Review: The Memory Palace, by Mira Bartok

I am a sucker for a good rough-life memoir. Give me three hundred pages of overcoming childhood adversity, throw in some life-threatening events, sprinkle liberally with mental illness and financial hardship, and I'm all in. It's my version of reality TV, classed up a bit.

Unfortunately, for a few different reasons, Mira Bartok's The Memory Palace just didn't do it for me. Certainly, her childhood was pretty horrific, with a schizophrenic mother, frighteningly violent grandfather, and abused grandmother; the ordeals she suffered at the hands of these people were at once heartbreaking and riveting. As adults, Bartok and her sister would both eventually change their names and hide their locations from their mother due to the danger she posed to their personal, professional, and physical lives, reuniting with their by-then homeless mother only on her deathbed. For her part, Bartok describes reliving the caretaker role in other relationships, including one ill-fated marriage, until she herself was in a car accident that necessitated having someone care for her due to brain injury.

As interesting as these events are, however, Bartok is unable to make them gel into one coherent, compelling story. Each detail and event is told as if happening in a void; this is not a story of her life, which contained unique challenges, but rather the story of those challenges in and of themselves. Thus, the reader ends up with less of a connection to Bartok herself, which is a problem in a memoir. I don't know a lot about what went on with her in school, if she had friends, what kinds of conversations she had with people, what her day-to-day adult life was like, and so I went through the book not really feeling like Bartok had allowed me in. Bartok is not an adult fiction writer, and she had a lifetime's practice hiding her experiences from everyone around her, and I wonder if perhaps that perfected secretiveness made it difficult for her to allow the emotional openness that would have been required to make The Memory Palace the story it could have been.

Bartok also seemed to be trying to tell both her story *and* that of her mother, but not filling in enough detail of either story, particularly during her adulthood, to make a connection with either person. For instance, late in the book, she makes us aware via a conversation with her sister that she is dating a poet whom her sister doesn't like because he's unemployed; in the next chapter, a good deal of time has passed, they have been married for awhile, and it suddenly comes out that he's been increasingly showing signs of potential schizophrenia himself - how did it get to that point? Why did she marry this person? We don't know. These details are important in a memoir. If this were fiction, maybe I could give it more of a pass, but this is a real life, and there are real details and answers out there; don't just dangle a carrot like that in front of me and pretend details aren't important, because they are.

This memoir could have been so much better. As it was, I wasn't drawn in enough to even really want to finish it, although I did because I can't stand leaving unfinished books around. Maybe after reading The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls' amazing memoir or living with mentally ill and drug addicted parents, I am completely spoiled. I just know that I wanted more from this story, because I know it's there, but perhaps Bartok simply isn't in a place emotionally, or mentally, to want or be able to fully reveal it.

Rating: one star. Disappointingly unengaging, disjointed memoir of a schizophrenic's daughter.

Review: Joy School, by Elizabeth Berg

Elizabeth Berg's newest novel, Joy School, is actually a continuation of a previous novel, Durable Goods, that I read long enough ago that I didn't actually make the connection between the two until I was midway through the story. The characters felt familiar, but there are enough changes in the circumstances that it wasn't immediately obvious to me what was going on.

Joy School is the (continued) story of Katie, who serves as the teenaged narrator of the book, which seems to take place in the sixties or so (the actual year isn't mentioned). She and her father have recently moved to Missouri after what is hinted as being a long line of relocations, and Katie is once again the New Girl, with all the challenges that go along with that status. The neighbor kids delight in being nasty to her, and her best friend's letters, which are few and far between, reflect a widening gap in maturity and experiences that make no connection with Katie's current situation. Her family situation is also a challenge, due to the death of her mother prior to the start of the book; her older sister has run away with a boyfriend to Mexico, and her father leans towards violence as a result of depression over the entire situation. Katies horizons begin to widen when she falls in (unrequited) love with an older, married young man and befriends another transplant, a beautiful student model with a penchant for shoplifting and parking.

Berg takes what could be a seedy and stereotypical plot and creates what is actually a sweet and fairly innocent story more related to a modern version of Beverly Cleary's teenage series than (gag) Twilight; throughout, I kept thinking of Fifteen, and Jean and Johnny (probably because the young man Katie falls in love with is named Jimmy, but the tone is the similar). Katie is a normal girl that many of us could relate to, and frankly who I hope my daughter would relate to; she has a moral compass, and is looking for more from life than cheap thrills. Berg does a good job reflecting the character of the general time period, rather than imposing current cultural standards on the characters. The sixties and early seventies were a time of huge social shifting, and Katie's experiences teeter on the edge of the precipice - on the one hand, she dreams about bringing Jimmy baked goods, and on the other she gets dragged along on what she discovers are very physical 'parking' dates and shoplifting lessons with her questionable new friend.

Katie's age-appropriate voice as narrator makes for a simple, yet not quite simplistic, read. The book goes fast, and took me literally two sittings to get through. Having only one perspective means that the other characters are not as developed as they could have been; I would be very interested in reading a book that focuses on her sister's separate journey. Berg gives tantalizing tidibts of information regarding her experience via Katie's interpretation, and I would like to see that fleshed out more; it's a bit of a shame that the story didn't have two parts, with the sister's telling their own stories separately at the beginning, converging into one when the family is reunited, and splitting up again afterward. That having been said, Berg does an excellent job of allowing Katie to tell her story in full, in a realistic and truthful manner.

If you enjoy YA literature in particular, or have nostalgic feelings about the YA stories of your youth, this is a good selection for you. If you prefer Twilight-esque sexual tension and melodrama, this may not be what you're looking for.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5: a sweetly charming coming-of-age tale about a level-headed heroinne.

Review: The Known World, by Edward P. Jones

I read a lot of material, both new and old, and it's not often that I come across a recently-published book that I would call 'literature'. Edward P. Jones' work, The Known World, crosses the line between novel and Work effortlessly. I am not the only one who thinks so - Jones won the 2004 Pulitizer prize for literature, and the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. It spreads across the mind like spilled water on an old wood floor, silently sliding, soaking in, and bringing texture into sharp relief.

Placed in the antebellum south, TKW is a broadly sweeping story that centers around the life and death of Henry, the favored slave of a wealthy plantation owner who, in a gross twisting of values, comes to own a large number of his own slaves as a freed adult. Strange as it seems, this is an actual historical detail; some freed slaves did indeed go on to own plantations with slaves. This in itself makes for a fascinating basis, because it seems completely counter-intuitive for such a thing to occur. Henry's life is at the center of a maelstrom of humanity created by Jones; there are so many characters in this story I honestly had a difficult time keeping everyone straight for quite awhile, and briefly considered creating a small chart to help me organize everyone. Via webbed plot lines, the reader learns the life and eventual fate of at least twenty inter-related characters, both slave and master, white and black, male and female, told in their own voices; these characters are so thoroughly and realistically created that I found myself having to look back at the binding to make sure I was reading fiction and not a recording of actual events. The prose is reminicent of a much older work, including the chapter titles, which are in the format of short descriptive phrases, like those you would see in a piece from a hundred years ago or more, such as Frederick Douglass' personal narrative. The entire package together successfully transports the reader into the 1800s, making the events that much more engrossing.

The story is long, at approximately 305pp for the Nook version (the paperback is listed as having 432pp, I'm not sure where the discrepancy comes from there), and yet there is not a word wasted. Unlike many authors I have read recently, Jones is not afraid to carry his tale to its natural completion, rather than getting three-quarters of the way through and rushing to the finish. This was refreshing, to say the least. I haven't read anything created with this kind of care and respect in a long time.

TKW is not a light read, and if you take it to the beach expecting to be able to also keep an eye on the kids and listen to gabbing neighbors, you will be lost. This story changes character hats frequently, and you need to keep up or risk being entirely lost, because each character's experience is closely tied in with others' and will be referenced in both blatent and obscure ways later on. I actually forced myself to put it down when I got tired rather than powering through *just a few more chapters*, because of this, and also because if the author put this much care into creating this tapestry, the least I could do is to be fully present to witness it all as intended.

It is the honest perspectives, and well-crafted relationships between the characters, that kept me reading this wonderfully-written book. No character is treated as lesser, or villified; it is left to the reader to judge these complicated, nuanced creations based on his or her own values, which I appreciated. Jones thought enough of his characters, and readers, to know that all he had to do was lay out the facts, and let them speak for themselves.

Rating: five stars. An excellent, multi-dimensional work of modern literature that feeds the mind.

Review: Night Road, by Kristin Hannah

I chose to read Kristin Hannah's newest book, Night Road, based on the fact that I was still in light-reading mode and had enjoyed Firefly Lane well enough. Plus, it happened to be sitting on the shelf at the library when I got there.

NR is the story of a foster child, Lexi, her shy best friend, Mia, Mia's popular twin brother, Zach and their overzealous helicopter mother, Jude, with the novel's plot spilled out alternately by Lexi and Jude. I'm not going to go too much further into the plot, because I'm guessing that you can already see at least partly where this is going. While there is one event that is slightly surprising, the rest of it is so predictable that I wanted to scream. In fact, there are whole sections of this book that I'm sure I've read somewhere else, SKIP THIS NEXT PART IF YOU PLAN TO READ THE BOOK

particularly the part where Lexi pleads guilty and goes to prison out of guilt for a car accident - I've read that same thing somewhere before - Jodi Piccoult, maybe? it's going to drive me crazy trying to figure that out

SAFE TO COME BACK NOW

My point is, the story is utterly predictable, and that was part of its downfall. Young love, disaster, self-loathing, martyrdom, personal awakenings, redemption, the end. The characters were also just tired stereotypes, Jude in particular. Really, though, the biggest downfall of the book was in the last quarter, where things just perfectly fall into place after becoming ridiculously screwed up. Hannah skips whole years of the characters' lives, and then doesn't do a great job at reeling the reader back into caring about who they've become. I believe that the story would have benefitted greatly from chapters told by Zach, particularly, since he plays a major role in the story and yet we know very little about his inner thoughts. In addition, had it been condensed into something more concise, and then had more depth added to the characters in the last quarter of the story, plus a less tied-with-a-bow ending, it might have been pretty good.

So, it doesn't take a genius to see that I'm not a big fan of this book. It started out well, and I found Lexi's character in particular interesting, but then the whole thing devolved into formulaic writing, and I crawled through the last (and utterly unbelievable) part of the story, almost just to see how bad it would get. It got pretty bad, people. That having been said, Kristin Hannah is an immensely popular writer, and I think whether you like this story or not will depend on what you look for in a story; if you *like* this formula, or you don't read a large number of books (and thus aren't tired of it), then you'll probably enjoy the story. If you do read a lot though, or like variety in your materials, this is one to skip unless you're on the beach and probably will be mostly skimming.

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars. An initially interesting novel that turns into a rehash of tired character and plot ideas.

Review: I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections, by Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron's latest semi-memoir, I Remember Nothing..., is another collection of rememberances and commentaries based on her experiences. I enjoyed reading her last collection, I Feel Bad About My Neck, so this was one of the first things I downloaded onto my Nook.

The shorts in this collection are more serious than I remember 'Neck' being. My two favorites are also the longest in the collection. The first, 'Journalism, A Love Story', details Ephron's experiences in getting into writing in a time when women were, at most, copy editors. Her words brought to life images of dimly lit, smoky meeting rooms, clandestine affairs between all-powerful bosses and female underlings, and the determination of a young woman to shove past it all and become Something. In the second, 'The Legend', she discusses her mother's alcoholism and her need to discover if the greatest story her mother ever told her, about how she threw a famous actress out of a dinner party for insinuating that one couldn't be a mother and a professional. You hope fervently that the story will be true, that Ephron will have this one pure memory of her mother's fierceness and veracity that will shine through the murkiness of addiction and professional loss.

Other stories detail the painfulness of aging and losing relstionships that you know will never be replaced. This, for me, was the hardest story to read, as I'm currently seeing several older people in my life struggling with this same issue, and recently lost a woman who was like a second grandmother to me growing up. Ephron's ability to intertwine her wry wit into a difficult topic, making it readable without being overwhelmingly depressing, is a credit to her storytelling ability.

However, this book was not as enjoyable to me as its predecessor. It felt a little like a do-over, since this was the exact same format she used before, and the stories were admittedly less humorous and engaging. It felt at times that Ephron was reaching for material, which may have been the case, as this collection is fairly short at about 150 pages. It very much has the feel of an NPR interview; if you think you would enjoy listening to Diane Rehm interview Nora Ephron, this would be a good choice for you. I might re-read my favorite portions again, since it's inside my Nook and will be with me all the time, but if it wasn't, I probably wouldn't go to the effort.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. A decent collection of personal stories, some witty and engaging, some not as much.

Review: Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me, by Chelsea Handler

Anyone who has read Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang or Are You There, Vodka... may be wondering what else there could possibly be to learn about this author/tv personality / potential alcoholic. Personally, I myself have felt on more than one occasion that I may know more about her vagina than I do about my own. Regardless, there is yet more to learn about the gregarious Ms. Handler: it seems that she is a compulsive liar who enjoys nothing more than mercilessly playing practical jokes on everyone she meets.

Chelsea's friends and family are more than happy to spill the beans on her craziness, in much the same way that all the characters from Seinfeld gathered on the last episode of the series to testify about the atrocities they dealt with at the hands of that show's main characters, in the new Lies that Chelsea Handler Told Me. The difference here is, all of the acts detailed in these pages, though just as outrageous, are true! Each chapter in the story is written by a different person, and details an event even more horrifying than the last. Ever had someone hijack your email and send notices to your entire family (as if they were you) confessing to them that you're only getting married because you're actually pregnant, or tell your boss that you're gay and looking for love? Do your friends convince your spouse to trick you into thinking he/she has become a compulsive gambler and owes a bookie $10k, and then get the bookie to go along with it? If you're a friend of Chelsea Handler, you may have experienced something like this, or worse. The more I read, the more appalled, and yet the more fascinated, I became. I was enthralled by the creativity involved in all of these stunts, and even more by Handler's ability to pull them off, time and time again, on people who are already on the lookout for this kind of behavior from her! She has to be some kind of evil genius.

One thing that becomes clear as you read the book is that, despite all of this insanity, every person who wrote a chapter adores Chelsea. While at first I wasn't clear *why*, since if one of my friends did these things to me, I might lose my mind, but after a few chapters, a trend began to emerge. Even as Handler is mucking around with the lives of everyone around her, she is also constantly inviting them into her home to stay for any amount of time, taking them with her on whirlwind adventures around the world, encouraging their own personal and professional success, and having a fabulous time doing it. At the end of each chapter, she adds her own brief comments about the authors' stories, and it is obvious that she cares about them as much as they do about her. The book is peppered with photos of a smiling Handler with her arms around whomever wrote the current chapter, on boats, tropical beaches, and poolsides, usually with drinks in hand.

The collection of personal testimonies from Handler's various victims rings true to those of us who have seen 'After Lately', Handler's new show about being behind the scenes of her infamous talk show. Working for the childlike Handler must be a challenge, because with a friend like her, you definitely wouldn't need any enemies! However, if you had any, she would probably ruin their immediate futures with a few well-places lies, and film the whole ensuing mess to watch with a bag of popcorn. That's kind of a nice, if messed-up, trait to have in a friend. I think.

Rating: four stars out of five. A fun, refreshing read about craziness you're glad is happening to someone else!

Review: Sh*t My Dad Says, by Justin Halpern

OK, so bear with me. I know this came out quite awhile ago, and I'm behind the curve. If you are familiar with this blog at all, you know I just finished grad school, meaning I have been stressed out of my mind lately. I was looking for something to help me relax and ease back into real life, saw Halpern's book, and thought I'd give it a try. I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting much. I didn't see the TV show based on this book, and I had thought it sounded a little stupid at the time. All I really knew was that it's based on the author's Twitter feed of the same name. While I still don't know how anyone thought this would translate into a weekly sitcom, I have to tell you, Sh*t My Dad Says - the book version - is actually really, really funny.

The book itself is more grouped by general topic rather than set into regular chapters, although it is organized into loose chapters as well. Each chapter begins with a longer story, such as the one that opens the book that details a family car trip to a wedding 1800 miles away, and then follows the story with several shorter anecdotes that have their own headings. These shorter bits don't seem to me to have any particular rhyme or reason as to why they are placed where they are, but it doesn't really matter because they are all stand-alone items anyway.

In truth, most of what Halpern's dad says is funny because he's extremely blunt, outspoken, and obscene. If his sentences were sandwiches, curses would be the bread, meat, and cheese. Somehow, though, it's not offensive. I'm not against swearing, heaven knows, but neither do I like it just for the sake of itself, and I don't find movies or songs that use that as a strategy appealing (for instance, the uncut version of Hollaback Girl - seriously, Gwen Stefani?). This doesn't venture into that realm. It kind of makes me think of what the dad from The Wonder Years, crossed with the dad from A Christmas Story, would have said if the censors allowed it. Halpern is careful to mitigate his dad's roughness with an obvious love and respect, and makes sure the reader understands the bond the two have; without this the stories might be a bit hard to swallow at times. The key here is that we are always aware that we are laughing *with* Halpern and his father, and not *at* them. I actually laughed out loud several times.

I do have some questions about the truthfulness of the book, such as how the author recreated all of these stories word for word, especially those from his childhood. Even if he asked other people in his life to help him, it seems unlikely to me that at least some of this stuff isn't embellished. That being said, I'm not sure it really matters all that much. Would I be disappointed to find out that this was yet another made-up life story? Sure, but it's not like this book will be up for some kind of major award, or selected for a book club based on the merits of some major cultural contribution. SMDS is just a short, lighthearted read for adults who want to take a break from the mean-spiritedness that often passes as comedy and enjoy a laugh with the author and his father. In fact, as long as your dad doesn't mind near-constant swearing, it would make a good Father's Day gift.

Rating: four stars out of five. A short, very funny read with none of the mean-spiritedness so common in today's tell-all culture.

I'm Done!

Hey! Me and my newly-minted master's degree are here! I got a Nook Color (from Barnes and Noble) for graduation from my husband, and I've been busy loading it up. The best thing about it is that it's compatible with library loan systems, whereas the Kindle is not. Also, hello, it's in color, so I can get all my magazines sent to it and not miss a thing. I cannot overestimate how much I love it! Three of us in the family have one now (I bought one for my husband for Xmas, and my daughter, who had been collecting gift cards from holidays and birthdays for a long time, finally got enough to buy herself one last weekend as well). Nook also allows you to share books via 'Loan' with other Nook owners, but I believe that this is restricted to non-new titles.

Anyway, my first review in about a year will be up shortly. The first few on my list are light reads, because frankly, after the year I've had, I need to unwind a little! If any of you have any recommendations for me, post here and let me know; I'm always open to suggestions.

Almost there!

I'll be back in three weeks! In the meantime, if any of you have read anything wonderful and would like to write a guest review, post here to contact me and we can work out the details. :)

Alternatively, if there's something you think I should put on my 'to read' list, post it here as well, and I'll add it to my pile - as long as it's not romance. (Seriously, I would just about read a phone book at this point, but there has to be a line somewhere.)

Still Here

Hi all - I am still here, but still mired down in grad school. I only have about three months left until I'm done, and probably won't have a lot of time to be reading in the meantime, but will try to post a few things now and then. Until then, if you read something wonderful that you think I should put on my list, please post it here so I have a wonderful list of things to read when I finish!