What I've Been Reading (Instead of Moby Dick)

I'm not ready to declare Moby Dick a loss just yet, but it's getting close. I have enjoyed what I have read of it, certainly, but I just never have the desire to read it. It feels like an obligation. For a long time, it was keeping me from reading anything else, because of my all-or-nothing block.

At some point, though, I overcame that tendency and started reading books in between my attempts at the whale. The Passage started it, because I was so excited by the idea of that one. Then the little Twilight companion book about Bree, which was practically an essay compared to those two books. Then I got on a kick and re-read the entire Harry Potter series. Finally, I went to my local library to pick up a couple of things, and of course books with a limited timeline will take priority over something I outright own. So that's, what, 11 books that I've read while avoiding Moby Dick? I should probably just concede defeat. Now I'm trying to not let it get in the way of my blogging, because I would want to blog something, and then I would feel guilty that my next entry was not going to be a Moby Dick update, etc, etc. Whatever, I'm blaming things on an inanimate object. Let me just move on to a couple of mini-reviews of my latest book finds.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

I have been better at reading books in bits and pieces lately, but that may just be because of the unique combination of 1) having other things to do around the house that prevent me from a solid block of reading, and 2) finding a book good enough to keep me coming back to it like an addictive new snack. I couldn't wait to return to this book every time I put it down. Every chapter was a vignette about a person somehow connected to an English-language paper in Italy. There was the guy who wrote the obits, a foreign correspondent, the girl who did accounts payable, etc. The vignettes were present day, while in between was the story of the paper itself - its creator, then his successor and then the next, leading up to the present just as the novel was wrapping up. The present day stories were fascinating, both in structure and content. Each one would focus on one person, but of course since they were all connected to the paper, they would mention other characters that would just flit in and out of their story, but then would be the focus of the next chapter. Events that were mere gossip or a one-line mention in the prior chapter would get fleshed out in their chapter. But the story kept progressing - it wasn't as if you saw the same event or time frame from the different perspectives, it was just that you got more information on the past events when you followed the next person doing their thing. Each character went from acquaintance to fully realized protagonist as the story went on. One story devastated me, the next made me hopeful, and the one after that both horrified and amused me. It was a sordid soap-opera and it was fantastic.

The Believers by Zoe Heller

As much as I loved the movie, I never bothered to realize that the Cate Blanchett film Notes on a Scandal had a book behind it. As it turns out, it was a book written by this author. I made a notation to read that book very soon, and was buoyed by the knowledge that the chances of this book being good-but-depressing had just gone up a notch. It's funny that I should read these too books together, because their structures are very similar. As in The Imperfectionists, the chapters are not merely a movement from one act to another while maintaining the same protagonist. Each chapter is a chance to jump to a different character in the story and, frequently, to jump days or weeks ahead in time. Instead of a bunch of different characters, though, it is a family of 3 women, a mother and her two daughters (although there is a father and a son as well, they are less characters than they are plot points for the other three). Outside of a brief time spent following the father, the book focuses on those three. It's not first person (and neither was The Imperfectionists, I feel I should mention), it's just that the narrator is following that one person and recounting their actions, with appearances by the others. If I had been an English major I would be able to describe that better. Oh well, in another life.

I'm not sure if I'd recommend reading these two books back to back, as they are ultimately depressing. Not in a Jodi Picoult/Nicholas Sparks hit-you-over-the-head depressing, but the real kind, the kind that makes you think that life is just one tragedy after another and that human compassion, if it exists, can never be trusted when your senses have been battered by the misdeeds of others.

The mother, Audrey, is abrasive, seemingly unloving and critical of everyone around her with the exception of her drug-addict adopted son upon whom she lavishes love despite his abuse of her trust. She and her husband Joel, a leftist lawyer who has spent his life defending the homeless, the disenfranchised, Mafia dons and suspected terrorists, are proud to be left leaning and progressive. Rosa, the older daughter, took her parents already strong socialist leanings and embraced them even more thoroughly, once criticizing her father for enjoying "reactionary" classical music because even music, in her opinion, could not be independently beautiful if inspired by bad politics. But that was the past, and after a few years in Cuba living with a farmer and a chance encounter in an Orthodox synagogue, Rosa is testing the waters of strict Judaism. This infuriates her parents, who are proud to be third generation anti-theists (although ethnically Jewish). Karla, the younger daughter constantly maligned for being fat, is constantly struggling for parental approval. She defends her parents at every turn, even though they have been the worst to her. The thing is, aside from a few snide comments and her general demeanor, there's nothing directly horrible about the way that Audrey treats her children. But it's like you can see the emotional abuse manifest in the myriad of ways that Karla and Rosa are insecure, emotionally disturbed adults.

While everyone is somewhat redeemed at the end and it's not an altogether negative ending, I find it hard to move on from all the horrible things these people have done to each other. Ultimately it encapsulates a life lesson I'm still struggling to learn - to take the bad things that happen and move on from them, live beyond them.