emasculating feminism

The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer
Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction
Challenge: 100 Book Challenge 2011
Review: The ancient Greek play Lysistrata tells a powerful story about war and feminism.  This book, in which a school production of Lysistrata has a surprising effect on the community, removes every shred of meaning from the play.

Rather than being organized into a sex strike to put an end to a long-running war, the women in this book are individually struck by a spell that makes them just not interested in sex or intimacy any more.  Not only is there no larger purpose to their sudden refusals, but for the most part none of the women is aware that what's suddenly struck them is anything other than a personal change.  One of the girls undertakes a personal strike to stay in bed, alone, until the end of the war in Afghanistan, but this, too, just fizzles out, much like the desire of the women in town, and much like the plot of this book.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

technically good

What My Best Friend Did by Lucy Dawson

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: If there is a textbook for "How to Write a Suspenseful Novel," then Lucy Dawson has surely read it. Her book opens on a suspenseful scene of Alice calling an ambulance for Gretchen, who has apparently tried to commit suicide by drinking and taking pills. But the reader is clearly not getting all the information. After a couple of chapters that build the suspense of what really happened and whether the truth will out, the action jumps back to when the main characters met. Chapters describing how the relationship among the various characters developed are intercut with continuing scenes from the hospital where Alice watches tensely to see whether Gretchen will wake up and tell everyone the truth. In the flashbacks, hints of the ultimate reveal are placed at exactly the right moments to ratchet up the tension, and the reveal itself is pitch-perfect. So if technically good pacing appeals to you, you'll like this book.

But there's one other problem: I think Dawson didn't quite make it to the end of her text. Although the secret itself is surprising while also being believable, and all the characters react realistically and consistently with how they've been described, the resolution is terribly disappointing. It's as though Dawson followed all the steps laid out in the textbook, but couldn't quite muster the imagination to bring it all together.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

making it personal

The Season of Second Chances by Diane Meier

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: This is a sweet book, though it's not without some drama and darkness. At just the right time in her life, Joy Harkness gets an unexpected job offer that takes her from a prestigious but unsatisfying job at Columbia University to an equally prestigious job in the small college town of Amherst, Massachusetts. Leaving behind a life devoid of personal connections, she suddenly finds herself thrust into the social framework of her new home.

Joy’s lack of personal past seems at many points in the narrative to be little more than a plot device to set up the “second chance” that she suddenly has in her new home. After all, if we didn’t know that she was a social outsider at Columbia, it wouldn’t make sense for her to behave in such a socially awkward way at Amherst. Except it still doesn’t make sense, because although she initially rebuffs many social efforts from her colleagues, she seems to have no problem forming a relationship with the handyman who fixes up her new house. That inconsistency undercuts much of the tension that might otherwise be present as she is forced to reconsider her life in social terms.

Fortunately, for both Joy and the reader, her new colleagues are fairly insistent that she not hold herself apart any longer, and the story that unfolds is quite touching. If many of the secondary characters seem flat, it is because their purpose is really to shine a spotlight on Joy and the changes she is experiencing. Meier generally succeeds in giving us a readable and enjoyable story and avoids the saccharine by achieving an ending that is not happy in the usual sense, but is certainly satisfying and hopeful.

FTC disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

have your cake and eat it too

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Reading this book is a bit like taking a really big bite of something really chewy. Taffy maybe, and not your favorite flavor, either, although definitely one you like. It's good, but you might feel like you have to work too hard.

Shriver takes her cue from the multiple universe idea that there exists a separate reality that has sprung from each decision. There's a universe in which you did X, and a universe in which you didn't do X (or did Y). Fortunately, she doesn't try to examine this theory to its fullest, but takes a single decision made a single person, and expands her universes from there. What drives this book, then, is not "did she or didn't she" (she both did and didn't, in alternate chapters), but what is the result of both decisions.

Shriver employs some very clever techniques to help her explore this theme. As the parallel chapters progress along the same time line, we see how similar the two universes are, but also how wildly different, as sometimes identical dialogue is spoken, but in vastly different contexts, or even by different characters. Shriver even gives her reader occasional anchors in time (helping to tie parallel chapters in time) by relating how the characters in each universe respond to international news events, such as the death of Princess Diana and the September 11th attacks.

Shriver also does a great job of keeping her main character consistent through both story-lines. It's easy (easier, at least) to write a character who responds to a single set of events, than it is to write a character who must respond to two parallel sets of events and yet remain believable as a single character. Shriver absolutely gets this part right. But that is also part of what makes reading this book seem like hard work - every time you get somewhere in the narrative, you are instantly sent back to the beginning of the timeframe and must go through it all again, with the same mindset, if different details. Even the best of characters might get a little tiresome through all that. The real triumph is perhaps that we care about what happens in both realities, and can't easily say which choice was the right one.

not smart

Smart Girls Like Me by Diane Vadino

Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Despite the title of this book, Betsy is not a smart girl. She may have better grammar than the people she works with, she may even be more intelligent than most of them, but she gives little evidence of actually being smart. She spends the bulk of the book being snippy about her best friend's upcoming wedding (to the point that if she were my maid of honor, I would have fired her!) and obsessing about her juvenile relationship with her maybe-boyfriend. At the end of the book she has the predictable revelation about her life and her relationships and the true meaning of being happy, but she spent so much of the book acting like an idiot that I couldn't really bring myself to care.

love me, love my books

An interesting essay on reading and relationships from the NYTimes Book Review. In my case, taste in books was definitely not a deal-breaker, since my husband hardly reads, and my nervous litany of "I read this" on our first date at a bookstore-cafe didn't keep him from calling me!