Fingersmith

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (2002)

In a very Dickensian London, Susan Trinder has grown up among thieves. Her mother was hanged for a murderess and is raised by the kind Mrs. Sucksby who owns a baby farm. But Mrs. Sucksby and a man they call only Gentleman has cooked up a plot that will make them all rich. All Susan needs to do is pretend a ladies' maid to a girl called Maud Lilly and convince her to marry Gentleman so that he can then throw his wife into a madhouse and take her fortune. When Susan arrives and begins to feel affection for Maud she must remember her purpose and continue to play the role for which has been hired.

This is just the very beginning of the plot, but it's filled with various twists and turns and secrets. I was deliciously shocked a few different times along the way. I hear that this novel is an homage to Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, which I still haven't gotten to but am sure I will like. For me, it was more like Oliver Twist, with the orphans and poverty and Fagin-like benefactors with illegal businesses. Nobody can be trusted, that's for sure.

As usual, Waters brought the setting alive with her rich detail and beautiful prose. Reading one of her books is to immerse yourself into another time and place, to really slip into another person's shoes and experience their life. I can't say that I especially liked any of the characters, but a few I could sympathize with. They were all victims of their upbringing or circumstances. All were intriguing though, and there were a few I wish I knew more about.

When it comes to Sarah Waters, I think I still liked Tipping the Velvet best so far, but Fingersmith was an excellent and well-told story which I enjoyed right up to its satisfying end.

New look

The blog is going through a bit of overdue template updating. Just bear with me through this awkward phase and excuse any weirdness. Like earlier this evening when I inadvertently published a very unfinished draft of a post. Whoopsie. I have no explanation for how that happened except that I was doing a lot of clicking and maybe I got carried away.

Please just ignore anything odd, because it will hopefully only be temporary. Soon everything should be pretty!

Paper Towns

Paper Towns by John Green (2008), narrated by Dan John Miller

Quentin grew up next door to a girl named Margo Roth Spiegelman and has always had a huge crush on her. Maybe obsession would be a better word. Margo is a wild and adventurous spirit, who has run away more than once and is notorious for her escapades. One night she comes next door and sneaks into Quentin's bedroom inviting him on an adventure to take revenge on several people who have wronged her. The next day, Quentin learns that Margo has disappeared again, but this time he is convinced she has left clues to help him find her, and he is determined to do just that.

I didn't really like Margo Roth Spiegelman very much. She kept pulling outlandish stunts to get everybody's attention and running away when she knew everyone would be trying to hunt her down. It was like she wanted everyone's lives to revolve around her, and she too interested in her own antics to pay attention to what was going on with anybody else. You could argue that she really did just want to get away, or that her pranks were more about revenge than attention, but she still came across to me as very self-centered. On the other hand, I empathized a bit because her parents really didn't seem to care about her so I could sort of understand why she would behave this way.

But mostly this story wasn't about her anyway. The characters we really got to know were Quentin and his friends Ben and Radar, and I really liked them a lot. Along with Margo's friend Lacey, the group banded together for what is possibly the best road trip I've experienced vicariously through a book. The group was so unprepared that a couple of them weren't even wearing pants, and they certainly didn't have permission to leave town. But they worked together, got themselves organized, and managed to get themselves to their destination on time and with their friendship not only intact, but stronger.

Each character had his or her own version of Margo Roth Spiegelman. Since Margo didn't seem to want anyone to know the real her, everyone just kind of filled in the blanks themselves so she was a different person to each of them. Of course, we do this all the time - we don't really know most people in our lives so we make a lot of assumptions based on the bits we do know and our own worldview. It's just a bit more exaggerated with Margo because she deliberately hides a lot about herself. I found this aspect of the novel quite fascinating.

In a way, Paper Towns reminded me a bit of Looking for Alaska. Boy crushes on girl he knows little about, girl is gone, everyone tries to figure out what happened to girl. But that is where the similarities end and although I really liked Looking for Alaska, I liked Paper Towns much more. As with any John Green novel, the characters are witty and smart but still manage to be believable as teenagers. Quentin and Ben spent hours playing a video game called The Resurrection, while Radar obsessed over updating the Wikipedia-like site Omnictionary. They could be selfish and impulsive, but were decent kids who you know are going to turn out all right.

Because I listened to the audio version, I can't share the many clever and funny quotes from the book. (I do have the ability to bookmark on audible, but it's not as easy to go back through as with a paper book.) You'll just have to read it yourself. Or listen - the audio is quite enjoyable. And now I realize there's no John Green left for me to read, so he better get cracking on his next book.

Small Damages

Small Damages by Beth Kephart (2012)

It's bad enough that Kenzie's father has died unexpectedly, but when she is still reeling from the tragedy she learns that she is pregnant. Her disappointed mother is so ashamed she sends Kenzie to Spain where she will live among strangers for the duration of her pregnancy before giving up the baby for adoption.

Kenzie is sullen and uncooperative, which is understandable given her situation. She is all but lost in Spain, young and alone and pregnant in a foreign country. It must be very disorienting. Not to mention that she must feel so unwanted by her mother and her boyfriend, and still missing her father terribly. She slowly warms up to the strange group of people with whom she is living. The owner of the house where she is staying is Miguel, and his cook Estela becomes sort of a mother figure to Kenzie, trying to teach her to cook and also to help her search her own heart and decide what she wants. Kenzie is also intrigued by the mysterious young Estaban and his birds, and the band of gypsies that Estela tries hard to avoid.

The writing is spare and a bit ethereal, a few details carefully chosen to evoke the atmosphere. Quotation marks are used infrequently in conversations, adding to the feeling of unreality. The effect was a beautiful style not usually found in young adult literature. Although I could absolutely see some teens liking this, I think an adult who didn't know it was marketed to teens wouldn't recognize it as a young adult book.

A lot is left unsaid, and we get only glimpses of Kenzie's life before Spain. The decision that brought her there was unclear; we know it was her mother's choice, but how much did Kenzie protest? We also see only a snippet of her conversations with the baby's father. We know almost nothing of her life and future plans before the pregnancy, except that she had an apparent interest in filmmaking which somewhat parallels her father's work as a photographer.

I believe the whole story took place in just a few weeks, which seems short for how important Kenzie comes to be to Estela and the others. She was so instantly drawn to Estaban in what seems to be a romantic way, which I found a bit odd given her situation. I would think romance would be the last thing on her mind. Still, I can see why she would be intrigued by him, and he was the only person around who was close to her age. I liked watching her relationship develop with these strangers who took her in so selflessly and made her a part of their family.

Small Damages was a short little book. It was close to 300 pages but there was little text on each page, plus the writing style made it flow pretty rapidly, and I read it in under 24 hours. I don't think this story will really stick with me, but it was a short, lovely, atmospheric trip to Spain.

Firmin

Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife by Sam Savage (2006)

Firmin begins his story by quoting the opening line of The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford: "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." This is my second time reading Firmin's story and it's still one of the saddest books I've ever read. But in a good way, a way that makes me smile often and wonder why nobody else seems to love this book the way I do.

Firmin is born in a bookstore, part of a litter of 13 rats. He was the runt, always having to wait until his siblings finished eating before he could have access to his mother. One day though, his mother went out and didn't come back, and Firmin was pretty much on his own. The litter split up, but Firmin stayed in the book shop where he learned to read and this soon separated him from other rats forever. He identifies more with humans, but to them he is just a rat like any other rat. His attempts at befriending the bookshop owner backfire, but eventually Firmin is taken in by a failed science fiction writer named Jerry who never really understands Firmin, but is still willing to be a friend.

Firmin is quite possibly my favorite literary character. Rats are misunderstood creatures to start with, and Firmin is even more so because he's not a typical rat. All he wants is for humans to accept him and be his friends, but they have no idea what he's like. He can understand them, but they can't understand him. Firmin sees beauty in everything, sees good in the most unlikely people. Jerry is one small step away from homeless, a heavy drinker full of crazy ideas, but Firmin thinks he's the smartest man in the world and loves him because he's so kind and generous and is willing to be his friend. Firmin really thought of them as a pair. When describing their dinners together he said, "Our favorite was Dinty Moore beef stew." Then he mentions they would just eat rice and soy sauce "when we were short on cash" as if he normally brought cash home as well. The way Firmin viewed their relationship was just so touching. Even though Jerry didn't understand the extent of Firmin's intelligence, he appreciated how different he was. When a friend asked if Firmin was tame, Jerry answered "No, man, he's not tame - he's civilized."

At one point in the story, Firmin is so desperate to communicate with humans that he tries learning sign language from a book he finds in the book shop. Of course he doesn't have the manual dexterity of a human, so he decides to just learn a couple of the simplest signs and even if it doesn't make sense it will at least show people that he can communicate. The phrase he learns is "goodbye zipper." He goes to a park and dashes out in front of some women and signs "goodbye zipper" repeatedly and violently, squeaking loudly to punctuate his effort. This is followed by a great deal of screaming and a whack from a stick, leaving Firmin injured. "Goodbye zipper" became shorthand for communicating and he occasionally would say that he had met someone who didn't seem especially friendly so he didn't bother saying goodbye zipper. Somehow I found this all very adorable and heartbreaking at the same time.

Early in the book Firmin says "If there is one thing a literary education is good for it is to fill you with a sense of doom." Firmin's story is certainly short and filled with heartache, yet it is told incredibly well and despite the sadness it's one of the very few books I will re-read. This was my second time, but surely not my last. Sam Savage writes so consistently well I wish he was better known and admired. His books are unusual, which may be why he's less popular, but also why I count him among my very favorite writers.

House of Leaves

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (2000)

This strange novel is a book within a book, and within the inner book is a documentary. The subject of the documentary is a house that's bigger on the inside, and the story of one family who was unfortunate enough to move into the house. But maybe I should back up a bit. The story is about a guy named Johnny Truant who stumbles upon an immense collection of writings by a dead guy named Zampano who was writing a book about a documentary called The Navidson Record. As Johnny puts together all the bits of writing, along with footnotes, appendices, and other periphery material he is drawn into a dark descent paralleling the Navidson family who made a documentary about their strange and otherworldly house. Are you confused yet? If not, then I'm not describing this accurately, but that's the best I can do.

House of Leaves has been on my to-read list for years. It's not widely known but has a cult following and every now and then I'll read some mention of it or see it listed among somebody's favorite horror novels. I'm glad I finally got to it, though I didn't find it as earth-shattering as some people have.

Because the bulk of the book is describing a documentary it seems in a way more real. It's an interesting device. On the other hand, because Karen and Will Navidson are just characters in a documentary that is being described, they remain distant. Also contributing to this are the many extensive footnotes and quotes from scholarly sources (which of course are fake.) Again, it makes it seem more real in a way, but distant and clinical, so it wasn't as scary as if you were hearing the story first hand and had access to the characters' thoughts.

Although my edition is 700 pages, the main part is really only about 530. The rest is appendices (and even an index, which I actually used at least once) and I read some of the material in the appendices but not all. There's a lengthy selection of letters to Johnny Truant from his mother, which I mostly read, and a lot of poetry that I skipped, mostly because I don't know why it's there or who supposedly wrote it.

Of that 530 pages, a lot of it is taken up by footnotes, or weirdness like mostly blank pages with just a few words in the center. Or not the center. The text is frequently arranged quite creatively. I sort of liked that, though I'm not sure I understand the significance of those arrangements. It was the footnotes and quotes from scholarly sources (or celebrities) that made it start feeling very encumbered. All the extraneous matter serves to illustrate how much The Navidson Record became a part of popular and academic culture, but reading through it was sometimes cumbersome. I think you could skip most of that and just read the main text and just the footnotes that make up Johnny Truant's story, which is almost a novel in itself.

I'm glad I finally read House of Leaves, but it didn't quite live up to the hype for me. I kept hearing that it was terrifying, but didn't find it so. Conceptually, it is creepy and mysterious, but the devices Danielewski used to make the story more believable lessened the potential to be scary to me.

Sunday Knitting

The last time I posted about my Humboldt Raglan, I had begun a sleeve, panicked, and shoved it all in a bag. Finally I decided I needed to bring it out and deal with it because like it or not, cold weather is approaching and I want to be ready.

My concerns were twofold. First, I was afraid I might run out of yarn. There's nothing to do in this instance except keep knitting. Second and more importantly, I had begun a series of increases and I needed to do a little math to figure out how to space them. The instructions said to increase ever 8th row. Of course when one's row gauge is off (which is pretty much always) you need to adjust that somewhat if you want them to be spaced properly. It was mostly this math that was preventing me from picking up the sleeve again.

Finally I decided I needed to grow up and deal with things, so I pulled out the sleeve, got a measuring tape, pencil, and scrap paper and measured my gauge. Which turned out to be spot on. All that procrastination for no reason! My sleeve became my bus knitting and I powered through it in no time and have even begun the second sleeve.

The sleeves are three-quarter, so are fairly short. I'd actually like to make them longer as I'm afraid this length might feel a little annoying, but of course I have concerns about yarn quantities. I'm less concerned about that now that I realize how little yarn each sleeve uses. I think the rest of this project will go pretty quickly.