BOOK: The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro

The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro, 350 pages

celebrate the author; what's in a name: building; 3rd Canadian Book Challenge

My first Alice Munro book. I liked the way the short stories were connected, much like in Olive Kitteridge, with recurring characters. Munro has crafted a partially fact, partially fiction history of her family. She takes the past, beginning in Ettridge Valley, Scotland, and builds a possible story of the Laidlaws coming to America. The stories are based on legend, and her imagination. The second half of the book is ficitonalized memoir of Alice Munro's life, and her family. She states in the introduction that the stories are not true - "And the part of this book that might be called family history has expanded into fiction, but always within the outline of a true narrative."

Very readable, a version of one family's Canadian history, but with general family relationships.


Alice Munro, born July 10, 1931 was awarded the Man Booker International Prize in 2009 for her body of written work. "Generally regarded to be one of the world's foremost writers of fiction, her stories focus on the human condition and relationships through the lens of daily life."

BOOK: The Sister by Poppy Adams

The Sister by Poppy Adams, 275 pages

What's in a Name?: relative; 2009 TBR lite; DeweyBooks

If the measure of a book is how much it makes you think, then this book was great. There are several aspects to it: the behaviour of moths (the title this book is known by in the UK), the relationship amongst a fairly dysfunctional family, and the narrator herself.

The moths and their behavior is the family specialty, and the narrator, Virginia, has devoted her life to their study. The story begins with Virginia's sister, Vivien, returning to the family home after over 45 years away, with no contact at all. Why hasn't Vivien kept in contact with Virgina in all those years? Ginny's routine will be severely affected here, and it causes her to remember back on her life beginning during and after the second world war, at the time of her sister's birth. We travel back and forth between past and present, and some rather dramatic events, all of which we begin to see through Ginnie's rather suspect view of things. She continually states she is a scientist, and only looks at the facts, which covers up her lack of emotion and feeling.

Fairly early on, I gathered that the narrator was not all there, and that her view of events was severely restricted by whatever disorder she had. It felt like something was kept from her, and I would have liked to hear more from Vivien's point of view. But maybe it was not knowing what really happened that kept the story interesting; it is up to the reader to decide what really happened. I liked trying to see the parallels between the moths and Virginia, whereas I imagine many people skim over the moth stuff. It does get a bit tedious, and only the game of trying to see why it was written there kept me into that part of it. And that is why I think this book was so good: it really engaged me and had me trying to read between the lines.

The idea of the unreliable narrator, when I can recognize it, generally makes a book I will like. In ways I cannot particularly quantify, it reminded me of The Interloper, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and ??( there's another one that's not coming to me now, something British, with remembering). I read a few reviews that found the ending ambiguous, but I liked the ending, and thought it made sense, for Virginia.

BOOK: The Smell of the Night by Andrea Camilleri

The Smell of the Night by Andrea Camilleri, 221 pages

What's in a Name? Challenge: time of day

Another great Inspector Montalbano mystery, the sixth in the series. More Sicliy, more food, more cranky Montalbano, more great food, and great supporting characters. Once you find a series you like, it's like comfort food.

BOOK: The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa, 180 pages
translated by Stephen Snyder

herding cats; What's in a Name? profession; Orbis Terrarum: Japan; published in 2009

A never named housekeeper comes to work for a never named math professor. The professor had a head injury in a car accident many years before and only has eighty minutes of short term memory. The housekeeper and her son, nicknamed Root for his flat headed resemblance to the square root sign, form a little family with the professor.

This was a delightful little novel about families and what makes them, about being educated and life long learning, and a bit about math and baseball. I'm sure not everyone finds math a selling point as a topic, but I loved it. The professor falls back on math when he doesn't know what to do or say as it is the one area of his life that he knows, that he has some control over. Plus, we learn a little bit about prime numbers and perfect numbers and solving problems.

Librarything predicted I would love it, and it was bang on. Keep an eye out, I bought it at Costco, so it must have been mass published recently.

also reviewed by thoughts of joy, 3M at onemorecchapter,

BOOK: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 348 pages

Orbis Terrarum: Colombia; What's in a Name: medical condition; 1% well read; Latin American Challenge

Fiction or non-fiction? Genre?
fiction; it's described as a romance at Sparknotes which I'm not sure I agree with but I'll discuss that later


What led you to pick up this book?
It's a book I've heard of in many contexts: it's an Oprah pick from a few years ago, it makes many book lists of important books, Marquez is a Nobel winning author, and it seemed like a definitive book to read for the Latin American Challenge. Marquez's other book, One Hundred Years of Solitude has more polarizing reviews and I've seen a few reviews for this one that made me think it would be a better fit for me.

Summarize the plot, but don't give away the ending!
Florentino Ariza falls in love with Fermina Daza when they are teenagers. She ends up rejecting him and marrying a doctor and Florentino Ariza swears his undying love. Fifty-one years and 622 affairs later, he gets his chance to proclaim his love to Fermina Daza again.

What did you like most about the book?

I liked the setting and the time period - turn of the last century in some unknown Caribbean location. I was interested in seeing how the two main characters would end up together at the end.
At times the writing was lyrical and would lull me along with the story, but at other times I would read a paragraph twice to understand what was being described.
I liked Fermina Daza as a character. She seemed very strong, and opinionated in a time when women were not treated very well. She survived on her own terms for the most part and the men in her life dominated her only in the ways she let them.

What did you like least?
I didn't like that the chapters had no breaks within them. Fifty to seventy pages written with no pause, changing from character to character and from one back story to another.

I didn't like the details for minor characters that would appear for several paragraphs and then not appear again, mostly in describing Florentino Ariza's lovers.

The theme of love as a plague, a sickness didn't resonate with me. I thought Florentino wasn't really in love with Fermina, rather he saw her as some ideal that he had to possess. He never really knew her and by the time he got to know her, she wasn't the same person at all that he originally fell in love with. He could better be described as a stalker, watching her from a far, waiting and setting up situations for them to meet.

The depiction of aging as the Worst Thing Ever. The first character in the book, a friend of the doctor's kills himself rather than get too old; Fermina's daughter at one point proclaims that seventy year olds making love is 'disgusting.' The description of Fermina naked when she was seventy was not at all flattering and was used to show that women do not age gracefully, where as the male was not so graphically described - he just couldn't get it up after seeing her.

Have you read any other books by this author? What did you think of those books?
No, and I think I won't need to.

What did you think of the main character?
Florentino Ariza was a nymphomaniac who justified his use of women as 'being true' to his one true love, Fermina Daza. He treated women as objects and kept a record of his conquests. One of his 'lovers' was fourteen and under his care as her guardian. When Humbert Humbert did that in Lolita he was a pedophile, but Florentino is never judged for it.

Any other particularly interesting characters?
Some of Florentino Ariza's lovers were interesting but they began to run into each other in my mind.
I liked Fermina's cousin, Hildebrande, who had her own love problems and tried to provide opportunities to get Florentina and Fermina together when they were young.

Share a quote from the book:
I seldom notice quotes from a book. Random page opening found this example of the writing:

He had to repress the trembling that was almost as old as he was when he saw the beautiful woman of his dreams on her husband's arm, splendid in her maturity, striding like a queen from another time past the honor guard in parade uniform, under the the shower of paper streamers and flower petals tossed at them from the windows.

Share a favorite scene from the book.
I liked the boat ride near the end of the book for it's discussion about how the environment had been destroyed by the progress of various river enterprises, but this little sermon came out of nowhere and seemed like a big idea to discuss that hadn't been mentioned at all.

What about the ending?

It was okay, but the ending happened at the beginning and then the rest of the book shows how we ended up there. It wasn't my type of love story.

Anything else?
The narration was third person omniscient, but a couple of times there was reference to 'us' or 'our' as a citizen of the country, which really threw me. And at another point, the narrator made mention to his/her being a namesake to a character. But there was never anything else mentioned about that. I kept reading partially to find out what that was about and I checked Sparknotes for some reference, but there was nothing there either. Very weird.

Which of your readers are most likely to enjoy this book? Why?

People who like Oprah recommended books. Readers who enjoy Nobel winning author books. Fans of Latin America writing.

Other reviews around the book blogosphere:
Rhinoa,
bybee,
chris at book-a-rama,
susan b evans at well-mannered frivolity,

BOOK: Remembering the Bones by Frances Itani

Remembering the Bones by Frances Itani, 283 pages

Dewey's Books; 2nd Canadian Book Challenge; What's in a Name: body part

I've just finished reading this sweet book, about Georgie, 88 year old widow, as she recounts her life lying in a ravine after her car rolled on the way to visit the Queen. Since I read this for Dewey's Book Challenge, I decided to head over to Dewey's to read her review, the one I'm sure I read a year ago that first intrigued me to Remembering the Bones. Oh dear. Dewey's review puts the book in a whole new light. Instead of pulling quotes from the book, I'm pulling quotes from Dewey's review:

Georgie is one of those characters that seem so real, you think of them for a long time after you finish reading, like old friends. Much like Dewey shared her life online and made us all feel like we knew her. I'm still having trouble in some ways defining the relationships with online friends, especially since we read about each other, almost like characters in a book.

My favorite thing about her is that when reminiscing, nearly all her thoughts are of the people in her life. Almost nothing else seems to matter at the end, and that’s how I feel every day, that life is about the people we love.

Georgie comes from a family of strong, long lived women, and the reader gets to know them all very well. Her family is small and close-knit and covers some spectacular times in history, the 20th century. It's the kind of book I like, where the families are ordinary and don't have tragic incidents, other than the everyday tragic events of birth, life, and death. I had the same feeling when I finished A Good House by Bonnie Burnard.

The times that loom large in Georgie’s memory, because they’re painful, or full of happiness, or simply unusual for Georgie, matter to the reader, in the same way that our own common griefs or joys matter to us.

Maybe it's too weird to read about a woman at the end of her life, recommended by Dewey who so recently died. It cheers the heart to know that Dewey enjoyed the book and could see the love from the book as reflected from her experience.

CHALLENGE: What's in a Name? 2

Annie is hosting the What's in a Name Challenge again, with all new categories. I like making a list with a few options for each category. there is a new blog with all the details, but basically, 6 books throughout the year, chosen from the following six categories. I must head over and see some other suggestions of titles for the categories. Some seem harder to find titles for, but I haven't been looking for very long.

A book with a "profession" in its title:

The Housekeeper and the Professor May 14/09

In the Company of the Courtesan

Teacher Man, Frank McCourt

A book with a "time of day" in its title:

The Smell of the Night by Andrea Camilleri June 14/09

Late Nights on Air

When Twilight Burns

A book with a "relative" in its title:

The Sister by Poppy Adams June 30/09

The Seven Daughters of Eve

When We Were Orphans

Cain His Brother, Anne Perry

A book with a "body part" in its title:

Remembering the Bones - Frances Itani Feb 28/09

The Left Hand of Darkness

A book with a "building" in its title:

The House at Riverton

The Wheel on the School

The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro July 4/09

A book with a "medical condition" in its title:

Girlfriend in a Coma

Love in the Time of Cholera Mar 14/09