Review: This Lovely Life, by Vicki Forman

What constitutes a life fully lived?

To what length should that life be required to adapt, and will one's personal strength fall short, or grow far beyond expectation?

How much is too much, and who gets the responsibility and blame for the choices made?

In her novel, This Lovely Life: A Memoir of Premature Motherhood, these questions create the perameter of Vicki Forman's existence. On July 30, 2000, Forman delivered twins at twenty-three weeks, a full seventeen weeks before their due date. The children, Evan and Ellie, each weighed less than a pound. With lungs were the size of dimes, their extreme prematurity meant that they were completely unequipped for life outside the womb. Forman and her husband were convinced that they would not live, and requested that they be allowed a peaceful passing. The hospital refused. Ultimately, Ellie did not survive, but Evan held on, tethered to this world by a web of tubing and wires.

Thus began Forman's struggle, both within herself and with representatives of seemingly every medical profession, to understand and care for Evan. Babies Evan's size are referred to as 'superpreemies', an almost absurd term considering the lengthy list of difficulties and medical disorders these children, and their families are often faced with. Evan is blind, requires oxygen and feeding tubes, and has multiple seizures a day, to name a short list. Yet, the facts of Evan's diagnoses do not even begin to encompass the dire implications for the entire family. Forman's overwhelming struggle with intense guilt, a fearful lack of control, raging fury, and hopelessness are the meat of this story. Evan is Jupiter, and his mother, father and sister are moons, circling the all-encompassing enormity of his existence.

The pull of this novel lies in Forman's frank intimacy with the reader. She pulls nothing, hides no emotion, no matter how ugly or frightening. She makes no apologies for her ambivalence about Evan's survival, for her inability to remember an entire year of her first daughter's life. Her convictions about her son's care never waver - she is interested only in what will give him the best quality of life. At first, that means allowing a dignified death, but as the situation changes, and Forman herself grows mentally and emotionally, we see her rise and morph into a strong advocate for her son on many fronts, going to any distance to seek what is best for him. She talks several times about Evan's role as a teacher, showing her what love, patience, and compassion truly are. Her growth as a mother, and a person, is astounding.

Woven into all of this is the family's coping with the death of tiny Ellie. As Forman begins to accept the cosmic lack of control, and corresponding required lack of expectations, she moves forward into acceptance of both the loss of Ellie and the reality of Evan's personhood. In the final chapter, as the discovery of the twins' birth record allows her to re-envision their birth, we see her moving forward, toward the 'well', and away from the 'but'.

This was a beautifully written account. The knowledge of Evan's death, which occured soon after it was written, made it even more poignant to read, because I knew how and when it would end, even though the author herself didn't at the time. In the epilogue, Forman writes that she wonders if Evan's death means that he was finished with her, because she was not finished with him. I think that the truth is, Evan had taught her everything he could, and so he moved on to wait for her to once again catch up.

Rating: five stars. A heartrending story from the depths of parenting.

Review: Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri

I am a big of Lahiri, but had never read her first collection, Interpreter of Maladies. Published ten years ago, this initial offering offers much the same fluid embrace that her following publications do. Lahiri is skilled at welcoming readers and treating them like they belong to this culture of Indian immigrants, much the same as the characters themselves seek each other out for community in their new land.

Some of the stories beckoned to me more than others in this collection, simply because in a short story format, I find it more difficult to bond with characters who experience what seems to me to be an almost fantastically unreal experience than I would in a longer format, where I would have time to settle in and really get to know and understand them. For instance, in 'The Treatment of Bibi Haldar', the main character is a strange woman who is afflicted with some sort on undiagnosable seizure disorder; as a result, although she is accepted by the community at large, the family members that live with her shun her increasingly until they move away and abandon her entirely to live in their shed. Abruptly, she somehow becomes pregnant, gives birth, and is miraculously recovered. While I found the tale interesting, it didn't draw me in on a personal level.

My favorite story, 'A Temporary Matter', did. A couple with deep-seated marital problems is drawn closer together by regularly scheduled power outages, sharing secrets in the dark. The path of the tale was like a funnel, seeming to draw together in a small, safe zone and then dropping me out the bottom. It was shocking, telling, and very, very real. I also enjoyed 'Sexy', the story of a young woman caught up briefly as the mistress of a shallow aldulterer, and 'This Blessed House', told from the perspective of a recently arrangement-married man who moves into a house with his bride only to discover a trove of hidden Christian idols hidden everywhere; his wife is inexplicably obsessed, and his irritation grows until it pops like a bubble. As the only story told from a child's perspective (although it is actually an adult relaying the story of her experience as a child), 'When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine' offers an innocent's glimpse into the geographic politics of war and separation, as viewed on an American television with Mr. Pirzada, a Pakistani man in American on a research grant, who has lost contact with his family in the war zone. The undertones of American distance from all that is difficult to fathom, and related ideas that it is unnecessary to understand issues that don't concern us, is an endictment that is very much relevant today.

Rating: four out of five stars: not quite as compelling as her later works, but still well worth reading for the beauty and insight it provides.

New Book Announcement!

The next book we will be reading is Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout. With 139 reviews, this collection of interwoven stories has a 4.5-star average rating on Amazon. I thought short stories might be nice, since they're smaller bites, and more compatible with a summer schedule.

For the next discussion, I would like to try to have a more discussion-friendly format, maybe using a chat room somewhere, start with a list of questions, and go from there. What would anyone think about that? Suggestions? I would like to do this around September 1.

Post if you plan to read: one randomly chosen person will get the book! Let's say, posts have to be made by the 17th.

Here's a review:

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Thirteen linked tales from Strout (Abide with Me, etc.) present a heart-wrenching, penetrating portrait of ordinary coastal Mainers living lives of quiet grief intermingled with flashes of human connection. The opening Pharmacy focuses on terse, dry junior high-school teacher Olive Kitteridge and her gregarious pharmacist husband, Henry, both of whom have survived the loss of a psychologically damaged parent, and both of whom suffer painful attractions to co-workers. Their son, Christopher, takes center stage in A Little Burst, which describes his wedding in humorous, somewhat disturbing detail, and in Security, where Olive, in her 70s, visits Christopher and his family in New York. Strout's fiction showcases her ability to reveal through familiar details—the mother-of-the-groom's wedding dress, a grandmother's disapproving observations of how her grandchildren are raised—the seeds of tragedy. Themes of suicide, depression, bad communication, aging and love, run through these stories, none more vivid or touching than Incoming Tide, where Olive chats with former student Kevin Coulson as they watch waitress Patty Howe by the seashore, all three struggling with their own misgivings about life. Like this story, the collection is easy to read and impossible to forget. Its literary craft and emotional power will surprise readers unfamiliar with Strout. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review: The End of Overeating, by David Kessler, MD

I originally became interested in this book because of an interview with Kessler I heard on NPR. Typically, books on diet and nutrition generally aren't of specific interest to me, because I find them either trite, boring, or so over-sensationalized that they immediately turn me off. However, while listening to the interview, I decided that this particular book sounded like none of those things, and put it on my list to read.

What really reeled me in was Kessler's discussion regarding the book cover, which has a gorgeous piece of carrot cake on top, and a pile of carrots on the bottom. He talked with Diane Rehm about why the cake looked so much better, and why she thought that she wanted it. She replied with something about how it feels in her mouth, the sensations it would deliver and the expectations she had of pleasure. In a nutshell, that is what the first 2/3 of The End of Overeating is about: why we want what we want, and how companies' greed makes us want more. The second half, which is less compelling than the first, discusses ways to take control (thus the subtitle of the book, 'Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite) of what we want and move forward.

Really, I found final 1/3 of the book to be almost unnecessary after reading Part Two, The Food Industry. I was so disgusted by most of what I read, I may never eat out again just from that! Kessler goes beyond the usual, companies-are-plotting-against-you material and includes interviews with industry executives who really spell it out in a very basic, horrible way. My favorite quote, which sums up the entire issue, is this:

"If you can find that optimal point in a set of ingredients, you may well be on your way to converting that array of chemicals and physical substrates into a successful product." - Howard Moskowitz, consumer behavior expert, on companies' useage of what are basically non-foods to form a chemically-modified irresistible food product.

Doesn't that make you want to go out and grab a bag of Doritos (one of the products discussed in detail)? All I could think about at that point was the old movie 'Soylent Green', where companies used what turned out to be a boiled-down human base in foods, which people in turn found irresistible.

Other little tidbits:

- Even if you think you're getting healthy food when you eat out, you probably aren't - most 'lean meats' that have any flavoring in them are injected with the flavorings at a manufacturing plant, often including huge numbers of needle pricks with concoctions of flavoring that a) deliver fatty marinades directly into the meat and b) tenderize the meat so much that it is basically "pre-chewed", which is why it seems to melt in your mouth. Oh, did you, like me, think those meats were prepared fresh at Applebees, Friday's, etc.? Sorry. That would be a big NO.

- Want to know why you can supersize drinks so cheaply? It's because sugars and fats, particularly engineered chemical sweeteners, are so inexpensive for companies that that extra $.99 of soda only costs them $.03 to deliver. Soda companies did specific studies on how they could make you want water less, and soda more. Sip on *that* next time you get a vat of soda at the theater.

- Sugars and fats stimulate the brain so much that lab rats pushed a button 77 times to recieve chocolate Ensure a mere 14 times. They work approximately the same amount to receive CRACK. They also repeatedly walked over flooring that zapped each step, their desire was so great.

I could go on. Really, these sections on the food industry are what make the book worthwhile. The later sections, on stopping overeating by creating 'rules' for yourself, which are supposedly easier for the brain to obey than generic willpower, don't make much sense to me because you have to use willpower to get to the point where those rules will actually mean something to you. So, it really is the same, obvious message: it's hard, make a plan, stick to it, get help. The corporate studies, though, and the interviews, are extremely engrossing. It's like watching a hidden-camera show because of that 'gotcha!' quality, although it's hard to be sure who's been gotten, when you really think about it.

Rating: 3.5 stars. Great industry and nutritional breakdowns, educational and engrossing, which are way more of a deterrant than the 'food rehab' portion. Mildly repetitive in sections, occasionally a bit science-y for non-science people, but still worth a food-consumer's time.

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Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Jane Austin and Seth Grahame-Smith

Oh.

Oh, Oh, OH!

I have never read the classic version of P&P, but I can tell you, now that I've read this clever version, I probably never will. Grahame-Smith has proved himself a master at weaving in the 'zombie mayhem' into the original in such an seamless manner that I feel the story to be much improved. Far from being trashy or gratuitous, PPZ is not uber-gorey; in fact, the zombies aren't even the main plot, but rather a ongoing concern that the characters accept as a fact of life, like an unfortunate rodent infestation. The characters' nonchalance is a great part of what makes the new twist work so beautifully, and their adaptations - the entire Bennet family has been trained in China by a master warrior, and are the premier (and yet unerringly proper) fighting force in the region. Mr. Darcy, also, is an excellent fighter, and his aunt is now the master fighter of England, renound for her abilities.

PPZ is very entertaining, and extremely funny, in a droll, NPR kind of way. Because Grahame-Smith has been careful to preserve the integrity and bones of the original story, the reader does have to be willing to read the novel in it's old english format, but he has also added several double-entendres and poked quiet fun at the conventions of the era while inserting bothersome events such as the entire waitstaff being attacked by zombies in the kitchen during a dinner party. All characters benefit from this new, added dimension of extreme physicality and concern for personal honor via the warrior's code, rather than dress code.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. Brilliant, funny, and expertly done.

Review: The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, by Joshilyn Jackson

She sees dead people.

Laurel Hawthorne, whose mother managed to escape from defunct mining town DeLop, AL (think X-Files scary) via marriage, is an improbably well-off young mother living in a beautiful gated community, where everyone has perfect lawns and pools. The only chinks in her life are her hot-and-cold relationship with her sister, Thalia, and the ghost of her dead uncle, which she hasn't seen in many years. Her husband is an extremely well-paid game developer, and she designs artistically unique quilts with hidden pockets and, we later learn, hidden meanings. Even her teenaged daughter, Shelby, is lovely. Laurel assuages her mild guilt over being so fortunate while many relatives reside in the emotional and financial squalor of DeLop by bringing Bet Clemens, her daughter's vaguely-related pen pal from De Lop, to stay with them for a few weeks each summer, and then returns to her tidy life.

Things are seemingly perfect until Molly, Shelby's best friend, wakes Laurel in the middle of the night. Molly has drowned in the Hawthorne's pool, and her ghost seeks Laurel's help in uncovering the truth of her tragic end. This event, horrible as it is, is the beginning of the end of Laurel's painstakingly created facade of perfection. With her conviction that Molly's death wasn't an accident, Laurel reaches out to her currently-estranged theater-actress sister, and the story of what actually happened, as well as what really happened with their uncle's death, come to light amongst Thalia's accusations and worming insinuations reagarding Laurel's marriage and family. As chapters pass, we learn, via Laurel's awakening, the hidden truth about the quilts, her uncle, her mother, Bet, Molly's death, and the realization that the title refers not only to Molly.

The beginning of The Girl... is slow, so much so that I actually considered walking away from it altogether. I didn't find Laurel to be incredibly engrossing, and the whole situation began to seem like a typical dysfunctional-relationship piece of chick-lit. For some reason, I picked it up again the next day, and skimmed through a few chapters, only to find myself drawn pretty deeply in once Thalia's character becomes involved, and the story began to unravel. One of the plot points I liked the most is that the reader only follows Laurel's piont of view, so as her ideas of what is actually happening twist and turn, we are brought along with her, rather than the reader's knowing what has happened and waiting for her to figure it out. The final few chapters in particular are real page-turners, starting from about the point where questions begin to arise about the solidity of Laurel's marriage, and I couldn't put it down after that. The ending was very exciting, although again improbably resolved, and although the afterward was a tiny bit trite, it didn't take away from the rest of the novel.

Rating: three out of five stars - not as good as I'd hoped, but still a decent, quick summer read

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Question 5

Who do you think was the more ridiculous character - Lydia or Mrs. Bennett?

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Question 4

Why do you think that no one noticed Charlotte's decent into Zombiedom (other than Elizabeth and, perhaps, Lady Catherine, if she was telling the truth)? Would you have chosen as she did, or simply asked Elizabeth to off you at once?

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Question 3

Elizabeth Bennet, lover, or Elizabeth Bennett, zombie killer - which do you think is the most dominant part of her personality? Which would you prefer to be?

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Question 2

Have any of you read (or seen) the original PaP? How does this compare in terms of truthfulness to the original text?

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Question 1

What did you think? Did zombies improve the romance of Miss Bennett and Mr. Darcy?