The members of our book club are busy people, so we generally limit the size of the books we choose to be sure that as many of us as possible can finish them before the discussion. This month, however, we picked a longer work than usual (about 500 words in paperback), and only about half of us finished it. I really had to push myself to get it all read, not because of the length, but because by 2/3 of the way through I was so disgusted with the characters that I really didn’t care what happened to any of them.
The book was The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver, and it’s actually two books in one. The protagonist is Irina McGovern, an American graphic artist living in London with her long-time lover, a think-tank wonk specializing in terrorism. Early in the book Irina is tempted to kiss a British friend on his birthday; the rest of the novel follows Irina through two alternate futures, one in which she gives way to temptation and one in which she does not.
This is one of those books that none of us actually enjoyed reading, but that generated a very lively discussion. Sometimes directly and sometimes obliquely, the author examines what attracts us to members of the opposite sex; what constitutes true intimacy; how tradeoffs between talent, money, and power can enhance or destroy a relationship; and whether trying to change one’s real self for someone else can ever be successful. In the end, although Irina is beautiful, talented, and desperate to please the man she’s with, both of her possible futures end bleakly, at least in her eyes. That wasn’t particularly surprising, since no matter how well things went for Irina during the course of the story(s), she never cheered up.
My main quibble with this book, in fact, is that the tone throughout is one of grim irony. The bitter discussions between the main characters would have been easier to slog through with an occasional leavening of fun. (That's FUN, Lionel, not just sex - got it?) After all, these characters were reasonably well and well-off members of the middle class who supposedly loved one another; surely they would have had a few laughs during the years covered by the novel. One would think that a female author capable of changing her name from Mary Ann to Lionel must have a sense of humor tucked away somewhere, but perhaps that choice was also informed by irony instead.
An interesting book, but not one that I’ll be reading again.
"...the author is more interested in raising questions about love and fidelity than in pat moralizing." ~Kirkus Review on The Post-Birthday World (quoted on the dust jacket)
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Monday, June 4, 2012
Van Gogh Writ Large
During the years I lived in New York the airfare to France was frequently cheaper than to anywhere in the United States, so Tom and I spent several vacations in Paris During one we went on a day trip to Giverny and Auvers-sur-Oise At Giverny we toured Monet’s house and garden; in Auvers we saw the room where Vincent van Gogh stayed, the church he painted, the field where he shot himself, and his grave. In the garden at Giverny, viewing the green bridge surrounded by flowers and arching over the pond of waterlilies, I could squint and see what Monet had seen. In Auvers, however, it seemed to me that only Van Gogh could have looked at the humdrum landscape and interpreted it as a magical whirl of color and movement.
Van Gogh’s singular vision of reality has been on unique display at the Arizona Science Center for the last couple of months, and I finally saw the exhibit last weekend. “Van Gogh Alive: The Experience” was developed by Grande Exhibitions in Australia. Giant photos of Van Gogh’s works and quotations from his writings (thoughtfully translated into English) are projected on the walls of several rooms to the sounds of classical music carefully chosen to coordinate with the images. Some of the art is displayed by theme – at various points, one is surrounded by an array of enormous sunflowers, or the progression of Van Gogh’s increasingly abstract and unhappy self-portraits – but it is also in roughly chronological order, ending with his final painting of that desolate field in Auvers.
The projections of course did not accurately reproduce the tactile effect of Van Gogh’s work, with its vigorous brush strokes and frequently thick application of paint, and some of the more abstract works dissolved almost into pointillism when blown up to room size. On the other hand, this was a fabulous opportunity to experience the evolution of his style, to learn more about his theories of art, and to bathe in the glorious colors he used. It was also the closest most of us will ever get to some of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings, now in private hands and rarely accessible to the public.
We stayed through several showings of the program, moving from place to place in order to see all of the pictures. Overall it was an amazing experience, and I hope that someday Grande Exhibitions will do the same for Monet; the already enormous waterlily paintings in the basement of the Orangerie in Paris, for instance, would look awesome projected all the way around a room.
"Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of color to express myself more forcefully." Vincent van Gogh (Letter to Theo van Gogh, 11 August 1888
Van Gogh’s singular vision of reality has been on unique display at the Arizona Science Center for the last couple of months, and I finally saw the exhibit last weekend. “Van Gogh Alive: The Experience” was developed by Grande Exhibitions in Australia. Giant photos of Van Gogh’s works and quotations from his writings (thoughtfully translated into English) are projected on the walls of several rooms to the sounds of classical music carefully chosen to coordinate with the images. Some of the art is displayed by theme – at various points, one is surrounded by an array of enormous sunflowers, or the progression of Van Gogh’s increasingly abstract and unhappy self-portraits – but it is also in roughly chronological order, ending with his final painting of that desolate field in Auvers.
The projections of course did not accurately reproduce the tactile effect of Van Gogh’s work, with its vigorous brush strokes and frequently thick application of paint, and some of the more abstract works dissolved almost into pointillism when blown up to room size. On the other hand, this was a fabulous opportunity to experience the evolution of his style, to learn more about his theories of art, and to bathe in the glorious colors he used. It was also the closest most of us will ever get to some of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings, now in private hands and rarely accessible to the public.
We stayed through several showings of the program, moving from place to place in order to see all of the pictures. Overall it was an amazing experience, and I hope that someday Grande Exhibitions will do the same for Monet; the already enormous waterlily paintings in the basement of the Orangerie in Paris, for instance, would look awesome projected all the way around a room.
"Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of color to express myself more forcefully." Vincent van Gogh (Letter to Theo van Gogh, 11 August 1888
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Herding Frankenquail
My plan to encourage Barry to cook more, especially for me, is working; he invited me over for dinner on Sunday night, and served baby bell peppers stuffed with ground lamb, rice, and onions – really yummy. Before we were able to eat, though, we had to engage in a little quail wrangling.
Ever since Barry moved into his present house, he’s been throwing out stale bread and crackers for the birds and bunnies in his backyard. This worked well and provided him with a lot of free entertainment until the last couple of weeks, when the latest batches of baby quail started hatching. Some of the parent quail are apparently at their wits’ end as to how to feed all these hungry little mouths, and they’ve started pecking on Barry’s glass patio door to demand more crumbs, leading him to announce, “I’ve created Frankenquail!”
Anyway, Sunday evening he and I wandered out onto the back patio before dinner, and while we were returning to the house one of the quail chicks (a little smaller than a ping-pong ball with legs) skittered inside with us and took refuge under the kitchen stove.
I immediately suggested moving the stove but Barry was afraid that the stove 1) was too heavy for us to move without injury to ourselves, and 2) would squish the quail as well. After a quarter of an hour of hand-wringing, however, he decided that he would worry all night if he just left the bird there – and who knows where it would have ended up if it had come out later on its own? – so we dragged the stove away from the wall and herded the chick into a plastic pitcher. I rushed it outside and deposited it under a sheltering bush. A few minutes later I saw it run at top speed (its legs only a blur) in the direction its family had previously taken.
I hope he (or she) caught up with the rest of the brood. I think it was pretty careless of the parent quail to move on without one of their children. Still, I can understand their problem – herding 10 or so clueless but fast-moving quail chicks must be even worse than trying to herd cats. Plus, quail apparently don’t actually like living in groups; the temptation to lose at least some of the kids may occasionally be pretty strong:
"The Quail is generally a solitary animal meaning they don’t really care for the company of other birds. Sometimes if this bird is in a gregarious mood then they will socialize with one other Quail. With that said, everything changes once mating season rolls around. During this time, different family groups will come together and form flocks as large as 100 individuals. I can just imagine how cranky these introvert birds are after a few days with such a large flock.” ~Wild Facts
Ever since Barry moved into his present house, he’s been throwing out stale bread and crackers for the birds and bunnies in his backyard. This worked well and provided him with a lot of free entertainment until the last couple of weeks, when the latest batches of baby quail started hatching. Some of the parent quail are apparently at their wits’ end as to how to feed all these hungry little mouths, and they’ve started pecking on Barry’s glass patio door to demand more crumbs, leading him to announce, “I’ve created Frankenquail!”
Anyway, Sunday evening he and I wandered out onto the back patio before dinner, and while we were returning to the house one of the quail chicks (a little smaller than a ping-pong ball with legs) skittered inside with us and took refuge under the kitchen stove.
I immediately suggested moving the stove but Barry was afraid that the stove 1) was too heavy for us to move without injury to ourselves, and 2) would squish the quail as well. After a quarter of an hour of hand-wringing, however, he decided that he would worry all night if he just left the bird there – and who knows where it would have ended up if it had come out later on its own? – so we dragged the stove away from the wall and herded the chick into a plastic pitcher. I rushed it outside and deposited it under a sheltering bush. A few minutes later I saw it run at top speed (its legs only a blur) in the direction its family had previously taken.
I hope he (or she) caught up with the rest of the brood. I think it was pretty careless of the parent quail to move on without one of their children. Still, I can understand their problem – herding 10 or so clueless but fast-moving quail chicks must be even worse than trying to herd cats. Plus, quail apparently don’t actually like living in groups; the temptation to lose at least some of the kids may occasionally be pretty strong:
"The Quail is generally a solitary animal meaning they don’t really care for the company of other birds. Sometimes if this bird is in a gregarious mood then they will socialize with one other Quail. With that said, everything changes once mating season rolls around. During this time, different family groups will come together and form flocks as large as 100 individuals. I can just imagine how cranky these introvert birds are after a few days with such a large flock.” ~Wild Facts
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Saying Goodbye
She's started to exhibit what the vet said would be signs of almost total kidney failure - constant drinking, nearly constant urination - and she's almost entirely stopped eating. She follows me around, wailing to be held (this from a cat who always hated to be picked up). When she's not in my lap or trying to get there, she's hiding under the bed.
I haven't even taken her on The Big Trip yet, and already I feel like a murderer, but she's obviously suffering and I hate to see that, too. Of course every time I'm sure she's doomed, she perks up and looks great the next day, but the overall trajectory is definitely headed in a downward direction.
To be continued...
"Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love." ~George Eliot
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Cinco de Margarita
I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect that my husband Tom tasted his first margarita shortly after meeting me, and he instantly fell in love with it. From then on, he was on a quest to find the perfect margarita - frozen, with salt. He didn't like them overly sweet, nor reeking of an excess of tequila, but well-balanced and preferably with fresh-squeezed lime juice.
On balmy Friday evenings we would park ourselves in an outdoor cafe (frequently the one in Manhattan's Bryant Park, behind the main library), or the outdoor tables of one of our usually interior haunts, and greet the weekend with chips, guacamole, and margaritas. The entire family knew of this obsession; one year he received two (matching, amazingly enough) sets of margarita glasses for his birthday, and kept them both. Brian, his older son, inevitably took us to our first Margaritaville restaurant when we visited him in Hawaii. When we moved to Arizona, Tom's younger daughter-in-law accused him of doing so in order to be closer to tequila country; she gave him a shotglass shaped like a squatty saguaro cactus as a going-away present.
That same daughter-in-law had earlier introduced us to the the delights of the frozen margarita bucket. A relative from Georgia had brought her a bucket of On The Border's margarita mix; one adds tequila, mixes, and places the bucket in the freezer. Voila, frozen margaritas on demand! Add friends and it's an instant party. Tom was thrilled to find both the buckets and the mother lode (actual On The Border restaurants) in the Phoenix area. We also found what we thought was the perfect guacamole in a small Glendale restaurant named Lily's; the owner used his Mexican grandmother's recipe, containing nothing but avocados, onions, lime juice and a little salt. Fabulous.
Of course Tom is gone now, and Lily's also died during road construction that cut off almost all access to the restaurant, but a bucket of frozen margaritas still lives in the freezer section of my refrigerator. Tonight is Cinco de Mayo, and although I'm a little fuzzy as to what it's all about, I'll gladly celebrate any holiday that allows me to pull out the margaritas, chips, and Wholly Guacamole.
"If life gives you limes, make margaritas." ~Jimmy Buffett
On balmy Friday evenings we would park ourselves in an outdoor cafe (frequently the one in Manhattan's Bryant Park, behind the main library), or the outdoor tables of one of our usually interior haunts, and greet the weekend with chips, guacamole, and margaritas. The entire family knew of this obsession; one year he received two (matching, amazingly enough) sets of margarita glasses for his birthday, and kept them both. Brian, his older son, inevitably took us to our first Margaritaville restaurant when we visited him in Hawaii. When we moved to Arizona, Tom's younger daughter-in-law accused him of doing so in order to be closer to tequila country; she gave him a shotglass shaped like a squatty saguaro cactus as a going-away present.
That same daughter-in-law had earlier introduced us to the the delights of the frozen margarita bucket. A relative from Georgia had brought her a bucket of On The Border's margarita mix; one adds tequila, mixes, and places the bucket in the freezer. Voila, frozen margaritas on demand! Add friends and it's an instant party. Tom was thrilled to find both the buckets and the mother lode (actual On The Border restaurants) in the Phoenix area. We also found what we thought was the perfect guacamole in a small Glendale restaurant named Lily's; the owner used his Mexican grandmother's recipe, containing nothing but avocados, onions, lime juice and a little salt. Fabulous.
Of course Tom is gone now, and Lily's also died during road construction that cut off almost all access to the restaurant, but a bucket of frozen margaritas still lives in the freezer section of my refrigerator. Tonight is Cinco de Mayo, and although I'm a little fuzzy as to what it's all about, I'll gladly celebrate any holiday that allows me to pull out the margaritas, chips, and Wholly Guacamole.
"If life gives you limes, make margaritas." ~Jimmy Buffett
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