Review: The Story of Forgetting, by Stefan Merrill Block

In his first novel, Merrill-Block tells the same painful story from opposite ends of the family spectrum. The author, who has done a significant amount of research into Alzheimer's disease, creates a fictional DNA-related strain of the very real early-onset condition to trace the disease from early England through the centuries to a Texas family separated by deceit and sorrow.

Fifteen year-old Seth Waller, a studious victim of victims in high school hierarchy, son of Jamie, who has recently been institutionalized because of the severity of her early-onset disease. For some reason, Jamie has always hidden her past from her husband and son, to the point that neither has any idea who her parents were or where she was originally from. Seth, who is used to finding answers to all problems he is presented with, breaks into the online research files of a scientist studying this strain of EOA, and obtains the names of those the sceintist has identified with the disease. Realizing he is somehow related to all the people on the list, he begins searching out those within reach of his Texas town.

Seventy year-old Abel lives alone in his decrepit home, reliving his memories of the past. Due to his disability - he is a hunchback - he never married, but lived with his brother and sister-in-law, with whom he had been desperately in love. Now, as his once expansive farm is surrounded by McMansions, he waits for his past to catch up with him.

The Story of Forgetting is told in alternating chapters by both main characters: Seth's from just before his mother is diagnosed; Abel's from his youth onward. As Abel's story stretches towards the current time, Seth's reaches both backward and forward as he attempts to connect himself with both his past and his future.

The story is enjoyable, and an amazingly sensitive and complicated first offering from an author not yet old enough to have had a family of his own. Abel's story was touching and bittersweet, while Seth was believable as a fictional child detective, although some of his interviews seemed mildly pointless in regards to the overall plot. The sections regarding the familial origin of the EOA DNA strain were a bit belabored, but the premis was entertaining and somewhat humerous.

Rating: four out of five stars: well-written interwoven tale of family, loss and regret

Review: Schulyer's Monster: A Father's Journey with his Wordless Daughter, by Robert Rummel-Hudson

In his novel, Robert Rummel-Hudson, a popular online writer, has channeled his blog of parenting a special-needs child into a very personal memoir that doesn't flinch away from the difficult, exhausting or, frankly, unflattering. His brutally honest descriptions of his own successes and failings as a husband and father, both factual and perceptual, couch his detailed discussion of his daughter, Schuyler (pronounced Skylar), and their family's struggle to understand and overcome her challenges.

Schuyler's monster, eventually diagnosed as polymicrogyria, affects the brain differently depending upon the severity of the malformation; in Schulyer's case, her ability to speak is nonexistant. This lack of speech made determining the extent of her disability extremely difficult, and most doctors and educators extrapolated that she would always be profoundly mentally disabled. However, while her MRI results showed an extreme affect on her brain, Schuyler's joyful, outgoing personage defied those assumptions and confounded her doctors. Her eventual emergence into the realm of significant communication, via speech-enabled technology, is the direct result of her parents' conviction that their little girl was not only able, but entitled, to rise above and beyond her diagnosis and prove that she was capable of much, much more.

As Rummel-Hudson details his own struggles with first denial, then despair, and finally determination, he also shares difficult details regarding a failed previous marriage, floundering career choices, and infidelity on both his and his wife's parts. These side stories reveal a deep-seated feeling of inadequacy as a person, husband and parent, but also serve to force the reader to regard the author as just another human, rather than a flawless superhero. Many writers would prefer to focus instead on their role as champion, portraying themselves as holier-than-thou. As many parents, he tends to be much more hard on himself than anyone else would be, particularly in his circumstances; his family's efforts to help Schuyler lead them across the country, through several school districts, and quite nearly to court. His gaining inner strength and confidence are evident as the story progresses. Still, through it all, Rummel-Hudson goes straight for the underbelly, and the result is a much more balanced, human side of a very human challenge.

Rating: four out of five stars: interesting, inspiring, and human

Review: Shanghai Girls, by Lisa See

Shanghai Girls is a vibrantly written novel that opens with sisters May and Pearl working as Beautiful Girls (as models were called) in 1930s Shanghai. Their status opens doors to clubs, bars, and society, while their father's riches have made their lives comfortable to an extent that many Chinese of the time could only imagine. Very quickly, however, their father reveals that he has lost all of his money through gambling, and he has sold his daughters to the man that holds all of his debts, as brides for the man's two sons, one an articulate man of about twenty, the other a fourteen year-old mentally handicapped child. They refuse to go, and as they begin to calculate a way out, Japanese bombs begin to fall on Shanghai. Penniless and homeless, the girls and their mother flee, meeting almost unmentionable horrors as they eventually make their way to America, the unwelcoming home of the husbands they must now accept to survive. As for most Asians in the US at that time, nothing is as it seems, and the girls, with their new families, must struggle each day to keep themselves alive and safe from those who would deport them. Sometimes, the sources of these dangers are from the communities, while others, the threats are from within their own walls. Regardless, the women do what they feel they must to protect the lives they have cobbled together, bringing about their own simultaneous salvation and destruction.

See is working on a sequel, which is wonderful both because her work is so tightly woven and because the ending leaves the reader hanging. May and Pearl, middle aged by the end of the book, come to a terrible, unexpected crossroads because of decisions each has made over the years, and must begin a new journey, separately, but also together. The new novel, which will hopefully be out by next year sometime, will follow them this time as parents chasing their own child's destiny.

It's difficult to come up with negatives about this story, but if I had to, I would say that it's a little over-descriptive, and for non-history buffs the detailed information on Chinese political history may be a bit much.

I will definitely be reading more of See's work. In a comparison of Asian-fiction writers, her level of storytelling is par with one of my favorite writers, Gail Tsukiyama, and overall I am looking forward very much to seeing what the rest of her library entails.

Rating: five stars - engrossing, gorgeous, and heartbreaking

Review: Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn, by Alice Mattison

Mattison's novel begins with a snippet of a young Constance's worshipful conversation on the phone with her mother's friend, Marlene. Con's overwhelming, blind dedication to Marlene echoes her own mother's emotional dependance on her friend, and foreshadows a lifetime of looking to the throaty, worldly elder woman for advice, attention and validation.

The novel then skips forward a generation. It is 1989, and Con, a lawyer, is housesitting for her mother, Gert, while Gert is visiting Marlene. Con is upset because her 16 year-old daughter, whom she had allowed to remain at home despite the fact that Con's flighty husband was away on a trip, is not answering the phone at their home. She goes to sleep, and awakes to find that the apartment has been burgled, but only her purse and a small keepsake box of her mothers were stolen, from the bedroom while she slept. Her daughter still missing, Con then receives a call from Marlene saying that after a day of visiting Marlene's personal doctor to discuss Gert's apparent early dimensia, Gert has died in her sleep. Marlene, who had been pushing Con to be given for power of attourney over the confused Gert, now insists that she is the executor of the will. Con finally finds out her daughter is with her husband on his trip, and decides that she will get a divorce.

While going through her mother's things, Con discovers many letters from Marlene to Gert saved in a drawer. She learns that Marlene has been involved with gangsters and black market dealings, and extorted money from Gert at every turn.

Flash forward to 2001. Con and Marlene are still close. Con did divorce her husband, but the two are still close. Their twentysomething daughter, Joanna, has been in and out of rehab, and is without direction. They are not close. All three are on their way to stay with Con at her apartment.

Here's the kicker: the entire premise of the story is based on the fact that Con inexplicably FORGETS everything that happened the week her mother died. She doesn't remember that her purse was stolen until it, for some reason, is sent back to her husband's address just in time for him to stay with her. She doesn't remember anything she read in the letters, either - not the extortion, not Marlene's connection with gangsters, none of it.

Puh-leeze.

The author tries to make sense of this by interjecting her own voice as Storyteller, and saying that no one remembers details for more than a few moments, but this in no way explains her huge leap into having the main character forget several jarring events, such as a break-in, robbery, and finding out that your mother's friend, whom you have worshipped all these years, is actually an extortionist. Even when presented with small reminders, such as the name of Marlene's husband (an infamous gangster), she can't remember.

This brings me to the basic problem of the novel (other than the freak amnesia thing): Constance is pathetic. She's a terrible lawyer who urges her clients to give up because the situation is hopeless, and allows her assistant to conduct what she knows are horribly inferior interviews of key clients. She doesn't have the courage to look into her daughter's recent arrest and open a case of harrassment by the arresting officers, even though Joanna begs her to. She needs constant reassurance and petting from others. She doesn't want her ex to stay with her, then sleeps with him, and decides maybe she's still in love with him. Even when presented with a sure-case summary by Joanna's daughter of what actually happened when Gert stayed with Marlene, she lacks the gumption to do anything at all. She never. does. anything.

The worst of it is, this could have been a good book. All the bones were there, but the main character was so terrible, I really couldn't do anything but despise her.

Rating: one star. Good potential, poor execution.

Review: Right of Thirst, by Frank Huyler

Charles Anderson, a cardiologist, recently helped his wife to die after a long battle with cancer. Seeking redemption, purpose, and escape, he accepts the offer of a self-proclaimed humanitarian fundraiser to become the doctor at a refugee camp in an Islamic country (whose name is never mentioned). Soon after, he finds himself in the mountains of a foreign country, waiting for refugees who never arrive, and occasionally attempting to practice medicine on locals in the valley. Who does show up, however, is the military, both local and aggressive, and all hostile towards the doctor and handful of others who have been in the camps. The result of all the turmoil and empty time is that the doctor has plenty of time on his hands to think about his own motives, and the real nature of foreign aid.

Huyler, himself a cardiologist, writes Thirst with a sincere and sober tone. He draws from experiences of his own as well as stories from others to create a unique novel. It is written very much from a man's perspective, and doesn't pull punches to make the reader more comfortable with either his perspective or with whatever the reader may be feeling. It would have benefitted from more actual interaction with people outside the camp, because all the self-reflection made, at times, for extended dry spells. Because the refugees never arrive, the main interaction in the book is between Charles, a young German woman who becomes the focus of his attentions, and the native military man assigned to, essentially, babysit them. Also, the extensive introspection grows monotonous, but in its own way points out the answers that Charles is looking for; too often, our main concern is ourselves, rather than those around us.

Rating: three stars. interesting topic, uneven application

Review: Testimony, by Anita Shreve

In her recent novel, Testimony, Anita Shreve presents a situation that is one of every parents' worst nightmares: a videotape of high school boys having group sex in their dorm with an obviously younger girl makes its way to the principal of an expensive private school, and rather than being delt with discreetly, the matter blows up in everyone's faces and makes its way to national media. Rather than delve into the act itself, Shreve takes readers through the back stories of the characters involved, utilizing a silent grad student interviewer from a local university to draw much of the story surrounding the actual incident from the students involved.

On the positive side, the characters were generally interesting and the topics involved - excessive teenage drinking, the confusion of youth sexuality and power, the role of the media in making any situation far worse than it would have otherwise been. It was easy to read, and since the chapters were short, also easy to put down for periods and pick up again without feeling lost.

However, Shreve's novels are falling into the trap of being predictable. She often uses the 'fourth-quarter shocker', springing a surprise at the last minute to bring a few plot lines together. That's getting old, and even in itself presents new questions that there isn't enough time to answer. Also, there were way too many voices in this novel, all crowding around, talking practically simultaneously. Some weren't even in the book more than once, dropping pieces of information out of an abyss, and making it difficult to keep track of who is saying what about whom. This multiplicity of characters also makes it difficult for Shreve to really delve into any one in particular, or make any real statement about any of the topics. The character I would really like to have known more about, the girl, had little in-depth analysis at all. If Shreve didn't want her to seem deeper than she really was, that could have been resolved by allowing the interviewer to either have a small voice, or close the novel with an article written by the grad student with her opinion. Because the Act had occurred before the novel really began, this was more of a character study than anything, and unfortunately, the study part wasn't there to back it up enough to make up for the lack of forward-moving plot.

I wouldn't call this novel bad; it's a relatively easy read, with a basically interesting story. Shreve has lived up to her reputation of producing perfectly acceptable middle-of-the-road fiction that is neither taxing nor enlightening. If you're going on a trip where you expect to be interrupted often, and don't want to be overly engaged or lost on reentry, this would be a good novel for you.

Rating: two out of five stars. Not boring, not overly engaging. Eeh.