Every summer I set out an ambitious list of what I’m going to read (usually complete with suggestions from you folks). And then I find various benches, beaches and buses (such fun with alliteration!) and read the list. I then humble brag about how much I’ve read. I make new and more expansive lists for the fall. I revel. Continue reading
Cottage Reads 2018: Death, Dying and Jonathan Franzen
Filed under Book Club, Fiction, Non-fiction, Prize Winner
An American Marriage: Terrific.
Tayari Jones’ An American Marriage is great. It follows Celestial and Roy and the dissolution of their marriage after Roy is imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. They’ve been married for a year at the point, and the book explores what the obligations are for each individual in marriage/committed relationships when the circumstances of the initial arrangement change. To what do we owe one another in perpetuity? When do we get to change our minds? What must we sacrifice for the institution, or for the other person, and when do we get to privilege our own happiness? What rights do we have (to be selfish) (to expect steadfast commitment)?
Celestial and Roy’s marriage is constrasted with that of their respective parents. Each set of parents offering up a different vision of the same questions of commitment. I was moved by the scene of Roy’s father (name escapes me) burying his mother and wondered at that kind of grief.
As much as it is a book about the institution of marriage, it is also about manhood. If both (marriage and manhood) are imagined in our current moment to be under threat, or flailing, or failing, this book harkens back to a vision of each that is, if not idealized, than at least coherent. Roy puts forward visions and versions of what it means to be a man, as if to test the hypothesis or to have them rejected. In so doing the reader can also examine whether there is any value to be had in a constellations of qualities we might call ‘manhood,’ or whether this institution, too, has served its function and can be dispensed with like so many fast divorces.
It’s also a book about race and the state. Much of Celestial’s concern about how to respond to Roy’s experience of incarceration is to know that he is a black man in America and that his experience of the criminal justice system is visited upon him and his family in ways that are at once extrordinary in their injustice and perfectly ordinary in their frequency. Celestial must weigh whether she has particular obligations, in addition to those of being a wife, because she is the wife of a black man falsely accused and imprisoned.
Taken together the book explores resonant questions and does so with beautiful, captivating writing. It’s well worth a read before the end of the summer.
Filed under American literature, Bestseller
The Obelisk Gate: I Maybe Need to Learn to Say No (or stop caring about the dishes).
I’m busy. It’s like a thing. You say you’re busy, I say I’m busy, we both secretly think the other person isn’t that busy, because like *I’m* the busy one. And also how important we are because we’re busy. Like unimportant people spend their time like sprinkles at a sundae buffet: willy nilly. But really I just seriously miscalculated how long some things would take and overcommitted and like all the things and never want to disappoint or say no and have a thing to prove and want to defy the expectations and stereotypes and so here I am – well past my bedtime, on an unmade bed (because the sheets had to be washed tonight to make a full load), trying to recall a book I read three weeks ago and promised myself I would blog two weeks ago and even while I was reading it was pretty sure I’d rather just be staring out the window but thought I had to post something here and so read it and thought it was mostly ridiculous but also halfway fun if you could put aside just wanting to nap. Or to plan a Farm Animal Theme Day for the Family Cottage because I also organized everyone into theme days for the cottage and my family can’t say no either and so now we’re all doing it and probably secretly hating that we have to organize it but we’ll have fun while it’s happening. Right?
Oh you wanted a book review and not… whatever this is? Right. Here we go:
The Obelisk Gate is… a book. Second in the Broken Earth series. I read the first one a few weeks ago and wrote about it here. This one also has characters and a setting and a plot. I honestly can’t remember much except there are some battles in a gemstone cave and some plans for more battles and maybe an epic mother-daughter fight (which is great because enough with the father-son fights) is coming. Some scenes with limbs being ripped asunder. A few where you’re like ‘who is who?’ ‘what is happening’ and ‘why does this matter’ but that’s probably because I couldn’t remember the rules of the world well enough from the first book, or the mythology/history of the world, to really be that invested in the next phase. Suffice to say I’m not going to read number three.
Or probably ever read for fun again. (Don’t worry, all, I’m almost done An American Marriage and I promise I’ll write its review when I’m not so overtired I’m seeing spots. (because I’m so busy and important, remember?)(but actually everything is a-okay, or at least it will be if I can get organized enough to relax at the cottage. Ha!).
Filed under Fiction
Literary Vice 