5 Stars for Strange Weather

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Strange Weather by Joe Hill is a collection of four, short, horror novels with little to do with the actual weather and more to do with innate fears erupting from monsters found in everyday life. Weather seems to symbolize the over-arching theme of our worst enemy (self) which ties the four seemingly different novels together. Our inner thoughts (fears and beliefs) are the catalyst to the kind of weather we have to endure. Just like the weather (a snowy day is opposite of one that is sunny) these stories are different at first glance, but if you dig deeper, and I think Hill did, you discover real monsters are created out of our own paranoia and fear. And it is here, we should be afraid.

In the first story, Snapshot, the fear of memory loss and growing older plagues us in diseases -Alzheimer. This fear is embodied in a creepy guy called the Phoenician.

“But he was feverishly ugly, his chin sunk most of the way back into his long neck, his cheeks corroded with old acne scars.”

“Don’t let him take a picture of you. Don’t let him start taking things away.”

I can’t think of a scarier way to lose my memory, but to a guy that looks like the Phoenician and steals memories with a click of a camera. And the Phoenician’s descriptive doesn’t stop with his physical appearance, it infiltrates his voice, actions and mean, heartless words he often spits out at every one he encounters, especially the narrator, a young boy named Michael, a good kid who wants to do the ‘right’ thing. The story follows a straight forward almost predictable ending, so this is not what makes this story interesting. It is the motive behind the Phoenician that is interesting and it is a genuinely fun read, scary, but fun. I’m an eighties girl, so the references made me laugh out loud.

“He grinned wolfishly beneath his Tom Selleck mustache. And – look – even the Trans Am was there.”

OMG, I remember that mustache, needing charisma, and Magnum P.I. cheese stud. I became nostalgic over other Eighty fun memorabilia, G.I. Joes, Artic Blu, and the Polaroid camera. Snapshot reminded me of a shorter version of Hill’s NOS4A2, a book about good versus evil with a little digging into what we hold as humanly important and traditional. In Snapshot it would be sanity, memories intact and in NOS4A2 Christmas traditions are turned inside out distorting the complimentary reds and greens to greys, and poop brown, turning vile and freakishly horrific. Both stories make you afraid pulling at your inner fear and paranoia.

The second story, Loaded, focuses on our fear of guns, and our need to embrace them out of fear. Sure, there seems to be some politics from Hill here, but not in way that bothered me. The story pointed at not the gun, but the monster behind the trigger. The ending is worth the read on this one, and I couldn’t see it taking another direction considering the foreshadowing that lead up to it.

The third story, Aloft, strange indeed, about a man getting hijacked by a cloud while parachuting from a plane. Aubrey, the man kidnapped, is afraid of heights, but this is not the larger fear at work in this story. Are we not afraid of floating through life, as if on a cloud, and then later waking up knowing we never parted our hair differently or ate the peach life presented to us. Are we afraid of wasting so much time, there will be no time? Are we afraid of leaping off our cloud-like home and reaching a bigger potential within ourselves? This story may have taught me to be less afraid after reading it.

The last story, Rain, was the results of fear and loss. Loss was the reason for the killer rain, and fear augmented it.  Once the killer rain fell, everyone began to theorize without fact and solely based on inner fear, inevitably causing a war among men. The ending came as unexpected until right before it was revealed. I like being surprised. Characterization was interesting. Honeysuckle Speck was completely flushed out in a short span of time with lines like the ones below, and heck, I just liked her.

“One look at the strappy white muscle shirt and the trucker haircut and you’d spot me for a bull dyke.”

Honeysuckle was true to her name, after wearing her sexuality out with big chunks of love for her lover Yolanda, the sweet smell of honeysuckles was left revealing real reasons to love, an invisible force that moved Honeysuckle on her journey to live, despite the grim circumstances the rain had left the world in. Rain could have easily been my favorite of the four stories, but I felt it needed to be a novel. The end, although complete, needed more flushing out. For example, the character of Ursula needed more background to play the key role she did. It was way too interesting to just be a short novel.

Strange Weather is highly recommended to those who want a good psychological scare by taking a look at reality.

5 Stars for The Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

Summary: 

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility.

But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.

A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

Review:

I read The Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance because it is on my daughter’s reading list this summer and reading what she reads allows me to connect with her through our life long love of books. The Hillbilly Elegy is the best book I’ve read in a long time. The last book I read on my daughter’s list was Ayn Rand’s Anthem, and the classical rhetorical laced with her “I” agenda made me graze pages like a fat cow eager for slaughter. Kill me, please! No offense to Rand, she has her merits, but I wanted a story. I am a big tootsie pop (sucker) for good stories. Now several key ingredients make up a well-constructed story beginning with a Shakespearean understanding of the human condition.

1.    Vance understands the human condition. The human condition are the characteristics, essential events, and particular events which evolve around birth, growth, and inner and outer conflict.

“Mamaw could spew venom like a Marine Corps drill instructor, but what she saw in our community didn’t just piss her off. It broke her heart.”

Vance understands what motivates the anger behind his Mamaw’s words, and it cuts at the core of the human condition. Vance’s book is loaded with this understanding, not just Mamaw, but his father and the reason he gave him up in the first place, his mother and her continuous struggle with drugs and men, his Aunt Wee, and his sister Lindsay, and finally his own human condition revealed in the monster dream at the end.

2.    Themes of forgiveness bathed in hope and the strength to overcome adversity. Vance came from dirt poor and turned Ivy League Yale graduate now living the American dream. He didn’t make that journey with the human feelings of anger and resentment that often blames others for their circumstances; He made it with love, forgiveness and understanding.

“For me understanding my past and knowing I wasn’t doomed gave me the hope and fortitude to deal with the demons of my youth.”

3.    Humility: Vance credits his success hugely to his mamaw and papaw. “Few of even my closest friends understood how utterly hopeless my life would have been without Mamaw and Papaw. So maybe I just wanted to give credit where credit is due.”

He doesn’t only credit Mamaw and Papaw, but a whole slew of blue-collar workers who helped him to achieve his Ivy League dream. These people include his sister, his cousin Gail, his Aunt Wee and even his mother, despite her many problems, instilled in him a lifelong love of education.

Vance says, “Remove any of these people from the equation and I’m probably screwed.”

4.    Accessibility: The Hemingway/Shrunk in White style of writing has a conversational syntax that can be grasped by anyone. Vance may be Ivy League now, but he still has the heart of his hillbilly ancestors and he knows how to speak to them and for them.

5.    Humor: This book will make you laugh out loud despite some of the horrific circumstances in Vance’s childhood, the laughter was the hope as conveyed in many of Mamaw’s speeches, especially this particular one on bullying.

“And she said something I will never forget: ‘Sometimes, honey, you have to fight, even when you’re not defending yourself. Sometimes it’s just the right thing to do.’ Then she taught me a move, a swift hard (make sure to turn your hips) punch right to the gut.”

6.    Solutions: Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls is similar to Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy because it shows a tough upbringing turned successful; however, as good as that story was, Walls did not offer any solutions for the homeless. Now, I’m not saying Vance offers great solutions for the problems with poverty in our country, but he does offer simple solutions, ones involving self-examination and our role in society. Recently, someone told me to read Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell (the title made me hesitate reminding me of a book Tom Buchanan liked in The Great Gatsby), now while this book probably offers great solutions; It was not what I looked for with Vance’s book. In Vance’s book I looked for a story about a poor boy who went Ivy. Vance’s book is a memoir and the parallel to Sowell’s non-fiction book just doesn’t work here. I recommend Vance’s book to all of those people who still believe in the American Dream and the hope and love where good family support fuels the dream. Vance’s tone is so optimistic for those wanting to follow a similar path, and even more so to everyone who wants stability, a home, a family and love.

3 Stars for Into Thin Air

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer is a heartbreaking tale about the lives lost on Mount Everest in 1996. Krakauer was one of eight clients lead by Rob Hall, a well-known guide to climb Everest. Rob Hall did not make it back. Some of those clients did not make it back. Krakauer barely made it back. Why would anyone want to climb Mount Everest? After reading, Into Thin Air, again I asked why would anyone want to climb Mount Everest?

Krakauer states, “Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics, and others with a shaky hold on reality.” 

Krakauer seems to be a romantic, though not necessarily a hopeless one. His descriptions of Everest are at times breathtaking, but not misunderstood as a Romeo/hopeless romantic with a shaky hold on reality.

“The glacier’s continual and often violent state of flux added an element of uncertainty to every ladder crossing.”

At the same time, there is an understanding of “reality”.

“But if the ice fall was strenuous and terrifying, it had a surprising allure as well. As dawn washed the darkness from the sky, the shattered glacier was revealed to be a three-dimensional landscape of phantasmal beauty.”

The descriptions and Krakauer’s obvious respect for Everest especially after the disaster in 1996 made me appreciate Into Thin Air. Krakauer’s respected guys like Rob Hall and his abilities. Hall is described as a fast learner with the ability to soak up skills and attitudes from anybody revealing a humility in the narrator to recognize the tremendous abilities of another climber, further recognizing his own short comings in that area. Despite the obvious unreliable narrator present in the memoir, Krakauer’s compassion for others and his unwillingness to ‘toot his own horn’ made me want to believe his account.

Still, Krakauer’s mind at the time of this disaster was in dire need of the oxygen only found at ground level. As pointed out in his book, high altitudes often rob the best climbers of their rational sense, and awareness of what is going on around them.

I ended up giving this book a three, not because of the writing. Krakauer is a skilled writer with the style of a journalist – I gave it a three because of the plethora of facts thrown at me on every page without transition to let me absorb, the list of names switching often from first to last names made my head spin, and last, the lack of emotion that Krakauer presented until the very end, which could be the journalist in him.

Still, even with my head trying to wrap around all the names and facts, some stayed with me as scary interesting. I didn’t know HAPE meant High Altitude Pulmonary Edema, where the lungs fill with fluid and the only cure is to descend. In the story there are several camps leading to the summit of Everest, at camp one a climber named Ngawang was lost to HAPE and that’s after he was flown off the mountain. Ngawang had a wife and three daughters. At camp one, already foreboding circled the air around the climbers, and yet they continued to ascend.

Other facts that plagued me were the amount of dead bodies all along the trail, bodies that could never be buried properly, bodies to remind you of the dangers, bodies to push you onward, in my case, downward. The other fact that remains with me is the ethical one: How do you let someone die? How can you not help your fellow man? I can’t imagine having to make a heartbreaking choice to leave a man to die in order to keep on living yourself.

I can’t imagine ever undertaking a journey like Everest that would leave me with those choices, or losing a limb due to frostbite, or worse, dying. I can’t imagine climbing Everest; however, I can recommend this book to others to climb Everest within the pages of Krakauer’s story Into Thin Air. This is the safe way. I will be using this book as a non-fiction piece in my classroom this year giving the kiddos a break from Shakespeare and Homer.

A Fine Balance Indeed! 5 Stars for A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry breaths exquisite balance through the theme of hope and despair. This balance is understood through direct lines like: “There is always hope – hope enough to balance our despair. Or we would be lost.” Set in India in the 1970s, among a state of emergency and caste injustice, Mistry throws four strangers together in search of an independence and happiness they find in each other. It is a sad story, but not a story without hope.

The idea that a widow, a student and two tailors find beauty and grace in each other in the midst of destruction is underlined with optimism.  These four characters are so well-crafted and developed even the minor flaws seem destructive to a possible friendship between the four. The situation seems impossible and yet it is. Their story is loaded with great writing leaving imagery that stays with you forever.

“The bulge of humans hanging out off the doorway distended perilously, like a soap bubble at its limit.”
Or
“The bulldozers finished flattening the rows of flimsy shacks and tackled the high-rental ones, reversing and crunching into the brick walls.”

Its not just the imagery that makes Mistry’s writing superb; It’s a plethora of ingredients. The symbolism of the quilt the widow, Dina sews from different pieces of cloth highlight the changes, but as a whole quilt these four people are forever sewn together. The dynamic characters created and the changes they go through and the choices they make because of them at the end reveal well-rounded thought out characters thrown between choice and destiny. For example, Om’s (one of the tailors) anger defined him in so many ways, giving way to disastrous ends, but in the end to a deeper more important humanity.

The dialogue did much in developing these characters. Dina’s sharp tongue often made me smile, especially understanding the soft heart that lied beneath it. Om’s anger often pained me, because beneath it he like his father only wanted respect. Ishvar, his uncle, holding onto the little they had left in each other often infuriated me with his compliant stubbornness, but in the end, I understood his need to expand and protect his family no matter the cost. Maneck, the student, buried in a deep sadness of his own surprised me the most with his outcome.  All four of these characters will stay with me a long time.

I can see myself reading this book again, and I highly recommend it to everyone I know. It was recommended to me with the comment, “I’ve never read a book that I began falling in love with the writer because of the writing.”

I knew I had to read this book, and now I understand the comment. I will be reading more of Mistry’s books.

5 Stars for Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1) by Gregory Maguire,

Summary: 

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious Witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

Review:

I picked this book up to read for purely sentimental reasons. My Grannie and I watched Frank Baum’s classic tale The Wizard of Oz, every year, beginning with the black and white version until it was colorized. Grannie’s favorite character was Dorothy. Dorothy symbolized purity and innocence, necessary ingredients for a young coming-of-age, girl. Both of us loathed The Wicked Witch of the West, who embodied evil in a humorous cookie-cut style, with lines like: “I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog, too.”

After years of growing with the understanding the Wicked Witch of the West defined evil, I was reluctant to change this viewpoint, but change it, I did. Gregory Maguire made me sympathize with The Wicked Witch, adding respect to her nasty sardonic side making her intelligent and intriguing. I begin to see her as Elphaba, which is her birth name.

Elphaba begins cursed, green, and with sharp little teeth. She’s a monster, her mother hates her, and her father loves her sister, Nessarose more. This is where my opinion changes, and I see The Wicked Witch as Elphaba, a real person who wishes to be loved. Later, this human need explodes to encompass Elphaba’s virtuous need to protect animals who are not even considered second rate citizens in the land of Oz. Adding to Elphaba’s virtuous character is the fact she doesn’t lie. 

“To the best of her recollection she had never lied before in her life.” Elphaba

The reader discovers Elphaba isn’t evil, more misunderstood, and what makes her character dynamic and round is her own soulful journey towards self-understanding. In this journey we see our so-called witch bullied as a child, falling in love as an adult, seeking redemption for the affair, stumbling through mother hood, grieving the loss of her sister and friends, and making attempts at acceptance into society’s role to condemn her as a witch. Oddly enough, the Wizard doesn’t really consider Elphaba a witch.

“’Sir,’ she said, ‘I think you are a very bad wizard.”

“’And you,’ he answered, stung, ‘are only a caricature of a witch.’”

Elphaba, a mere caricature of a witch, came to an acceptance of soul brought on by a need greater than needing to be loved, but the need to be forgiven. She found it in Dorothy, who by the way stays innocent and pure, but in more of annoying kind of way.  The irony that both the innocent and wicked deserved atonement fit in a twisted graceful way that made sense. In addition, to redemption, other themes ran through this book, ones dealing with politics, romance, animal rights, and fate vs. choice, the last one being interesting, especially when Elphaba seemed fated at birth, in the end her choices led to her final demise.

I didn’t mind the plethora of themes in the novel, and I didn’t mind being preached at by McGuire. Tolstoy was famous for his preaching in War and Peace. I also didn’t mind the plot jumps, lunging forward for sometimes years, without transition. William Faulkner wrote in past and present timelines jumping so abruptly, I often had to re-read to make sure of where I was from page to page. I still find The Sound and the Fury one of the best books I’ve ever read. Both Tolstoy and Faulkner are classic writers.

With McGuire’s analysis of the complexity of redemption with the motives and grief that goes with that, and his analysis of good vs. evil, that alone makes this feel classic classy. I found the book more than a little intriguing making me question my theory on evil almost as much as C.S. Lewis makes me.

“Evil is an act, not an appetite. How many haven’t wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table? …Everyone has an appetite. If you give into it, it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal.”

This quote also addresses the idea of choice over fate while addressing the theme of defining evil. Wicked by Gregory McGuire is worth reading. It’s not a fast read, and not one easily understood, but to use an Elphaba phrase, it’s not pigspittle, either.

4 Stars for Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants

One critic stated they could not connect to this book; therefore, the critic found they could not connect to the characters and relationships after the protagonist, Jacob’s parents died. Further this critic lost all interest in Jacob’s life as part of the circus. The critic stated the book was well-written, but the idea did not feel compelling. It was this particular critic, who helped me sort my own feelings out towards Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants.

The writing was strong, particularly towards the circus images showing a less glamorous side, one the audience is unaware of when they bring their families to the see the show. A couple of years ago, I went with my children to one of the last Ringling Brothers shows, and the contrast in description, note the time period differences, gave meaning to a complimentary color scheme. Mine and my children’s experience breathed breathtaking vibrant orange, while the show behind the mask in Gruen’s book cooled off to a dark, black blue hues. With that said, I can appreciate great descriptive, especially those placing the reader in time period with brutal honesty.

Despite the writing, I still could not connect to this story and this line of thinking lead me back to the reason I decided to read it in the first place, and that reasoning lead to falling in love with a protagonist who struggles against the time period’s hardships to achieve the unbending dream. I liked Jacob, but unlike characters like Lennie and George, also set against the backdrop of The Depression, the dream was missing. For Lennie and George in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, there was the constant dream of owning your own farm. With the obstacles of history, where money and work to achieve this dream was anything but hopeful, these two men still hoped.

I think Gruen’s Water for Elephants was missing that thread of hope that bleeds through a novel, often making a reader think the protagonist might bleed out taking their dreams with them, and leaving the reader devastated. If Gruen could have found that thread, this book would be classic. Jacob’s love for Marlena, the romantic thread did not work simply because the reasons for falling in love seemed superficial and a matter of convenience. Perhaps more could have been placed on Rosie, the elephant the two characters loved, putting Rosie as a catalyst for their love but this connection seemed forced at best. With that said, Rosie could have been my favorite character, and I wish I had seen more of her.

I do recommend the book. It is loaded with beautiful descriptions of the truth behind the circus during the 1930’s. It also has Rosie, the elephant who needs the water of hope, because she certainly in unappreciated and thirsty for freedom.