aka Ann Aldrich
aka Vin Packer
aka ME Kerr
aka Mary James
and finally aka MJ Meaker
held by only one OCLC member library!
writes of her two year affair with mystery writer Patricia Highsmith who also wrote--as Claire Morgan--the lesbian romance (noted for its happy ending--not that kind of happy end, gutterbrain!) The Price of Salt.
If you read anthologies (or comp zines) you know that they're always uneven in quality and focus. The most common thread I found in Only Child, both thematically and content-wise is a self-consciousness. There are more than the usual amount of asides, parentheticals, and explanations, which I think makes sense for people accustomed to having so much attention aimed their way. Many of the writers cited having all of their parents' love and affection to themselves as a childhood experience. I know when eyes are on me I feel more self-conscious, like if the Pilates class instructor praises me, I inevitably mess up the next exercise, as if to show that I'm not special, I'm the same as everyone else. But of course no one cares. In Pilates you're not looking at anyone else. That is one place where navel gazing is not only okay; it's the rule. Same with these only child authors, but they haven't had siblings beat "no one cares" into them, lucky dogs.
Hrm. I'm not really sure what to make of this book. It's a pretty good read with a reasonably compelling narrator, but plot doesn't quite gel. The ending left me mystified, and not in that cool dazed way where you contemplate what might happen next. Instead we're left with what essentially feels like a "to be continued," which I would have thought the author would be too classy for.
Anyway, Genna is a smart and solitary African- and Panamanian-American teenager growing up in early 21st century Brooklyn who gets transported back in time to more or less the same location, just before Christmas in 1862. She ends up working for a white doctor as nursemaid to his child and as a sort of nurse-in-training in his practice. (She wants to become a doctor, a psychiatrist specifically, a notion Dr. Brant thinks is absurd. Negroes' heads are small than white peoples', so they aren't capable of being as smart. Same with women vs. men.) She has two potential love interests, one from the present, and one from the future/past, who manages to find her in the 19th century.
When I selected this memoir by a Taiwanese adoptee raised by white parents in Michigan reunited with her birth family, I expected something a bit more critical than Lucky Girl turns out to be. I guess I thought the title would be more ironic than it is. I don't think the title is entirely unlayered, but the author does seem pretty happy with how her life turned out, rather than how it might have if she'd remained one of too many (seven?) daughters of a Chinese couple that kept at it in the hopes of eventually producing a healthy, non-deformed boy.
Besides, to my child mind, adoption seemed a plenty logical way for people to reproduce, way more reasonable than the idea that women grew babies in their bellies that popped out after forty weeks. It made all the sense in the world to me that we would pick up my new brother at the airport--I mean, that's where I came from, right? p.69
Per Mrs. Robinson (all titles are listed, which jarred me at first until I realized why that would have been a big deal), Rosa Parks was actually just tired that day. I mean, she was part of it and all, but the boycott wasn't planned until after her arrest. The "Women Who Started It" were the three hundred members of Montgomery's three Women's Political Council chapters. Unfortunately the book is really more about the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and Dr. King, than the women in the title.
93 (or 90)-year-old Jacob Jankowski's narrative takes us on the road with a depression era second or third rate circus, with which he served as veterinarian in his early 20s. The book was interesting and absorbing. I quite enjoyed it. Do you sense a however coming on? However, I'm not sure I really get why the back and forth between the circus and the nursing home.
"But then in your thirties something strange starts to happen. It's a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I'm--you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you're not. You're thirty-five. And then you're bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it's decades before you admit it.
"You start to forget words: they're on the tip of your tongue, but instead of eventually dislodging, they stay there. You go upstairs to fetch something, and by the time you get there you can't remember what it was you were after."
"They're eight-pagers.
"A crudely drawn Olive Oyl lies on a bed with her legs open, naked but for her shoes. She spreads herself with her fingers. Popeye appears in a thought bubble above her head, with a bulging erection that reaches to his chin. Wimpy, with an equally enormous erection, peers through the window."
It was funny to read this twenty-something memoir about a religious woman in NYC immediately after reading a twenty-something memoir about a stripper in the Midwest. Baker comes off naive, not so much for her religious beliefs but because her idea of adventure is lying to a campus recruiter about her major in order to get a free highlighter. It's kind of fascinating to see what kinds of things college age nondrinking sex abstainers do to amuse themselves (banana flavored foods party!!!).
Cody's writing is extremely clever, witty, and accessible. I was worried it was going to be too clever at first, but she calms down after the first couple of chapters. Not the over-the-top part, but the general feeling of it reminded me of Ayun Halliday's writing, so if you're an East Village Inky fan, you should like Candy Girl. The title pretty much says it all. Cody got it into her head, or heart really, to do some nude dancing and on-demand masturbating for a while in her mid-twenties. It happens.
I don't know if I've ever read a book that better or as unselfconsciously captures the intimacy and idiosyncrasies of a high school clique. (Note--when I say "clique" I do not mean to imply snobbery or exclusivity, merely the phenomenon where teens create their own family of close friends.) Wanda Lowell and Dora Nussbaum, editors of the school's literary magazine Galaxy which is at the heart of the group's identity, are best friends and the leaders of the clique. Wanda and Dora are called the Wandora Unit because of their intense friendship and solidarity, though sometimes the term is not a tribute. Until their senior year of high school they never disagreed about anything. The Galaxy crew have inside jokes, think they are the funniest and smartest people in the world, and they are doomed.
Sophie Mercer is a social outcast from a broken home who has finally been sentenced to the school you go to when you've been kicked out of all the others: Hecate Hall. Well, where witches, shape shifters, and faeries go anyway. Raised by a human mother and yet to meet her warlock father, Sophie doesn't know a lot about witchery (history and powers), which is kind of a drag when she gets to Hecate (Hex) Hall, because the other kids are steeped in it and even know more about her father than she does. Assigned to the school pariah as a roommate, a pink loving vampire named Jenna, Sophie is not off to a good start at her new school.
