Books 2010: Corduroy Mansions by Alexander McCall Smith

I'm a longtime fan of Alexander McCall Smith's #1 Ladies Detective Agency series.  These books which are set in pastoral Botswana, tell the tales of Precious Ramatswe, a lady detective or a certain age and a certain size.  Each one describes a gentle African beauty of culture, people, and geography with humble respect and dignity.  There is something that is both simple and profound at once in the same sentence, the chapter, the entire novel, and the entire series.  It is a quick and easy read, but never insulting of one's intelligence.

Until now, I had not found McCall Smith's other novels all that appealing.  During the period that I was reading about the ladies detective agency, I was traveling back and forth to Africa.  This time, I was traveling back and forth to London, when I became immersed and enamored with Corduroy Mansions.

Corduroy Mansions is a townhouse divided into several flats in the Pimlico area of London.  Each flat has its own cast of characters, with somewhat interlinking stories, each totally absurd, yet somehow almost perfectly plausible.  One twenty-something flatmate living among the group of young women living together entirely by circumstance, is the junior staffer of an abhorrent MP who ends up firing her by text message. While another of these post-uni young woman works at a health food store, and somehow offers her boy-crush a free colonic irrigation.  A middle-aged gentleman is desperate to have his mid-20's son move out to his own place, and schemes ways to push him out of the nest.  All this while a desperate divorcee schemes her way into the nest.

The novel has an agreeable pace and tone.  McCall Smith carries you easily through each sentence and chapter, but never insult you intelligence.  And while the plots unfold in a simple, seemingly one-dimensional narrative, there is an additional plane of biting, droll wit, so subtle it's often almost missed, like one character's somewhat neurotic observation of the fish seller always being prompt, "she liked that in someone who sold perishables."  There were many times when reading, I just enjoyed the little subtle joke or the totally nuanced absurdity, and I could imagine McCall Smith's twinkling eyes as he wrote it.

4 out of 5 stars for a good read, an gentle read, and a natural humor...this one's easy on the eyes, and only as taxing on the brain as you want it to be.

The Afterlife of Stieg Larsson

Wow! The drama and intrigue of the late Stieg Larsson's family and long-term lover are nearly as compelling as his novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I blogged about here.

That novel, the first installment of the Millennium trilogy crime thriller series, was wildly successful. All three books are soaring best sellers, translated into multiple languages, and adapted into mainstream films.  All of that translates to -  as we say here in the 'hood - "BANK!"  But Larsson, who died at the age of 50 of a massive heart attack before the first book was even published, has never seen a single cent...er...a single Swedish kroner.  Without a will, that money (which just keeps pouring in) goes to his estate, his brother and father. His long-term lover and partner of 30+ years, Eva Gabrielsson,  is not recognized under Swedish law.  With no children together, and having never gotten married to Larsson, she is Nobody.  Interesting, that in socially liberal Sweden, there is no such thing as common-law marriage - only the real deal (gay or straight) traditional "Married"  with a capital "M."

And the bitterness, allegations, insinuations, and accusations are flying...Money! Who gets all the dough?  What is she entitled to? His brother and father were legally awarded half the apartment that Larsson and Gabrielsson shared, then demanded an arrangement of Gabrielsson to buy them out, and later caved to social and moral pressure to just give her the Larsson half outright.  Mystery!  What were Larsson's intentions?  And now even, who wrote the books? She has alluded that she had a hand in creating them.   Family strife! She says Larsson was estranged from his brother and father. Psycho girlfriends!  Brother and father say, of course, that Gabbrielsson is "mentally unstable."  (Grrrr...don't get me started on that one!)  Revenge!  Despite it all, she still holds a great hand of cards.  Why?  Because Gabrielsson just happens to have Larsson's laptop with the nearly complete manuscript, outline, and notes of a 4th novel .  That's right, folks, more "BANK!"

So, there's quite a drama behind the crime thriller trilogy.  The subtext, the sub-plot, the intrigue make for a whole other bestseller.  I'm fascinated! - and staying tuned for the next installment of Reality Lit.

Books 2010: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Wow.  This book got me.  Published under the crime novel genre - not at all my usual - I was absolutely spellbound, one night even reading it from 3am to 6am (ok, coupled with jetlag, but still...).

The gripping tale takes place in Sweden, and follows a somewhat disgraced, but totally righteous, journalist (and his lovers); a disturbed young punk hacker (and her abusers); and a wealthy aging industrialist (and his multi-generational back-stabbing family, each member with shares in the family empire).  The main story is solving a 40-year old mystery, the disappearance and suspected murder of a young teenage girl.  However, there are seemingly a bizillion sub-plots - and their twists and turns, and unexpected connections make for a very complex web indeed.

Parental discretion is advised.  The crime novel includes just about every type of crime - rape, murder, serial murder, hate crime, financial crime, and cybercrime - at times so complicated, I could barely follow.  There's some bondage (not all in the name of crime, if you know what I mean).  And the mystery and its investigation involve some highly repellent, hugely graphic depictions of rape, sexual assault, torture, animal torture, and more.   Around page 450, there was a description of a tortured confession that went on so long - 40 pages or more - and was so vividly described, my stomach churned and my head was addled.  The characters in this book are sick, I thought. The author is a sick man for writing this.  I am a sick woman for reading this.  I briefly considered abandoning the book here - just too much for me.

But I continued.  It was also around this point in the nearly 600 page novel, that it lost just a bit of its hold on me.  The sub-plots, as they were wrapping up, were taking yet another turn, perhaps one too many.  And there were just so many sub-plots to wrap up - I thought the book still could have been great with  2 or 3 fewer plots!  A few seemed to hasten to finish, in order to wrap up without hitting the 800-page mark.  Some of the delicious pacing got compromised to this end.

One thing I definitely loved about the book was it's Swedish setting.  (I'm so predictable).  You could really feel the summer white nights and the long, dark winter nights with their bone-chilling cold.  Stockholm's modern cosmopolitan life was juxtaposed against the spare, simplicity of northern Sweden's secondary towns with their hearth-warmed cottages.  The endless pots of very strong coffee could be smelled brewing throughout.  And the lovers, and the other lovers, and the lovers of one's lover, and the lovers in their 20's and their 50's (sometimes even lovers of each other).  Ahhhhh...Sweden....

All in all, a satisfying read - 3.75 stars of 4, just slightly marked down because of pacing and (over) complexity.  But still, completely enticing and engrossing, and never, ever cheap.

Books 2010: Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

I'm definitely a Jhumpa Lahiri fan.  I loved her debut collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, which won a Pulitzer.  I liked, but didn't love, her first novel, The Namesake; and liked the movie even less.  Unaccustomed Earth is another collection of short stories, and a novella.  Here, she shines!


The stories focus on Indian-American-British life in the US, in the UK, and in India, woven seamlessly across these disparate worlds.  Old world, new world.  Immigration.  Culture shock and adaptation, or not.  Intergenerational dynamics.  Cross-cultural relationships.  These themes are fraught with the nuance,  complexity, and tension that I so appreciate, and Lahiri captures it acutely.


The stores are beautiful, but also dark...Toddlers being left in the bathtub while the uncle is passed out. A woman pinning her sari so when she ignites herself it will be harder to save her. A college student screaming insults at his prepubescent step sisters and storming away (when he's supposed to be babysitting them) knowing they'll be terrified.  Lahiri acutely observes marriage in its most alienating and lonely form.  She captures the heights, depths, and confusion of a new love affair.  

At times, I would put down the book with an incredible empty emotional thud, but also richer for the complexity of our human experience.  It is a lesson in empathy, and a keen character study.  Desperate people do desperate things.  At times, I was swept away in her prose - her beautiful word choice, her evocative descriptions. And I give her credit for writing about sex without being contrived in any way.

4 stars (of 4) - I love Jhumpa Lahiri's writing, her themes, her insights.  The book was dark, desperate and depressing - but to be honest, it's that frilly shit that makes my stomach churn.

Books 2010: Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon

This book – a collection of short essays - was amazing! I laughed out loud. At times, I read it aloud to others and to myself. I re-read passages and sentences just because I enjoyed and appreciated the thought and the prose so much, and wanted to savor each delicious word. Admittedly, I slowed down in this book towards the end – lost focus with my many distractions and less uninterrupted reading time to immerse myself. I got this book from the library, but it is definitely one I want to own, and re-read time and again, discovering its riches again and anew.

Chabon writes about manhood – a topic of which I am endlessly fascinated, as well as bewildered. However, as a thinking, thoughtful, smart man, he has endless insights on the topic that go beyond the typical observations of hormones, power, sex, machismo and masculinity. While retaining absolute masculinity - his love of baseball, his appreciation and drive for sex, his geekiness in his love for Dr. Who, his ability to compartmentalize ;-) - he is also insightful and sensitive observer.

[And I fear, I’m getting into stereotypes – but know, dear reader, that I am fully aware of our human and gendered complexities. I have wrestled with my own as a strong, intelligent, independent woman with not much interest in, in fact resistance to, girliness, maternal nirvana, and things frilly and frivolous. But somewhere along the way, I also embraced and accepted my femininity as good, and not diminishing, and my love of lipstick totally within the realm of acceptable].

Chabon explores his identity an experience as a man- as father, husband, and son. He chronicles his relationships with the people in his life, and the unique dynamic with a man they each provide – his wife (both current and ex), his eldest daughter, his younger sons, first father-in-law, his best friend, his brother. I have a greater appreciation for what each of these distinct relationship dynamics mean for a man.

He does all this with a light hand and a sense of humor (seriously, I rolled laughing), and writes from an accessible place of common experience and recognition. But he does not miss the mark on depth, wisdom, complexity, and nuance (among my favorite qualities in a book and in a person (MC is, unfortunately for me, happily married)). He employs rich prose, a wonderful vocabulary (mine is failing me right now), gorgeous metaphor, while also freely referring to “ass-sliding” when no other word could do any better justice.