Second Chances

From StarMag, September 2005

Byline: Review by DAPHNE LEE

ELSEWHERE

By Gabrielle Zevin

Publisher: Bloomsbury, 273 pages

(ISBN:0747580340)

WHAT would you think if you woke one morning and found yourself sleeping in a bunk on a ship, wearing strange pyjamas, and sporting a shaven and stitched head? And what if you had a cabin mate with a bullet hole in her skull?

When this happens to Liz, she assumes she's dreaming. But she's not. The vessel she's on isn't sailing on the River of Dreams. It's taking her to the afterlife, or Elsewhere, as it's officially called.

In Gabrielle Zevin's young adult novel about life, death and second chances, the afterlife is a place very similar to Earth. In fact, it's very like an American town. The question of whether different people have different Elsewheres, based on what they were used to on Earth, is not addressed. Would I, for example, if I died, find myself on a Star Aquarius cruise ship headed for an Elsewhere that mirrors the Klang Valley?

Well, as John Lennon does make a brief appearance in the book (actually, it's not even a walk-on part; one of the characters just mentions meeting him), I guess in Zevin's fiction, we're all headed for Smallville, USA, once we pop our corks. I guess it could be worse. A lot worse.

In Elsewhere, you age in reverse, until you are seven days old, whereupon you are returned to Earth and reborn as a new person. In Elsewhere you may seek employment and, if so, you're encouraged to do only what you really love. In Elsewhere, you may learn to speak canine (and other animal languages), or find out that you knew how to all along. In Elsewhere, you may meet friends and relations who have passed on. You may even meet family members who died before you were born. And in Elsewhere, you can view those you've left behind on Earth, through powerful telescopes at the Observation Deck (OD).

Fifteen-year-old Liz, the victim of a hit-and-run, takes a while to accept her death and is, briefly, an OD junkie. She even tries to contact her family – a big no-no in Elsewhere. However, this event marks a turning point in her afterlife. She is arrested for the misdemeanour by Owen Welles, a detective with the Elsewhere Bureau of Supernatural Crime and Contact.

Owen has been in Elsewhere for nine years. He died at 26, leaving behind his wife Emily. Now, having aged backwards to 17, he still misses her. He is lonely and a loner, until he meets Liz. They fall in love. And then Emily dies and is reunited with Owen in Elsewhere. In this way, "life" there can be as confusing and painful as on Earth.

Reading this book made me cry, but it was, mostly, a good, satisfying sort of cry. Of course, I have some questions about the world described by Zevin – like, are mass murderers and other psychopaths running around in Elsewhere? (Jack the Ripper and Hitler, for instance.) Like, what happens if you were to die in vitro or at birth? And why does no one worry about being reborn into abject poverty or to abusive parents?

I guess if Zevin got into all that, this would be rather different book. As it is, Elsewhere is uplifting, comforting and hopeful without being preachy and sentimental. The author is perceptive and very funny – a good storyteller who seems to really know and care for her characters, and believe in the world she has created.

I'm not sure I want to be reborn, but I love the idea of death offering me another stab at life. I think Elsewhere will appeal to anyone who's ever asked for a second chance.

Death of the Heart

From StarMag, 13th Feb 2005

Review by DAPHNE LEE

THE LANDSCAPE OF LOVE

By Sally Beauman

Publisher: Little Brown

(ISBN:0316729434)

WHEN I read a Sally Beauman novel I find myself feeling both caressed and harassed. Her narratives are hypnotic; her words – symbolic and evocative – are full of portent and significance. I am lulled by the beauty of her style and the glamour of her characters, yet haunted by the certainty that nothing is right in the worlds she describes.

Her books are rich, dark things. Her characters, especially the women, are beautiful, dangerous and misunderstood. An air of doom prevails; secrets and lies fester and pollute everyone and everything, while lust and love compete for dominance: both are equally destructive.

Will she ever write a book full of nondescript people leading blameless, boring lives? It’s hard to imagine. Her latest, The Landscape of Love, is just what one has come to expect from her. Set partly in a mouldering, haunted abbey in the Suffolk countryside, it could have been a romantic, picturesque tale a la I Capture the Castle. Why, given the right tone it could have taken a satirical turn and ended up a modern Northanger Abbey. But no, Landscape is just exactly what her fans want – firmly and woefully a Beauman exercise in hand-wringing tragedy.

As the title suggests, it is a love story – that is, an anatomy of the emotion as experienced by and seen through the eyes of the novel’s characters. Love’s terrain is rugged, unfriendly and unforgiving – typical Beauman-country, a battlefield on which her characters die a thousand deaths, disillusioned, desperate, frustrated and obsessed.

It ain’t pretty, but it’s compelling, and like all Beauman’s work, one loathes to stop reading. She teases you mercilessly, constantly hinting, implying and inferring, so that the suspense is unbearable. Unfortunately, disappointment is also inevitable. All the hoo-ha is, at least I find, about nothing – how could it not be when whatever revelations Beauman has in store have your energetically back-flipping imagination to live up to? (Of course, it may just be that I have a more gratuitously morbid and disgusting imagination than hers.)

It’s no different with Landscape. Nevertheless, what a page-turner it is – the feeling of anticipation, when you’re right in the middle of the story, is hard to beat. Beauman has been likened to Daphne du Maurier (her last novel was actually a re-telling of du Maurier’s Rebecca) and I agree that she comes very close to matching that writer’s broodingly elegant style. In addition, Beauman, like du Maurier, specialises in puzzling yet beguiling female characters and settings that exude a sense of both mystery and menace.

In Landscape, we are bewitched by the Mortland sisters. The youngest, Maisie, is only a girl when the story opens, but she is also the narrator – a sly, intensely observant one who sees ghosts. Her sisters, in their early 20s and late teens respectively, are the beautiful and scornful Julia and the wild, bookish Finn.

It is the summer of 1967 and the family are gathered at the ancestral home. Also present are the sisters’ childhood friend, Dan; his best friend, Nick; and Lucas, an aspiring artist who is in the process of painting the sisters. In the second part of the book, both Lucas and the painting are famous; Julia and Nick are unhappily married; and Dan is a drugged-out has-been, suddenly gripped by the urgent need to make sense of that last summer in Suffolk.

This second portion of the book, set in London and narrated by a bitter and desperate Dan, is harsher in tone than the first, reflecting both his state of mind as well as the dog-eat-dog social climate of late 1980s Britain. And yet, there’s something about Maisie’s gently pensive voice, and even Julia’s final, dispassionate words, that are more unsettling than Dan’s explicit and intentionally offensive account.

All three are, in fact, masters of concealment, deliberately leading the leader deeper and deeper into a story by dangling the truth like a carrot. Ultimately, however, one is left in the dark. I even re-read the book, hoping to benefit from hindsight, but the second time around only made me certain that Beauman intended to leave us guessing. With this book, about that treacherous land called love, she may have decided that hiding the truth might be the most honest course of action.

Books by Sally Beauman, Daphne du Maurier and others about love and how it can really, really suck:

S. Beauman:
Dark Angel
Rebecca's Tale

D. du Maurier:
Rebecca
My Cousin Rachel

Others:
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
Babel Tower by A. S. Byatt
Heartburn by Nora Ephron (at least this one is funny)
Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
The Willow Cabin by Pamela Frankau

Teen Mifits to the Fore

From StarMag, Sunday, 6th February, 2005

CHASING VERMEER

By Blue Balliett

Illustrated by Brett Helquist

Publisher: Scholastic

(ISBN: 978-0439372947)

SEVERAL foreign reviews have called Chasing Vermeer a children’s Da Vinci Code, but I think the only thing the books have in common is that they encourage an interest in art, or at least certain artists and their works.

A number of portraits by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer appear in Blue Balliett’s novel, but none harbour secrets about Christianity or the, supposedly, true identity of biblical figures. There are no codes to crack, no puzzles to work out, no trails to follow in Chasing Vermeer. Rather, it becomes gradually clear that the mysteries in this book are solved by methods that are themselves mysterious. They remain, till the very end, unexplained phenomena.

As a result, some readers might close the book feeling short-changed. Personally, I was surprised that so little logic went into the mapping and unfolding of the plot. Pentominoes feature largely in the story, but although they are a mathematical tool, they are used in a strangely fanciful, even superstitious, manner.

There is much focus on Vermeer’s art. Seen through Balliett’s eyes and described in her words, the artist’s paintings are vibrantly beautiful things. The “real” portraits (reproductions in books and on the Internet) don’t come close to what one sees as a result of the author’s loving and vivid descriptions. In this way, and by feeding the reader with intriguing titbits about Vermeer’s life, Balliett succeeds in kindling one’s interest in him and his paintings.

However, I suspect kids might find pentominoes and Charles Fort more fascinating than the artist. Fort (1874-1932), a writer who delighted in strange events, plays a significant part in Chasing Vermeer. But, like pentominoes, he and his work are used to further mystify the characters and the reader, and do not actually provide any clear answers.

The book’s strongest point is, I feel, its characters, especially Calder Pillay and Petra Andalee, the pre-teen, socially awkward protagonists. Refreshingly, neither is of Anglo-Saxon stock: Calder is part Asian-Indian, while Petra has African, European and Middle-Eastern forbears. Both are intelligent, creative, articulate and – in each other’s eyes – “weird”!

Then there is their unconventional teacher, Ms Hussey, who encourages her students to question everything and come up with their own spin on things. It is partly thanks to her that Calder and Petra take an active interest in the disappearance of a Vermeer painting that’s on loan to a local museum.

Although their interest in the crime is initially awakened by uncanny dreams and weird coincidences, it is only when it becomes evident that Ms Hussey is in some way involved in the incident and in danger that the pair make a pact to find the artwork at all costs.

Elderly Mrs Sharpe, with her furtive air, cryptic remarks and scathing sense of humour, is also fascinating. But as sharp-witted as she is, her style of mystery-solving is, disappointingly, as whimsical as everyone else’s.

At least Brett Helquist’s illustrations provide readers with quite a meaty puzzle to sink their teeth into. I suggest saving it for last as it’s quite time-consuming and distracting. Young sleuths will also enjoy decoding some letters Calder receives from his best friend, who has moved to another state. It’s a pity that these brainteasers have nothing to do with Balliett’s actual story. Perhaps she (and Helquist) provided them as a trade-off!

It’s such a pleasure seeing Helquist’s drawings here. I especially love Petra, with “her fierce triangle of hair”. Children’s novels (and even many adult ones) used to be illustrated as a matter of course up to about 30 years ago. But economics seems to have put an end to that, apart from rare cases, like the A Series of Unfortunate Events books, also illustrated by Helquist.

I’m looking forward to Balliett’s next book, another mystery, featuring Petra and Calder, and ghosts! Once again, Helquist will provide the artwork.

I recommend Chasing Vermeer, but not because it’s the most spectacular children’s mystery ever written (any Famous Five story does better in this aspect), but because I think it contains some really marvellous writing. Balliett does particularly well when she writes from Petra’s perspective, offering a view of the world that is delightfully reflective, full of trembling, inspired wonder, and confused but intense emotion.

Finally, it’s pretty wonderful when a couple of non-conformist geeks like Petra and Calder are cast as heroes. In the tradition of E.L. Konigsburg and Madeleine L’Engle, Balliett celebrates and empowers social misfits. As most youngsters go through periods of self-doubt, this book and others like it are a welcome and refreshing alternative to the recent barrage of teen novels that make too much of being beautiful, well-groomed and sexually active!

Eats, Lives, Breathes Books

From StarMag.

SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME: A YEAR OF PASSIONATE READING

By Sara Nelson

Publisher: Berkley Books

(ISBN: 0425198197)

MY thoughts exactly, I wrote in my book blog on receiving a review copy of Sara Nelson’s So Many Books, So Little Time. I could easily identify with the cover art, and of course the sentiments. It’s a predicament book-lovers enjoy complaining about, but actually revel in. How could we not? It simply means that all is well in our world. Imagine if instead of having too many books and too little time, we had all the time in the world and too few books!

Thus, this book is, as I see it, a bit of a gloat: “Poor me: All these books. And I’m getting paid to read them!” Of course, Nelson denies it. She embarked on this project – to read one book per week for a year, and then write about the experience – so she could try to “figure out why I read what I read when I read it; how one book leads to another, and, of course, what it all means about me, my life, and the nature of reading itself.”

This may interest you, or not. If you’re looking for 52 book reviews, this isn’t what Nelson delivers. She has a lot to say about the books she reads, but relates it all to her own life and experiences so that her work reads like a journal of someone who eats, lives and breathes books. So, if you love books, read practically round the clock and see yourself and your life in the books you read, you should enjoy So Many Books.

You’ll find it irresistible when Nelson says something that describes exactly how you feel about reading and books. For example, have you ever tried, in vain, to make someone (usually not a book lover) understand why you like a particular title? “Explaining the moment of connection between a reader and a book to someone who’s never experienced it is like trying to explain sex to a virgin,” says Nelson with witty empathy.

Yes, I could relate to some of her observations and enjoyed her ballsy humour, but not the self-satisfied air that permeates most of the book. Nelson is master of the droll and insightful one-liner, but it’s so easy to be penetrating and amusing when it’s your own navel you’re describing.

Personally, I found her flippancy (“I even liked Sabbath’s Theatre. So sue me.”) irritating. Also, while honesty is mostly a good thing, her frank descriptions of her, at times, rocky relationship with her husband made me squirm on his behalf. The problem was not so much her candour as her glib manner when talking about him. Is nothing sacred? Apparently not in Nelson’s book.

Worse of all is her tendency to judge people by the books they read. Nelson spends a whole chapter justifying this, in my opinion, intolerable case of snobbery: she reveals that when a friend recommends a bad book, she “ends up reconsidering the friendship”! Thus, in Nelson’s world, book lovers are equal, but some are more equal than others. Therefore, if you are devoted to bodice rippers or restrict your reading to murder mysteries or bestsellers, you would be, in her eyes, a comrade, but a second- ... maybe even third-class one.

And then there’s the description of a visit to the late Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s home in Vermont. There, she sees a book “whose title is spelled out in angry red Asian characters”. Her host, Sabrina (the widow of Solzhenitsyn’s stepson) tells her that it is August 1914: Red Wheel ... in Malaysian!

Other Malaysian readers may well puzzle over the incident and share my annoyance. God only knows what language the book was actually in. Chinese? Arabic? Why didn’t Nelson check the accuracy of Sabrina’s statement? I daresay I care so much only because I’m Malaysian. It’s a small detail but it niggles like the bite of a tiny, persistent ant.

What I did like about So Many Books is that it has introduced me to a handful of titles that I’m now dying to read. Nelson can make a book sound like the most wonderful thing on earth, which leaves me thinking that she should have written 52 reviews after all.

Tales Rooted in Real Life

From StarMag, 16th January, 2005

Review by DAPHNE LEE

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN FAIRY TALES

Translated by Tiina Nunnally

Edited and introduced by Jackie Wullschlager

Publisher: Penguin, 437 pages

THIS new collection of fairytales by Hans Christian Andersen was published late last year, in time for Christmas as well as the Danish writer’s 200th anniversary (in April this year). It’s a very handsome edition with rich red covers, gold-edged pages and a silky bookmark, and will make a beautiful gift for anyone, of any age.

In addition to the 30 stories (familiar and obscure) compiled here, there is also a chronology of Andersen’s life, an introduction by his most recent biographer, suggested further reading, a translator’s note, a note on the illustrations, and notes on the stories themselves. Therefore, you not only have a cache of wonderful stories, but a wealth of background information to enhance your pleasure of them.

For example, the brief synopsis of Andersen’s life included in the introduction offers the reader a revealing glimpse of a man who triumphed over the disadvantages of his working class background, yet was never able to totally shake off the stigma of his vulgar birth and upbringing. It affected all aspects of his life, most significantly his sexuality, and his stories reflect his constant struggle to be accepted by others and himself.

Anyone acquainted with Andersen’s stories is aware that they are often about pain and suffering, with no reward or redemption. Unlike the Grimm Brothers, Andersen did not always provide a happy ending and his characters are frequently tragically overcome by both desire and impotence (the little mermaid; Kai in The Snow Queen), destroyed by their own folly (the fir tree, Karen in The Red Shoes), or are tragic victims of social circumstance (the little match girl, the scholar in The Shadow). Even for those who are blessed with a rosy future (the ugly duckling, Elisa in The Wild Swans), great personal misery must first be endured.

Some might thus prefer Disney’s schmaltzy version of The Little Mermaid to Andersen’s heartbreaking original; might even consider the latter too dark and cruel for the consumption of little ones – sensitive souls will certainly have a good cry over the mermaid dancing despite feeling as though her feet are being pierced by hundreds of sharp knives.

In fact, Tiina Nunnally writes, in the translator’s Note, that the earliest translators of Andersen’s tales censored aspects that they deemed inappropriate for children. English versions were actually often translated, not from the original Danish, but from German translations that were themselves inaccurate.

As I don’t read Danish, I can’t tell how close Nunnally’s English rendering is to Andersen’s style and language, but experts have declared her work a great success. According to Jackie Wullschlager, a respected authority on Andersen, “(Nunnally’s) feel for Andersen’s slightly eccentric yet beautifully fluent and easy use of language makes this translation at once accurate, loyal to the original, and a joy to read.”

For instance, Nunnally is the first translator to use the preposition on, in The Princess on the Pea, which is more precise than The Princess and the Pea, and conveys more effectively the absurdity of the story.

I think she has indeed done Andersen justice because I can’t remember being as captivated by previous translations and adaptations of his tales. The writing is simple and graceful, crisp and lively, at times with an undertone of cheekiness, irony, sarcasm or menace.

Savour this book. Read one story per day, to yourself or a child. Read it aloud to enjoy fully the sound and effect of the words that paint vivid pictures full of colour, shadows and light.

If you’re a squeamish parent who trembles at the thought of exposing her children to descriptions of grief, violence and pain, rest assured that Andersen doesn’t always end his tales on an unhappy note. To be sure, in his world, the road to happily-ever-after is invariably strewn with thorns. But I believe that this roots the stories in real life and makes their magic even more a thing of wonder.

Wild Thang!

From StarMag, 2nd January, 2005

A ROUND-HEELED WOMAN: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance

By Jane Juska

Publisher: Villard, 273 pages

IMAGINE if your grandmother put an ad in the papers that read something like this: “Before I turn 70 at the end of this year, I would like to have a lot of sex with a lot of nice men. We can also talk, preferably about Venezuelan soap operas.”

Freaky or what? I guess we will never be entirely comfortable with the idea of our parents, never mind our grandparents, as sexual beings. The thought of the APs doing the wild thang is enough to put most of us off our dinner. Why is that? I mean, I’m 37 and in a few years I will probably be considered too old to “do it”. Yet, my first instinct is to gaze askance at 50-somethings and think: “They can’t still want to!”

Posing the question to a 20-something recently, I elicited retching noises and a derisive remark about wrinkly nether regions. (Her original words were much more colourful!) I think this book, A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance, would definitely put her off her food.

In it, Jane Juska, a 60-something divorcee, describes how she relaunched her sex life by placing a personal ad, similar to the example above, in a national newspaper. The response she received was so overwhelming that she had to take a sabbatical from her job (teaching) in order to meet the men who had replied.

Juska is extremely frank about what happens during these dates, but don’t expect blow-by-blow accounts a la Penthouse magazine or even the average romance novel. It’s not that she skimps on details. Her meaning is clear as crystal, but when she describes her sexual encounters, there is nothing suggestive or titillating about her words or phrases.

However, while Juska is as candid as they come when she’s talking about sex, there is a tendency for her not to address other issues which crop up when she’s talking about her life in general. What becomes increasingly apparent about her is that while she’s confident about her right to have a good time, sexually, she seems less sure about her right to have more than sex, that is, a loving relationship.

Could this be anything to do with the fact that she was abused as a young girl? And could that experience also have any bearing on her alcoholism, her poor parenting skills (her son ends up homeless at 17) and her uneasy relationship with her own parents? Juska mentions all this in passing, but doesn’t make any attempt to make sense of any of it in relation to her little “project”.

So, this book isn’t the light-hearted romp it’s made out to be (the saucy purple jacket and frisky sub-title are misleading). Juska (and certainly her publishers) probably meant it to be an entertaining, enlightening and liberating look at sex after 50, but then she has inadvertently turned it into an account of an elderly woman’s attempt to find love through sex – not that she admits this for a second. It makes for a rather pathetic and depressing read. In fact, an undercurrent of sadness runs through the entire text, which is unfortunate really, because moralists will say, “Well, what can you expect from someone who behaves like a trollop.”

Ah, well, at the very least, Round-Heeled Woman makes a case for life not ceasing after menopause. When I was still practising as a nurse, my aged patients would often say that what they hated most about growing old was no longer being counted as feeling, thinking human beings. At a certain age, it seems, one is relegated to the rubbish heap, considered past one’s sell-by-date, and useless.

In I Look into My Glass, a poem by Thomas Hardy, an old man gazes at his reflection and wishes that his spirit were as wasted as his body. Instead, he laments, Time, to make me grieve/ Part steals, lets part abide;/ And shakes this fragile frame at eve/ With throbbings of noontide.

It’s a common supposition (and misconception) that one’s emotions and urges, including sex drive, wane with old age. A Round Heeled-Woman (this is an old-fashioned term for a promiscuous woman), at its most basic, acts as both a warning and a lesson. One can enjoy an active sex life for as long as one is blessed with good health. And if there are teens and 20-somethings reading this and rolling their eyes dismissively, imagine how stupid they’ll feel when they’re hale and hearty 70-year-olds and get called dried-up old prunes!