Tag Archives: death

Comic-A-Week – Jan 9-15 – Mother, Come Home

By Lu Posted in Books, comic, review Tagged , , , , , 7 Replies

After Thomas’s mother dies, his father suffers from survivor guilt and depression.  He is hospitalized and this comic tells that story from Thomas’s eyes as a child.  I’ve read a lot of comics like this lately and I haven’t reviewed any of them because I so often find myself at a loss of words to describe anything about them.  Not how they made me feel or if I enjoyed reading them.

Honestly, I sometimes feel myself close off to comics like this.  The structure was so strange, it never allowed me to get involved in the story.  I wanted to care about Thomas and his father’s story, but I couldn’t. Overall, I thought the art here suited the mood perfectly, but the story was sometimes confusing, perhaps intentionally to illustrate grief and depression.  And the ending?  The ending was just strange when you compared it to the rest of the book, to be honest.

Though I didn’t want to talk about this because it’s unfair to compare, it’s really hard to ignore Chris Ware’s influences on Mother,  Come Home.  I just like Ware’s work much more.  They are different beasts in terms of storytelling – Ware’s most famous graphic novel, Jimmy Corrigan, Smartest Kid on Earth is huge and this is a slim book that covers a tenth of that space.  All the same, if you are interested in the art, I’d recommend Chris Ware over this one.

In any case, if you are an avid reader of comics, Mother, Come  Home should be on your list to read.  But be prepared, it’s a difficult one and one that doesn’t ultimately live up to its promises.

So go read this!: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR pile

Jenny’s Books also has a post about Mother, Come Home. Do you?  Leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it to this list.

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by AS King

By Lu Posted in Books, review Tagged , , , , , , , , Leave a reply

I read this one based on a recommendation from The Perpetual Page-Turner.  Jamie’s blog is new-to-me, but has already moved on up to my list of favorite blogs and bloggers.  Her taste is very interesting and eclectic, so when she started talking about Please Ignore Vera Dietz on Twitter and it made her top books of 2010 survey, I knew I had to read it.  Pair that with the fact that it was lounging on the library shelves, just waiting for me to pick it up, well, it was just meant to be!  Plus, her review of Please Ignore Vera Dietz is just so clever, I could never hope to top it.

Vera Dietz’s best friend Charlie has died.  But worse than that, right before he died, he did something to make her hate him.  As Vera says, “If you think your best friend dying is a bitch, try your best friend dying  after he screws you over.  It’s a bitch like no other” (7).   And that kind of frank language is just one reason to love Vera Dietz.  She’s honest and flawed, a perfect narrator for her imperfections.  Vera Dietz does not sugar coat or patronize and I loved it for it.

This is the kind of book you read in one sitting, because there is  a mystery, but also because the mystery is not the center of the novel.  I read Vera Dietz in one sitting because I loved the relationship between Vera and her father and the way it developed.  Like any relationship, it has its ups and downs, but is one based on love and respect.  It was such a healthy portrayal of a parent-child relationship, something that is unfortunately rare in novels.

I liked the different perspectives in the novel.  Though it is mostly told from Vera’s point of view, her father, Charlie and a community landmark (the Pagoda) all have their own parts of the novel to narrate.  And I know that sounds weird and at first I didn’t understand or like that the Pagoda was narrating sections, but looking back on it it was kind of funny.  And that’s what’s so remarkable about this book – it deals with incredibly heavy topics, but it is also humorous.

Please Ignore Vera Dietz reminded me a lot of Say the Word by Jeannine Garsee for a lot of reasons.  Though Say the Word deals with GLBT issues, both main characters are young women, unhinged by a recent death, who turn to alcohol to dull their sorrow.  Though I loved both novels, I loved Vera Dietz slightly more because it dealt with the alcohol and, as I have mentioned, the positive father-daughter relationship.   One of my biggest problems with Say the Word was that the main character drinks and drives and there are no consequences.  Beyond that, she doesn’t even think it’s wrong.  Here, the same thing happens, and even though Vera never truly gets in trouble for drinking and driving, she acknowledges that what she was doing was wrong and that is so important to me in a novel like this.

But above all, I loved Please Ignore Vera Dietz because of Vera Dietz.  She’s such a great narrator.  I mean, there’s a chapter, at the beginning of the novel, entitled, “You’re Wondering Where My Mother Is” that begins like this:

“My mother left us when I was twelve.  She found a man who was not as parsimonious as my father and they moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, which is two thousand five hundred miles away.  She doesn’t visit.  She doesn’t call.  She sends me a card on my birthday with fifty dollars in it, which my father nags me about until I finally go to the bank and deposit it.  And so, for all six years she’s been gone, I have $337 to show for having a mother.

Dad says that thirty-seven bucks is good interest.  He doesn’t see the irony in that.  He doesn’t see the word interest as anything not connected to money because he’s an accountant and to him, everything is a number.

I think $37 and no mother and not visits or phone calls is shitty interest.” (13)

See?  Heartbreaking and funny.  How is that even possible?  But King pulls it off.

So go read this!: now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR pile

Perpetual Page-Turner, Booking Mama, The Story Siren, Reviewer X, The Book Lady’s Blog,  Presenting Lenore, Sarah’s Random Musings all wrote posts on Please Ignore Vera Dietz. Did you?  Please leave your link in the comments and I’ll add it here.

A Common Pornography by Kevin Sampsell

By Lu Posted in Books, review Tagged , , , , , , 4 Replies

A Common Pornography is a memoir, but one that breaks the mold of what a memoir should be.  Told in a series of vignettes, at the heart of the story is Sampsell’s relationship with his father, an angry and brutal man.  While stories of his father bookend the narrative of the memoir, what makes up the meat of this story is vignette after vignette of Sampsell relating memories from his adolescence and young adult.  They are not often connected, but underneath each story runs a current of trauma.

It’s true that Sampsell’s father was a despicable man, who does some absolutely horrible, unforgivable things.  But nothing is every so simple, no person is  truly evil, and Sampsell does not paint his father in a child’s unambiguous terms.  His father is the kind of man that can abuse his children, but lovingly bury a family pet with tears in his eyes.  Does Sampsell ever connect the ways in which he struggled, with finding direction and his relationships with women?  Not explicitly, but that is the suggestion.

If the title is any kind of hint, this memoir is not necessarily for the faint of heart.  Sampsell leaves no stone unturned, from tales of his first experiences with sex and pornography to drug use to the abuse he witnessed as a child.  The structure of this memoir serves the heavy topics well, because the reader never dwells for very long in a certain memory, and Sampsell’s pacing is perfect.  He keeps the tragedy of his life from outweighing the good memories, even in the structure of his memoir.

Here are just a few examples of the writing I loved so much in A Common Pornography:

“The next day, I called her and listened as she described to me what had happened.  I felt hollowed out and light-headed.  I pulled the suitcase out of the closet and locked my door as I heard her tell her side of things.  I wanted to interrupt her and tell her about the suitcase [of pornography], to make her jealous of the photos and how much I liked them.  About how fantasy was sometimes better than reality, which was how I wanted to feel when the heartache went away.” (120)

“I remember being really impressed about how the husband ran the family business with such an easygoing nature. He was always telling his wife that he loved her and called his son honey or sweetie.  It was the first time I heard a dad call his son names like that and it caught me off guard, especially because I thought the son would protest or be embarrassed.  But he wasn’t.  They were a close family.  Whenever I saw a family like that anywhere, I would watch them carefully, as if they were a rare species of animal.  I would want to go and join them.  Feel that unbreakable bond.

I remember thinking that if I had a son,  I would call him honey.” (172)

“Even though they were never affectionate with each other when I was growing up and in the twenty years since I left the Tri-Cities, I guess  they formed some kind of bond, or a truce that would keep them together forever.  Maybe it was formed out of mutual stubbornness, or perhaps they were used to each other, even though terrible things had happened between them.  Unforgiveable things.  But maybe the unforgivable things were forgivable after all, for the sake of not being alone.” (215)

In a lot of ways, though perhaps Sampsell has more sadnesses in his life than most, it is perfectly ordinary.  Sampsell’s story is not necessarily unique, but it is one that deserves to be told, and one I’m so glad I read.  Reflective and emotional, but also fragmented, I don’t think this is a memoir that will appeal to everyone.  But for me? I couldn’t stop reading it.

So go read this!:  now| tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR

Other reviews: Bermudiaonion, The Book Lady’s Blog.

Special thanks to Harper Perennial for sending me this book to review.

Poetry Wednesday – Sherman Alexie

By Lu Posted in Poetry, poetry wednesday Tagged , , , , , , , , , , 3 Replies

This Poetry Wednesday, I thought it would be fitting to include poems from Sherman Alexie because I just reviewed his novel Flight.  I love it when authors cross over from poetry or fiction – often you can see the influences of fiction on their poetry and poetry in their fiction and this is certainly true of Alexie.  Alexie talked about the event that he describes in this poem during his interview with Nancy Pearl that I posted yesterday and I didn’t know he turned it into a poem until I tried to find a poem to post today.  I love it.

Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World

The morning air is all awash with angels…
Richard Wilbur

The eyes open to a blue telephone
In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.

I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,
Proctologist, urologist, or priest?

Who is most among us and most deserves
The first call? I choose my father because

He’s astounded by bathroom telephones.
I dial home. My mother answers. “Hey, Ma,

I say, “Can I talk to Poppa?” She gasps,
And then I remember that my father

Has been dead for nearly a year. “Shit, Mom,”
I say. “I forgot he’s dead. I’m sorry—

How did I forget?” “It’s okay,” she says.
“I made him a cup of instant coffee

This morning and left it on the table—
Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—

And I didn’t realize my mistake
Until this afternoon.” My mother laughs

At the angels who wait for us to pause
During the most ordinary of days

And sing our praise to forgetfulness
Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.

Those angels burden and unbalance us.
Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.

Those angels, forever falling, snare us
And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.

________________________________________________

This poem is absolutely beautiful and full of grief.  But he expresses it so beautifully and simply.

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Grief and humor in Looking for Bapu

By Lu Posted in Books, review Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 20 Replies

“The wrinkle-nosed woman turns again.  ‘You’re brave to wear your turban, young man.  With all the anxiety!’

Young man?  Mr. Singh must be at least forty.  ‘I’ve been honored to wear this turban for many years,’  he says, holding his head high.  ‘Throughout history people have fought and died for the right to wear it.  I will not take it off  now.’

The woman purses her lips.  ‘Well, you’re very brave.’  She turns ahead  again, and the line begins to move, finally.  I glance sidelong at Dad.  He looks Indian, but he whistles ‘American Pie’ in the shower and reads the Seattle newspaper in the morning.  My dad is not what anyone calls him.  My dad is just my dad.  Is it brave to be what you are, I wonder?  Brave to just be yourself?” (pg 63)

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