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31
Quickie: WE THE ANIMALS by Justin Torres
2011 at 11am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Published August 30, 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
You know when you hear about how amazing a book is from SO MANY PEOPLE that you have that crazy conflicting thing where you simultaneously expect it to rock your face off AND never live up to your impossibly high (thanks to everyone else’s ravings) expectations? Yeah, that’s my story with We the Animals.
By the time I picked it up, I had heard that this book had everything. That it would stomp on my heart. That it was nothing short of incredible. And I thought, “Really? All that in 144 pages?” We the Animals is a little wisp of a book that is probably more accurately described as a novella, but yes, really, ALL THAT.
Torres presents the story of three brothers, the children of a Puerto Rican man (Paps, a heavy drinker prone to violence) and a white woman (Ma, perpetually exhausted from working the graveyard shift, she’s too out of it to do much of anything to stop Paps from scaring the shit out of the boys, but her heart is in the right place), growing up in upstate New York with big dreams of getting out. The dynamic he creates between the brothers is beautiful and searing, their terror of Paps and desperate love for Ma almost tangible. And their ties to each other, the way they are so close that their identities overlap? Gorgeous.
But my relationship with We the Animals remains complicated. I spent most of the two hours it took me to read it waiting for the stomp-on-your-heart thing to happen, wondering if I was missing a chip or something, since everyone else loved it from the word go. I sent my Bookrageous cohorts an email to the same effect: “what’s the matter with me that I don’t love this?” BUT THEN. Then the ending happened, and the last twenty pages made me hold my breath and very nearly made me cry, and then I got it.
So, while I wouldn’t endorse We the Animals as the life-altering read others are making it out to be—come on, changing lives is no small feat, especially in so few pages—I will say it packs a powerful punch and is totally worth it for the ending alone.
Read It Now: WHAT IT IS LIKE TO GO TO WAR by Karl Marlantes
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Published August 30, 2011 by Grove/Atlantic
Widely praised as one of the best novels written about the Vietnam War—and one of my favorite books of 2010—, Karl Marlantes’s debut, Matterhorn, was packed with heartrending scenes inspired by his experiences as a young Marine. In What It Is Like to Go to War, Marlantes reveals the intimate details of the real-life moments he fictionalized for Matterhorn and skillfully deploys them to support his call for a paradigm shift in how we prepare soldiers for combat.
“The Marine Corps taught me how to kill, but it didn’t teach me how to deal with killing.”
Marlantes opens with the idea that the attributes that make late-adolescent males ideal warriors–his choice of the word “warrior” throughout the text deserves an essay of its own–are the very ones that make them ill-equipped for coping with the psychological, emotional and spiritual effects of combat and killing. A former Rhodes Scholar, he draws from his readings in philosophy, psychology, history and mythology to argue that in order to survive battle and return to their civilian lives as whole persons, “warriors have to be able to bring meaning to this chaotic experience.”
Homer and Jung stand alongside the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita in a remarkable cadre of source texts that support Marlantes’s assertion that military training must expand beyond the mechanics of killing to include dialogue about why we kill in combat and how warriors are likely to feel later about the fact that they have killed. Addressing concerns about warriors’ numbness to violence, Marlantes contends that “compassion must be elicited consciously in warfare” and suggests that we incorporate mindfulness training into combat preparations and discourage warriors from depersonalizing the enemy. He emphasizes the necessity (and current dearth) of post-combat rituals to demonstrate respect for the lives taken during battle, and recalls how the men in his unit wept as they obeyed his order to bury an enemy soldier after a particularly brutal encounter. Marlantes also recommends the implementation of mandatory counseling to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder, remove the stigma of needing help and enable veterans to rejoin their communities successfully.
What It Is Like to Go to War can be read as both a letter to young warriors and as a catalyzing call for change. But this is not a book about politics; it is about humanity. Using his own experiences to provide context, Marlantes advances, with startling openness, a revolutionary strategy to preserve the humanity of those who fight for our nation and to honor the humanity of those they kill. It should be read, discussed, taught, and acted upon.
This review originally published in Shelf Awareness.
The Sunday Salon 8.28.11—Goodnight, Irene!
2011 at 1pm Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
An earthquake and a hurricane later, we are still here! What a week it’s been!
I spent Friday afternoon in Chapel Hill, NC visiting my friends at Algonquin Books before heading over to Raleigh for my little sister’s baby shower. Despite the weather warnings, Raleigh didn’t get hit very hard, so we had just a little rain and some wind, and plenty people turned up to help us celebrate and eat the six dozen cupcakes my sister’s mother-in-law made to feed 30 people. That might sound crazy, but when you’re talking about a variety of cupcakes, including chocolate with Nutella filling, it’s not too difficult to convince folks to chow down.
Because the weather wasn’t too bad in Raleigh, I left around 4pm to drive back home to Richmond so I could be home with the husband today to celebrate the 10th anniversary of our first date—the anniversary we always celebrated before we had a wedding anniversary. Turns out that Irene hit Virginia much harder than she hit North Carolina, so the drive probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but I made it home safely to discover that despite the fact that we had trees down, the power was still kicking.
Tree down in front yard, tree down in back yard:
The power went out at 7:30 last night, so we ran to the drug store to stock up on candles, grabbed dinner at the neighborhood dive—an awesome place that was the only restaurant open in a 10-mile radius—and headed home to read by candlelight until bedtime. It was fun and rustic, and I have to admit that I love a big storm as long as I’m not in danger. Power came back on around 2am, though most of Richmond is still without. Sometimes it pays to live down the block from two fire stations that are first in line for having power restored!
I woke up this morning to the sound of chainsaws and went out in the back yard to be greeted by the husband, hard at work.
Bob w/ chainsaw, shortly before it died.
Yup, you read that correctly. The chainsaw died. Halfway through cutting up the first tree. Do you know how hard it is to find a Lowe’s/Home Depot/hardware store with chainsaws in stock in the aftermath of a hurricane? Yeah. Not fun.
But we prevailed! The husband is outside entering into round 2 of man vs. chainsaw, and I’m hunkered down inside trying to stay out of the way. I think a hurricane calls for a break from work, so I’m putting aside review books for the day in favor of finally starting The Magician King. Our friends without power are on the way over for a breakfast-for-dinner/cook-all-the-food-that-will-otherwise-spoil party and sleepover, and we’re ready to enjoy some quality time being thankful that the damage wasn’t worse.
Hope you’re all safe and sound—and surrounded with good reading material—as well.
Hurricane Party!
2011 at 12pm Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Well, this sounds like as good a plan as any. Booze? Check. Books? Check. Batteries? Check. Bring it, Irene.
The Bare Necessities—Christina Shea (SMUGGLED)
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
The Bare Necessities is a series in which authors and book industry professionals share annotated reading lists of books they love.
Christina Shea is the author of Smuggled, a novel about about a woman’s life in eastern Europe after she is smuggled across a key border in the final days of World War II as a child. Smuggled is available in paperback from Grove Press.
I want to be transported, swept away when I read! If the writing grabs me, I will read it. I have a weakness for lyrical prose, but I also have a strong desire for information. Of course, a plot that asks a central or moral question is always compelling. And what reader doesn’t love a hero? Combine all of these qualities with a fresh take on history and it’s heaven on earth for me. There are writers who reach this kind of Shakespearean proportion in their work with seeming ease: V.S. Naipaul and Charles Frazier in Cold Mountain and of course Toni Morrison, Garcia Marquez, Ursula LeGuin and many others, Denis Johnson come to think of it. Here are the ones that inspired the writing of my new novel Smuggled.
Paradise Lost by John Milton
I hope it doesn’t sound too crazy to say that this poem changed my life. I was a lit major in college, reading Paradise Lost with a brilliant professor. I think the whole semester was on Paradise Lost. It is eternally long, a meditation on the relationship between God and man, Creator and creation, and as an eighteen year old recently fallen Catholic it hit me where I lived. Anyway, it tops my Bare Necessities not because you should bring Milton to the beach with you, necessarily, although I do find it easier to read poetry on the beach somehow, but because this epic poem spoke to me directly at a formative time and I have never forgotten the rapture!
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
If you have read Smuggled you know where I am going with this. Mary Shelley opens her 19th C Gothic novel Frankenstein with a now famous quote from Paradise Lost. I preface Smuggled with the same quote to honor both writers. In doing all the historical research for my story, I came to a vivid notion: it is possible to give birth to monsters. Motherhood is a central theme for me, as a woman and writer and I identified with Mary Shelley, who had multiple miscarriages and was pregnant while writing Frankenstein, although she barely mentions these experiences in her personal writings. Frankenstein tells the story of a creature denied by his creator. For me, this all fit metaphorically with the period of history that I was writing and with my character Éva’s story. I knew that the only way Éva could find herself again was through mothering because this was the hole or whole that needed feeling. Read more
