John Banville’s The Sea was the 2006 Man Booker awardee, and I only now just finished it. I’ll admit it“The past beats inside me like a second heart.”
John Banville’s The Sea was the 2006 Man Booker awardee, and I only now just finished it. I’ll admit it was not the thing I usually picked up to read, so it took a long time to get through, and for possibly three quarters of it I was just grudgingly admiring of its writing but increasingly resentful of the main character, whom I like less and less as time goes on. Convinced to read it yet? Wait for it, as they say. I did, but only because my friend Rex told me it was one of the best books he had ever read. Oh, come on Rex, this guy here is so boring!
(I'm being a little bit facetious here, as I do not choose my books because I "like" the main characters. But play along, if you are willing.)
Max’s wife Anna has died, and so he returns--escapes? It seems so--to a place near the sea where his parents had taken him when he was a boy. He’s an art critic, not writing his critical biography of Bonnard--who did portraits of his wife bathing in tubs, among other things. Anna also liked to bathe in tubs, but Max never fully loved her, never appreciated her wanting to photograph with social class in mind. Nor does he take seriously his daughter’s similar commitments, nor does he reach out to her in her grief. So as you read, you know this is a book about grief, about memory, okay. Lovely writing, ho hum.
On memory: “There are times, they occur with increasing frequency nowadays, when I seem to know nothing, when everything I know seems to have fallen out of my mind like a shower of rain, and I am gripped for a moment in paralysed dismay, waiting for it all to come back but with no certainty that it will.”
But why is it this self-absorbed and stuffy old guy comes to the sea to reflect--not so much on his dead wife and needy daughter--but the Grace family, Connie, Carlo, Chloe, Myles, and their governess Rose? So this emerges at one point to be about the class envy that Max, raised by a single mother, experiences in hanging out with the Grace family, his boyhood lusts for the dramatically beautiful Mrs. Grace, and his first kisses with Chloe. Who cares?! You selfish bastard, your wife just died, and this is what you think about?!
Max seems so shallow (though he knows it): On self-knowledge: “I fancy, rather, that I expected too much, in the way of knowing. I know so little of myself, how should I think to know another?” “I was always a distinct no-one, whose fiercest wish was to be an indistinct someone.” “I had a sudden image of myself as a sort of large dark simian something slumped there at the table, or not a something but a nothing, rather, a hole in the room, a palpable absence, a darkness visible.” “To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all I have ever truly ever wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there, hidden from the sky's indifferent gaze and the air's harsh damagings.”
Oh, who cares about this nowhere man?! So I won’t tell you, but after so little happening, in often quaint, erudite, even pretentious language, everything happens all at once, in recasting the memories of youth. It’s one kind of book and then it is something quite different. I won’t tell you, except to say it took my breath away as these little self-deceptions come to be revealed.
On the sea, in incandescent prose: “Although it was autumn and not summer the dark-gold sunlight and the inky shadows, long and slender in the shape of felled cypresses, were the same, and there was the same sense of everything drenched and jewelled and the same ultramarine glitter on the sea. I felt inexplicably lightened; it was as if the evening, in all the drench and drip of its fallacious pathos, had temporarily taken over from me the burden of grieving.”
But you think it is one thing about the sea and then it is that and also utterly something else, something deeper and richer and completely surprising:
“There are moments when the past has a force so strong it seems one might be annihilated by it.”
I’m glad I hung in there and finished it, my first Banville after so many of his pseudonymously penned Benjamin Black mysteries, that I also love, though they move more quickly. Thanks, Rex!
One last evidence of his wit: “Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him.”...more
I read Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, by Maddie Mortimer, because it was longlisted for the 2022 Man Booker Prize. It was not subsequently shortlisteI read Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, by Maddie Mortimer, because it was longlisted for the 2022 Man Booker Prize. It was not subsequently shortlisted, which surprises me, since I ultimately admire it very much, but I know how unpredictable these awards committees can be. The Colony by Audrey Magee also did not make the cut, which I thought was great, too. Maybe it’s because these are first novels, and the committee feels you have to earn such a prestigious award? Who knows? It took me a while to truly engage with this book, but I came to like this book a lot.
Our Spectacular Bodies is about the death, from cancer, of a woman, Lia, who is also a wife (husband Harry) and mother of a teenage girl, Iris. So death is a common literary theme, and no one reading this hasn’t grieved the death of someone we love from cancer. So ho hum, boo hoo, right? Why write yet another book about the death of a woman? Well, Mortimer, whose own mother died of breast cancer, gets ambitious in trying to say something new and in a fresh and inventive way about the death of one family member.
Mortimer uses different types and type sizes, a range of perspectives, and a range of tones and colors, from sadness to humor, from lust to tears. It’s multi-generational, in that it reaches back to the youth of the dying artist Lia. We get her perspective, from the first and third persons, and--the most interesting--the malevolent cancer herself, invading and eating away at Lia’s body. Now I can think of many books where Death or Cancer plays a character, such as the children’s book The Book Thief, or Death in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal--even The Emperor of all Maladies assumes a kind of sentience to Cancer--and as I can recall they mostly are--like many evil characters in literature---the most interesting and formidable characters. Mortimer’s Cancer is a deliciously gleeful--and ultimately frightening--character, of course.
The book is very much about the body, no surprise; it’s categorized as women’s fiction, and it’s principally about a mother and daughter, so the various bodily acts and functions are seen largely from the perspective of women. Cancer and Lia--who become one in places, a plural first person--take us through Lia’s body, including the red Chemo treatment, taking us back to Lia’s past.
I haven’t spent a lot of time researching about this book, but I understand Mortimer was influenced by another experimental novel about grief, Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders, which also has so much going on. I’m less sad at the perhaps inevitable end as I am admiring of the various ambitions of this sometimes spectacular work, which just grew and grew on me in all its playful forms. Mortimer also takes on the issue of why we should care--as we do in most books---the death of individuals when millions die in earthquakes or wars and so on. Lia is no more nor less important than anyone who lives or dies. Family is where we live our lives, mothers are whom we (often) love, so all lives, all deaths matter, and creative ways of making sense of them matter....more
One of my top ten graphic novels of the year, In, a first graphic novel by Will McPhail, whose work is best known in the US through his New Yorker carOne of my top ten graphic novels of the year, In, a first graphic novel by Will McPhail, whose work is best known in the US through his New Yorker cartoons, maybe. I am told this is semi-autobiographical, as it features a guy who does illustration/art for a living. The guy has problems relating to people, doesn't know how to have conversations that get beyond the surface level, but he really wants to. He has had girlfriends, he has had a couple friends, but he is most connected to his sister, his nephew, and his mom, who understand him as socially distant though friendly, but they too know he needs to make real and deeper connections with humans.
At one point he meets and begins dating a woman, though he doesn't yet know how to talk with her. She's an oncologist, so he begins to ask her about that work, though--given his well-ingrained personality--his inclination is just to joke around a bit and have sex. But he knows this is not enough for her, nor for him. Then someone close to him gets sick--okay, it's cancer--so he needs to learn how to make connections there; this pushes him, makes it urgent.
Much of this is very moving; at one point his young nephew says he wants to see him more, and it is a poignant moment. All of it is delicately balancing wry humor (such as about coffee shops with silly names he visits daily) with poignancy. It's sad, it's funny, and sweet. The drawing is amazing, most of it black and white, except when he makes a human connection--asks good questions of others, mainly--we go into color (as with the Wizard of Oz--"that's a horse of a different color!"), and the paneled images have emotional resonance, are lyrical, more layered, more abstract.
Is the oncologist/cancer connection too "convenient" for the narrative (but then I think, if McPhail has written a semi-autobiographical story, then my comment may be perceived as insensitive)?! Well, this point occurred to me as I read it, but things like that do actually happen, of course, and I (an adult male who sometimes avoids uncomfortably intimate conversations myself) was nevertheless very moved by all of it, so I don't object to it on any grounds. Powerful, powerful book....more
“Save your tears for when your mother dies”--Something Michelle Zauner’s mother tells her when she is crying from a fall; apparently it is a Korean sa“Save your tears for when your mother dies”--Something Michelle Zauner’s mother tells her when she is crying from a fall; apparently it is a Korean saying
Crying in H Mart by musician Michelle Zauner is not I’m Glad my Mother Died, by Jennette McCurdy, nor Mommie Dearest, far from them; nor is it even Dancing at the Pity Party: A Dead Mother Graphic Novel. Mother-daughter books abound, as do mother grief stories. And memoirs about mothers by daughters are as varied as one might expect. This one is about a mother the author adores, through and through. Okay, I’m stalling. I think Crying at H Mart is a solid memoir and very nice tribute Michelle Zauner makes to her mother, who died of cancer at the age of 47, when her daughter was 25. It’s a great title--though I expected a little bit of irony or humor in it--nope, just crying--and there’s a great Korean food-mother connection in it.
Most of us know and remember our mothers through the food they made for us. So we can relate, many of us. And Korean food is the best thing about Zauner’s memoir. Zauner (who is mixed-race) finds her way to her mother through food, especially in the first chapter--crying in a Korean grocery store chain called H Mart--and in the end, as she tries to make her mom’s signature dishes. The food stories and recipes are both relatable and interesting. I have a lot of index cards in my mom’s penciled handwriting on them and like to make her recipes, too, as I run my finger lovingly over her written words from decades ago. My mother is the person I loved (love!) more than anyone else on the planet. So it's not that I don't get mother love or food-love connections.
I know this is a popular book, and 126 of my Goodreads friends have reviewed it, most of them women, most of them giving it rave reviews and five stars, so I tiptoe through this review now to say it’s--for me--yes, sure, a good book, a good first book, but not a great one. I have as I enter old age seen a lot of death and cancer and have read a lot about both. I don’t know Zauner’s music--Japanese Breakfast? Psychopomp?--though I like her voice; it’s a nice voice, she’s a singer!--in narrating her audiobook. Maybe that would have made me connect to it more? I dunno. I just think it is generally solid, well-written, but unsurprising in every way. But I am happy so many people love it and of course find it relatable in their grief for their mothers....more
Desjardins was encouraged by a ten-year old to write a cancer story with a happy ending and so here it is. Would you be more or less likely to read itDesjardins was encouraged by a ten-year old to write a cancer story with a happy ending and so here it is. Would you be more or less likely to read it if she had just titled it A Story About Cancer? This story, fictional, deals with a girl of fifteen who has been living with cancer since she was ten. The story begins as she and her mother and father walk to the doctor's office: "In just a few minutes, they're going to tell me how much time I have to live."
The narrative trick Desjardins plays at this point is to delay your hearing the answer until the very end. Periodically she returns to that long slow walk to hear the news, but we already know how it ends. It's like a Bunuel film, we walk, then we do something else, and then we walk again, and then we do something else, and then we keep on walking, seemingly endlessly. And walking to what? Whatever comes.
What we learn in this spare, evocative graphic story that also seems like a cross with a picture book for all-ages is what it feels like a young person to be living with cancer. How helpless you feel in each trip to the doctor. One nurse suggests that having a positive attitude is better for her and all around her, but many days she just thinks about what it will mean for her to die. That is always with her. She also thinks about her struggles with what seems like peripheral details such as the colors and smells of hospitals. Who knew interior design would be an obsession in a life or death story, but who loves hospitals, why should that be a surprise.
In the process she loses her best friend in the hospital to cancer, so of course, death is all round her and not just in her imagination. She also meets and falls in love with a boy, which makes things easier, in many ways, of course. At one point she is asked by her doctor how she is doing and she says she feels a little nauseous and dizzy lately. When? All the time, or in particular circumstances? "I told her that I almost always felt that way when I was with Victor. . . Anne burst out laughing and crossed out the notes she had just written. Then she turned to me and whispered, 'It sounds to me like you're in love.'"
I like the elegant, muted watercolors of Marianne Ferrer that promote reflection and a range of emotions, mostly leaning to hopeful. Because this is what Desjardins and Ferrer are also trying to tell us, if we get sick, as difficult as it is to hear, that being hopeful, that helps. I like the little Chagall moments Ferrer conjures--ach, that flying kiss near the end, so sweet!--and a few Matisse-like cut-outs, too.
Here's a happy, hopeful ending: Eight out of ten children who are diagnosed with cancer today are cured, Desjardins says.
And here's another happy ending: That ten-year-old girl who asked for the cancer story with a happy ending? Well, she lived long enough to read it; she also shared with Desjardins that she developed a relationship with a boy during her struggles with cancer, and the best yet: She's still alive, as of the printing of this book. That's a happy ending....more
This is a highly energetic, even at times effervescent graphic novel, almost completely wordless, with"What are you going to do now? Anything I want."
This is a highly energetic, even at times effervescent graphic novel, almost completely wordless, with script by Vera Cazot and wild, colorful illustrations by Julie Rocheleau. And the back cover describes the basics:
"She lost her left breast, her job and her guy. She doesn't know it yet, but this is the best day of her life."
So it's a book ostensibly about mastectomy, but obviously much more than that defines her. Not without attention to grief, madness, pain and loss, Cazot and Rocheleau's story is an allegory of hope and sometimes surreal hilarity, funnier and more fun than you would expect. I can tell you that when I saw the subject matter I was not looking forward to it, but I have a growing number of books in my gn-health shelf, and I knew I had to read it, especially after Hannah's review. And it is pretty amazing. Of course this story doesn't relate every version or approach to the situation; surely there are worse horror stories, but this one chooses to be inspiring, and I think it works....more
Geneviève Castrée died from cancer a couple years ago at 35. She left this board book for her daughter, 2, and it isn't quite finished. It was her lasGeneviève Castrée died from cancer a couple years ago at 35. She left this board book for her daughter, 2, and it isn't quite finished. It was her last work, and of course heartbreaking to read for all those reasons. It's a sweet love letter about the love bubble they were in together, and sweetly drawn, and something her daughter and family and all in similar situations can read again and again. I don't think of it now as a kid book, primarily, but as a board book for adults, mainly, a way to leave "last words" to your kid, as horrific as this sounds on some level. Unthinkable that she should die at such an earlier age, and so loving her kid, her little daughter, of course. But it happens, it happened, and she wrote this as one of the last things she had strength to do.
About five years ago, in 2013, when it was released from Drawn & Quarterly, I read her short book about growing up, Susceptible, and was impressed especially by the lovely drawing, contrasting the awful experiences she had growing up. I just read I am Not Okay with This by Charles Forsman and it reminds me of that. Some people are tough, and can handle hard things easier. Some are "susceptible" to damage. Yet Castrée kept creating, as illustrator and musician. Having finally read this, I want to read every thing she wrote and produced, a few short things.
I read a lot of books about grief, some of them for kids. But in reading this I was reminded of Anders Nilsen's Don't Go Where I can't Follow, by Anders Nilsen, which he in part constructed for his girlfriend as she was dying from cancer. Very intimate, not written for us to see, it's none of our business, but finally a privilege to see, something from which we can gain insight.
A link to Pampelmoussi, some music she did accompanied by drawings, which I am considering buying, but you get to hear some of the haunting music here:
A kind of hybrid prose and comics/cartoons memoir about the author's being diagnosed with (incurable) metastatic breast cancer at the age of only 37. A kind of hybrid prose and comics/cartoons memoir about the author's being diagnosed with (incurable) metastatic breast cancer at the age of only 37. One page has images, the next has an anecdote or reflection, and I guess I might have preferred more of one than the other.
I wasn't a fan of the illustrations (give her a break, maybe? While she calls herself an artist, this is her first foray into cartooning), but also in a way--I know this sounds crazy--I actually might have preferred her illustrating her struggles, focusing on the images to convey her experiences--to her prose. But I can say if you have cancer or know someone close to you that has cancer, this could be an important book for you. It has a very high Goodreads rating so far, so lots of people love it, find solace and fellow-feeling in it. A quick glance at some of the reviews confirms this, too.
I don't have cancer (I think) though I have a lot of experience with family and friends who have or have had it. I also have read a number of cancer memoirs and specifically graphic memoirs about living with cancer and thought this was good, honest, real, useful, pretty engaging. And sad, of course, though she is hopeful her team can turn "incurable" into "chronic condition."...more
When I first picked this up at the library I thought it was going to be some kind of dark mashup about a guy's cancer and how it feels to have cancer,When I first picked this up at the library I thought it was going to be some kind of dark mashup about a guy's cancer and how it feels to have cancer, as if it were some dark murder mystery. I read a lot of graphic memoirs and novels about health issues, and more than a few about cancer. And then, to see that the art is so quick-sketched as to be almost baffling, even ugly. And I was unfamiliar with the author and illustrator. I set it aside for a few days, not sure it would be worth my time.
No, it wasn't quite what I expected, but was in a way much more. The book was released serially in 2009 on Kindle, and just now in late 2016 in hardcover. It's a noir detective story about a guy, Frank Armstrong, who gets the biggest case of his life--to find the daughter of a mobster and kill her--on the same day he is diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. As Duane Swiercznski points out in his preface, hard-boiled detectives are always getting bonked on the head, and authors are ridiculously describing the effects of such hits. But here our hero, down on his luck, old, a long time drunk, broken from his love, a veritable cliche of a detective, now has to contend with hallucinations, migraines, seizures, and a reality warping twist on time. And it feels real, not just like someone knocked out and "shaking off" a serious concussion as usually happens.
The girl he finds he confuses with his old girlfriend, he thinks he's back in time, he's in the future, he's constantly struggling with saving the girl and trying to maintain some semblance of equilibrium, and it is pretty affecting, I think. This deluxe hardcover edition includes a sketchbook, an interview with the author, an afterword by him, a separate story in the world of our hero, and the original pitch for the series, where the author admits some echoes with stories such as Memento.
The art of Noel Tuazon seems, finally, great, appropriate to the rough and ready noir intention, and a dark and tenuous grip on reality both for him and for us. The girl seems like his girlfriend, it's hard to tell the difference for him, so why should it be any different for us? He loses touch with reality, and we do. This is really an impressive indie comic that all readers of detective fiction should read. And maybe, those who want insights into brain cancer, which Fialkov did his homework about....more
The graphic memoir of Hayden's relationship to her breasts, with each chapter focusing on some aspect of them and how she is defined by them in any giThe graphic memoir of Hayden's relationship to her breasts, with each chapter focusing on some aspect of them and how she is defined by them in any given stage of her life. An illustrator and fiction writer, Hayden published Underwire in 2011, and in it I liked her original and attractive style and snarky sense of humor. I just thought it was okay for a first effort. She says she got the idea for this project after reading Marisa Acocella Marchetto's Cancer Vixen, as she herself is a breast cancer survivor, and she thought then how she might expand on the subject, broaden the topic to include her view of her body, her relationships with men, and her relationships with her family, whom to a person don't like to talk about themselves much at all compared to Hayden.
Hayden's mom is a breast cancer survivor, but she didn't think she wanted "to dwell on it." Hayden does indeed want to dwell on it, for more than 340 pages, and for me it was maybe a bit long, maybe just a little too expansive and detailed in all aspects of the double mastectomy and reconstruction and her relationships to her husband and parents and kids, but since I am not the primary audience for this book, I am sure most readers will not complain. Her most supportive person in the process is her husband, whom she dedicates the book to, but she has lots of support, generally. Her greatest support is her hilarious and a little bit crude sense of humor. There's a lot about self image as it relates to her breasts, quite a bit of frank and funny talk about sex, and then there's the main part, her cancer and all the other cancer she encounters through the loss of friends that most of us can relate to.
As I said, I can't imagine she thought her primary audience for this was men. I just happen to have read a lot of cancer survivor (and other health) memoirs in the past few years. I have really never read anything quite like this story, so refreshingly frank and informative and even occasionally fun on this topic. When you read superhero comics (as I do) or are otherwise bombarded with breasts on social media and magazines and films, as we all are, you have a sort of stereotypical relationship with images of women's breasts, of course.
But this isn't the straightforward anti-sexist story one might expect, though. Hayden is snarky and sexy and blunt and so many things about her breasts. Her story is really worth reading, for everyone. And the artwork is terrific, perfect for the lightness of her telling. Don't avoid this one because of the unsettling title or topic. Check it out, I'd say for sure....more
“Don't leave me here alone! It's your Sam calling. Don't go where I can't follow! Wake up, Mr. Frodo!”--Tolkien, Two Towers
All of Nilsen's work that I“Don't leave me here alone! It's your Sam calling. Don't go where I can't follow! Wake up, Mr. Frodo!”--Tolkien, Two Towers
All of Nilsen's work that I have read besides this work (Dogs and Water, Big Questions, Monologues on the Coming Plague) seems philosophical, deliberately spare, ironic, Samuel Beckett-like, stripped down emotionally and technically. Controlled, in a certain way. Not personal in any obvious sense. Maybe some people might see the work as flippant, as obviously anti-aesthetic, anti-Art School pretension. I find a kind of shyness, tenderness, vulnerability, humor in it. More philosophical than personal or political, certainly.
Then this terrible thing happens to him that sort of is the personal and professional Speed Bump it would be for anyone: His girlfriend Cheryl gets cancer and dies. And they are young, in their twenties. He does what many normal people do, but maybe more artists than non-artists, he puts together a sort of memorial for family and friends based on sketches and journaling he did while she was sick, then gets help publishing it in a limited edition by Drawn and Quarterly, then rethinks this as too personal and raw and possibly giving the impression of being self-serving, and stops production. Then five years later he decides to allow a second printing. As he says, love and loss comes to us all and we need to process it in our own ways, so maybe it's okay to share his way.
In many ways it is just as minimalist, and unpretentious, as any of his other work; it feels honest, and this is about him and her, her death from cancer, their experience of it together. I liked it very much, was moved by it in many ways, maybe especially by its honesty and simplicity. All these books on death (I think of Harvey Pekar's My Cancer Year, too, though he writes that one) bring you back to other deaths you have faced, or they do this for me, I think, and that is enriching. It's also about how we memorialize the ones we love and lose. And what a great title, eh?...more
For those of you of of my friends curious (and brave enough to ask) whether I have cancer or are otherwise sick: No, I do not have cancer or anything For those of you of of my friends curious (and brave enough to ask) whether I have cancer or are otherwise sick: No, I do not have cancer or anything else life-threatening, as far as I know, thanks for your concern. I am reading as many stories of physical and psychological and neurological health as I can, to see how they navigate this tough terrain, personally and aesthetically and narratively. I don't much like this woman, a New Yorker cartoonist from the city, but the work is good and not self-pitying or heroic, but as funny and true to her spirit as she can be, and the story is helpful, I think, for all those facing very specific details about health and relationships. The color and humor and spirit help make this readable, and even enjoyable, I suspect, for those who want to do everything they can to avoid this topic. It isn't all academic for me, though, since I know I likely will die at some point, and will face something terrible like cancer, etc. ALL of my five brothers and sisters are cancer survivors, and two of them were told to make out their wills and are still around twenty years later. So I am not naive, but curious how others face trauma of various kinds. Tolstoy has helped me in "The Death of Ivan Illych" and Anna Karenina (Vronsky's falling apart as his dear brother dies, as his wife deals calmly with every aspect of the crisis), but graphic memoirs have their own down to earth accessible ways of helping. ...more
At a glance, a lot of people didn't seem to like this book, but I did! The drawing is not great, not "professional" or impressive, but herein lies itsAt a glance, a lot of people didn't seem to like this book, but I did! The drawing is not great, not "professional" or impressive, but herein lies its strength for me, in a way; she makes herself accessible to us, she is not above us, she is one of us. The book catalogues her breast cancer.. and finally, she dies in 2006. Grim? Well, yes, but she is often very funny, and unfailingly honest in her wish to escape through tv, crossword puzzles…. anything not to think about it… and escapes through humor, of course. The point of this to counteract all the Cancer Made Me a Better Person or was a Gift or whatever books… she is often bitter, angry, confused, hurt… and filters that through humor. I liked it a lot and learned…. I read these books for the time I (might) get ill, to see how people cope. I learned. RIP, Miriam, and thanks....more