Sarah

Fiction / Literary / Crime
Originally published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004.

Reviewed by Sarah, 06/16/15

When you think about stories that capture the persona of a murderer or a sexual offender, you typically think of thrillers. That’s not this book. Page’s character, Simon, is in prison for killing his girlfriend. We know this immediately. The book is not so much about that event as it is about the aftermath. We are looking at the rehabilitation process, the prison system in England, and the humanity of an individual at once flawed and sympathetic. Don’t get me wrong, Page doesn’t glorify Simon. She wants you to see him as potentially dangerous and unstable, but she wants you to understand him at the same time. That is, we have the opportunity as readers to imagine how a person can commit such a crime without being “crazy” or “evil.” At the same time, we are invited to imagine what this must have been like for his girlfriend, another character presented as a whole human being, not just a victim.

The book is filled with thought-provoking material in terms of psychology, penal system rehabilitation programs, ideas about sex and sexuality, etc. In fact, the book also features a transgender woman. This is an interesting piece of the plot and provides another great example of realistic portrayal. In fiction, the LGBTQ characters are often relegated to stock characters or featured solely as a part of erotica. As we celebrate Pride Month, I’m thrilled to note that Page has included a character that is none of these things. Page’s character is a part of a larger narrative and feels important to the action of the book, not just propped in as a token.

I appreciate this book and believe that Page is tremendously talented. This is a fascinating read.

Reviewed by Sarah, 4/10/15

This is not one of Vonnegut’s best known titles, but it deserves just as much attention as Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle, and any of the others. If you like stories about well-meaning people who do terrible things out of ignorance, this is it! What do I mean by terrible things? Try the boy narrator who fires a gun out his folk’s upstairs window as a celebration of his burgeoning manhood only to find that he just accidentally killed the pregnant neighbor lady, nailing her right between the eyes. Now he’s forever known to his community as “Deadeye Dick.” If this makes you laugh rather than cry, you’re a Vonnegut reader. The dark comedy of this novel is offset at times by a surprising warmth and gentleness regarding humanity. It’s as though Vonnegut is assessing all of our human fallibility and laughing with us at its absurdity. Essentially, this is some of the best fiction I’ve read and I’m a pretty persnickety reader.

Adult Fiction / Novel
Pub. 2012 by Little, Brown and Company

Reviewed by Sarah, 4/23/2015

Tosches creates a narrator that he none too subtly suggests might just be himself. The guy’s name is Nick, he’s a writer, he’s in his fifties, friends with Keith Richards…pretty much Tosches bio. I guess that all sounds fine, but then there is the troubling bit about Nick liking to drink the blood of pretty young women. The narrator feasts on their blood as a sort of life force, finding that his meals taste better and his body feels more alive after literally consuming a part of these women. While this makes the novel sound like a vampire fantasy book, it is something more akin to magical realism. Reading it feels a bit like falling into someone else’s nightmare, watching him live parasitically, and realizing that he feels zero remorse for his actions. You probably won’t like this narrator much as a person, but it’s a well crafted novel and an interesting read.

Fiction / Hard-boiled / Noir
Originally pub. 1941 by Alfred A. Knopf
This edition, pub. 1989 by Vintage

Reviewed by Sarah, 6/2/2015

Things have gotten a little rough for Mildred Pierce. Her hubby decides that the braless Mrs. Biederhof is more interesting than his current family and leaves Mildred to figure out her life. Thus, Mildred and her two little girls are suddenly alone. Did I mention that this is the 1930’s? Not a great time to be a single mom. With Bert gone, Mildred faces finding a job for the first time.   After taking a turn as a waitress, she realizes that maybe she could establish her own restaurant.

If this sounds like a novel about how to overcome obstacles, I have some unfortunate news. Mildred might be a surprisingly good entrepreneur, but she is also the mother to an elitist, unfeeling daughter who judges her mother even as her mother scrimps and sacrifices to make a good life for her child. In addition, she takes up with a man who values her money and her figure more than he values her selfhood. By working and achieving independence, she also achieves scorn for not being an upper class lady of leisure.

Cain, who’s known for his own brand of noir fiction, achieves something special with this novel. He creates a human woman having a human experience, something much more authentic then the “dame done wrong” or the “femme fatale”. He likes Mildred and so will you.