Vodka, Midgets, & Gingers

One part vodka, one part midget-obsession, and a dash of old-fashioned bedroom humor, Chelsea Handler’s Are You There Vodka? It’s Me Chelsea is a rowdy memoir that follows the comediennes’ misadventures in babysitting psychotic children, befriending little people, and boozing.

High-brow literature won’t be found between these covers but chances are that there will be chuckles and outright mirth. Highlights include the antics of her father aka Bitch Tits (he is a rotund, elderly man), when she denudes in a restaurant, and her description of a red-headed lover’s nether-regional grooming: “That’s even creepier then than seeing what Austin had, which could really only be compared to one thing: A clown in a leg lock.”

If the upcoming television series based on the book stays true to the source material, it should do just fine.

Rating: 3 out of 5 vodka bottles

The Bell Jar- chronicling one’s own madness

There is something mesmerizing and beautiful about watching a tragedy unfold. Sylvia Plath’s first and only novel, The Bell Jar, is a wonderful literary example of that principle as we are told the story of a young writer and her struggle with mental illness. At times, the tone is melancholic, wryly humorous, and painfully self-reflective so make no mistake- this isn’t an uplifting or redemptive read.

Plot: Ellie Greenwood finds herself thrust from suburban single-parent home into the lights and glamor of Manhattan on a writing internship, only to find that she can’t seem to enjoy herself and becomes increasingly removed and unhappy. At first, I thought this was going to be set entirely in the New York and Ellie would be an outsider disenchanted with the martini and high-rise life. But throughout the first of two arcs in the book, the reader gradually discovers that this is a mentally unwell person whose problems are bigger than not being like all the other city-folk.

The book switches pace when she leaves New York for her hometown where she descends further down the rabbit hole and eventually ends up committed to an asylum. The second act shows us a more disjointed and confused Ellie who tries to overcome the demons in her own head.

Review:  Taken as a whole, the Bell Jar, was depressingly enjoyable. The author’s voice is tinged with confusion, ennui, and a genuine hurt that sounds authentic because Plath is telling her own story under the veil of fiction writing. In fact, it’s such a convincingly told story with fine writing that the reader can easily slip into Ellie’s troubled psyche and feel like they are the ones undergoing a breakdown.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Bell Jars!

“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.”  -Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Chapter 20

 

The Book of Sand / Shakespeare’s Memory-

A short but delightful (yes, delightful) and thought-provoking read. Some of the short stories are as short as 5 pages but in this case, it’s definitely quality over quantity. The author, Jorge Borges, is a semi-blind septuagenarian who writes of dreams, poetry, loss, and the mystical in such a seamless and convincing way that you can’t but help and stop after every story and reflect on it before continuing on with the next one.

The recurring motifs of memory as identity and a single powerful word that when uttered, has the power to transform are both particularly powerful given that they come from the pen of a aging writer who sounds at peace with his life. Some of the more fascinating stories are “The Other”, where as an old man, he meets a younger version of himself on a park bench, “Blue Tigers”, where he comes into possession a handful of blue stones that break mathematical laws, and “The Sect of the Thirty”, which imagines a sect that worships Jesus and Judas equally.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Borge’s



Yes Man- a year of yesses

My rule of thumb is to read the book once I’ve seen the movie and in this case, I enjoyed both. As a former naysayer, I  took up the author’s manifesto to say yes more often and like the author, I can report positive results.

The author’s voice is likable and the adventures he goes on due to his year-long commitment to a 3-letter word are entertaining: he gets chased by giant lizards in Singapore, tries mushrooms in Amsterdam, and meets a dog with hypnotic powers.

At times, it’s frustrating to see how religiously he clings to saying yes (yes to infomercials, yes to helping the deposed Sultan of Omar transfer his funds over to the UK, yes to getting a mullet) but it all wraps up nicely in the end. Of course, you expect the moral of the story to be to say Yes to Life more but the journey there was fun to follow along with.

On second thought, Yes Man is the guy’s version of Eat Pray Love but more down to earth and funnier (not that I’ve read E.P.L.)

Rating: 4 out of 5 Yesses (Probability: 0.79%, assuming that the unseen side of the die are identical)

The Magicians: Teenage angst goes to Hogwarts and Narnia

Initially, Lev Grossman’s The Magicians read like the rated R version of Harry Potter but as I progressed, I grew more and more rapt with attention. Quentin is a book-smart and socially awkward teen from Brooklyn who is on his way to an alumni interview for Princeton. He arrives at a musty old house to find his interviewer dead and is given an unpublished copy of Book 6 in the “Fillory & Further” fantasy series. Only 5 were ever published and he knows this because he is a mega-fan of the books. Quickly, he gets whisked away into an exam room where magical aptitude is tested and to his fan-boy delight, he gets accepted. What kind of magical adventures will ensue?

Quentin settles into a magical major where he meets his fellow wizards-in-training at Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy. Magic powers or not, they are all teenagers brimming with ennui and prone to hedonism. At first, the supporting cast came across as a set of boorish jackasses but each character has their own distinct personality that feels very fleshed out. After graduation, the magic land they stumble upon in Narnia-style is an enchanting but lethal wonderland where murderous critters set ambushes. I particularly enjoyed the ending of how Quentin copes with the aftermath of their journey.

Dare I compare this to the beloved HP series? Imagine if Harry was a self-loathing boyfriend to Hermione, Ron was an alcoholic bisexual, and Voldermort literally ate children. It’s darker fare than Hogwarts but on another level, more realistic.

Spells zip through the air, magical animals arm themselves with knives, f-bombs drop left and right, and sexual hijinks ensue between friends- what’s not to love?

Rating: 5 out of 5 Magic Hats!

The sequel, Magician King, is scheduled to be published in fall 2011

Our Tragic Universe- Sad writer rediscovering the point of life through writing

Scarlett Thomas’ our Tragic Universe was the last book I read this year and perhaps appropriately so, as the book itself is a sort of reflection on storytelling and how the writer relates to the process. The heroine, Meg, is a ghostwriter of YA Fiction who is stuck in a dumpy house that is a too humid with a slacker boyfriend who is too whiny and immature. Thomas chronicles Meg’s growing unhappiness with such detail that at times the sadness leapt off the pages and seeped into my own brain. Set along the shore in either New England or in the UK somewhere, the quiet town seems to be constantly drizzling and dreary but populated with eccentric and retirement aged characters.

It’s fine writing but it got to be a little much reading about one woman’s unhappiness until about 70% of the way in which is when the book really hits its stride- a strange twist of fate intrudes on her real life in the form of a mysterious ship in a bottle and a possibly supernatural wolf-monster.

This book seemed to be running on two tracks- one which concerns itself with the details of her depressing life populated with past-due bills and failed relationships, and another which reads like a highly philosophized discourse on the nature of reality. The reader gets treated to a helping of Zen koans and theories of an afterlife called Second World where we are all dead but don’t know it yet (see 1990 film, Sixth Sense)

These two universes, one tragically mundane and the other where the supernatural is possible, intersect but not the way you expect it to. Meg doesn’t get sucked into a world of magic and run off having adventures. Instead, she talks at length about the possibility of the extraordinary and works those thoughts and conversations back into her everyday life. In that way, she infuses her dissatisfied life with a spark of something grander.

Spoiler alert: The best part of the book isn’t about how Meg dumps her boyfriend, moves into a new place, and picks up new hobbies. That’s chick-lit fare (no offense to chick-lit readers). As previously mentioned, the book saves itself in the third act from becoming the chronicles of a middle-life crisis by evolving into a meta-fictional work about how writing and life is rarely linear with neat and tidy endings*

Bottom Line: While being well-written, the story and main character kinda dragged. The ideas touched upon in Our Tragic Universe and interesting and novel; they shine through what would have been an otherwise debby-downer of a novel. Cerebral but hard to connect with.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 ships in a bottle

(insert .jpg of half a ship)

*What I felt was the point of this novel was that there doesn’t necessarily have to be a point. A story can be a story without a conventional arc and plot structure (introduction to hero, dilemma,  overcoming evil, ending). One of Meg’s hippie friends expands this concept of the “storyless story” and in fact, that’s what Our Tragic Universe comes off across as. However, one peril of this approach is that it’s harder for the reader to emotionally invest in such a story. I honestly didn’t care if Meg was any happier by the end but I found the journey from page 1 to page 425 interesting.

The Things They Carried- Just wow.

I first read The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brein in high school and it was one of the few experiences from those years that stuck with me. This Vietnam War memoir blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction with masterful writing, nuanced emotions, and great storytelling.

Parts of the book are re-imaginings of his own experiences as part of a platoon but for all intents and purposes, that type of story-truth is more important than the reality-truth. It’s a novel concept that works really well in a morally ambiguous setting such as the Vietnam War and allows O’Brein to fully voice the soldiers’ experience.

Grounded in fiction and transformed into something beyond just the facts, The Things They Carried is a first-rate novel.

My Rating :5 out of 5 M1 Helmets!