Book Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven

Written by: Emily St. John Mandel

Published: 2014

Synopsis:
Day one: The Georgia Flu explodes over the surface of the earth like a neutron bomb. News reports puts the mortality rate at over 99%.

Week two: Civilisation has crumbled.

Year twenty: A band of actors and musicians called the Travelling Symphony move through their territories performing concerts and Shakespeare to the settlements that have grown up there. Twenty years after the pandemic, life feels relatively safe. But now a new danger looms, and it threatens the hopeful world every survivor has tried to rebuild. (from library copy's blurb)
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

The wren goes to't

If you had asked me what was missing from my literary life I don't know that my answer would have been "a mix of dystopia and Shakespeare with just a smidge of Star Trek" but there you have it, it's exactly what was missing from my life.

Station Eleven is very successful at crafting a story about a world 20 years after a catastrophic medical disaster that both conforms to genre standards and completely leaves them behind. I, personally, love books and films about pandemics that decimate the human population. I love to see how people adjust (or straight up don't), especially considering the world we live in today is SO dependant on technology to do even the simplest of tasks*. I mean even farmers who you'd think would be in a pretty sweet situation would probably suffer since everything from milking stations to combine harvesters are almost entirely mechanically self-reliant. So you usually end up with these fantastic explorations of society falling backwards in terms of education or mechanics but also progressing forward in a cultural sense, for instance, community becomes far more important for survival, and bartering takes over from the traditional monetary system.

And you get tonnes of this good stuff in Station Eleven. The Travelling Symphony makes their way through tiny towns where people have tried to adjust to this new world. Reminders of the old world, Walmarts and airports and highways, of the previous world still linger but they're rendered useless in their normal form so they're transformed into storage spaces or homes for the people who managed to survive. And like folk did pre-cars, trains and planes, they become pretty insular. They might hear news from the next town over, but it takes weeks and only reaches them if someone happens to be moving through. And with this insulation comes, of course, a level of superstition. News travelling from one town to the next over a series of weeks tends to evolve like a game of whispers, something fairly innocuous is slowly warped and shifted until it becomes a warning or something to fear. As a great deal of this novel takes place 20 years after the Georgia Flu annihilated life on Earth, a lot of the characters were either born post-flu or were so young they can barely remember the life they used to have, which only exaggerates this disconnect between the world that was and the world that is. Stories of planes flying through the air and told to children who are amazed and also slightly disbelieving of their parents tales. I just find all of this stuff utterly, utterly fascinating.

But where the book diverges from these more traditional aspects is where I think it truly shines. The book begins and ends on a stage in Canada as a cast perform King Lear. The death of the play's Lear on stage coincides with the beginning of the Georgia Flu but it was a heart attack and not actually the flu which ended his life. Even though this actor, Arthur Leander, dies in the opening pages of the book of a completely unrelated illness, he is pivotal to the book. The direction of the central characters, who haven't all necessarily met, are motivated by their relationship to Leander regardless of how tenuous that link may be. It's like this spider web of causality and influence and it's incredibly hard to explain here but it blew my mind. Seriously, I finished this book over a month ago and it is still blowing my mind how freaking gorgeous and complex the whole damn thing is.

Since I read it over a month ago I am blanking on some of the smaller details that I wish I'd noted down, but this book is really something else. I went into it knowing very little and that may be why it had such an impact on me. The writing is beautiful and yet it never got too flowery or Literary for the post-apocalyptic setting, a balance I think must have been incredibly difficult to maintain. The secondary characters aren't always incredibly fleshed out but because there's an element (or a feeling at the very least) of a play within a book I was able to push past those moments and instead appreciate the characters for what they stood for. There are large chunks of this novel which take place way before the outbreak of the Georgia Flu, most of them relating to Leander's life (which, damn, what a terribly sad story that is), so I wouldn't recommend this one to anyone who wants a straight-up post-apocalyptic tale but seriously everyone else, read it**.

*Obvs this isn't the case everywhere in the world. But since these books typically take place in the Western world I'm going to keep going with this.

** I think just about everyone in the world (blog world anyway) has already read it, but if you're one of the 10 people who haven't then GET ON IT.

Audiobook Review: Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Burial Rites

Written by: Hannah Kent

Published: 2013

Audiobook read by: Morven Christie

Synopsis: Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard.

Riveting and rich with lyricism, BURIAL RITES evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Any woman knows that a thread, once woven, is fixed in place; the only way to smooth a mistake is to let it all unravel.”

There are some books that I know I should read, but also know that I never will. Sometimes it's because of how much they're hyped. Sometimes it's the fact that I feel like I have to, rather than want to. Sometimes I just can't muster any excitement for them, even when they sound like they were basically written for me specifically. In other words when it comes to books I am a fickle bitch. Burial Rites was always going to be one of those books. I had heard people wax lyrical about it for months and it ticked so many boxes. Australian female author (check), set in a country I'm interested in but know very little about (check), female protagonist (check), beautiful prose (check), bloggers I respect loved it (check). But meh. And as usual I ended up downloading and then listening to it on a whim and realised once again how much my fickleness withholds from me. Because this book is sensational.

Burial Rites is Hannah Kent's debut novel and it really isn't fair. Where are all these young writers who have their authorial voices sorted out at 28 coming from? Have they just been placed on earth to make me feel like crap because I'm still not together enough to make myself breakfast in the morning* or do my dishes within a reasonable time frame? And just for an extra twist of the knife, she's also the founder and publishing director of an Australian literary journal called Kill Your Darlings. But even though she makes me feel like I have accomplished absolutely nothing in life and never will, I can't hold it against her because this novel is gorgeous. Just utterly, utterly gorgeous.

The book is based on the events that surrounded the final execution in Iceland in 1929. Leading up to her execution, Agnes Magnúsdóttir is sent to a nearby farm to live and work with a family and receive religious guidance from a young priest, Tóti. Her arrival is, understandably, upsetting to the family and their neighbours. She arrives surrounded by whispers, questions about her past, her relationship with the man that she's supposed to have killed and the likelihood of her actually being the devil fill the air as she silently tries to make her way through the day. As the reader we get insight into her mind, how she feels about their whispers and why she's afraid of speaking more than she has to, but to everyone else her silence makes her standoffish and terrifying.

Hannah Kent paints a haunting picture of Icelandic society, one where a woman who strays from the traditional path, who wishes to have a life of her own and to be educated and heard, is automatically labelled as someone to be feared. Agnes came from inauspicious origins, born to a mother who wasn't able to care for her and followed by bad luck and strife all through her childhood. She's at once a realist to her situation in life and also an eternal optimist, sure that something better lays over the horizon for her. Which only makes hearing her recount her story all the more heartbreaking, because we know things don't look up for her. Or if they do, that high doesn't last for long.

 As I listened to the audiobook I did feel a few pangs of regret that I wasn't reading the eloquent prose with my eyes, but that didn't last long. I don't know whether Morven Christie has narrated many novels and I don't know if I'd necessarily say she'd suit a great deal of books but she was insurmountable here. Her narration dripped with the emotion instilled in the writing. She gave Agnes life and weight and I listened to the vast majority of the book on the verge of tears because Christie's narration was just so real. I've read that the book is being made into a film and apparently Jennifer Lawrence was rumoured for the role of Agnes at one point, but I would wholeheartedly support casting Christie in the role because as far as I'm concerned she is Agnes.

There isn't a great deal of information online about Agnes Magnúsdóttir that isn't tied to Hannah Kent's research of this subject, but it is clear that this is a woman and a story that Hannah Kent felt a connection to and one which she felt she had a responsibility to tell. It's a  look into a world that is foreign to us in many ways, but the story of a woman out of place is one many of us can relate to. I could write more about how exquisite this book is, but I think this is one of the cases where you really have to read it for yourself.


*Except coffee. Coffee is my breakfast. Coffee is also often my lunch and afternoon snack. And sometimes my dinner.

Book Review: Rape - A Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates

Rape - A Love story

Written by: Joyce Carol Oates

Published: 2003

Synopsis: Teena Maguire should not have tried to shortcut her way home that Fourth of July. Not after midnight, not through Rocky Point Park. Not the way she was dressed in a tank top, denim cutoffs, and high-heeled sandals. Not with her twelve-year-old daughter Bethie. Not with packs of local guys running loose on hormones, rage, and alcohol. A victim of gang rape, left for dead in the park boathouse, the once vivacious Teena can now only regret that she has survived. At a relentlessly compelling pace punctuated by lonely cries in the night and the whisper of terror in the afternoon, Joyce Carol Oates unfolds the story of Teena and Bethie, their assailants, and their unexpected, silent champion, a man who knows the meaning of justice. And love.

Challenges: RIP VIII

warning: potential rape triggers below.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

A month ago I decided to take a trip to my local library for the first time. I usually just go to my university library or the main Brisbane library in the city, but it seemed borderline insane that I hadn't been to my nearest library in the 3 years I've lived in the area. It's a weird (and wonderful) little library, there were three copies of The Dark Tower: Wizard and Glass but no other Stephen King books* and the entire collection of Joyce Carol Oates' were on the shelf. And since I had never read a Joyce Carol Oates novel - partly due to fear, partly due to lack of time - and the library was basically pushing them on me by stocking them all, I decided to give the smallest - and therefore least intimidating - one a go.

I've got to give it to Ms Carol Oates (Ms Oates?), the woman knows how to choose a provocative title**. It was the size that first caught my eye (a petite 154 pages) but the title that really pulled me in. And in the month that I had this book floating around my house, at least 4 people commented on it, mostly with an awkward laugh and a look of suspicious horror. And that's absolutely the reaction it's supposed to inspire, because it's what the narrative inspires. It might only be short, but it doesn't hold back or shy from forcing the reader to experience the full gamut of emotions. I swung from horror, to anger, to sympathy and back to anger as I progressed through the story. It was an unpleasant experience, it's a book I'll never read again but I'm still glad I did.

So as the synopsis above describes, the book follows Teena and her daughter Bethie before, during and after the brutal gang rape and assault (of Bethie, she was beaten but not raped) by local boys. While the book is told primarily from Bethie's perspective as she makes sense of the crime, the justice system and her perpetual fear of the rapists who live nearby, it also provides insights into the minds of police officer Dromoor, the rapists, and locals in the small town of Niagara Falls. The most disturbing and fascinating chapters were those that came from the perspectives of the locals hearing or reading about the case. One of the earliest chapters, placed before the horrific rape scene, lists the reactions locals had to Teena's rape, things like "Teena was asking for it" and "who would walk their 12 year old daughter through a dark park" and "I heard she was drunk and on drugs". And that's where this book really excelled, it really ground home how natural victim blaming is and how often we look for any excuse to explain why something this horrible happened***. It can never just be a group of 20-something guys high on meth deciding to force themselves on two females because they can. The woman must have done something, she talked back, she walked through a park, she wore a skirt, she's had plenty of sexual relationships in the past, she was drunk. And it would be bad if this was just a bunch of misguided locals being awful, but these arguments are routinely brought up in tabloids and in court by the defendants. In the case of Rape: A Love Story, rather than make the rapists look like model citizens who would never do such a disgusting crime, the plan is to tear down Teena to make her appear like someone who deserves to be raped and beaten and nearly killed. As you read this book it's not hard to believe that most rapes go unreported, because who wants to have their credibility attacked on every front while they try to repair physically, mentally and emotionally?

Alongside this sick and sad story, however, is a revenge fantasy. Officer Domoor, first on the scene, finds himself caught up with the case and angered by the lack of justice coming Teena's way. After the criminal case begins and the defense state that the men will all be pleading Not Guilty because they were engaging in prostitution not rape (RAGE) Domoor takes the law into his own hands. I won't go any further in describing it because, spoilers, but there is something satisfying about the victims being given the power (even indirectly) against their attackers. So many people don't get any true sense of justice or closure and while I'm not one to condone violence normally, the events of the book made me so mad - especially since they are so typical in the real world - that it was gratifying and cathartic to read about Domoor, Teena and Bethie's revenge.

The book's conclusion comes a little too quickly and neatly. After spending such a large chunk of the book looking at how damaging the criminal system is to the rape victim I wanted to read more about the healing process, if there even is one. However as a small peek into a horrifying and heartbreaking world this book does a fantastic job. Should you read it? On one hand it's a compelling and well written novella, and on the other the subject is hard to read and deeply disturbing. So I guess read it if you think you can handle it, or if you want to get angry about rape culture and need an excuse to write about it on your blog, but don't expect it to be a light read.


*I don't know if that means my area loves King so much he's always booked out, or if they like him so little the library doesn't even bother stocking him.

**My next Joyce Carol Oates will definitely be Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart. That title makes me so happy even though I have no idea what the story is about.

***I was horrified last week when I read one of the Dear Prudence columns and a commentor attacked the woman who wrote in and admitted to being raped by her boyfriend's best friend. So much victim blaming, so much anger.

The Correctioning; an introduction post

Intro posts are weird right?

Like I get why we do them, but I always feel a little like I'm in AA for the first time.

Hi, my name is Kayleigh Murphy. I'm a book blogger and English lit graduate and I've never read any Franzen before.

I'm not sure why I avoid Franzen. I mean, I've heard he's a colossal dick, but that hasn't stopped me from reading other authors in the past and I only heard that well after reading glossy reviews for books like Freedom and The Corrections. 

Maybe it's because I heard about him during my undergrad days where I basically avoided literary authors on principle because of all the lit-snob douches in my classes who were too busy kissing people like Franzen's ass to admit that they were just jealous that genre authors like Stephen King make bank AND write awesome books. That was a really long sentence, and I'm sorry for that.

Or maybe it's because his books are freaking HUGE and I just haven't been able to bring myself to sit down and read something when I have a high probability of disliking it. Because I just read the opening line to The Corrections and I'm thinking that me and this book are not going to be bros. Sometimes I just take awhile to get into the rhythm of literary fiction, what with the unnecessary amount of words used to describe wind and the colour of a tree and bullshit like that. So I am hoping that around page 50 I'll settle in and be able to actively engage with the characters and the story and this can be a fun and happy gif-filled readalong. But thankfully, thankfully, since I'm doing this with all of you lovely ladies (just ladies right? If there's a dude present I apologise) it will still be fun and gif-filled even if the book is terrible.

On the gif-front I have found myself a bunch of awesome "I hate this" themed gifs that I hope to use sparingly (but expect to use often), plus a bunch of squeee gifs in case I end up loving it AND a bunch of Lee Pace gifs in case it all just becomes too unbearable. Oh oh, and a huge THANK YOU to Alley for hosting this mammoth of a book. It's going to be awesome, no matter what

!I'm feeling pretty damn ready guys. LET'S DO THIS!

Armchair BEA (day 3) Literary Fiction

So I really hope my genre fiction post yesterday didn't give anyone the idea that I don't like literary fiction, or that I don't recognise the brilliance that can be found between the covers of a literary fiction novel. he broad definition of literary fiction is a book that's serious in tone and holds literary merit.  If you take that as fact it's pretty clear that the two genres are not mutually exclusive, there's a definite muddiness in the line between the two, it's just the critics who like to try and make it sharper from time to time.

Anyway.

2013 has not been much of a literary year for me. Aside from Room by Emma Donoghue my books have all been thoroughly genre fiction. With a PhD to work on I haven't really had the heart to explore dark and emotionally-wrought novels that will probably take me a month to finish. Or at least, the lighter more enjoyable books are just beckoning far louder on my bookshelves. But recommendations I do have, oh I have trucks full of them!

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiiguro was my favourite book of 2011, really powerful and interesting and hard to put down. A must read for sure. Anything by Margaret Atwood is a sure-fire winner, there's (almost) always a strong feminist or dystopian thread running through her books and they will take the wind out of you. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel is like a historical fiction/literary fiction cross and if you like history (specifically English history in this case) then her sharp, accurate and illuminating prose will rock your socks off. The sequel Bring Up The Bodies came out last year and I still don't own it, which is a serious problem I hope to rectify soon. I read my first essay collection by David Sedaris this year, and for the most part I really enjoyed his brutally frank, self-deprecating story-telling although I don't know how many collections I could read without it feeling derivative. It's perhaps not strictly literary fiction, but Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader is a fantastic novella and Cormac McCarthy's distopian novel The Road is filled with some of the most beautiful prose I've ever come across.

Mini Graphic Novel Review #12: For the bookish types

Fables Volume #1

Written by: Bill Willingham, illustrated by: Lan Medina, Steve Leialoha, Craig Hamilton, James Jean.

Published: 2002

My Thoughts: Before Once Upon a Time and Grimm hit the TV, Fables was doing the same thing, but better. After being pushed out of their homelands by "the adversary," the fabled fairy tale characters we (think we) know and love move into our world to live among "the mundane". This first volume deals with the disappearance of Rose Red, notorious party-girl and sister of Snow White. On the trail is Mr (The Big Bad) Wolf as he hunts out her kidnapper and/or murderer. It gets a little procedural at times, but I am psyched to see where the series heads - I think it could become a new favourite. Revisioned fairytales are the shit.

Kill Shakespeare Volume #1

Written by: Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col, illustrated by: Andy Belanger

Published by: 2010

My Thoughts: I've seen a lot of Shakespeare's plays converted into graphic novels, but I've never had much of a desire to read them. They're plays - I'll watch them thank you very much. But this...ohhhhhh boy, I super love it. Thank you Mister Comic-Book-Guy for suggesting it.  It takes the more interesting and better known villains and heroes of Shakespeare's work and transplants them into a world where Shakespeare is either a god or a wizard and both the villains and the heroes want to find him and it just so happens that Hamlet is the key. Like Fables, it takes stories we know and love and gives them a bit of a shake up. I can't wait to get onto the next issue.

Book Excerpt: The Car Thief by Theodore Weesner

How did everyone enjoy yesterday's guest post (the first ever for Nylon Admiral by the way)?

 I thought it was fascinating to read how wide and varied a life Theodore Weesner has lived and the devotion he has shown to his writing career. Something that I'm sure you all can imagine is expressed wonderfully through his writing. As promised I have an excerpt from the book for you all to read. I'll stop waffling and let you all sink you teeth into the goodness below soon enough, but before I do I just want to remind you all to click through if you're interested in reading some more about the book, its critical reception and the links to the myriad sites where you can purchase it.

Now, this excerpt is from the second chapter and follows the theft of Alex's 14th car. Bored and wanting to do something crazy, Alex decides to do the unexpected and actually attend school for once.


___________________________________________________________________________________

ALEX PARKED THE BUICK three blocks from the school, where he had parked the day before, and walked back. The snow had turned to rain by now and the leather of his shoes was quickly soaked black. He had considered clearing the car of evidence, to wipe away fingerprints and to empty the ashtray, but for no clear reason he parked it and let it stand. About ten minutes remained in the lunch hour, and as he walked back, the feeling of drawing nearer to the school moved through him with the sensation of a wind rising and falling, rising again.

Ahead, before the dairy bars, there were only a few students about, and they were walking with their faces down against the damp snow. Alex walked past the parked cars, cars which were full, their windows steamed over. The windows of the dairy bars across the street were also steamed over. He did not cross the street. He was growing vaguely weak in his joints, fluid in his muscles. He imagined a car door being thrown open, or the door of one of the dairy bars being thrown open, and someone running—he would not run himself—and grabbing his arm, calling back to the others following, as if they could not see, “I got him, here he is, I got him,” the others strung out, walking, trotting, smiling, without their coats. Teachers could see from the second- and third-floor windows across the street, men teachers whispering afterward as Mr. Burke had once, after a fight, whispered to him, “Hey, who got his clock cleaned down there?”

He did not look toward the steamed windows of the dairy bars across the street. He walked by and crossed over to the sidewalk leading to the school. He was thinking he might as well try to hit one of them, maybe feign submission, for there would be words, and come up, come around, with all he had—he might as well try for Cricket Alan, close his eye, break his nose bone, maybe knock him out, cold-cock him. But no one came running after him, and he walked along, rubbery. Just as he reached the heavy double door, the other side came swinging open and startled him. It was a girl, nameless, a familiar and pudgy face. She wrinkled her face and turned it down immediately against the weather, and went on, and he forced a weak smile over the jumping of his heart.

Within the warm air he foolishly stomped his feet on the link-metal mat, splashing the water the mat lay in on his pants legs. He walked on into the first-floor corridor. In spite of all else there was a faint feeling of coming home after having been away. Here was the tile floor, the familiar hallways lined with dark-green lockers, the whiskey-colored varnished molding, the globes hanging from the ceiling. Except for two girls walking away on the right, the corridor was empty. Far off, also to the right, music was playing, record music from the noon-hour dance in the girls’ gym, which, because he had never learned to dance, he always avoided.

His locker was to the left, in the basement near his homeroom. He walked along. Here he was, he had come back, the object, he believed, of a morning of corridor conversations. But the first student he saw, Barry Fagan, coming down the stairway ahead, walking fast, looked at him as he passed, nodded, walked on. Alex tried not to walk too fast, or too slow, and it was difficult to coordinate himself.

Going down the stairs to the basement, he met his homeroom teacher, Mr. Hewitt, coming up. Mr. Hewitt, besides teaching history, was the varsity baseball coach, and a quiet man, neither popular nor unpopular. He nodded lightly at Alex as they passed. Then, behind him, Alex heard Mr. Hewitt say, “Alex, were you here this morning?”

Pausing, Alex said, “No.”

“Where were you?”

Rather than condemnation, there was some kindness in the man’s voice, and Alex, stopped on the steps, was affected and weakened by it. He found it hard to look up at Mr. Hewitt, who stood waiting. At last, glancing up, Alex said, “I’m back to school now.”

Mr. Hewitt was amused. “You’re back. Good, I’m glad to hear that. Where have you been?”

“Nowhere,” Alex said. “Just messing around.” He stood where he was, looking down again, knowing that Mr. Hewitt was standing there looking at him.
“You have a minute?” Mr. Hewitt said. “I’d like to talk with you.”

Alex hunched his shoulders, to say yes, and walked along slightly to the rear of the man. They went past Alex’s locker and into the homeroom, and Alex still found it hard to look up. It seemed that if he did, something like whimpering would spread from his chest to his throat. He glanced up enough to see that Karen Parker was sitting at a desk in the homeroom, reading, and looked away as Mr. Hewitt said to her, “Karen, would you excuse us a minute, please?”

She did not quite understand, and Mr. Hewitt added after a pause, “We’d like to have a talk in private for a minute.”

“Oh,” she said. Alex heard her gather her things and heard Mr. Hewitt step over to close the door behind her.

Mr. Hewitt said, “Sit down.”

Alex sat down, looking ahead to look away. He saw the bottom half of Mr. Hewitt move to a seat on a desk top. Mr. Hewitt said, “You’ve gotten yourself into some kind of a dilemma, haven’t you?”

Alex had not expected or wanted kindness from anyone; he was too easily affected by it, and even as he smiled lightly, his cheeks were trembling and he could not look up.

“Can you tell me what’s happened?” Mr. Hewitt said.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Alex said quickly.

“Why are you so upset?” Mr. Hewitt said. He spoke all the more kindly.

Alex hunched his shoulders and lips again, as if not knowing or not wanting to say.

“Something at home?”

“Nah,” Alex said.

“I know you’ve missed a lot of school lately. What have you been doing? I’m not going to punish you or anything. Perhaps I can help.”

“Ah, just a lot of bad things,” Alex said. But his voice failed to work clearly—it rose at the end—and he continued to look ahead at nothing, angry with his voice, with himself.

“What kind of bad things? You mean skipping school?”

“No.”

“What, exactly? Can you tell me? You feel free to tell me?”

Unable to speak and unable to look, Alex hunched his shoulders again—he didn’t know. He felt his lower lip reaching out.

Someone opened the door and came walking in. Alex’s view to the door was blocked and he did not look anyway, but Mr. Hewitt said impatiently, “Please wait outside and close the door.”

After a pause, almost in a whisper, Mr. Hewitt said, “Serious bad things?”

Alex nodded once. He did not look up. He knew Mr. Hewitt was studying him, and in his pause, that Mr. Hewitt believed him.

“These wallets—the money taken from the locker room. Do you know anything about that?”

“No.”

For a moment neither of them spoke or moved. Then Mr. Hewitt said, “I’m afraid the class is about to start. But I want you to do me a favor—I want you to come back this afternoon after school—immediately after—will you do that?”

Alex moved his shoulders again and more or less nodded that he would.

He stood up as Mr. Hewitt rose, but he still could not look at the man. He walked over toward the door without looking back, and heard Mr. Hewitt say behind him, “Don’t get too worried now. It’ll work itself out.”

Alex said nothing; before him through the glass half of the door he saw faces on top of and beside each other. They began to separate and back off before he touched the doorknob.

He stepped through them without looking at a face, saw bodies before him in the thickening corridor, and heard someone whisper, “What’s going on?” The bell, ringing suddenly, startled him.

At his locker, facing the wall and holding his lock in his hand, he tried to tell himself the numbers. They came close but he could not quite catch them. He fingered the lock’s black face, and beside him someone said, “Hey, what was that all about?”

Alex turned and looked at the boy beside his shoulder but could not think of his name, however familiar his face. “What?” he said to the boy.
The boy spoke again, but Alex’s mind was hearing Mr. Hewitt again and he did not hear the boy. Alex turned his back on him, as if to conceal the working of his combination, and the boy’s hand fell on his shoulder. “Hey,” the boy said, and Alex, not looking back, suddenly, violently, whipped his shoulder to shake off the hand. The hand did not return. Nor did Alex look back. He continued staring down, hardly seeing the face of the lock.
In a moment he knew, decided in the knowing, that he was not going to the afternoon classes. What was he doing there? How could he have thought of coming to school? Sitting at a desk, sitting there, sitting there, sitting there. He closed his eyes for a moment, still facing the wall. But he could not see what he seemed to have been trying to see.

At last he let the lock drop. He turned to leave, making his way as calmly as he could through the confusion of corridor movement, aiming for the side door on the landing, fifty feet away, aiming for the gray and cold air outside. He experienced a slight shivering of panic as he walked, panic against the ringing of the second bell, a fear of being collared by some teacher, being led to a classroom and turned over to another teacher like an errant Tom Sawyer when he was of a range of mind this moment to go for the teacher’s head, or eyes, or throat.

___________________________________________________________________________________

I hope you all enjoyed this brief foray into what seems like a unique book (I'm hoping to finally get a chance to read it once my uni commitments start to die down). If you're interested in learning more, click through the link provided at the top of the post. And if you missed the guest post by the author yesterday, be sure to click through to read it now.

Author Guest Post: Theodore Weesner

Hello everyone! I know things have been quiet around here, but I think this post will make it all worthwhile! Below I have a wonderful guest post by Theodore Weesner, the author of The Car Thief. 

Hailed as a modern American classic, this coming of age tale is Theodore's fourth novel and just the tippy-top of his illustrious writing career. Before going any further in my introduction, I'm going to whet you literary appetites with a brief synopsis of The Car Thief;

It’s 1959. Sixteen year-old Alex Housman has just stolen his fourteenth car and frankly doesn’t know why. His divorced, working class father grinds out the night shift at the local Chevy Plant in Detroit, kept afloat by the flask in his glove compartment and the open bottles in his Flint, Michigan home. 

Abandoned and alone, father and son struggle to express a deep love for each other, even as Alex fills his day juggling cheap thrills and a crushing depression. He cruises and steals, running from, and to, the police, compelled by reasons he frustratingly can’t put into words. And then there’s Irene Shaeffer, the pretty girl in school whose admiration Alex needs like a drug in order to get by. Broke and fighting to survive, Alex and his father face the realities of estrangement, incarceration, and even violence as their lives hurtle toward the climactic episode that a New York Times reviewer called “one of the most profoundly powerful in American fiction.”

Do I have your full attention now? Good! I'll be posting an excerpt from The Car Thief for your enjoyment tomorrow, but right now I have a post that Theodore was kind enough to write about the making of The Car Thief. Below you'll be able to read about the inspiration that lead to The Car Thief and exactly how much of Theodore's own life is mirrored in this fascinating new novel.

Enjoy!
___________________________________________________________________________________

Theodore Weesner, author of The Car Thief

What was my inspiration for writing The Car Thief and how much of me personally went into the story? 


I'm working to answer those questions in a personal memoir I have underway called ‘Hoodlum Artist.’

 As a short answer let me say that I lived a stupid and ignorant life of deprivation that commenced on being abandoned at age one, with my brother Jack, age three, to a 550 pound immobile woman named Alice Sleeseman, who took in children from broken homes in Flint’s ‘Little Missouri.’ We may have been dirty and scrawny but ours was a ‘Summerhill’ life of almost total freedom (I recall nothing but happiness, exploration, adventure) and I’m not complaining. If I was damaged on having been abandoned by my mother, I’m not smart enough to say. She was fifteen when she gave birth for the first time, on proceeding into a life devoted to drinking, dancing and honky-tonking. She never visited, while my father stopped by every other weekend or so to see how Jack and I were doing. Grandma Sleeseman, as we called her, made her way each morning to a centrally-located rocker from which she issued instructions, sending Jack and me with some dollars and a rusty wagon to a grocery store on Fenton Road to buy food supplies, and instructing other children of the house in the preparation of meals in the kitchen. Jack and I always had an eye out for the appearance of our father’s green Chevy and the thrill we felt when it came into view.

(After an extremely rough childhood, Theodore (known as Ted) picks up his story in a defining incident in High School…)

Central High School. Working as a part-time carry-out boy at Hamady’s, minding my own business and striving to get my life on track, I wandered into the stands of a high school football game one Friday evening after work, only to find myself inexplicably charged, on Monday at school, with fighting in the end zone. The witness making the charge was the Principal himself, on having used binoculars from Atwood Stadium’s 50-yard line to make his identification. At a subsequent hearing attended by my step-mother as well as the Superintendent of Public Schools--where the Principal wept in the face of the terrible punishment he felt compelled to administer despite my claims of innocence--I was permanently discharged from Flint Central, never to be allowed to set foot on school grounds again.

Disturbed and cheated, needing at all costs to prove myself, I began to become an over-achiever. Having turned seventeen, enlisting in the army as a GED, I soon became a model soldier who—by the time my three years were up, spending all but six months in Germany—I had qualified for OCS (based on high test scores, ranked in the 99th percentile) and, as a decent athlete, had also been considered for appointment to West Point…which consideration was quietly withdrawn when my juvenile criminal history and time served came to added light.

Admitted by some quirk to Michigan State University, I continued as an over-achiever, giving my all to catching up with the proper kids who had left me behind. Qualifying for a newly launched Honors College, I also received Hinman Creative Research scholarships with which to supplement my monthly checks under the GI Bill. I was invited as well, as a junior, to represent the giant-sized University in competition for a Rhodes Scholarship. Not wishing to undertake the competition and interviews, having fallen in love by then—having been ‘called’—to be nothing less than an artist committed to creative writing, I went on in search of success in the craft…and never looked back. All along, in my writing, I had been exploring conflicts I had known before landing on my feet in the army and as a student. So it was that I called my first novel, which was inspired by need, experience, and artistic hunger, ‘The Car Thief,’ during the writing of which I drew on the guts of my own history in search of valid themes and exquisitely realistic details.

-Theodore Weesner
___________________________________________________________________________________

Be sure to keep an eye out for the excerpt from The Car Thief I'll be sharing tomorrow. Or if you simply can't wait, click through for all the purchasing options, and a more detailed run down of the book.

Review: Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

Sexing the Cherry
Written by Jeanette Winterson

Published: 1989

Synopsis: Sexing the Cherry celebrates the power of the imagination as it playfully juggles with our perception of history and reality; love and sex; lies and truths; and twelve dancing princesses who lived happily ever after, but not with their husbands.



Sexing the Cherry was my final read for 2011, and what a magical and incredible book to close the year on! This teeny little book (144 pages) is filled with so much substance, love, magic and imagination that it nearly made my heart explode!

The book takes place in 1600s England with the King Charles, Cromwell/Parliament issue looming in the backdrop. Amongst all the turmoil and challenges and change that London is experiencing, a young baby is discovered beside the river by a giant (literally) woman known only as (the) Dog Woman. The story follows the relationship between Dog Woman and Jordan (she names him after a river because he came from water) and the adventures, highs and lows they both experience, together and in their separate lives.

After viewing the first banana to ever arrive in England, Jordan finds himself obsessed with travelling and exploring, especially by sea. He is apprenticed (sort of) by the King's horticulturist, and after several years spent in Wimbledon with the Dog Woman he takes to the seas exploring the far corners of the world and the many rich experiences that there are to discover. However what he discovers isn't simply the wild and mostly unexplored worlds of the Bahamas or other islands/countries, instead he comes across (face to face or through stories) wonderful magical places like the city where they were plagued by love, or the town where gravity forgot about them and they took to the sky travelling around the world in their town un-moored from the rest of earth. In his searches through these wonderful places he struggles also to find the woman he loves and to understand who he is.

The book is wonderfully written in exquisite prose that would make even the most unimaginative person ascend into clouds of strawberry marshmallow. The characters are multi-dimensional and so real it almost hurts. And because of the loose, not quite linear time-line of the story, it really is the characters who are important, rather than the things going on around them. This book plays with the aspects of traditional storytelling and just pulls all the rules apart and rearranges them into these new and unique ways that makes you question not only the contents of the book, but the concept of time and space and life and magical in your own world. This truly is a wonderful book, and I'm not sure I can really give it justice with my review so I'm just going to finish with a few quotes from the book that just captured my heart and mind and really made me love this book.

*In which Jordan recounts a moment in a town where words literalised in the air around them. He ascends in a balloon and helped a cleaner wash away the words that had amassed in the sky, page 18.

"Towards the end of the day we joined with the other baloons brushing away the last few stray and vagabond words. The sky under the setting sun was the colour of veined marble, and a great peace surrounded us. As we descended through the clean air we saw, passing us by from time to time, new flocks of words coming from people in the streets who, not content with the weight of their lives, continually turned the heaviest of things into the lightest of properties. "

*Jordan describes maps and discovering, page 81.

"Maps are magic. In the bottom corner are whales; at the top, cormorants carrying pop-eyed fish. In between is a subjective account of the lie of the land. Rough shapes of countries that may or may not exist, broken red lines marking paths that are a best hazardous, at worst already gone. Maps are constantly being re-made as knowledge appears to increase. But is knowledge increasing or is detail accumulating?"

 *Jordan discussing the painting "A Hunt in a Forest" and it's relation to his life/lives, page 92.

"When I saw this painting I began by concentrating on the forground figures, and only by degrees did I notice the others, some so faint as to be hardly noticeable. My own life is like this, or, I should say, my own lives. For the most part I can see only the most obvious detail, the present, my present. But sometimes, by a trick of the light, I can more than that. I can see countless lives existing together and receding slowly into the trees." 

Yes, so hopefully that gives you a slight taste of the magical literary qualities of this wonderful book and the slight sci-fi, cerebral quality it has regarding time, space and life. A wonderful read that you must experience!