'Kaputt' by Curzio Malaparte

Kaputt, Curzio Malaparte (4)

My Italian friend, Luca, recommended this novel to me. He said it did for WWII what ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ did for WWI and I must agree.  This not an easy book to read, with its indirect language and difficult subject, but it is important and powerfully moving.  Malaparte was initially a supporter of Mussolini who became an observer and journalist on the Eastern front. One of the things that really sets this book apart is the unparalleled access he had to the upper crust of the Axis nations’ society from the German governor of Poland to the Prince and Princesses of Bavaria and Italy.  He meets these people and tells stories of what he has seen in the war. These stories are horrendous.  In the beginning of the book he tells them in an ironic and somewhat detached manner.  As the book (and also the war) continues, he becomes more embittered and his sarcasm with this blind society becomes more barbed.  While it is a novel, it is more like historical fiction where some of the stories are real and others are allegories or modified versions. Obviously the novel hit close enough to home with the powers that be that Malaparte was jailed for his politics and had to smuggle the manuscript out in 3 parts in order to get the book published. If you want to have a very different view of the war from an insider on the Eastern front, this is an excellent book to read. It highlights the horror and the ignorance of war.

'True Grit' by Charles Portis

True Grit, Charles Portis (4.0)

I knew of the famous John Wayne movie ‘True Grit’ and the recent remake but was surprised to hear they originated with Mr. Portis’s novel written in 1968.  This is a simple, quaint story of a young girl from Arkansas who is determined to find justice for her father’s murder.  I loved the simple purity of this character and her resolute drive.  She is a great role model for any teenager – a fourteen year old who works hard to support her family, is not afraid of adults (and this includes some pretty shady characters) and who won’t let anything get in the way of achieving her goal.  The original movie made much of Rooster Cogburn, the marshal hired to find the killer, but the hero of the book is really Mattie Ross and her unending focus.

'Bite Me' by Christopher Moore

Bite Me, Christopher Moore (3.0)

Christopher Moore is obviously a very clever writer.  What I found so disturbing about this, my first experience reading his fantastical and irreverent humor, was that a grown man could write so utterly convincingly in the voice of a teenage Goth ‘valley’ girl!  In doing so, he has taken a very tired theme (vampires) and refreshed it with non-stop humor.  The main storyteller, Abigail Von Normal, starts as a minion for two other recent vampires.  While they attempt to navigate their way with their new powers they find an odd phenomena, someone has turned a cat into a vampire. This vamp cat, in turn, inadvertently ‘turns’ many other cats (nasty exchange of bloods while humping) and San Francisco becomes overrun with vampire cats.  The silliness of the plot aside, the ridiculous characters (homeless guy, thinking dogs, vampires, old ninja guy) and Abby’s constant hysterically skewed priorities (as you’d expect of a teenage girl) lighten the story and had me laughing out loud. 

'The Marriage Plot' by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides (3.0)

This novel is the newest from Jeffrey Eugenides, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of ‘Middlesex’, an oddly non-fantastical book about a hermaphrodite.  Once again he has an interesting perspective on subjects, in this case mental illness and relationships. ‘The Marriage Plot’ follows the lives of 3 college students as they make their way through the precarious and very important transition to adulthood.  In this novel, Mr. Eugenides tackles mental illness, a relatively touchy subject, with a gentle hand. He also examines various types of love between these 3 characters. The main character, Madeleine, is attracted to the brilliant, but odd Leonard. She is also conflicted about her feelings for Mitchell, who is deep, but far more ‘normal’. What I liked about the book was that the characters felt very real with interesting dilemmas. Maybe that is what led me to the ‘3’ rating, maybe they were too real to make the book extraordinary. Btw, after writing this paragraph, I read some of the reviews on Amazon. A number of people wrote that the characters were not real and quite pretentious. I guess it must depend on what type of real characters you know if your own life!

'The Night Circus' by Erin Morgenstern - book club selection

The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern (4.0)

This book is very unique, which is likely why it caused the split in feelings from the book club. While the majority of readers found it very imaginative with beautiful imagery, a couple could not get engaged and found very little to enjoy in the book. The book introduces a circus that shows up spontaneously, comes alive at night, is truly magical, and leaves as quietly and quickly as it arrived. The story is told from various times and from the perspective of people who visit the circus and those who both started it and participated in it. For those of us who don’t normally like circuses (and there are a few of us), it was relatively easy to suspend one’s imagination and enjoy the magic. Maybe that was why – real magic is more enjoyable in fiction than someone trying to create an illusion without real magic? Either way, the characters and the imagery that Ms. Morgenstern has evoked with her imagination were truly amazing. I feel that I need to read this again in order to slowly enjoy the pictures drawn in words.