This Will Be Difficult to Explain: And Other Stories by Johanna Skibsrud

I love to read short stories.  To me they are a lovely step between novels and poetry.  They tell little tidbits of stories with a whammy of message.  This book did not live up to my expectations.

The stories were varied yet connected.  A young American maid at a hotel in France meets a man who asks her to sit for a portrait, only to find out later he is not who she thinks he is.  A father lets his thirteen-year-old nearly estranged daughter take the wheel of his car, realizing too late that it was a bad decision. A Canadian girl and her French host stumble on the one story that transcends their language barrier.

All the stories were entertaining; however, the ‘whammies’ never came.  I felt like what the author was trying to say was so nebulous as to be out of my reach.  Sometimes when I feel that way I wonder if it’s just a matter of my being too obtuse or uneducated to understand, but the other review I read of this book backed me up.  It’s nice to know you’re not the only one that felt that way.  I also read that the author has had great success as a poet.  That lead me to think that maybe she didn’t realize that with prose one needs a bit more guiding to get the point. 

2 stars (Rated PG for adult situations)

The Laying on of Hands: Stories by Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett is playwright and screenwriter that has done quite a bit for BBC and most notably wrote ‘The Madness of King George’ which won him an Academy Award.

This was an odd little book.  It consists of three short stories. The writing was amusing and witty; however, when done reading there was nothing there.  I could see no purpose to or lesson to be learned from the writing.  The stories were just there, no plot.  Not worth it.

2 stars (Rated R – bawdy humor)

To My Dearest Friends by Patricia Volk

Alice and Nanny have never met before, but they have one thing in common: their late friend Roberta. Alice is the prim proprietor of a chic Madison Avenue shop, while Nanny is a sharp-eyed Manhattan real-estate broker. This New York odd couple is thrown together when Roberta trusts them with her last request—that together they open her safe-deposit box. What they find inside compels these women to address a surprising truth about their beloved Roberta. A profound yet hilarious novel, To My Dearest Friends is the story of two women and a journey of friendship neither chose to take.

While Ms. Volk’s writing is exceptionally lyrical and lovely to read, the book contains much too much sex and sex talk for my taste.

2 Stars (Rated R – too much sex)

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs.

The story of this book moves sideways, diagonally and backwards, but never simply forward.  It is a mind-bending, novel novel.  There is even a chapter told in Powerpoint slides.  While it was entertaining I’m still not what the message of the book was.  Ironically, after slogging my way through so many Pulitzer Prize winners last year, I picked this as my first book to be read this year.  I was about ¼ of the way through it before it was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize! Argh!

2 Stars (Rated R – language, sex)

A Secret Kept by Tatiana de Rosnay

It all began with a simple seaside vacation, a brother and sister recapturing their childhood.  Antoine Rey thought he had the perfect surprise for his sister Mélanie’s birthday: a weekend by the sea at Noirmoutier Island, where the pair spent many happy childhood summers playing on the beach.  It had been too long, Antoine thought, since they’d returned to the island—over thirty years, since their mother died and the family holidays ceased.  But the island’s haunting beauty triggers more than happy memories; it reminds Mélanie of something unexpected and deeply disturbing about their last island summer.  When, on the drive home to Paris, she finally summons the courage to reveal what she knows to Antoine, her emotions overcome her and she loses control of the car.

Recovering from the accident in a nearby hospital, Mélanie tries to recall what caused her to crash.  Antoine encounters an unexpected ally: sexy, streetwise Angèle, a mortician who will teach him new meanings for the words life, love and death.  Suddenly, however, the past comes swinging back at both siblings, burdened with a dark truth about their mother, Clarisse.  

Trapped in the wake of a shocking family secret shrouded by taboo, Antoine must confront his past and also his troubled relationships with his own children.  How well does he really know his mother, his children, even himself?  Suddenly fragile on all fronts as a son, a husband, a brother and a father, Antoine Rey will learn the truth about his family and himself the hard way.

I was anticipating a book on the level of “Sarah’s Key” and was disappointed.  As much as I loved “Sarah’s Key” I felt that the ending of it kind of fell flat.  This book was the same but without the enthralling beginning.  I only was mildly interested in the first half of the book and was a bit repulsed with the ending.  Also there was way too much unnecessary sex.

2 stars (Rated R – sex)

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

We went to the café and drank some absinthe, we went down the street to another café and had some wine, we went to bed ‘tight’.  The next day we did the same thing.  The girl comes into the picture, we all fawn all over her.  We drink some more and get tight.  Then we go fishing and to the bull-fights and drink at both of those as well.  We fight over the girl and then set her up with the bull-fighter (all the while drinking until we are tight). 

That’s the plot!  Hemingway’s famous terse prose did nothing for me.  I was bored most of the time. After reading The Paris Wife which was about Hemingway’s first wife, I was very interested in reading this book as it was written during the time frame of The Paris Wife. I must say, I enjoyed the book about the book more than the book itself!

I read through SparkNotes to see what they had to say about the novel.  I was amazed at all the symbolism and imagery they reported was in the book.  I say, you have to dig pretty deep to come up with all that.  What I felt the book was saying to me was that this generation of young people living in between the two World Wars truly lived up to their moniker of “The Lost Generation”, and The Sun Also Rises is the quintessential novel of that time frame.

2 stars (Rated PG for Adult situation and riotous living)

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

I like to imagine myself as a great literature connoisseur.  I was excited to read this book and add it to my list of well-loved classic novels.  After all it won a Pulitzer Prize, someone must have thought it was fabulous, right?  Let me say, I would like to meet and speak to those people.  I think of all the Pulitzer Prize winning books I have read this year, this has to be the most disappointing. Someone….please….tell me why this book is so great.

Newland Archer is a young man in New York City high society in the 1870’s.  Society has some very strict rules and Archer seems to think they apply to everyone but him.  At the beginning of the book he announces his engagement to the beautiful, young, very innocent May.  May’s cousin the Countess Olenska comes to New York having left her cad of a husband behind in Poland.  May insists that Archer should be kind to the disgraced Countess.  Archer finds himself falling in love with the Countess.  From there he just continues to act like an insipid ass.  The Countess desires a divorce from her husband, which Archer talks her out of, yet he also insists that she not go back to her husband.  All the while he is pressing May to push up their marriage date. 

I don’t get it!  I couldn’t seem to care about any of the characters as they all seemed to have no spine.  The only person I liked at all was the demanding grandmother. 

2 stars (Rated PG – for adult themes)