulterated; a perfect thing.

I also particularly enjoyed "The Way to Behave". In the ironic opening sentence, the narrator says, "Sisterhood, it's just a wonderful thing," and then goes on to tell the story of meeting her husband's mistress and taking revenge. I found this by turns biting, funny, mean and satisfying.

I agree with the copy on the back of the book that says that the stories are about power and powerlessness. The power Baines writes about is the power in regular, everyday relationships. She writes about the power struggles that occur during domestic disturbances. The stories are about the power struggles that happen in love relationships, relationships between parents and children, especially when these relationships are broken.

Some of the most powerful of the stories are the ones told from a child's eye view. And all of these stories pushed many of my emotional buttons, especially the stories about children who feel abandoned by parents who are separated or just emotionally distant.

Overall, I really enjoyed this writer's voice. Every story is meticulously crafted, and I loved how the stories are told with such a compact grace. Baines takes life's mundane moments and invests them with meaning, power, and a sort of magic. I also loved how the stories all made me feel something. I am not someone who cries while reading, but I definitely wiped away a few tears while reading some of these stories. There is an emotional honesty to them that is really raw and intense, and I found them very affecting.

I was really impressed with Baines, and how she gets to the heart of the matter. I'm looking forward to reading more by this author.

Click here to read Dovegreyreader's review of this book.