The Candy House

Oh my, this book. This author. Part of me is put off because there is so much going on, that it takes work to track all the characters. Oh, but Jennifer Egan is such an excellent writer! The Candy House is a brilliant and absorbing tale. Again, much like A Visit from the Good Squad, it is akin to a collection of short stories in which a minor character in one assumes the primary voice in another. These people are so real and relatable in their search for authenticity, for connection and meaning, for identity. The pull to conform versus the wish to be unique. What we give up in exchange. 

Choosing quotes was difficult, as every other sentence was worth keeping. I decided to not think too hard about it: 

Page 22:  Had there been a clue Bix had missed, when he said goodbye, of what would happen next? He felt the mystery of his own unconscious like a whale looming invisibly beneath a tiny swimmer. If he couldn't search or retrieve or view his own past, then it wasn't really his. It was lost. 

Page 50:  Holding my phone, looking out at twinkling Lake Michigan, I understood with sudden clarity that doing the right thing--being right--gets you nothing in this world. It's the sinners everyone loves: the flailers, the scramblers, the bumblers. There was nothing sexy about getting it right the first time. 

Page 54:  My family and work--so long the crux of everything I did--became thin topsoil over a deep, bitter root system where my real life took place. Once I'd entered that system, it was all I cared about. 

Page 86:  Consciousness is like the cosmos multiplied by the number of people alive in the world (assuming that consciousness dies when we do, and it may not) because each of our minds is a cosmos of its own: unknowable, even to ourselves. 

Page 97:  Not that it matters; it's all just retroactive math. The random walk of a drunk is of geometric interest, but it can't predict where he'll stagger next. 

Page 125:  Never trust a candy house! It was only a matter of time before someone made them pay for what they thought they were getting for free. Why could nobody see this? 

Page 152:  But friendship risks the end of friendship, and Roxy has moved through too many friends in her life. 

Page 298-9:  The only route to relevance at our age is through tongue-in-cheek nostalgia, but that is not--let me be very clear--our ultimate ambition. Tongue-in-cheek nostalgia is merely the portal, the candy house, if you will, through which we hope to lure in a new generation and bewitch them. 

Page 322:  Snow swarmed like honeybees in the golden glow of the old-fashioned streetlamps; it slathered tree trunks and sparkled like crushed diamonds at his feet. 

Page 326:  One horror of motherhood lies in the moments when she can see both the exquisiteness of her child and his utter inconsequence to others. 

Page 333:  But knowing everything is too much like knowing nothing; without a story, it's all just information.  

Fairy Tale

I visited the library just after Thanksgiving and found Fairy Tale by Stephen King. It was a Lucky Day book (which means a new release that can't be renewed) so I had three weeks to read the 600 page tome. Oh my! I was initially up to the challenge, but then got sick with covid and was up for nothing. In the end I read most of it in the last two days. But I finished! And returned it on time - ha! 

What a fun mashup of everything fairy tale, from Jack and the Beanstock to Rumpelstiltskin and any other fairy tale story or character you can think of. Current and timeless. Smart and truly entertaining. The references were intentional and made this other world seem the source of them all, discovered by wayward travelers who happened upon a portal. 

I also enjoyed the illustrators, Gabriel Rodriguez and Nicolas Delort, alternating a drawing for each chapter. Very cool. 

Page 17:  You have to keep in mind that high school kids - no matter how big the boys, no matter how beautiful the girls - are still mostly children inside.  

Page 33:  The windows were dusty, all the shades pulled. Those windows looked like blind eyes that were somehow still seeing me and not liking my intrusion. 

Page 414:  You get used to the amazing, that's all. Mermaids and IMAX, giants and cell phones. If it's in your world, you go with it. It's wonderful, right? Only look at it another way, and it's sort of awful. Think Gogmagog is scary? Our world is sitting on a potentially world-ending supply of nuclear weapons, and if that's not black magic, I don't know what is. 

And finally, page 595:  You may say I have no reason to feel shame, that I did what I had to do to save my life and the shed's secret, but shame is like laughter. And inspiration. It doesn't knock. 

Carrie Soto Is Back

I enjoyed reading Taylor Jenkins Reid's latest novel, Carrie Soto Is Back. I attended her author talk at the Portland Book Festival earlier this month. I haven't read her previous books but have friends who enjoyed some. The book didn't immediately suck me in, and I'm not much for tennis. But Reid's work is very readable and smart. In the end I found it well-crafted and emotionally satisfying, exploring identity and belonging. I kept three quotes: 

page 40:  I hit the ball the same as I always did, but inside, I felt flushed and in possession of my first real secret. It was like opening the front door and letting fresh air into the house. 

page 177:  But of course there are no absolute morals or lessons. Only perspectives. One man's bitch is another woman's hero. 

page 303:  Gwen stands up and puts her hand on my shoulder. "Falling in love is really quite simple," she says. "You want to know the secret? It's the same thing we are all doing about life every single day." I look at her. "Forget there's an ending." 

A Visit from the Goon Squad

When I heard about Jennifer Egan's recent book, The Candy House, I was intrigued, but since it uses the same universe as her book from about a decade ago, A Visit from the Goon Squad, I decided to read that one first. What navigational skill! Jennifer presses the boundaries of the novel, barely binding a collection of stories into one cohesive experience - this is almost a short-story collection. Or perhaps it is a collection of shorts that was satisfyingly connected. Either way, my attention was rapt. 

Only kept two quotes: 

Page 205: Hilarity keeps you busy for several blocks, but there's a sickness to it, like an itch that if you keep on scratching, will grind straight through skin and muscle and bone, shredding your heart.

Page 337: It was one of those days when every intersection brings up another familiar face, old friends and friends of friends, acquaintances, and people who just look familiar. 

ALSO! I am thrilled to announce that I have a novel coming out November 1st! It is called The Runestone's Promise and it's being published by Unsolicited Press out of Portland, Oregon. Set in 1799 Norway, I found the bones of the story in some family genealogy records. It was fun to write and very satisfying to see being put into print. I'm currently working on my third novel.

All the Light We Cannot See

 Anthony Doerr crafted a beautiful tale of being plucked from the familiar and dropped into a situation that evolves into something terrifying in All the Light We Cannot See. I loved his fresh sight on the familiar setting of WWII. Marie Laure's blindness and faithful guardianship of a mythical curse, as well as the methodical and insightful way Werner could unriddle a broken radio and see the humanity (or lack thereof) around him, made the reader see with all of their senses. Such lovely, yummy turns of phrases. I could have quoted the whole thing. 

Page 218:  The sky drops silver threads of sleet. Gray houses run in converging lines to the horizon, bunched as if to fend off a cold. 

Page 437:  It seems to Werner that in the space between whatever has happened already and whatever is to come hovers an invisible borderland, the known on one side and the unknown on the other. 

Their Eyes Were Watching God

I have had this book for twenty-six years and only now have read it. My husband read it in college and I've been meaning to. What serendipity that my book club chose it. And what an appropriate and relevant time to read it finally. 

Zora Neale Hurston has crafted a masterpiece in Their Eyes Were Watching God. A black woman's journey of coming into her own, I found Janie's story a pure delight. It's a novel of black experience and also feminism. I like how she couched the story inside telling her neighbor friend her tale. I like how little the white people figure into the story - they show up with ingrained oppression, but the story isn't about them. I like Janie's interesting interaction with Mrs. Turner, a black woman prejudiced against black-skinned people. (See the quote from page 138.) I especially like how we get to see the world through Janie's perspective, the beauty in description and in the vernacular. She has plenty of struggles but at the end we find her feeling content, with experience and memories and full with living.

Just read it. 

Page 15:  "You know, honey, us colored folks is branches without roots and that makes things come round in queer ways. You in particular. Ah was born back due in slavery so it wasn't for me to fulfill my dreams of whut a woman oughta be and to do. Dat's one of de hold-backs of slavery. But nothing can't stop you from wishin'. You can't beat nobody down so low till you can rob 'em of they will." 

Page 138:  Anyone who looked more white folkish than herself was better than she was in her criteria, therefore it was right that they should be cruel to her at times, just as she was cruel to those more negroid than herself in direct ration to their negroness. Like the pecking-order in a chicken yard. Insensate cruelty to those you can whip, and groveling submission to those you can't. Once having set up her idols and built alters to them it was inevitable that she would worship there. It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. 

Page 151:  The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God. 

Page 182:  "Ah know all dem sitters-and-talkers gointuh worry they guts into fiddle strings till dey find out whut we been talkin' 'bout. Dat's all right, Pheoby, tell 'em. Dey gointuh make  'miration 'cause mah love didn't work lak they love, if dey ever had any. Then you must tell 'em dat love ain't somethin' lak uh grindstone dat's de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It's uh movin' thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it's different with every shore." 

The Radium Girls

It was fascinating to read The Radium Girls - The Dark Story of America's Shining Women first during the impeachment trial and then as the global epidemic was unfolding. Kate Moore compiled an interesting account of the (mostly) young women who were poisoned by the radium in the paint they used in their work. It showed the mistreatment of people for the financial gain of a few, and then the dogged refusal of those businessmen to take any responsibility. I was struck by the similarity in "rephrasing" the facts and rewriting history used by the company lawyers and the president's defense team. At least the radium companies were eventually shown for their true role in ruining their employees lives. We'll see how accurately history remembers Trump and his actions using his presidential powers. It's gratifying to know that good legislation protecting workers' rights came out of the radium trials, although it was disappointing to hear the short account of it happening again in 1978. Wow.

I was also struck by the context Kate Moore brought to this subject. So many landmark events were happening during that time: World War I, the Flu of 1918, Women's Suffrage and getting the vote, Prohibition and into the Great Depression, just to name a few! I love it when history is sewn together to show us how events are interrelated.

I didn't keep any quotes this time. I almost did, but realized I was just noticing when the author wrote with clear bias, in an isn't-this-awful-guys way that I found to be too emotional (even though I was agreeing with her!) It felt a little long at times, but that helped show just how dogged legal battles like this can be. It was a well-researched work of an important issue, and I am glad I read it.

And now I am waiting for the libraries to reopen to be able to return the book.