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| 5- Cherished Favorite | 4 - Keep in My Library | 3 - Good Read | 2 - Meh | 1 - Definitely Not For Me |
| 5- Cherished Favorite | 4 - Keep in My Library | 3 - Good Read | 2 - Meh | 1 - Definitely Not For Me |
| 5- Cherished Favorite | 4 - Keep in My Library | 3 - Good Read | 2 - Meh | 1 - Definitely Not For Me |
| 5- Cherished Favorite | 4 - Keep in My Library | 3 - Good Read | 2 - Meh | 1 - Definitely Not For Me |
I glanced at my mother. She was not crying. Her face was drained not only of color but of expression as well. She might have been a vacant body, waiting dumbfounded to be infused with a human soul. (p. 14)Bobby and Jonathan come together, spending hours immersed in drugs and music. Their relationship is complicated -- are they like friends, brothers, or lovers? Later they come together as adults, sharing a life with Claire, a slightly older woman who dyes her hair vibrant orange and ekes out a living making jewelry from odd things, finding beauty in bits other people leave behind.
(narrated by Bobby) Once our father bought a convertible. Don’t ask me. I was five, He bought it and drove it home as casually as he’d bring a gallon of rocky road. Picture our mother’s surprise. She kept rubber bands on the doorknobs. She washed old plastic bags and hung them on the line to dry, a string of thrifty tame jellyfish floating in the sun. Imagine her scrubbing the cheese smell out of a plastic bag on its third or fourth go round when our father pulls up in a Chevy convertible, used but nevertheless—a moving metal landscape, chrome bumpers and what looks like acres of molded silver car-flesh. He saw it parked downtown with a For Sale sign and decided to be the kind of man who buys a car on a whim. We can see as he pulls up that the manic joy has started to fade for him. The car is already an embarrassment. He cruises into the driveway with a frozen smile that matches the Chevy’s grille. (p. 1)As I got further into the book, I was a bit disappointed. The story is told by four different characters, but everyone's narrative sounds the same. The use of different points of view allowed us to hear the story from different perspectives, but it didn't establish each character as a unique person with his own way of thinking and speaking. And the slow, thoughtful, lyrical language, which I usually savored, sometimes gave me a sense of walking underwater; it felt slow and heavy. I started wishing the author had varied the style and pace a bit more.
I never expected this, a love so ravenous it's barely personal. A love that displaces you, pushes you out of shape. I knew that if I was crossing the street with the baby and a car screamed around the corner, horn blaring, I'd shield her with my body. I'd do it automatically, the way you protect your head or heart by holding up your arms. You defend your vital parts with your tougher, more expendable ones. In that way, motherhood worked as promised. But I found that I loved her without a true sense of charity or goodwill. It was a howling, floodlit love; a frightening thing. (p. 274)The three-way relationship between Jonathan, Bobby, and Claire, flawed as it was, intrigued me. Love definitely comes in unexpected forms. I saw an interview with Robin Wright, who played Claire in the movie adaptation. (Gotta love special features) She felt an important point, in Claire's relationship with these two men, was that no one person can be everything you need. Even as a person who's embraced lifelong monogamy, I agree with this. To expect a spouse or lover to fulfill all your needs is a recipe for failure. We glean different things we're seeking, often without consciously realizing it, from many people -- partners, friends, parents and children.
| 5- Cherished Favorite | 4 - Keep in My Library | 3 - Good Read | 2 - Meh | 1 - Definitely Not For Me |
"Handsome European male fluent in English and Chinese would like to meet Japanese and Korean girls. NO SPEAK ENGLISH? O.K. I LIKE YOU. WE HAPPY" ... These women couldn't understand how what seemed like romance, or at least mutual attraction, was shameless capitalization; or the historical context of Orientalism; or the subtext of those English ads -- how, for starters, that "Handsome European male" preferred his Asian women inarticulate, if not voiceless; or how such presumptions coiled around people, until they no longer knew how their own identity had been constricted. (pp. 72-73)Then she discovers the sexually "exploited" women she reaches out to don't want to be rescued, and glimpses the reality that this issue is more complex than she had imagined. For these women, paradoxically, prostituting themselves offers an unprecedented kind of freedom.
| 5- Cherished Favorite | 4 - Keep in My Library | 3 - Good Read | 2 - Meh | 1 - Definitely Not For Me |
It seemed to Matt ... that he had not so much moved through his life as wandered through it, his spirit like a dazed body bumping into furniture and corners. He had always been a fearful father: when his children were young, at the start of each summer he thought of them drowning in a pond or the sea, and he was relieved when he came home in the evenings and they were there; usually that relief was his only acknowledgment of his fear, which he never spoke of, and which he controlled within his heart ... and then he lost Frank the way no father expected to lose his son, and he felt that all the fears he had borne while they were growing up, and all the grief he had been afraid of, had backed up like a huge wave and struck him on the beach and swept him out to sea. (p. 11)"The Winter Father" --
The Jackman's marriage had been adulterous and violent, but in its last days, they became a couple again, as they might have if one of them were slowly dying. (p. 24))This begins a story of a newly divorced father of two young children who struggles to adapt to his changed role in the kids' lives. He feels the divorce has "pierced and cut" his time with the kids, and he finds any moments of silence between him and his children painful, so he fills their time with entertainment: movies, museums, and aquariums. As a newly single man, he also comes to a new understanding of his sexual and emotional needs. This story explores parenthood, intimacy, loneliness, and regret. It also touches lightly, but powerfully, on the theme of guilt, an inevitable emotion at the end of a marriage.
Crossing the sidewalk to his car, in that short space, he felt the limp again, the stooped shoulders. He wondered if he looked like a man who had survived an accident which had killed others. (p. 26)One of Dubus's gifts is to avoid the temptation to give his characters a Road to Damascus-like moment of revelation or an easy solution to their problems, yet he does show them some kindness and compassion. "The Winter Father" offers no moment of resolution and closure, but it does allow the father to gradually begin growing toward a sort of peace.
And in Rose's eyes, I saw embers of death, as if the dying of her spirit had come not with a final yielding sigh, but with a blaze of recognition. (p. 61)I will leave you to discover Rose's tragic story for yourself. It's a tale of how a woman loses her power and even her awareness of her own love, but it's also about how people, including Rose, discover hidden reservoirs of strength, at critical moments, that they never knew they had. The narrator sees her with respect and compassion, even though she can't see herself in this light. It's also a story that explores the intersection between religious belief and real life, and the search for meaning or lack of it, important themes in Dubus's work.
Devout Catholics, she told me. By that, she did not mean they strived to live in imitation of Christ. She meant they did not practice artificial birth control, but rhythm, and after their third year of marriage they had three children. They left the church then ... I am not a Catholic but even I see they were never truly members of that faith, and so could not have left it. There is too much history, too much philosophy involved, for the matter of faith to rest finally and solely on the use of contraceptives ... They had neither a religion nor a philosophy; like most people I know, their philosophies were simply their accumulated reactions to their daily circumstance, their lives as they lived them from one hour to the next. They were not driven, guided by either passionate belief or strong resolve. And for that I pity them both, as I pity the others who move through life like scraps of paper in the wind. (pp. 64-65)"The Fat Girl" -- A slightly obese young woman's sense of identity, and her expectations of her life, evolve as she loses and gains weight.
For ritual allows those who cannot will themselves out of the secular to perform the spiritual, as dancing allows the tongue-tied man a ceremony of love. (p. 119) Certainly the ushers who pass the baskets know me as a miser. Father Paul ... could say Mass in my barn. I know this is stubborn, but I can find no mention by Christ of maintaining buildings, much less erecting them of stone or brick, and decorating them with pieces of metal and mineral and elements that people still fight over like barbarians. (pp. 114-115)"All the Time in the World" -- A young woman searches for an adult relationship and discovers both the joys and limitations of a culture revolving around casual sex.
The film unfolds its true story, which is about the marriage of Matt and Ruth--about how hurt and sadness turn to anger and blame. There are scenes as true as movies can make them, and even when the story develops thriller elements, they are redeemed, because the movie isn't about what happens, but about why.This movie shines, partly due to great performances by Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek, and Marisa Tomei. Have I mentioned that Tom Wilkinson is one of my favorite actors in the world? This isn't the kind of fast paced movie you'd expect from Hollywood. It movies slowly through vibrant images, that give you hints as to what lies beneath the surface, and it reveals the characters in quiet, everyday moments. This is true to the introspective, character driven quality of Dubus's stories and his deft use of imagery, which I described above. On the other hand, it is a violent, disturbing movie, though not gratuitously so, and it will keep you on the edge of your seat!
| 5- Cherished Favorite | 4 - Keep in My Library | 3 - Good Read | 2 - Meh | 1 - Definitely Not For Me |
Being a Good Father is a reasonable, attainable goal; you need only be present and supportive. Being a Good Mother, as defined by mothers themselves, is impossible. When asked for an example of a Good Mother, as defined by mothers themselves, the women I polled came up with June Cleaver and Marmee, from Little Women. Both of whom are by necessity, not coincidence, fictional characters. The good Mother does not exist, she never existed, not even in those halcyon bygone days to which the arbiters of maternal conduct never tire of harking back. If the producers of Leave it to Beaver had really wanted to give us an accurate depiction of late 1950s and early-1960s motherhood, June would have had a lipstick-stained cigarette clamped between her teeth, a gin and tonic in her hand, and a copy of Peyton Place on her nightstand. But still, this creature of fantasy is whom the mothers in my sample measured themselves against, and their failure to live up to her made her feel like Bad Mothers. It's as if the swimmer Tracy Caulkins, winner of three Olympic gold medals, setter of five world records, were to beat herself up for being slower than the Little Mermaid. (p. 11)Other topics explored:
When Rosie was little, she was a slow talker ... She would sit on the floor, her fat legs stretched out in front of her, as I built and rebuilt a tower of blocks, , laughing each time I toppled it over. I was so busy saying, "Rosie can you say 'boom'? Say 'boom' for Mommy," that I barely registered her full-body smile, the way every inch of her, from her cornflower blue eyes to the pink tips of her toes, wriggled as she grinned at the tower's collapse. The most toxic thing parents can do is allow their delight and pride in their children to be spoiled by disappointment, by frustration, when the children fail to live up to expectations formed before they were even born, expectations that have nothing to do with them and everything to do with the parents' own egos. (pp. 205-206)There were several things that touched me deeply. I connected with Waldman's account of her son's diagnosis with ADHD and coming to terms with the unexpected twists presented by a child's learning differences. I was also moved by her disclosure that she's bipolar and struggled with the decision to use medication during pregnancy. I went through this too. I had to make a choice, with each of my last two pregnancies, whether to use medication for anxiety and depression. Despite my severe history with my mood disorder, which runs in my family, and although increasing medical evidence indicates that SSRI use during pregnancy and nursing is safe, this was very difficult.
| 5- Cherished Favorite | 4 - Keep in My Library | 3 - Good Read | 2 - Meh | 1 - Definitely Not For Me |
