The Lovely Complexity of an Ordinary Life

Back in March I wrote a glowing post about Jim the Boy, a simply and beautifully written novel by Tony Earley about a little boy growing up in a small town during the Great Depression. I'm happy to report that the second novel Earley wrote about Jim Glass is just as good as the first. Whereas the first novel follows Jim for a year when he was about 10 years old, The Blue Star records Jim's senior year in high school. Jim's widowed mother and funny, fatherly uncles are still present as is Earley's familiar, effortless prose. The plot is somewhat more mature due to Jim's age, and World War II propels events in the town. Jim's friendship with his insightful ex-girlfriend is as moving to me as his at-odds romance with a struggling half-Cherokee girl.

There's something about Earley's writing I find impossible to justly describe. His stories are sentimental without descending into melodrama or affectation. Your heart bleeds for each character; they live humble, ordinary lives, but Earley can infuse an ordinary life and the simplest of phrases with great poignance. After finishing the book last night, Ickie asked me about it (he read this one prior to me as well as the first), and I couldn't talk about a single scene without getting all choked up. If you're a fan of Southern literature or coming-of-age stories, you'll especially appreciate Jim the Boy and The Blue Star.

Cultivating A Green Thumb

In the past I've been hopeless at keeping plants alive, but since moving into our new house, I've made an extra effort, and it has paid off. The previous owner was a master gardener, so all we had to do was watch our back hillside garden bloom in the spring and continue to bloom all summer (at present it's covered with yellow and orange lilies). I managed to plant impatiens and hostas in the front garden, and they have flourished.

Inspired by that small success, yesterday Ickie and I drove over to the most extensive and impressive nursery I've ever visited and bought a montmorency cherry tree for our yard as well as some potted herbs. The tree will commemorate our first year in the house as well as the summer The Kid is born. We'll be able to admire a tree full of these blooms next spring:














...and more importantly, a tree full of these tart cherries for pie and jam:













(Some of you know tart cherry is my favorite type of pie/jam, and I obsess about the cherry season each year.) Granted, it'll probably be several years before the tree can yield enough fruit for half a pie, and I suspect we'll need to make a concentrated effort to keep the rouge birds and squirrels from eating them, but I'm excited all the same. At the nursery I fought the inclination to buy every fruit tree in sight and turn our tiny back yard into an orchard full of apples, plums, pears, and cherries because I figure The Kid will want a bit of space for throwing a ball around without hitting one of mommy's trees.

Zack

Alright, unless you're excessively squeamish or have an unusually pathetic complex about being frightened, I demand that all of you immediately get your hands on a copy of World War Z by Max Brooks. Subtitled An Oral History of the Zombie War, it's a book both Ickie and I quickly devoured, much like a zombie devours tasty brains. Once you begin, it's impossible to put down, unless you are a zombie who has just been alerted to fresh brains in the area or a live human who needs to defend yourself against a zombie onslaught.

Many of you may be thinking to yourselves, "I have no desire to read a book about a zombie apocalypse." Well, friends, that just shows how little you know. I'm not a horror movie fan, and in general I opt for dainty tea-sipping accompanied by British humor or fairy tales. Sure, on occasion I've mentioned the importance of developing my personal zombie contingency plan, just for the sake of discussion. But I fail to see how any reader won't be drawn into WWZ.

Told after the war, in documentary fashion, WWZ is a collection of interviews with people across the globe. From political strategists to soldiers to civilian doctors to feral children, each character recounts his or her experience in the zombie war with a unique voice. Ickie pointed out that the book has a feel most like the new Battlestar Galactica series on SciFi (which you should be watching). As in that series, we're hearing from the survivors of the human race, and Brooks delves into every theme: human psychology, battle strategy, survival instinct, religion, consumerism, democracy versus communism, reconstruction, etc. Most of the tales are chilling, but all of them are fascinating. I'd like to recount my favorite chapter here as an example, but I can't choose one. It may seem odd that a book about zombies offers deep insight into the human condition, but it's true.

Cranford

I honestly find it impossible to write about all the things I love about the new BBC series Cranford in a blog post of moderate length. Every detail contributes something extraordinary, including the quaintly animated opening credits to the stunningly composed scenes and beautiful photography, to a perfect British cast (Judi Dench, Michael Gambon, etc.), to the fact it’s an adaptation of an Elizabeth Gaskell novel. Likewise, it doesn’t hurt that Cranford was created by the two women (Sue Birtwistle and Susie Conklin) responsible for BBC’s excellent Pride and Prejudice and Wives and Daughters.

Now, I must fess up that I’ve not read Cranford, so I can’t say from firsthand experience how the show compares to the novel. However, I’ve read in online forums that even where they’ve added a bit to the storyline (it’s a relatively short novel, apparently), Birtwistle and Conklin stay true to Gaskell’s work. They even include several subtle jabs at Charles Dickens (a mentor of Gaskell's).

Chris and I laughed more in the first episode of this show than the entire P&P series (and I always laugh a great deal at that one). Cranford is a town full of gossiping (but not unkind) spinsters, so much of the humor features the hysterical Imelda Staunton jogging flustered and frumpily through the streets, nearly apoplectic to convey the latest news. My favorite character is the stalwart and puritanical Deborah, played by the marvelous Eileen Atkins. Here’s a sample of the first exchange that made Chris and I rock with laughter.

Deborah: I would prefer it if I did not enjoy oranges. Consuming them is a most incommodious business.
Matilda (Deborah's sister): There is not such a lot of juice, Deborah dear, when sliced with a knife.
Mary (Deborah & Mattie's young guest): At home, we make a hole in our oranges…and we suck them.
Deborah registers a silent expression of abject horror.
Matilda: That is the way I like to take them best, but Deborah says it is vulgar and altogether redolent of a ritual undertaken by little babies.... My sister does not care for the expression: suck.
Deborah cringes.
Deborah [in an authoritative tone]: We will repair to our rooms and eat our fruit in solitude.

The series is not only a comedy, and there are so many moving storylines and touching moments I can't begin to summarize them here. The many strong females are the backbone of the town, whereas the male characters are somewhat muted and incidental. However, there is one subplot I especially like about an estate agent working quietly and secretly to educate the young son (played by the adorable Alex Etel of Millions) of a degenerate squatter.

Everyone in Cranford has strong opinions. Many seem biased and regimented to a fault, yet every character has moments when she or he shows compassion to another person. The show has everything from cows in pajamas to funerals and romance, and I'm planning to buy the series to watch over and over again.

Significant Dates

2008 features a host of new releases from some of my favorite series and authors (all of which I've reviewed earlier on my blog). Here are the upcoming releases I anticipate most:

The Midnight Folk, John Masefield (NYR Children's Collection): After being enchanted by Masefield's The Box of Delights during advent this year, I was both thrilled to hear tale of a prequel and distraught to find it out of print. Luckily for me, the industrious drones at the NYRCC are featuring it as one of their beautiful new editions. The fact that it's being released on my birthday is akin to adding vanilla ice cream to cherry pie. Release date: 9/30

Uncle Cleans Up, J.P. Martin (NYR Children's Collection): My adoration of J.P. Martin is comparable to Masefield, and again the NYRCC saves the day by providing me with a second farcical collection of stories about Uncle the benevolent millionaire elephant. Release date: 6/24

Superior Saturday, Garth Nix: This is volume six in the Keys to the Kingdom series by Nix, a captivating fantasy series aimed at preteens. It's coming out on the eve of my baby's due date. Will I have time to read it if baby is running late, or will I be too overwhelmed to read it if baby is born early? Either way I'm sure I'll manage to order it for my eventual enjoyment. Release date: 8/1

The Pirates! In An Adventure with Napoleon, Gideon Defoe: Defoe's fourth book about a zany collective of pirates and their ludicrous adventures with historical and fictional characters promises to be just as funny as the other books. A snippet of Napoleon is available on his comical website. Release date: It is already out in the UK but not yet in the US.

To round things up, I'll mention the other series I'm eager to continue. I reviewed the first book of the Percy Jackson and Olympians series by Rick Riordan, but as I continued with volumes two through four of the series, I enjoyed it more and more. Now I'm dangling on cliff's edge as I await Riordan's next offering, and there's no word on when that release will be. Alas! But the kindly Mr. Riordan has provided a list of recommended young adult lit for greedy, impatient readers like myself on his website.

A Snail with Character and Two Dull Young Men

I probably post more quotes from Wodehouse novels on my site than from any other author, but I find them endlessly amusing. In this case, the excerpt comes from the excellent Sam the Sudden, one of my new favorites. Wodehouse has a gift for metaphor, as I've mentioned before, and he also attributes hilariously introspective personality traits to animals and inanimate objects. In this case, I offer you a simile about a dog named Amy, followed by possibly the most ever written about a snail in Western literature:

"Like Niobe, she [Amy the dog] had mourned and would not be comforted. But now, to judge from her manner and a certain jauntiness in her walk, she had completely resigned herself to the life of exile."

"By nature sociable, she [Amy the dog] yearned for company, and for some minutes roamed the garden in quest of it. She found a snail under a laurel bush, but snails are reserved creatures, self-centered and occupied with their own affairs, and this one cut Amy dead, retreating into its shell with a frigid aloofness which made anything in the nature of camaraderie out of the question."

Another of Wodehouse's gifts is in conveying a character's manner of speech secondhand. In this case, the omniscient narrator describes the comments of two "rabbit-faced" young men at a dinner party.

"'I gave her a plot for a story,' said Sam.

One of the rabbit-faced young men said that he could never understand how fellows--or women, for that matter--thought up ideas for stories--or plays, for the matter of that--or, as a matter of fact, any sort of ideas, for that matter.

'This,' Sam explained, 'was something that actually happened--to a friend of mine.'

The other rabbit-faced young man said that something extremely rummy had once happened to a pal of his. He had forgotten what it was, but it had struck him at the time as distinctly rummy."

Morning Walks

Ever since moving into our new neighborhood, Ickie and I have taken a 2+ mile loop nearly every morning--I walk it and he runs it. Here are some of the things I've enjoyed on my morning waddle.

• yammering swans on the Presumpscot River
• the aroma of greasy Mexican food from the Fajita Grill
• a blood-red cardinal
• Saccarappa Falls by the old Dana Warp Mill
• huge blooming bushes of forsythia, rhododendron, and lilac
• a sleek black kitten with bright jade-green eyes
• the towering stone of St. Hyacinth's Catholic Church
  
• a white-spotted chipmunk
• dome-covered desserts on the counter of Olivia's diner
  
• toddlers hassling the seagulls hassling the ducks in the park
• aimless teens hanging out on the railroad bridge
• a house that smells like sauerkraut
• little league baseball games on Saturday mornings
• neighborly pedestrians who make room on the path for the pregnant woman
  
• the hot dog cart next to the playground, crowded with children

Update (06/15/08): The other morning I saw a man riding down Main Street on one of these. Sadly, he was not arrayed in period costume and handlebar mustache to match. He just looked like he was riding to work, which actually made it all the more curious.