Send Me

We're off to the beach for the weekend, so not much time for blogging today. Thought I'd share this author interview from QPB's insider column. I really appreciated the humorous take on family dysfunction in Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother. Patrick Ryan's debut novel Send Me also looks into family dynamics, though from a rather different angle. Based on the rave reader reviews on QPB and Amazon, I may have to order this one. [below interview excerpted from qpb.com]

Associate Editor Justin Ravitz recently sat down with author Patrick Ryan to discuss his new book, Send Me
JUSTIN RAVITZ: In a nutshell, what's your book about?
PATRICK RYAN: It's a big nutshell: it's about people trying to do the right thing, and screwing up, and my trying to understand why they screwed up. I think that nobody really knows how to be a good mother, father or sibling. It was about having compassion for all of these people. And giving a panoramic view of this family.
JR: I loved the atypical structure. You told the story of this family through six members of this family, by jumping back and forth randomly over 40-odd years. We enter each scene nearly mid-action, and this odd sense of dislocation sheds a remarkable kind of beauty and nuance to each scene. What inspired this approach?
PR: Thanks! I never wanted to write a traditional novel. I never saw it as having one arc. I think that when people experience life, we don't experience it chronologically. In our heads we make these leaps to memories from when we were five to now. I wanted to try to mirror that. Each of the six main characters has his or her own arc, and sometimes they overlap.
[...]
JR: What, if anything, unifies this fractured, dysfunctional Kerrigan/Ragazzino family? What brings them together?
PR: I think that each one of them arrives at a place where he or she is very much aware of his or her shortcomings and culpability. But I didn't want any of them to be heroes or villains or "good" or "bad" people, necessarily. I don't believe in those pure extremes; everyone's sort of in the middle. I wanted them to be messed up and aware of that. That's what life is, that's who we are.
JR: Could you tell me a little bit about yourself?
PR: It's either an inspiring or pathetic story (laughs). I was born in DC, I grew up in Florida, went to Florida State, got my MFA at Bowling Green State in Ohio, and then embarked on a long series of jobs, one after another, and wrote the whole time. I was a housepainter, bartender, teacher, waiter, retail, I worked at a law firm . . . Between 1988 and starting Send Me in 2003, I wrote, finished, revised and sent around seven novels that I was never able to publish. I also started and got about halfway through eight more. All those years, it was always about having some crummy job that I had no interest in so that I could write. I wrote five days a week. And every book I finished I thought "this is the one, this is the one." But I got really down and depressed before I started Send Me. This sounds so corny - I thought "I can't obsess every single day about having my book published. I have to let go of the prize." And something clicked in my head and I just relaxed a bit. And I started writing better.
JR: Are there parts of yourself, your own history and family amidst these characters?
PR: Almost all of the events themselves are made up. The one thing that's really true is that my mother does think that she's a reincarnated model from a Vermeer painting (laughs).
JR: I have my own theories, but what's the meaning of your title?
PR: To me it's three things: 1) Deliver me from all this. 2) Sort of an abbreviated "you send me," I always thought that meant "I get a big kick out of you," but I found out that in the fifties it actually meant "You make me horny." (laughs) 3) You're driving me away from you, send me out of here, get me out of here. [...]

The House on the Strand

I first encountered Daphne du Maurier as a teenager when my grandmother loaned me her worn copy of Rebecca. I remember being completely enthralled, holding my breath with every turn of the page. Had I not had such high expectations for my reading of The House on the Strand due to my fond memory of Rebecca, I may not have been left quite as unsatisfied. This wasn’t a bad novel, just a bit disappointing. In fact, the premise is interesting. I tend to enjoy plots alternating between the twentieth/twenty-first centuries and the Middle Ages or Renaissance—Michael Crichton’s Timeline, Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book, The Intelligencer, The Eight, even the not-so-well-written Da Vinci Code, though the last three are not truly time travel books, but rather mysteries solved with clues from the past.

Plot summary from daphnedumaurier.org:

“Dick Young has been lent a house in Cornwall by his friend Magnus Lane, a professor of bio-physics. He has agreed, while he is there, to act as guinea-pig for a new drug that Magnus has discovered; and the small bottles which hold it are waiting for him in the laboratory at Kilmarth.
With no idea of what the result will be, he takes the prescribed dose - and without warning finds himself back in the fourteenth century, in this same Cornish countryside. During the following days he takes successive 'trips'. Each lasts only a short time, but always he is back in the same surroundings. Invisible, inaudible, he finds that he is a kind of alter ago of Roger Kylmerth, steward to Sir Henry Champernoune, lord of the manor of Tywardreath. He witnesses intrigue, adultery, murder, feeling himself personally involved.
Are the experiences hallucinatory, a subconscious escape from dissatisfaction with his own marital life? Or has he really traveled back in time? This is the question Dick asks himself.
More and more he grudges the hours spent away from these people of long ago, resentful of the time that must be given to his loving though suspicious wife and to his stepsons, intruders into his secret life. With immense skill, the tension is kept on both levels, and, as Dick grows ever more obsessed by his trips into the past, so the reader begins to share his addiction, and to find that past and present become inextricably, perilously mixed - until the final, stunning climax.”

It was the limited character development that truly frustrated me in this novel. Dick Young seems to me a rather shallow individual. We know very little about him, only that he recently ended a career in editing due to displeasure with his job. Dick is a malcontent whose curiosity for the fourteenth century is piqued simply because it is different from his present—perhaps equally complicated, but more logical to him. He seeks refuge from a nagging wife and two stepsons at his friend’s country estate and his brief forays into the past deepen this estrangement. Since Dick is merely a passive observer of the past and has no interaction with the families whose history he is tracing, these passages of the novel have an artificial quality. We witness along with Dick only isolated events in fourteenth-century Kilmarth and have little opportunity to develop sympathies for these characters. Furthermore, Dick’s interactions with the people in his present hardly earn our compassion, either. He conceals his drug-induced time travel from his wife and this growing obsession becomes his only motivation, causing his family relationships to rapidly deteriorate. Du Maurier is quite successful at depicting the single-mindedness of an addict completely dependent on his drug of choice. I only wish that she could have drawn me into her story in the way that her character was drawn to his vice.

If you are looking for a good time travel book, try Connie Willis or Audrey Niffenegger’s excellent book The Time Traveler’s Wife. And for a satisfying Du Maurier read, pick up one of her more celebrated books. There is a reason this one is obscure.

The troublesome task of writing

Sitting here and trying to make myself write makes me want to scream. AAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! I would rather do anything other than write my dissertation. I would rather read or take a walk outside; I would rather iron and fold clothes; I even would rather scrub disgusting pots and pans or worse, the drain in our shower. I am so (figuratively) sick of the thought of it that I feel (physically) sick when I try to do it. Why is this? Is it the effort? Yes. Is it fearing that I have nothing to say? Yes. Is it fearing that I won’t finish by my “deadline”? Yes. Avoidance is just easier. But avoidance brings guilt. And with guilt comes aggravation, irritation and general disappointment in self. Everyone says “just push through,” “just divide it into smaller chunks,” but I “just” want to smack them all. Do I really want to get my PhD? I thought that I did. It would open more doors in my future (even if I decide not to take them) and I suppose that options are good to have. It would mean giving up if I didn’t continue to write and that is not the greatest character trait. Do I dislike the thought of leaving this part of my life incomplete more than I dislike the thought of writing? Yes. Then what’s the problem? Why all the inner turmoil? Why do I struggle so? It’s such an enormous, daunting task. That’s why. But, lots of people have done it. People do it every day. If they can do it, so can I. Right?

Cats, the booklover's companion

I just received two books in the mail today from QPB: The Book Thief and The Book of Lost Things. I am eager to start both, particularly The Book of Lost Things. I couldn't resist flipping through it and simply based the two epigraphs, this is a book after my heart:

▪ Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told to me in my childhood than in the truth that is taught by life. -Friedrich Schiller

▪ Everything you can imagine is real. - Pablo Picasso

Today I have cats on my mind. There seems to be something about booklovers’ personalities that draw them to cats. A generalization, I know, but it does seem to ring true more often than not. I have seen references to cats on several book blogs, most recently at Danielle’s A Work in Progress. In her tribute to the glorious lethargy of cats she remarks: “I think cats have the right idea sometimes--find the sunniest, most comfortable place in the house and just take a nap.” I most heartily agree. I envy my Emmy sometimes, basking in the sun before the glass doors or atop my desk, sprawled out across my papers where she has a view of the hummingbird feeder through the window. Occasionally, for a special treat, I’ll swivel my desk lamp towards her—she enjoys the warmth of her own personal heat lamp. Now, that’s not a bad life in my opinion. I’m thinking of my good friend Megan today, who recently lost her cat Loba to cancer. Hang in there Megan!

I’ve always liked T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939). Of course, the original poems are decidedly more enjoyable than Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical adaptation. This excerpt reminds me of our gray tabby:

The Old Gumbie Cat

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;
Her coat is of the tabby kind, with tiger stripes and leopard spots.
All day she sits upon the stair or on the steps or on the mat:
She sits and sits and sits and sits - and that's what makes a Gumbie Cat!

But when the day's hustle and bustle is done,
Then the Gumbie Cat's work is but hardly begun.
And when all the family's in bed and asleep,
She slips down the stairs to the basement to creep.
She is deeply concerned with the ways of the mice -
Their behaviour's not good and their manners not nice;
So when she has got them lined up on the matting,
She teaches them music, crocheting and tatting.

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;
Her equal would be hard to find, she likes the warm and sunny spots.
All day she sits beside the hearth or in the sun or on my hat:
She sits and sits and sits and sits - and that's what makes a Gumbie Cat!

A Good Book and a Pot of Tea

Today being June 1st, I am beginning my two reading challenges: Southern Reading Challenge & Summer Reading Challenge Round 2. For SRC2, I am challenging myself to read half of the books in the list at left. That will make 10 total for me this summer, including my three for the southern challenge. I can do this!

What better way is there to kick off my summer reading properly than to treat myself to some new books and teas? There are few more delicious combinations.

The FedEx man made my day yesterday when he brought me a small brown package from Adagio Teas. I recently discovered this company and so far, I am impressed. The selection is great; prices aren’t bad and delivery is fast. This time, I ordered the rooibos vanilla and the apricot green tea—I’m drinking a pot of this one right now and it’s quite yummy; the apricot is very delicate. Would be arguably more pleasant paired with a good novel rather than required dissertation research, but will look forward to that treat this weekend as I hope to find the time to finish my current read, Daphne du Maurier’s The House on the Strand. Made a trip to our local bookshop last night and picked up my next two picks: Mansfield Park and The Jane Austen Book Club. These will be immediately followed by one of my southern picks, of course.