The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

Like with most of the books that I read, I heard about this on NPR. This novel was Wilson's first and was wonderful.

Camille and Caleb are the heads of the Fang family and are known the world over as conceptual artists, with their roots in Slavic Eastern Europe. They have won many, many awards and receive many grants that would enable them to perform their art and not have to worry about earning the money to support their children: Annie and Buster (known to most of their fans as Child A and Child B). In order to memorialize their art, which often makes use of their children, they use video recordings. An example of their art is this: one day, the Fang family go to the mall.  Annie,Buster and Camille go into a candy store separately and un-attached, so there is nothing to attach them to each other. Camille begins to put candy under her dress and Buster tells one of the clerks about it.  The ensuing chaos is recorded for posterity by Caleb. As the children get older and enter into adolescence and young adult-hood, they begin to resist being used by their parents in performances and eventually outright refuse.

In the present time of the novel, Annie and Buster are living independently from each other and from their parents: Buster as a novel writer (who has published two novels) and Annie as an actress (who was nominated for an Oscar but who has begun to appear somewhat regularly in the tabloids). The Fang parents have also not presented any new art since Buster and Annie became independent.

This is both an entertaining and disturbing look at a dysfunctional family, a la "United States of Tara" and is very witty.  It is entertaining and not predictable - scenes that comprise the Fang "art" are loony and off the wall and completely unrealistic but are nonetheless funny and smart and fresh.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Firstly, I must disclose that I have absolutely been in love with Jeffrey Eugenides since I read Middlesex, a few years ago, so I may not be the most impartial of reviewers.  I eagerly awaited this new release of his and was happy when my name was up on the library's list.

In this novel, we literally follow a modern day Marriage Plot between three students at Brown University in Rhode Island.  They are on the eve of their graduation in 1982 - one is suffering from debilitating bi polar disorder (manic/depression), the second is Madeleine (who is brilliant and beautiful and sells herself short constantly) and the third is Mitchell, who is the journeyman and travels through Europe and India.  All three students are brilliant academics, with their own interests and academic strengths, but who often mistakenly follow their sex drives in directions that lead one to wonder : WTF? We follow Mitchell on his journeys, Madeline through her struggles in dealing with a lover that struggles with a debilitating mental illness and Leonard, who struggles himself with the mental illness. What I also loved is that Eugenides somehow manages to capture the tensions and feelings of a late teen/early 20-something involved in these sorts of emotional relationships.  It took me back to this period of my life; it was as if I had never left.

The novel itself was wordy, but I personally love that kind of novel. I love losing myself in the minute details of everyday (and the non-typical everyday living as, for instance, we see when we visit the psych wards or a laboratory colony on the Cape), so this didn't bother me all that much. In fact, I really enjoyed it. I wouldn't expect any miraculous revelations to come out of this novel; it doesn't expand the boundaries of what we know about love triangles, college or mental health issues.  And yet, I found it highly satisfying to read and complete. It's not as good as Middlesex, but most novels aren't.  This novel is definitely better than most and gives some insights.

Definitely take the time to read this one.

Her Husband: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes - a Marriage by Diane Middlebrook

Ever since reading The Bell Jar, I have been in love with Sylvia Plath.  I loved her writing and her strong, strong feelings. So I have been reading everything that I could about her and her life, from her journals, to her letters and her poems.  So when I saw this book at the library, I picked it up and brought it home with me, even though it's not solely about Plath, but about the often volatile relationship that she had with her husband, Ted Hughes.

Diane Middlebrook examines the relationship between the two poets from the moment that they meet while studying in England until after Sylvia dies, and beyond.  She begins with their meeting and courtship and ends with Hughes' passing.  She must have done an immense amount of research in writing this book, because her narrative was very detailed and very articulate.  It was a pleasure to read, in part because I could tell that she was truly striving to give us an unbiased account of their relationship and what, in her opinion, really led to Sylvia's death - depression and anxiety and not necessarily Ted Hughes himself (since Sylvia apparently struggled with intense depression even before she met Ted, including a suicide attempt that left her underneath her porch to be found by her brother and then sent to the State hospital for electroshock therapy).

The message that I got from this book is that their marriage was often very intense and was the muse for each of them, in the sense that it fueled her poetry as it did his. I felt that this book gave me insight into Plath, just as much as Hughes.  When they first met, I realized that she was like me in some senses: she wanted it all in the sense that she wanted a home and babies and a wonderful domestic life in addition to a satisfying career as a writer.  And she thought that Hughes could help her to have that. I also got some insight into Hughes that I hadn't had before - he really wasn't the jerk that we all thought he was and perhaps truly loved Plath or at the very least, felt badly about treating her the way that he did during their marriage.  For instance, after her death, Ted Hughes managed her work and got it published and re-published.  He memorializes their relationships and his feelings for her in Birthday Letters, which he published after Plath's death.

While I'm not sure that I agree with Middlebrook completely about Hughes (really what excuse does anyone have to be mean and/or abusive to their spouse), the book is a wonderfully researched and informative read.

The Butterfly Mosque by G. Willow Wilson

I was browsing in the library and saw this book. When I read the inside flap, I thought it looked really intriguing so I picked it up. After 9/11, I've been really interested in Islam and Muslim conversions.  I also had a pretty big interest in women in Islam - their role, how they perceive their roles and what the Koran says about their roles. This particular book intrigued me more then other books about gender and Islam because G. Willow Wilson is a white, American woman that converted to Islam after studying Arabic and Islam extensively as a college student in Boston, living in the Middle East for some time and marrying an Arab man.

Before reading this memoir, I think it's safe to say that the readings I had done previously about women in Islam had been mostly negative: women were treated poorly and had to straggly mightily in order to gain some degree of recognition.  I think that this sort of portrayal leads the reader easily to believe that women that follow Islam are completely lacking in power or say at all in everything from their everyday life to who they marry and to the religious choices that they make. In this particular memoir, G. Willow Wilson narrates her journey from an atheist American to a Muslim woman who is getting married to an Arab, Muslim man. She attempts to explore the struggles that she faces in attempting to reconcile Western Cultural beliefs with Middle Eastern Cultural Religious beliefs and the religion that she is attempting to convert to. She explores the struggles that she had as a white, American woman attempting to convert and assimilate to the culture of the country that she was living in and she also attempts to describe the struggles that she had in surpassing the sometimes negative mindsets that she had with regards to Islam. In so doing, she presents a generally positive interaction and conversion.

This memoir was absolutely beautiful. I really enjoyed reading about Wilson's experiences in college and abroad.  I felt like she was completely honest and up front - she opened herself up in this memoir and her writing was fluid, accessible and beautiful.  Sometimes, I felt that I was standing right next to her as she was having an experience because I could smell what she smelt and feel what she felt on her skin or with her hands as she was feeling it.  It was astounding. Wilson was often brutally honest with us: she was particularly honest about her anxieties about converting and how her family would react. She was also nervous about how her background would impact her relationship with her now husband, Omar.  Wilson expressed a lot of anxiety about walking the line between asking questions to solve her ignorance and offending the people that she desperately wanted to accept her into their lives.

This was an honest and rich portrayal of an American woman's conversion to Islam and her take on women's roles in the Muslim world. I would highly recommend it. 

As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto

This book tells the true and heartbreaking story of David Reimer. At the age of 8 months, he suffers a botched circumcision at the hands of apparently inept doctors, who then refer David's family to a sex specialist by the name of John Money. Dr. Money, to use the term lightly and loosely, recommended that David's parents have him physically reassigned as a female and then suggested that they raise him as such. Dr. Money firmly believed and convinced David's parents that if David was physically re-assigned as a girl and then raised as a girl, he would grow up firmly believing and feeling that he was a girl. So that's what they decided to do after consultation.

As the experiment progressed (because that is what it was essentially - this was the first time that this sort of thing had ever been attempted), Dr. Money reported that David was adjusting wonderfully to being a female, but this was less than accurate reporting to say the least.  David was depressed and acting out at school. He had to be held back at least once in school. As a result, it was decided that they would tell David that he was really born a male and, as a result, he ended up reverting to a male, taking hormones and  getting a mastectomy.

I found this book to be really very interesting and immensely readable. I found that there was a really nice balance between the oral history and individual perspectives of the family and person that was impacted.  Colapinto somehow managed to win the trust of David and his family and was able to empathetically and touchingly describe the angst and tragedy that this family underwent while at the same time describing the scientific theories, politics and sociological issues that were in play at the time that this "experiment" was occurring. It was a harrowing and aching tale to read about that was offensive on so many levels:  that Money thought that he could do this sort of experiment on a human child and that then, he completely lied about the results for purely selfish reasons, at the doctors who screwed up to begin with and then started backtracking to cover themselves, at society and doctors who think that they know everything about what our children are made of and demand that the physical body is what actually makes the person and only the physical. It was extraordinarily and thoroughly researched.

This was a really good book - one that should be read - and when you are done, make sure to read the Wiki entry for David - it will break your heart further. 

Banned Books Week - an honorary posting

So, Banned Books Week is a week dedicated specifically to books that have been banned.  It's a week set aside each year by the ALA. Banned books are books that have actually been removed from libraries and school curriculums; they aren't books that have simply been challenged.  Banned books won't be found in the particular library that you are in, if they have, in fact, been banned. Books are challenged and/or banned for three main reasons: containing sexually explicit material, containing offensive language or being unsuited for any age group.

Examples of books that have been challenged are: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Ulysses by James Joyce, The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, 1984 by George Orwell, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Native Son by Richard Wright, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, The Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie, Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hunger Games by Susan Collins, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

So, my rant.  Banning and challenging books is absolutely garbage in my mind.  It's nothing more than censorship dressed up as concern and good parenting. No. I respectfully disagree (and sometimes not so respectfully depending on my mood).  In my opinion, good parents don't look to stunt their child's intellectual development or exposure to different ideas simply because they disagree with those ideas.  By doing so, I firmly believe that you hold your child back from reaching their full potential.  Additionally, if the concern is that your child may be exposed to things that you consider to be immoral, perhaps you should be taking a more active role in talking to your child about what they are reading and why you believe that it is immoral.  Having conversations like this and trying to teach your children about your viewpoint and what you consider to be right or wrong is part of your job as a parent.

As a lawyer and blogger and avid reader, I also find the banning of books to be completely offensive to everything that our Constitution and our laws stand for.  The First Amendment is absolutely one of the bedrocks of our society.  Granted, you can't walk into a theater and shout fire, but literature is hardly akin to that situation at all.  It's censorship, pure and simple and I don't see any difference between the burning of books that the Nazis in Hitler's Germany engaged in and the banning of books here.  It absolutely makes me sick that in 2011, we still have to have the discussion about censorship and banning books.

Here are some resources that I thought were good:

• The American Library Association's Banned Books website
• Banned Books Week new website
• The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (Tony, I think you'll like this one!)
• Kids Right to Read Project

Just my two cents!

"There Are Things I Want You To Know" About Stieg Larsson and Me by Eva Gabrielsson

This is a memoir written by Eva Gabrielsson, Stieg Larsson's life partner, in which she details her life with Mr. Larsson and the complications regarding his legacy and his estate which his untimely death caused. Stieg Larsson is the author of the insanely popular "Millennium Trilogy," which includes The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

The book was initially written in Swedish and translated into English in 2011, and begins with diary entries that Ms. Gabrielsson wrote in order to help her cope with the grief of losing a man that she had been in an extensive relationship with. Gabrielsson apparently took the title for the memoir from a letter that Mr. Larsson had written to her before a trip to Africa that he thought that he might not survive. The memoir details how the couple met and how Stieg tireless fought the right wing fascist movement.  He was also a tireless crusader for the rights of women, having become a feminist after witnessing the brutal rape of a girl during his youth.  As a result, he and Eva were often placed in danger and often received threats. Ms. Gabrielsson states that the major reason that they never married was because their marriage would make him an easy target for his enemies on the right, a valid concern after they received hateful voicemail messages and bullets in the mail.

She further describes the impact of Larsson's death on both her emotional life and her physical life.  Gabrielsson was, essentially, a wreck and became worse when Larsson's brother and father began to fight her over Larsson's estate and work.  Gabrielsson discusses feeling dispossessed and disempowered because she was not recognized as a wife, even though she and Larsson had lived that way for years.

I wasn't particularly thrilled by this book.  I felt like the writing wasn't that great and that it had been written and published with an eye towards getting support for a cause that might not otherwise have a lot behind it. I felt that it was too clean and that gave the impression of being disingenuous and dishonest.  Life isn't that clean.  I was left with a not so good taste in my mouth, as if the book was written to manipulate my feelings to get support for a cause and I didn't really like that.  I found the bits about Stieg Larsson's youth and life to be fascinating though, so if you're looking for information about that, the book does it justice.