Oates, Joyce Carol "A Widow's Story. A Memoir"

Oates, Joyce Carol "A Widow's Story. A Memoir" - 2011

Even though Joyce Carol Oates has been very high on my list of favourite writers ever since I read her for the first time ("We Were The Mulvaneys"), she is moving up higher and higher with every book I read. This one was the best one ever.

This book has touched me more than any book has for a long time. It spoke to me.

I learned a lot about JCO, a lot that I have in common with her. For example, she loves gardens but not gardening. But that is not the main fact.

What does a woman do when her husband dies unexpectedly, when she says to him "Good-bye, see you tomorrow", only there is no tomorrow. At least not for him and it feels the same for her. Is a tomorrow without the loved on with whom you've shared most of your life worth living? Even if, in this case, you are a very independent person, have your own life and job and everything? They were married for 47 years. That is a long time, not easy to get over the loss of someone so close.

Joyce Carol Oates tries to move on but finds it very hard. She gives us the opportunity to follow her on her voyage back into life, one day at the time.

Joyce Carol Oates ponders over so many questions related to this topic, death, widowhood, old age. She goes deep down.

Why is there life? (JCO: "I am utterly mystified why there is life and not rather the cessation of life.")
What does life mean? ("I am not suggesting that life is not rich, wonderful, beautiful, various and ever-surprising, and precious - only that, for me, there is no access to this life any longer. I am not suggesting that the world isn't beautiful - some of the world, that is. Only that, for me, this world has become remote & inaccessible.")
How do you change your perspective to life, to suicide ("Do not think - if you are healthy-minded, and the thought of suicide is abhorrent to you ... - that suicide is, for others, a 'negative' thought - not at all. Suicide is in fact a consoling thought. Suicide is the secret door by which you can exit the world at any time - it's wholly up to you.")
She talks about depression and its effects on life ("Perhaps it's a withdrawal symptom - being unable to get out of bed in the morning. [The very concept of 'morning' is open to revision when one is depressed - 'morning' becomes an elastic term, like 'middle-age'.] Feeling arms, legs, head heavy as concrete. An effort to breathe - and what a futile effort! Never mind rolling a boulder up a hill like Camus's Sisyphus, what of the futility of breathing."),
how it changes your perspective ("I am not strong enough to continue a life to no purpose except getting through the day followed by getting through the night. I am not strong enough to believe that so minimal a life is worth the effort to protract it.")
as well as about illness ("Then, when you are finally sick, and must retreat to bed, really sick, with flu, let's say, you are so terribly week, so unambiguously sick, it is all you can do to hold up your head, or even to rest your head against a pillow. Reading, so long imagined as a much-deserved reward, is suddenly out of the question, like jumping out of bed and dancing - running - to the far end of the house.") in a way hardly anybody has talked before.

She gives us the deep thoughts by a widow or probably anybody who has lost the touch with life for any reason whatsoever ("To be human is to live with meaning. To live without meaning is to live sub-humanly. Like one who has suffered damage to a part of the brain in which language, emotions, and memory reside.")

She also talks about the onset of shingles and how she feels that all of sudden, people seem to acknowledge that she is sick. As a chronic migraine sufferer I can so relate to this. ("My pain-free life of only a few days ago seems idyllic to me now but it's a measure of my delusion that I am almost cheerful about this, for shingles is something real - 'visible' - and not of the ontological status of the ugly lizard-thing urging me to swallow all the pills in the medicine cabinet, curl up and die.") as well as this quote ("Physical pain, emotional and psychological pain - is there any purpose to it?")

You might think I have quoted half the book and that it is not worth reading it anymore. Believe me, it is. If these thoughts do not get you to read this memoir, I don't know what will.

She is so honest, leaves no stone unturned, no thought unmentioned. We can actually feel her grief, her sorrow, her pain.

A friend recommended I read "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion who suffered a similar loss, as well. Maybe I will.

At the end of this book, there is just one open question. Why did Joyce Carol Oates not receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, yet?

From the back cover:

"On a February morning in 2008, Joyce Carol Oates drove her ailing husband, Raymond Smith, to the Princeton Medical Center where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. In less than a week, Ray was dead and Joyce was faced - totally unprepared - with the reality of widowhood.

In this beautiful and heart-breaking account, Joyce takes us through what it is to become a widow: the derangement of denial, the anguish of loss, the disorientation of the survivor and the solace of friendship. Acutely perceptive and intensely moving, 'A Widow's Story' is at once a truly personal account and an extraordinary and universal story of life and death, love and grief."

Find links to all my other Joyce Carol Oates reviews here.

Prelutsky, Jack - Poems for Children

Prelutsky, Jack - Poems for Children

"Something Big Has Been Here" - 1990
"A Pizza the Size of the Sun" - 1996
"It's Raining Pigs and Noodles" - 2000
(just a selection of his books)

Jack Prelutsky writes poems that make up a picture, he writes poems that are jokes, he writes poems that are very observant and he writes poems that are just nonsense. But what all of his poems have in common, they are really really funny and kids love them. A great way for them to learn how to deal and play with language.

They deal with everyday situations, families, friends, and schools and animals, but also with mysterious scenes, dinosaurs, invisible people and wizards, anything children see in real life and in their imagination.

Lovely books, nicely illustrated by James Stevenson who gives many of the poems that extra touch. My boys really loved these poems.

Here is just a little taster to see how funny they are:

"I am digging a hole in the ceiling
In order to gaze at the sky,
I began at the end of September,
I intend to be done by July...."

"An unobservant porcupine
Backed up into his brother.
Since then they've been inseparable -
They're stuck on one another."

"Butterflies, you puzzle me,
For as you flit and flutter,
I study you, but never see
The slightest bit of butter."

 James Prelutsky has written a lot more poetry books and worked with a series of highly acclaimed artists, I am sure they are all just as great as the three I have mentioned.

From the back cover:

"Jack Prelutsky is widely acknowledged as the poet laureate of the younger generation. (And many people would happily see him crowned with no age qualification.) The New Kid on the Block and Something Big Has Been Here are household words wherever there are kids."

Grossman, David "To the End of the Land"

Grossman, David "To the End of the Land" (Hebrew: אשה בורחת מבשורה/Isha Nimletet Mi'Bshora) - 2008

A book that sounds both realistic and philosophical. With the background of the situation in Israel, the author tries to find out what the reason behind all this is. He mainly describes the life of Ora but also that of her two best friends, Avram and Ilan and about her sons, Adam and Ofer. We read about the life in modern day Israel and what it means if everybody joins the army for several years and you are in a constant warzone.

The author describes every situation, every person from at least two sides, compares situations constantly. He tries to draw the image of life as well as getting to the bottom of it.

Ora wants to go to the end of the land but I have the feeling she wants to go to the end of the world and even further, forget about all the troubles.

Very thought-provoking. The author is a wonderfully talented writer, I am sure I will read more of his books.

I only read after I had finished the book that the author wrote this book while his oldest son was in the military. He talked about it a lot with his second son Uri who enlisted while his father was still writing the book. Uri was killed in the war and David Grossman finished the book. He said "What changed, above all, was the echo of the reality in which the final draft was written."

From the back cover:

"Ora, a middle-aged Israeli mother, is about to celebrate her son Ofer's release from army service when he returns to the front for a major offensive. Instead of waiting at home for the 'notifiers' who could arrive at any moment to tell her of her son's fate, she sets off for a hike in Galilee, leaving no forwarding address. If a mother is not there to receive the news, a son cannot die, can he? 

Recently estranged from her husband, Ora drags along an unlikely companion: their former best friend and her former lover Avram, the man who in fact turns out to be her son's biological father. As they sleep out in the hills, ford rivers and cross valleys, Ora recounts, step by step and word by word, the story of her son's birth, life and possible death, in one mother's magical, passionate and heartbreaking attempt to keep her son safe from harm.

Grossman's rich imagining of a family in love and crisis makes for one of the great antiwar novels of our time."

David Grossman received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis) in 2010.

Buck, Pearl S. "The Mother"

Buck, Pearl S. "The Mother" - 1933

I have been reading Pearl S. Buck novels ever since I was a teenager, so about 40 years now. But there are still so many of her books I haven't read.

I came across this little gem in a used bookshop.

As it happens so often in her books, the author does not reveal the names of the children as this seems to have been quite normal in China. But in this case, there isn't even another name involved. The only one we come across, "the mother" is sometimes called Mrs. Lee.

However, the names don't matter. We get to know a poor peasant woman and her family, her thoughts and her feelings, her hardships, how she leads her life, how she is forced to look after her family, how all her life is just work and responsibility.

I have seldom read a book that goes so deep into the heart of the protagonist. We get to know the traditions in a little village in China, the way girls are married off into another family.

If you want to learn about pre-revolutionary rural China, this is the right book. If you want to read more books by Pearl S. Buck, check all my posts about her here. I suggest you start with "The Good Earth".

From the back cover:

"Within this novel Ms. Buck paints the portrait of a poor woman living in a remote village whose joys are few and hardships are many. As the ancient traditions, which she bases her philosophies upon, begin to collide with the new ideals of the communist era, this peasant woman must find a balance between them and deal with the consequences."

Pearl S. Buck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938 "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Book Quotes of the Week

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"Books don't just go with you, they take you where you've never been." N.N.

"Some books are so familiar that reading them is like being home again." Louisa May Alcott

"People who know and love the same Books as you have the road map to your Soul." Cassandra Clare

"We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else's mind". Anna Quindlen

"There is no such thing as a child who hates to read, there are only children who have not found the right book." Frank Serafini

"Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own." William Hazlitt

Find more book quotes here.

Hosseini, Khaled "And the Mountains Echoed"

Hosseini, Khaled "And the Mountains Echoed" - 2013

So far, I have read three books by Khaled Hosseini, the three books he has written so far. I liked "The Kite Runner", I loved "A Thousand Splendid Suns" and I thought that this one was one of the best books I have read in a long time (and I read a lot). One proof how much I was looking forward to this is that I even read it before it was out in paperback. I prefer those editions, they are easier to hold and to carry around.

Khaled Hosseini is a wonderful author. Such beautiful penmanship, such a gift for telling a story of his war-torn home country. He is an author where you don't think another great book like this will come along anytime soon. His book leaves you with a feeling that it can't be over yet, why are there only 400 pages?

"So, then. You want a story and I will tell you one..." This is how the story begins. Abdullah's and Pari's father Saboor loves telling stories and the children love listening to him. What they don't know, his stories are often parables that shine into their own lives, good or bad. The novel tells us about town and village life in Afghanistan but also about the lives of Afghan expatriates in France and the United States of America as well as that of foreigners living in Afghanistan. He mentions them all. We meet rich people and poor people, good and bad ones. We learn about siblings, sibling rivalry and sibling love. About friendship, marriage, sickness and health, this is a novel about everything. The story spans over several generations and more than half a century, starting in the 40s in Afghanistan and ending at the beginning of this century in California. I don't want to give away too much and I would have to do that if I delved deeper into the story. I just want to add that this books raises so many questions about the why and how we live, what kind of decisions people make and what the implications are on the lives of so many. I would say it is quite philosophical in that respect but also tells a gripping story you don't want to put away until you're finished.

What I specifically loved about this book, it starts immediately, no long introduction to get used to the characters, no description of any kind what was before (that comes later), I love how he starts with a splash. You don't have to read about fifty pages to know whether you will like this book. You will like it from the beginning.

If you only read one new book this year, "And the Mountains Echoed" should be it!

The only disappointment, now that I read his newest book so fast, it will take even longer to wait for the next one.

From the back cover:

"So, then. You want a story and I will tell you one...
 
Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his sister Pari live with their father and stepmother in the small village of Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they struggle together through poverty and brutal winters. To Abdullah, Pari, as beautiful and sweet-natured as the fairy for which she was named, is everything. More like a parent than a brother, Abdullah will do anything for her, even trading his only pair of shoes for a feather for her treasured collection. Each night they sleep together in their cot, their skulls touching, their limbs tangled.
 
One day the siblings journey across the desert to Kabul with their father. Pari and Abdullah have no sense of the fate that awaits them there, for the event which unfolds will tear their lives apart; sometimes a finger must be cut to save the hand.
 
Crossing generations and continents, moving from Kabul, to Paris, to San Francisco, to the Greek island of Tinos, with profound wisdom, depth, insight and compassion, Khaled Hosseini writes about the bonds that define us and shape our lives, the ways that we help our loved ones in need, how the choices we make resonate through history, and how we are often surprised by the people closest to us."

Book Quotes of the Week

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"A little library, growing larger every year, is an honourable part of a man's history. It is a man's duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessities of life." Henry Ward Beecher

"I wander through fiction to look for the truth" The Goo-Goo Dolls in "Before it's too late"

"Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood." Jane Yolen

"Books cause dangerous thoughts." N.N.

"Books give us the panoramic spectrum of possibilities for encountering life in a new way." J. Michael Martin 

"The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library." Albert Einstein, who was one of the wisest guys who ever lived. Obviously.

Find more book quotes here.