NOVELS TOLD IN POETRY FORM

Though I tend to focus on adult fiction, I am always interested in any fiction that is accomplished and interesting. We all have our favorite genres, of course; I tend to especially enjoy short stories and novels. . .I read a great deal, both adults books, as well children's novels. Within the past several years I have become a serious fan, admirer of these short novels told in poetry form.

Most often these novels are found in the Juvenile section of the library, BUT this definitely should not repel readers: some of the best writing can be found in juvenile fiction! Let me share with you here some of my big favorites, beginning with a beautiful book I took on vacation and read while taking a cross-country flight - Reaching for the Sun by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer. this is a short 181 page novel of a Josie, a seventh grade who happens to have cerebral palsy; she lives with her mother and grandmother in a small farmhouse - her rather staid existence is altered as she becomes acquainted with a new neighbor who helps to open her world. A bounty of lovely garden & growth imagery awaits the reader in this affecting, transforming story of interlinked free verse poetry. Interestingly, those who read this book & are not poetry lovers will not realize this is lovely story is all poetry. . .those who love poetry will admire, appreciate, and cherish this. Try it-you'll probably never forget this experience.

I will keep you posted on other novels told in poetry form in just a bit.

KEEPING IT short

On the basis of what we last shared, I thought revisiting the short story might be not only enjoyable, but we could also share a few writers of this genre who are expecially good at their craft.

I was delighted to read author, Marianne Wiggins review of Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff, an author I have long admired, in the (Easter) Sunday 3/23/08 LA Times Book Review section ---and what a review this was! She does what a reviewer aspires to do: she writes such a strong, positive review that the reader wants to fly out of the house and get to the library and/or bookstore as fast as possible.

She loves his writing, adores his subject choices and has a great appreciation of his many 30 years as an author. She refers to Wolf as a "master mason" and his language, very ordinary, is the kind that just pulls the reader in because it is the sort that people around us happen to use. Wiggins, Salman Rushdie's former wife, has a few short story collections ('92, '93?) of her own so I am looking into locating these. However, her review of Wolff's new short stories was particularly glowing: Wiggins points out that Wolff's mastery of the craft compares to Poe, Hemingway, J. D.Salinger and Raymond Carver.

Naturally, this review is a must-read, but I also began thinking...what other short story crafters should we discuss?

Waiting to hear of other short story writers recommendations you'd care to share here. I may have left two off the kings, J. D. Salinger and Raymond Carver from my list earlier this month; Ray Bradbury, Katherine Mansfield. additionally, swimming in my head are the names of Jack London, Paul Theroux, Bernard Malamud, David Bezmozgis -just a few others who spring to mind. Let's hear some of your favorites - love to learn about new and different writers...thanks.

Let's Praise the Short Story, Not Bury It!

Well, I continue to hear that the short story is dead. Can this be true? I believe that readers often don't select short stories because they conjecture that they are too short, not complete and don't have much substance. To this I would say: wrong, wrong, wrong. Of course, this is my (strong) opinion, but I would say if we each go out and check out short story collections and anthologies, we can give new life to this suffering breed of fiction - take a walk on a (good) short story side and you will find that - for the most part - they are surprisingly well-constructed: very briskly paced, challenging yet compact and overall, clever compelling and concise.

I love good short stories so I would like to take this time to introduce or familiarize readers with twelve terrific short story authors including the following: Don Chaon; Amanda Davis; Anthony Doerr; Ryan Harty; Stephen King; Jhumpa Lahiri; Steven Millhauser; Lorrie Moore; Alice Munro (practically the QUEEN of this form); Julie Orringer; Annie Proulx and Eric Puchner.

Don Chaon's Among the Missing, a splendid collection of tales in which the past haunts the future- this collection is riveting, puzzling and filled with wonder; Amanda Davis, who tragically perished in a plane accident near age 30 in 2003, focuses on the lives of (chiefly) female characters in the dark, lyrical, ferocious yet playful studies of vulnerability in her amazing Circling the Drain.

Anthony Doerr's The Shell Collector is complex and powerful in its depiction of the natural world and how its beauty and power move our lives; Ryan Harty, who happens to be married to Julie Orringer, another writer highlighted here, wrote Bring Me Your Saddest Arizona: a stark, subtle unsettling look at the Southwest and its denizens' love and loss.

Stephen King's Night Shift and or Skeleton Crew underline his abilities to remain in tone and theme yet stay simple and to the point - plus not all King is horror!; Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies elegantly, meticulously depicts both East Indians and Indian Americans, who experience culture conflicts and a constant curiousity about the human condition...this April should bring Lahiri's new short story collection!

Steven Millhauser's new collection of short stories, Dangerous Laughter, is a strange and magnetic invitation to his uncanny world of magical realism-this collection and his The Knife Thrower are remarkable in their depiction of amazing other-wordly paradoxes : his finesse in conjuring up the strange, mesmerizing worlds he creates is extraordinarily brilliant and we can see the influence of Poe, Kafka, Borges and Faust; Lorrie Moore has written stories filled with the unsettled of America, in Birds of America and Self-Help - Moore uses her trademark humor and fuels each story with pathos and empathy.

Alice Munro is known as the finest living short story writer-her tales of Ontario, Canada involve characters who confront conflict while adhering to tradition, experiencing the inabiltiy to delay life moving forward as evidenced in The Runaway, Friends of My Youth and Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage ; the incredible Julie Orringer has offered her debut collection How to Breathe Underwater which is a terrific in-depth study of various aged characters desperately trying to sustain viable realtionships.

All of Annie Proulx's bleak but whimsical collections, such as Bad Dirt, Close Range, That Old Ace in the Hole reflect forgotten places at a pace closely aligned with quieter days. And, finally,Eric Puchner's debut collection of short stories, Music through the Floor, highlight a group of cultural misfits attempting to navigate mainstream America - strikingly original, fiercely funny, and quietly heartbreaking.

So . . . please offer your analyses, beliefs, feelings, ideas, impressions, inspirations, investigations, observances, opinions, theories, thoughts and views on what makes a good short story and who some of your favorite short story authors are. Looking forward to you sharing your ideas. Yearning to hear of your choice in yarns and yarn-spinners.

The Heist with a Hitch

I know how much we all enjoy reading these simple, non-challenging novels that we have plenty of on our bookstore and library shelves. They are light and offer us a respite from our worries and troubles. While I have read and enjoyed many of these, I do think we deserve to be enlightened once in a while-you know, take the time to read a novel that just might shed some light on facts, ideas we seldom consider. Some of these novels may offer additonal invitations to us to question aspects of our beliefs and our spirituality. One such novel that practically called to me from the shelf, pleading "Please give me a try!" is the thoroughly enjoyable (though I do not claim it is an easy book to read) novel by Dara Horn's The World to Come. Wow. This is a book with a lot going for it! At the heart of the story is Ben, a depressed prodigy and recently divorced quiz show question writer. Attending a museum function, he comes in contact with a lovely Chagall painting that he nearly immediately steals. He also comes in contact with Erica, who seems wise to his thievery. Additonally, we have Sara, Ben's twin sister, a terrifically talented artist in her own right. At this point, you might say, this is enough for a livley novel, but, no, kind reader, that would be incorrect! We are invited to behold recent Chernobyl, Stalin's acts, Vietnam, a dandy introduction and acquaintance with Marc Chagall, a look into art and culture in nineteenth and twentieth century Russia, terrorism all woven into a wonderful tempting combo of fable-mystery-suspense-romance-historical fiction that questions and challenges the way we view the afterlife, as well as our lives on earth. At times frustrating, baffling and confounding, this novel is breathtaking. We are introduced to past, present and future in this intoxicating tale, breathtaking as it is amazing-do yourself a favor and please seek out this challenging novel.

Well, well, well, now that we are in a new year, having read, read, read while we were relaxing over the restful holiday break, I am just wondering how many of you will have suggestions about what your favorite books into movies have been. . .now that Academy Award season is upon us I am naturally curious as to how many of our favorite books and - maybe, not so-favorite-books - have been transformed into delightful, charming, wonderful or at least good movies.

Let's see . . . I have not read "Atonement"- maybe many of you have read it? The film is a visually lovely film, boasting some interesting acting and plot turmoil. However, I can't really say much else, as I did not read this particular novel by Ian McEwan. I also have not read the Upton Sinclair short novel Oil on which the fill "There will be Blood" is loosely based. However, I did see the film, which is a very moving experience-a stunning movie with its very dramatic soundtrack, boasts some remarkable acting, probably unlike anything I have seen in recent years.

Let's look back even a more than a few years at another interesting movie: "The Girl with the Pearl Earring", which was also a very enjoyable book by Tracy Chevalier. What I enjoyed so much in both is that there isn't a great deal of action, in fact, there's very little. However, this works so well with the subject, as we're invited to glimpse, study, behold Vermeer's seventeenth-century life as he becomes acquainted with a servant girl he is interested in portraying on canvas. The movie, starring Colin Firth, Scarlet Johansson, Cillian Murphy is such a deliberate, slow-moving, perhaps even lugubrious, film but it's looks so splendid-the colors, the light, the atmosphere, the interactions between characters. I really enjoyed it.

More recently, I saw the film version of the novel, The Kite Runner. While I thought it included lovely acting by the young boys as well as and especially the actor portraying the main character's father, I was rather surprised at how the filmmakers toned-down many of the explosive, political elements of the film. I recall that the novel really gave the reader an understanding of the dangers of the Taliban, representing some of its leaders as violent megalomaniacs. Much less so with the film, or, at least these portions were not dwelled upon, nor were they nearly as violent as Khaled Housseni portrayed them in his novel. Overall, while the film "The Kite Runner" was enjoyable, it also seemed somewhat "safe".

I have not read Into the Wild, nor have I seen the film. I understand there is a wide array of diverse opinion on how the story is treated in the film "version" of the non-fiction book.

I can think of two film experiences that were leaps and bound better than the books each was based upon. These would be "Forrest Gump", a thoroughly engaging movie, but a more dismal, senseless book cannot be found; "Big Fish" was also a somewhat entertaining movie, but the book was so ludicrous, lumbering and lumpy that even at a short 208 pages it seemed interminable. Ideas for others that have disappointed or surprised you??

How about the Joanne Harris' book Chocolat? A perfectly lovely film, "Chocolat" starring Juliet Binoche and Johnny Depp; one that can be seen repeatedly . . .

One pont to take into consideration: a novelist or writer has a seemingly infinite number of pages to write and we can spend hour upon hour with his/her creation. A filmmaker has a finite number of minutes to be used for his/her purpose and, therefore, some of our most favorite themes, threads, topics may be glossed over or omitted.

I am eager to find out what your choices will include! Let's hear from you. . .

You will get LOST in LOST

Well, I have finally finished reading Daniel Mendelsohn's 528 page detective-adventure-memoir account Lost: The Search for Six of Six Million, written in September 2006. I have been reading this riveting narrative by this American award-winning book critic, contributing editor for Travel magazine, author and classics professor for the better part of two months. It is an incredible, deeply personal narrative of a man who had recalled hearing, lifelong, that six of his relatives were believed to have perished in the Holocaust. He had come upon a stack of old letters from an uncle, begging for help for himself, his wife and their four daughters at the onset of the early years of Nazi grip on their Polish village. Interestingly, as a boy, the author brought relatives to tears just by walking into a room because of his strong resemblance to this particular uncle. Mendelsohn's book is the coverage of his obsessive, extensive search of what really happened to this part of the family, as none of the relatives can say for certain.

He travels worldwide to unearth morsels of truth, to acquaint himself with those very few who may have known the family members and to interview other Holocaust survivors in an attempt to shed light on the mystery. His photographer brother, Matthew, accompanied the author on many of his travels, catching priceless shots of a increments of past world; on one trip, the author's sister and another brother accompanied them.

While the author may digress by including portions of the Bible's Genesis, relating memories of his youth combining this with travelogue and history then offering personal viewpoints about his academic & teaching background, Mendelsohn's unbelievably suspenseful, haunting, amazing trail of discoveries leading back & forth from the U.S. to Australia, Israel, Ukraine, Scandinavia several times, offering the reader a dim light on hope.

His effort to retrieve a forgotten world is ambitious, heroic and sprinkled with the most flabbergasting coincidences ever known. Lost offers a most horrible vision of hell, but Mendelsohn also reveals human nature, tenacious and empathic, in this emotional, provocative and profound journey that I would strongly recommend.

Haven Kimmel's Novels

I have just begun reading Something Rising (Light and Swift) which is the second book in a sort of geographic trilogy, all focusing on fictional, small town rural Indiana and all filled with tough, eccentric residents. I can already tell that this novel will be rewarding, but it is somewhat slow to build. First and foremost, its heroine Cassie Claiborne, age 10, supports her family by hustling pool. Her family life is bleak and dismal; her family members are a neurotic crew, each believable and sympathetic.

This book bears little resemblance to Kimmel's The Solace of Leaving Early, but it does contain the same quiet charm. The Solace of Leaving Early is a heartbreaking/heartwarming tale of two individuals at odds with themselves and small-town life. Kimmel's characters in Solace are troubled individuals seeking solace, struggling with their problems, both large and small. Langston, the main character has walked out on her PHD oral exams, returning to her hometown, while Amos, the town minister is torn by a tragedy he was unable to prevent. Kimmel's wonderful gift for slowly revealing secrets is what helps this novel to be so enjoyable. There is a great deal to enjoy in this lovely novel that is told with empathy and

wit.

The third installment of the trilogy is The Used World, which also features Amos and is placed in rural Indiana, but, again, is a completely different story. I think we visited that novel on this blog a month or so ago.