Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong

I loved Bitter in the Mouth.  Linda Hammerick grows up in Boiling Springs, NC, but she is an alien.  There is always something different about her, and she never quite fits in.

For one thing, Linda is a synesthete; she tastes words.  "My first memory was a taste.  For most of my life I have carried this fact with me not as a mystery, which it still is, but as a secret....There was something bitter in the mouth, and there was the word that triggered it"(15).

Here is an example of Linda's hearing/taste condition: 

"When my teacher asked, 'Linda where did the English first settle in North Carolina?' the question would come to me as "Lindamint, where did the Englishmarachinocherry firstPepto-Bismol settlemustard in Northcheddarcheese Carolinacanned peas?" (21).

Synesthesia is not, however, Linda's only difference, and there are mysteries that she doesn't understand about her relationships with her family and the community. 

My favorite character is Linda's Great-Uncle Harper, a retired librarian and one of her two best friends.  Her other best friend is Kelly, with whom she exchanges almost daily letters even at seven years old. 

I love the way Uncle Harper classified his own books:

"His books were shelved in alphabetical order but not by titles.  A for "Acerbic," B for "Buy Another Copy as Gift," C for "Cow Dung, as in This Stinks," D for devastating," E for "Explore Further, F for "Foreign" (foreign meant that my great-uncle couldn't relate to the characters in the book, not that the author was from another country), and so on."  He had, according to Linda, 26 categories!

A beautifully written book with lots of little mysteries about herself and her family that Linda only discovers fully as an adult.  I was surprised the book was only 282 pages, I felt it was so much more!  In the best possible way!

Highly recommended.

Fiction.  Southern Fiction/Coming of Age/ Family Relationships.  2010. 282 pages.

A Reliable Wife

Goolrick, Robert.  A Reliable Wife.

I've really wondered about how to review this ARC from Algonquin Books.  The beginning is slow as we are made privy to the thoughts of Ralph Truitt, a wealthy and lonely man, waiting at a Wisconsin train station in 1907 for the woman who has answered his add for a "reliable wife," a "simple honest woman."

The fifty-four year old Truitt's thoughts wander from his concern about what the townspeople think of him, to stories of madness and disaster that he reads in the newspapers, to thoughts of his younger, highly-sexualized self, and to shame combined with hope as he waits for the arrival of his prospective bride.

When Catherine Land arrives, however, the first deception is uncovered.  The photograph she sent him was of a plain young woman, and Catherine Land is beautiful.  As the Wisconsin snows cover the landscape hiding most of the features of the land, the characters in this novel reside under many layers of protective coloration.  In the West we associate white with weddings; in the East white symbolizes death. 

The novel is as cold as the snow...and yet full of lustful passion that provides little heat.  Not that there are graphic sex scenes, but that sex and thoughts of sex hold many of the relationships together.  The characters are not people you warm to, but you can sympathize with them at times.  They are complex, deceptive, despairing, and obsessive.  No one is exactly as they seem in this dark novel.

This is also the story of fathers and sons, guilt, remorse, and hope.  It is not a novel that I enjoyed, but after the first chapter, I was determined to make my way through all of the twists and turns the novel takes.

Fiction.  Drama.  2009.  291 pages.

That Old Cape Magic

Russo, Richard.  That Old Cape Magic.

Oh, I loved this book!   Russo's Bridge of Sighs was one of my favorite books read in 2007, and although this one is shorter, less dense, and much funnier, That Old Cape Magic will probably be on my list of favorites for 2010.

The author explores marriages and family relationships, mid-life crisis, the emotional inheritance we carry all our lives, and the biases of memory.

Jack Griffin has an attachment to Cape Cod because the happiest moments of his childhood occurred during family vacations to the Cape.  The current visit to Cape is to attend the wedding of his daughter's childhood friend, and memories resurface as he looks for a place to scatter the ashes of his father.

Russo's comedic touch is pitch perfect, but the humor is balanced with regrets, sadness, and loneliness as Jack struggles to escape the voices of his parents and their influence on his behavior.
 

Fiction.  Family drama.  2009.  261 pages.

Palace Walk

Mahfouz, Naguib. Palace Walk. Translated by William Maynard Hutchins and Olive E. Kenny. Mahfouz, who won the Nobel Prize for literature with this novel, examines the daily lives of the members of a Cairo family with great and sympathetic detail. The time period, between 1917 and 1919 includes the end of WWI and the Egyptian revolution, but these events are remarkably removed from the family until the very end of the novel. Even then, when the demonstrations against the British become violent and touch the family personally, there remains a strange removal from anything that happens outside of the immediate family members. The novel is a sort of psychological examination of a patriarchal Egyptian family, and Mahfouz reveals the lives of each individual, recreating the thoughts and behaviors of each, and examining the interaction of the family members.

The ability to get into each mind - mother, father, siblings - is a remarkable feat. By taking part in the daily lives of this family, the reader is exposed to a larger explanation of a culture. My question is whether or not Mahfouz approves of the culture. In spite of the patriarch Abd al-Jawad's hypocritical, egotistical and tyrannical behavior (fully related by the author), Mahfouz appears to admire the man. He sympathizes with Amina, usually referred to as "the mother," but doesn't appear to find her treatment entirely reprehensible. The objectification of women as sexual objects or breeders pervades the novel. Adultery and worse are accepted without much fuss.

The father leaves every evening (every evening!), returning in the early hours of the morning after drinking, carousing, spending time with friends and lovers. He sees no serious conflict with his behavior and his religion. The most important thing to the father is his image; everything is subjugated to view of himself he wants presented to the world. He also has two sides that never meet: the witty, amusing, helpful friend who laughs and enjoys life and the stern disciplinarian at home who never smiles, knit picks constantly, and indulges in tantrums. The ultimate control-freak, he can brook no independent thought or desires on the part of his wife or children.

Mother and daughters rarely leave the house. Their confinement is much greater than the wives and daughters of friends; in a society that closely guards women, these women are even more isolated and subservient. Amina is allowed to visit her mother a few times a year, but only in a carriage and chaperoned by her husband. Heaven forbid that anyone glimpse his wife. Although Amina does make one foray out into the world to visit a mosque, the results are disastrous, and al-Jawad tells her to leave his house. He does not divorce her (as he did his first wife who had a more independent mind and resents his confinement and beatings enough to leave him and return to her parents) and eventually allows her to return, but the calculated cruelty of the punishment is accepted by all concerned. Sadly, in order for this treatment of women to work, it has to be supported by the women. Tradition assures the women's complicit support by their own subservient, obedient behavior.

Yasmin, the son by a previous marriage, is a libertine like his father, but is a much more companionable character. When the extent of his failure at self-control becomes evident (will not reveal this spoiler), the reader is disappointed that the one character who had a fun-loving approach is so seedy. Not that the family holds this against him for long... I'm not sure which behavior offends me more, Yasmin's or the family's much greater concern for how it will appear to others, how it will reflect on them.

Fahmy, the middle son, is eighteen when the novel opens and in love with a neighbor, but his request to his father to arrange the marriage is denied. He is a gentle and thoughtful young man, an idealist, and he eventually becomes wrapped up in the nationalist fervor.

Kamal, the youngest son, is not yet crushed entirely by his father and is pampered by the older siblings. He has a certain charm and openness that hardly seems possible in the otherwise oppressive atmosphere.

Now, after all of the above rambling, I have to say that the style of the writing (or the translation) does not make any of this seem overbearing or oppressive to the degree it sounds. How to explain the contradiction? We are totally immersed in the society, the culture, the minds of the participants. The author does not give opinions except through the words, thoughts, and behavior of the characters.

The novel is very slow and quite long. We move through the days and experiences of the characters at a languid pace. There are abrupt endings to several events. We might be expecting more about some of them (the marriages of Aisha and Khadija, the father's affair with a neighbor, the birth of Aisha's child, etc.), but the next chapter often begins days or months later with no further reference.

This review may sound critical, and yet, I thought it was an excellent novel, an eye-opening look at the smallest details of family life in a patriarchal culture. I needed occasional breaks from it, it was quite long and my tolerance for the father reached its limits, but the novel is rich, complex, and informative.

Fiction. Family drama/ foreign culture. 1956. 498 pages.