'We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves' by Karen Joy Fowler

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler (4)

I am not going to write much about this novel. I believe it is best enjoyed as events unfold in front of you. Basically a woman discusses her family history up to present day from various points along her life. She starts her story in her college years. You can tell she has suppressed something about her family (e.g. no one knows she has a sister or brother, all we know is that she hasn’t seen them for years), but the ‘what’ and ‘why’ are not clear. As her story unfolds, it is touching and sad but has enough humor and quirkiness to keep it from being maudlin. 

'Frankenstein' by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (3.5)

As with many of the classics given the Hollywood treatment, we all agreed that ‘Frankenstein’ the book was much deeper and more interesting than its movie counterpart. The beginning was a bit slow – it starts with ship’s Captain writing letters to his sister about meeting and befriending a strange man (Victor Frankenstein) who tells him a story that has a story told within it by the ‘monster’. It was not easy to follow the story within a story, within a story! We also unanimously found ‘Dr.’ Frankenstein quite abhorrent. His treatment of his creation is reprehensible. It is thought that Mary Shelley actually rewrote the story in her later years to have his circumstances be more fate driven than choice driven – possibly due her belief that fate affected the tragedies in her life. The monster himself is a sad character, but with more to his story than was ever shown in the movies. Overall the book drove a good discussion about the story and about the author. Mary Shelley wrote this under a pseudonym and the author was believed to be a man as it was felt a woman could neither write about science nor use such gore. If the beginning had moved faster, I think we would have given this a ‘4’ for its depth.

'Divergent' by Veronica Roth

Divergent, Veronica Roth (3)

This may be the second most hyped YA novel, after ‘The Hunger Games’, but I felt it did not live up to the hype. While it has some of the same elements of lack of choice, teenagers fighting, and dystopian future, the main character pales in comparison to Katniss. While she is supposed to be strong and clever, she is surprisingly unaware of what is happening around her – she almost has an Asperger’s level of reading people. This is reiterated with her constant inability to understand why the main male character takes any interest in her – duh, he likes you. For the most part I like a clueless protagonist – one who is unaware of their qualities (Jane Eyre being one of my favorites), but eventually they should be smart enough to overcome their non-narcissistic nature and embrace the compliment. Character flaws notwithstanding, the plot of the novel is interesting. Society has divided itself into factions that represent the major personality types: intelligence, courage, etc.  While you may grow up in one faction, you pick your adult faction at age 16. Tris, the protagonist, goes outside her faction and starts to realize that things are very different in the world than she had thought. She represents the ‘I don’t quite fit in anywhere’ feeling of all teenagers in a quite literal way, which ends up aiding her as conflict builds among the factions.

'Dead Man Walking' by Sister Helen Prejean

Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean (3.5)

Many people know this story from the movie starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon.  The book is a drier, more matter of fact account of Sister Prejean’s experiences with the death penalty both as a spiritual advisor to multiple convicts on death row and as a champion for the abolition of the death penalty. I appreciated her ability to look at both sides of the argument, but stay focused on her religious convictions. She admonishes herself often for not spending enough time with the victim’s families and she does not condone what the convicted felon has done. But, she continues to reiterate that if killing is wrong, why does the government get to do it? She also discusses at length the powerful statistics of the lack of efficacy of capital punishment as a deterrent, the costs compared to life imprisonment and most sadly the somewhat random way it is administered (i.e. a black person killing a white person in the south is far more likely to be prosecuted for the death penalty than visa versa for the same crime). Overall the book is interesting and thought provoking, though it is sad and a bit dry. It was written in 1993 based on a lot of facts in the 80’s. I would be interested to hear how things have changed since that time.

'The Sunshine When She's Gone' by Thea Goodman

The Sunshine When She’s Gone, Thea Goodman (2.5)

For such a bright and cheery book cover, I found this to be a depressing book. The married main characters narrate a weekend in alternate chapters. I don’t mind giving away the main plot point – as it happens quickly in the book and hopefully none of you will read it anyway. They have a baby and are dealing with new parenthood. The book begins with the father deciding to take the baby for an early morning trip to a diner (they live in NYC) on the corner to let the mother sleep in. He grabs their mail to read over breakfast. Once he finds the diner closed, and finds their passports in the pile of mail, he decides to take the baby on an adventure – and jumps on a plane for Barbados- without telling the mother! That the mother wakes up sees the note that they’ve gone to breakfast, gets a voicemail later in the day that they are visiting grandma and doesn’t actually talk with the father the ENTIRE WEEKEND is really unimaginable to me. As the weekend unfurls the mother parties it up and the father realizes taking care of a baby is not really as easy as he thought – they both do unforgivable things and eventually reconnect, but by that time you despise them both and frankly don’t care what happens. The ending is more of an aside than anything else. A comment on the back of the book indicated that the book was funny and had a lot of truths about parenting. I hope that is not true – and I can’t imagine who would find this book at all funny.

'Red Harvest' by Dashiell Hammett

Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett (3.5)

If you like a Humphrey Bogart gumshoe-type character solving a complicated mystery involved gambling, drinking and a lot of shooting, you’ll enjoy this book. It is a typical Hammett yarn with an unnamed detective trying to clean up a small town in Northern California. The cadence of the dialogue is tough – it helps if you read some of it aloud. Lot’s of phrases like: ‘My chinch and Dick’s are together at your client’s joint. Mine’s been generally busier than a hustler with two bunks, though I don’t know what the score is yet.’ I enjoyed this book more for the ambience than the plot. It was complicated and the ending was not entirely satisfying – unless you like numerous shoot-outs and dead gangsters. I do plan on reading the rest of his novels, particularly ‘The Maltese Falcon’ and ‘The Thin Man’ as they are two of my favorite movies.