Sharp Objects and its subtext

Sharp Objects' subtext suggests that everyone needs mentors to guide them. Without mentors, people end up hard-edged and damaged. They can even, in some cases, become monstrous.

Mothers are a child's natural and first mentor but as the novel makes clear some people are terrible at mothering. 

As Camille wryly points out, "I just think some women aren't meant to be mothers. And some women aren't meant to be daughters."

According to Adora, Camille wasn't "good." What Adora means is that Camille wasn't vulnerable or weak the way Marian was. 

Marian dies when Camille is thirteen--a circumstance that further estranges her from her mother. Camille says, "Its impossible to compete with the dead." 

Camille has always felt unloved by her mother. She engages in risky behavior and becomes a cutter--perhaps purposely putting herself in danger to find maternal love. 

Like her half-sister Amma will find out, Camille's hometown is oppressive.

Camille decides to write about pain; that is, become a crime reporter.

After she leaves her hometown, she vows to never look back. She revels in the role of "cubby" or that of cub reporter. With her editor, Camille has finally found the mentor she needs.

But then Curry sends her back to her hometown to report on a story that he thinks will "make" her career. 

Sharp objects by Gillian Flynn

Gillian Flynn's debut novel, Sharp Objects is mesmerizing. The protagonist, Camille, returns to her hometown, a small, suffocating town in MO, to report on a couple of horrific crimes.

Two young girls have been murdered and in both cases their teeth have been removed. Both girls are tomboys yet otherwise have little in common. 

Camille is a Preaker, one of the leading families in the town yet she feels completely alienated from her family and their sprawling Victorian home.

Beneath a veneer of hospitality, Wind Gap is beseiged by bullies. Camille's half-sister, Amma, is one of the prettiest and meanest of the blondes.

Camille develops a relationship with one of the investigators but refuses to let her guard down. Like everyone else in the town, she holds on to her secrets. 

Many are convinced that one of the deceased girls' brothers, John Keene, is the killer. 

Sharp Objects has been turned into an HBO miniseries with Amy Adams. 

Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

This is an absolute stunner in every sense of the word--rich prose, tight plotting, and imaginative twists and turns. 

The Company has manufactured biotech that wreak havoc upon the City. The actions of Mord, a man-made bear-like creature, and his proxies cause the Magician and her pseudo-children to rebel. 

Even before the rebellion, however, the City has been wrecked, leaving many scavengers. Rachel, who lives in the Balcony Cliff with Wick, has learned the art of scavenging. 

Though there is a gap in her memories, Rachel remembers once living on an island. Later, as the waters rose, she became a climate refugee and moved to the City.

Perhaps she sees something of herself in the creature, Borne, who helplessly clings to Mord's flank. She nurtures him yet she doesn't know exactly what he is. 

No one does, not even Borne himself. For a time, he ponders if he is a biotech weapon created by the Company. Wick suggests that they deconstruct him to see what he is but Rachel feels outraged. He is a "person" in her eyes yet he at first seems little more than a plant with eyes. 

Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir by Beth Kephart

I took a memoir writing class at the University of Kentucky. I wish we had Beth Kephart's book, Handling the Truth.

One of the class discussions at the life writing class I took was how people react to memoir. How they react to seeing themselves portrayed in memoir?

Often their recollection is different, which is natural, but sometimes the people that populate your memoir feel affronted.

Kephart deals with this early on, "Its obvious, isn't it? Memoir making is a hazardous business. People are involved. Their feelings. Their reputations. Their relationships to you..."

Decoding the Weather

If you're showing PBS's Decoding the Weather at your public library, keep this list of eco-themed books in mind. 

These "climate change" themed books would make excellent book discussion or common reads:

Bacigalupi, Paolo. The Water Knife.
Jemison, N.K. The Fifth Season.
Mandel, Emily. Station Eleven. 
Miller, Sam. Blackfish City.  
Roberts, Nora. Year One. 
Wright, Alexis. The Swan Book.

Writers

“Writers don't write from experience, although many are 

hesitant to admit that they don't. ...If you wrote from

 experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. 

Writers write from empathy.”

Nikki Giovanni.

Attica Locke's Bluebird, Bluebird

Set in East Texas, this murder mystery looks at crime through the eyes of Texas Ranger, Darren Matthews. Darren's 9/11, as he calls it, was the murder of an innocent black man in Jasper, TX.  Sadly,  his favorite Uncle has been killed in an unrelated incident. 

Both incidents compel Darren to forsake law school for law enforcement.  Deciding to continue his Uncle's line of work, Darren works hard to become a Texas Ranger.

The more he succeeds, however, the more his marriage deteriorates. Even with his marriage in shambles, Darren cannot help investigating a pair of murders in Lark, TX. Both bodies--that of an African American man and a white woman--were found in the bayou behind Geneva's cafe.

One of his obstacles is the local sheriff who wants to limit the Ranger's role as much as possible. Darren suspects the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas may be involved but the local sheriff wants to pretend they don't exist in his county.

Lark has its share of family secrets; even Geneva Sweet, owner of Geneva's cafe harbors her own.

Darren needs to find a way to investigate both murders without upsetting the locals, the deceased's ex-wife, and Geneva, whom he comes to respect.

This tightly plotted thriller entertains as well as explores race relations in a small town in Texas.

My Real Children by Jo Walton

This is the startling story of a woman who remembers two different versions of her life. 

Pat's life takes two completely different trajectories. 

In one version she has four children. She chooses the safe but disparaging partner, Mark.

In another version of her life, where she is known as Trisha, she rejects Mark and chooses an unconventional lifestyle. She falls in love with a woman, writes guidebooks to Italy, and has children with a friend.

"Character is destiny," postulated Heraclitus. In this novel, however,  one choice changes not only a woman's life but alters world history and politics as well. 

My Real Children is an intriguing thought exercise but not really satisfying. Some of the turns of events in both realities are heartbreaking.

 
 

Whale Road Review, Summer Issue, 2018

My favorite poems are poems that teach e.g. "On the Occassion of Eating Bird's Nest Soup With Trung and Kim" by Rachel Barton.

The poem explores the notion of how everything is connected through a food chain. A woman eats bird's nest soup, a delicacy in China, and contemplates how everything is connected as the swifters rise into view.

The soup, she admits, is flavorless. She marvels that even the spit of the swifters, which the birds use to construct their nests, is a "jewel."

Another instructive nature poem, "Whale Fall Deadsong Heavenly Blues #17," by Christopher Todd Anderson compares a whale carcass to a cathedral. 

...Boneworms
humble themselves in the chapel of her heart,

decapods haunt her lungs’ cloisters. 

Later, its clear that the carcass is not a church but a universe. However, both are impressive and big so really a church and a universe are interchangeable:

...Creatures

born here, in the interstices of bone and blubber,

think this is the whole universe: cell-rot sky

and jaw-cave homeland, a history founded on decay

See the Summer issue of Whale Road Review,

www.whaleroadreview.com

Book Review: Mister Tender's Girl

Quite possibly there's no worst feeling than be watched, scrutinized or stalked. Mr. Tender's Girl captures the nightmare of being observed by a group of online "fans." 

At fourteen, Alice Hill is a victim of a horrible crime. Her father's creation, Mr. Tender, the devious hero of the eponymous graphic novel, has inspired two of her friends to stab her. 

To escape the media and the sensationalism of the crime, Alice, who is British, changes her name and goes to America. 

She thinks this is enough to protect her anonymity until a strange package arrives--the last book in the Mr. Tender series.

Her father, who died in London, never finished the Mr. Tender series. In fact, he never penned another drawing after the vicious attack on his daughter occurred. So, where did the package, postmarked from England, come from? 

The graphic novel is mostly blank but a few frames depicted her apartment in Manchester, MA convince Alice someone is watching her. 

She discovers that she is the "star" of an underground online community that have been discussing her case for years. They have been collecting and posting photographs of her, her house, her coffee shop.
But that's not all. Alice is also being stalked by an associate of an ex-boyfriend who tries to extort money from her. The associate comes to the coffee shop demanding cash or he will implicate Alice in her ex's crimes.

This is a taut, psychological thriller that was inspired by two true life events--the Slenderman stabbings and the Theo Van Gogh killing in Amsterdam.

What I liked best about this novel was the character development of Alice. Though she is a victim and isolated in the beginning, she emerges as a self-aware protagonist who is in charge of her own life.

Coding club?

We aren't anywhere near Christmas but here's a simple tutorial to make a Christmas tree using CSS.

http://www.cssviking.com/css-christmas-tree#comment-2483

Cssviking.com originally posted this in 2012 but it would make a good exercise for coding clubs.

.ctree {
    background-color: #FFFFFF;
    border: 1px solid black;
    margin: 15px;
    height: 350px;
    position: relative;
}
.ctree .trunk {
    border-color: brown transparent;
    border-style: solid;
    border-width: 0 14px 300px;
    bottom: 0;
    left: 50%;
    height: 0px;
    position: absolute;
    width: 0;
}
.ctree .branches {
    border-bottom-left-radius: 50% 20px;
    border-bottom-right-radius: 50% 20px;
    border-color: green transparent;
    border-style: solid;
    border-width: 0 100px 120px;
    bottom: -270px;
    height: 0px;
    left: -100px;
    position: absolute;
    width: 0;
}
.ctree .branches.middle {
    border-bottom-left-radius: 50% 15px;
    border-bottom-right-radius: 50% 15px;
    border-width: 0 80px 100px;
    bottom: -176px;
    left: -80px;
}
.ctree .branches.top {
    border-bottom-left-radius: 50% 12px;
    border-bottom-right-radius: 50% 12px;
    border-width: 0 60px 80px;
    bottom: -100px;
    left: -60px;
}
.ctree .band {
    background-color: transparent;
    border-color: white;
    border-style: solid;
    border-width: 6px;
    border-radius: 103px;
    clip: rect(152px, 260px, 260px, 82px);
    margin-bottom: 15px;
    height: 200px;
    right: -50px;
    margin-left: -165px;
    position: absolute;
    bottom: -110px;
    width: 200px;
}
.ctree .middle .band {
    bottom: -92px; 
    clip: rect(162px, 260px, 260px, 95px);    
    right: -50px;
}
.ctree .top .band {
    bottom: -77px; 
    clip: rect(172px, 260px, 260px, 110px);    
    right: -50px;
}
.ctree .star {
    border-color: yellow transparent;
    border-style: solid;
    border-width: 0 30px 21px;
    -moz-border-end-style:dashed !important;
    display: block;
    height: 0px;
    left: -28px;
    position: absolute;
    top: -10px;
    -moz-transform: rotate(35deg);
    -ms-transform: rotate(35deg);
    -webkit-transform: rotate(35deg);
    transform: rotate(35deg);
    width: 0px;
}
.star:before {
    border-color: yellow transparent;
    border-style: solid;
    border-width: 0 9px 21px;
    -moz-border-end-style:dashed !important;
    content: '';
    display: block;
    height: 0;
    left: -22px;
    position: absolute;
    top: -14px;
    -moz-transform: rotate(-35deg);
    -ms-transform: rotate(-35deg);
    -webkit-transform: rotate(-35deg);
    transform:rotate(-35deg);
    width: 0;
}
.star:after {
    border-color: yellow transparent;
    border-style: solid;
    border-width: 0 30px 21px;
    -moz-border-end-style:dashed !important;
    content: '';
    display: block;
    height: 0px;
    left: -34px;
    position: absolute;
    top: 3px;
    -moz-transform: rotate(-70deg);
    -ms-transform: rotate(-70deg);
    -webkit-transform: rotate(-70deg);
    transform: rotate(-70deg);
    width: 0px;
}

On What Matters

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

William Bruce Cameron, "Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking," 1963. 

Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction

Did you know there is a Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction?

The prize is given to works that depict lawyers in society and their power to effect change. 

James Grippando's Gone Again won last year's award. 

Mother Mother by Koren Zailckas

Violet Hurst's family is a vortex of toxicity. Nearly everyone is a narcissist, liar, or addict, an abuser an enabler, or some combination.

After a drug-fueled night that Violet has trouble remembering, she is sent to a mental health clinic. Her mother, Josephine, insists that she has tried to hurt her brother, Will.


Though she can't remember the incident, Violet thinks she has been framed. She does not believe she would intentionally hurt Will.

What happened that night is slowly unfolded through the eyes of two of the novel's characters, William and Violet. 

Rose, who ran away from home before the incident, has her own emotional problems. Though readers never get her point of view, she blames her mother for pressuring her to have an abortion--a decision that has left her emotionally scarred. 

Trapped in lock down, Violet has a hard time discerning what is happening at home. She tries to contact Rose because she thinks her sister is on her side.  

Violet's yearns to be emancipated from her psychopathic mother, Josephine. This wish becomes even stronger when she learns the depth of her mother's deceit.

This is a novel by talented writer who writes with confidence and dark humor. While its a great read, it may not be a great Mother's Day present. 

"With Time Their Wings Fade" by Erika Swyler

This story combines loneliness with magical realism, the uncanny, canning, and longing.

El has lived with almost unbearable loneliness--visiting almost no one for twenty years in a house so far from town. Mercy is the only one who visits because she sells her canned vegetables for her in town.

Anyone, who longs for something, will identify with this woman. 

In this story, El has a stack of unused diapers in her closet and jars of tomatoes and other vegetables. Never having had the children she expected to have, she ends up with a cache of diapers.

She buries sparrows and bluebirds in unused diapers when they accidentally hit themselves against her glass window. They seem to do that frequently even after her strange house guest, a boy covered in dust, arrives.

The descriptions in this story are wonderful. The sparrow weighs less than "a breath of dust."

The boy, too, is made of dust:

"The cat was on the doorstep. Behind her was a child, brown, a layer of dirt covering every inch of his skin, making it velvet. His eyes were like his skin; soft, dark. A quick tilt of his head brought to mind hiccups or a sneeze. Four or five, she figured him, and without a stitch on but the dirt."

He appears to have wings that will not wash off:

Where skinny shoulder blades should have ended, they began, two shadows sprouting from the child’s back. Clouds, wings made of dust.

The wings are uncanny yet Mercy, El's only friend, tells her not to mind his strangeness. Children do not feel different until someone tells them they are different. 

The boy brings more and more children to the house--two little girls and a boy. El and her husband, Davis, a mason, contact the Sheriff but no one has reported missing children.

The mysterious boy clings to El's legs. He is mostly non-verbal but seems wiser beyond his years. He says "not yet," when she asks him his name. 

El finds homes for the other children; these children bring brightness to the people who have led dull lives like Mercy and Jeanne. 

The story tells readers that grief , like the uncanny wings, fade over time. 

Even though El loses Davis, she finds this unnamed boy who takes his rightful place beside her.

https://catapult.co/stories/fiction-with-time-their-wings-fade

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Dark Matter is an unforgettable novel with a horrifying premise. Kidnapped at gunpoint by an unknown assailant, Jason Dessen is forced to drive to an abandoned power station. He is given a drug that knocks him unconscious.

Later, Jason wakes to find that his assailant has hijacked his life.  Jason finds himself questioned by a room full of strangers. 

Years ago, Jason had abandoned his scientific research to become a professor at an average university and have a family. Waking up in this aberrant world, Jason realizes that none of the life he knows and loves has ever happened. 

In this parallel world, Jason pursued scientific research. He ended his relationship with his girlfriend before she had his son, Charlie. 

Using a device (a "box") his alternate self created, Jason escapes. He hopes to find his previous life, even if it means looking for one life among infinite lives. While taking a trip through the multiverse, Jason is met with danger, heartbreak, and surprises.

The novel asks several philosophical questions that are chilling in their implications. Overall, this is an entertaining thriller, even if there are a few quibbles and unanswered questions.  

Dark Matter will soon become a feature film. 

If you like Dark Matter, you may also like Connie Willis' Cross Talk, Audrey Niffennegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, or Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven. 

Lariat Reading List

Lariat Reading List

This past Thursday I attended the Lariat Adult Fiction Reading List Author Section at the Texas Library Association conference. Authors Benjamin Ludwig, Matt Goldman and Lisa Wingate were there.

Each of the presentations was warm, funny, and inspirational. Ludwig who has won many awards for Ginny Moon said he wanted to write about a kid looking for her own voice. 

Ludwig is a teacher and he comes across many kids who don't speak in class because of their troubling circumstances. 

For reasons that make sense only to her Ginny tries to get her biological mother to kidnap her from her foster family. 

The second presenter used to write television screenplays for Seinfeld but has since turned his attention toward murder mysteries. 

His mystery, Gone to Dust, features Nils Shapiro who is faced with an enigmatic situation--a body covered in vacuum dust.

Goldman admits that one of the main reasons he added this detail to his crime novel was he hope to baffle fans of CSI.

Though he no longer writes comedies Goldman makes his characters relatable and quirky.

Before We Were Yours has been on the New York Times best seller lists since August 2017. Lisa Wingate explained that she first ran across the story of Georgia Tann while watching a history documentary. 

Wingate brings the character of Rill and the other "river rats" to life as only she can. Since Rill is the oldest, she feels responsible for the plight of her siblings. She feels doubly devastated when she and the others are taken to the Tennessee Children's Home Society.

The story of these siblings and the later generation that reconnects with them is a rare achievement.

For more books on the Lariat Reading list, please go to,

http://www.txla.org/Lariat