The Scar by Mary Cregan, a review

Unwittingly, I've taken to alternating fiction with non-fiction.  For me, non-fiction is oftentimes easier (depending upon the circumstances - but that is another blog post in and of itself!). I don't quite remember where I got the idea to read this book but in all likelihood it was either NPR or BookRiot or one of the myriad of book review websites that I follow and blogs that I read. 

The Scar by Mary Cregan is part an attempt at recollecting how Mary Cregan came to be depressed and how she dealt with a severe depression but also a history of depression and its treatment itself. Mary's story begins with one of the most, perhaps, tragic events a person can deal with - the death of a newborn child that was completely and utterly unexpected. Mary's daughter, Anna, is born with a congenital heart defect that in all likelihood would be known about now (it was the early 80's when this occurred - a time period in which ultrasound wasn't routine maternal/fetal health care) that is essentially an underdeveloped heart valve. Anna dies within a day of her birth. Many months later, Ms. Cregan attempts suicide, during hospitalization.  I won't go into details here in part because I believe that the rest is Cregan's story to tell but also in part because it is horrific and likely triggering to a reader. After treatment during hospitalization, including ECT, Cregan is ready to work towards a non pathological acceptance of her mental illness.

Cregan uses her memoir to explore depression, its social status (if any), the pathological self-hatred and questioning they feel, their acceptance (or lack of acceptance) by society, the evolution of ECT and SSRI's and more. I really loved Cregan's ability and her courage not only in telling her story but also in publishing it in such an expansive way. I enjoyed how she demonstrates the practicality that someone that is battling mental illness has and that she does it in a completely unabashed way. She confronts topics, like Electro Convulsive Therapy head on and in a way that demonstrates not that she is proud of it, but in a way that shows that she has accepted its usefulness to her and that it isn't a big deal.I loved how she took the fears that society had about ECT and turns them on their heads. 

Crear's use of things like literary and mythological methods of dealing with depression were also quite interesting. I am a person that likes to read about people having similar experiences with things and about they have handled it as well as learning about the things that I'm experiencing so this particular part of Crear's memoir appealed to me on many levels. It felt like I was reading about myself and not only learning about someone who experienced feelings, but also learned about certain topics in their historic context. This was a magnificent book that I would recommend for all.

I'm Back and a Review

Things have been quite hectic in my life so I haven't been blogging lately even though I've been doing a ton of reading.  I started a new job that I enjoy but it takes a lot of time.  That being said, I'm now committed to re-starting review blogging again.  Please enjoy my review below!

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I just finished reading The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore by Kim Fu - it's her latest book but not her first, although it is the first book of hers that I have read.  This book takes place at an all girls' camp and focuses on the pre-teen girl perspective. All of the voices that you hear and experience are that of girls as they experience the camp and then age. The girls all come from different socio-economic backgrounds and different ethnic backgrounds, which is a great touch. On an overnight kayaking trip to an island, true personalities come out and alliances constantly shift, Survivor style before Survivor was a thing.

The book opens with a narrative setting the girls at the camp and introducing us to them.  The book then switches between the girls' experiences at camp and chapters that tell us about the campers themselves - where they are from and where they are going. It's hard to switch between the narratives - to me it was VERY jarring.  I enjoyed the chapters about the individual campers the best because Fu gave me perspective as to why the girls acted the way that they did in the situations that they were presented. Fu's character development is NOTHING short of masterful and I found myself enjoying the chapters about the characters much more enjoyable than the chapters that describe camp events.

I enjoyed Fu's style - it was deceptively simple. You have to pay attention to it because she dropped tidbits that were so easy to miss if you weren't paying attention and her wry voice gave rise to many snorts in the privacy of my home (and sometimes other places as well). I found myself really feeling for the characters and empathizing with some of the scenarios that they found themselves in.  It is also an adept survey of human nature that you don't find many places.

Get this one out of your library!

The Power by Naomi Alderman

If you liked The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, you will want to read this dystopian novel, which has won a number of awards in the past year, including the Bailey's Prize for Women's Fiction.  This book was particularly terrifying and enlightening at the same time.

The most basic premise is that teenage girls everywhere find out that they can produce a deadly electrical shock. There's a strip of muscle across their collarbones that enables them to produce this electrical charge, which they call a skein. As a result, society is turned on its head with boys being told not to go out alone or at certain hours for fear that they will be shocked. The book combines a number of storylines - there is an American girl that runs away, a British daughter of a notorious gang leader, a reporter, politicians - and yet, the overarching premise is what the impact this has on governments, economic systems, societies.

I loved the questions that this raised - what happens when the tables are turned and men have to worry about being raped? Being threatened with violence that is either overt or implied or both?  And the ways that Alderman makes these points ranges from the light (there is a female newscaster that teases her co anchor and all I could think about was how newscasters faux joke on the air while they're interacting) to the descriptions of the chilling and often violent crimes that are committed by gangs of women.

There are also glimpses of other social issues that are impacted by this - theology and religion play a tremendous role in this novel.  The gospels and the religious texts have to be completely reimagined and iconography has to be changed. New leaders have to rise. Sexuality is also a major theme in this novel, with Alderman redefining courtship and the intersection of pain and pleasure. There is also items that are found in an archeologic dig that describes curbing - male genital mutilation. 

This book is a daring new look at a complete and utter change in gender roles by implementing a shift in the power dynamics.  It is so good in its terror. 

Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance

This had to have been the most talked about memoir of 2016 so much so that my local library had a wait list as deep as the Mississippi River. JD Vance, the author, is now a venture capitalist in California; however this book is about how he grew up dirt poor in Appalachia to a family that was highly dysfunctional on a good day.  This book generally details how he transcended this dysfunction to attend college and then law school at Yale, while also making forays into why the working white poor in the United States is in such a state of socioeconomic crisis.

Vance's family came from a long line of hill people originally from Kentucky.  They migrated to Ohio to work in the factories that sprang up following World War 2. His grandparents, in spite of the alcoholism that plagued them, had a decent life as a result.  However by the time that Vance was alive industry had left and there was mass poverty. His mother was a neglectful parent with alcohol and substance abuse issues that had a series of new husbands seemingly every year.  Vance's father was largely absent, although he eventually meets him.

I was very much struck by Vance's story but I had a really difficult time with his analysis of why this was happening. In part, this was because I found his academic writing to be mediocre at best. In part it was because I found the story of his life more interesting. That being said, he does pose some really interesting questions the most important of which - how much should the white poor be responsible for their own misfortune? He actually comes out with saying that the white poor are tremendously responsible for their misfortune - albeit in a compassionate tone.  While economic insecurity is a factor, the social decay that seems to come along with it is something that doesn't always need to be a result of that insecurity.He seemed to be particularly frustrated with his people's inability to counteract it - in part because I think that he saw his mother caught in a vicious cycle of abuse, drugs and a revolving door of men. He also told a story about how he worked as a cashier and got tremendously frustrated seeing his neighbors game the system and have cell phones, while he worked and could not afford one.

I respected Mr. Vance tremendously for attempting to take on a subject that everyone knows exists but which no one seems to want to explicitly tackle head on in an honest, straightforward and compassionate manner. Hats off to him for advancing the conversation.

Where'd You Go Bernadette - Maria Semple

I have this quirk - I guess it isn't really a quirk because I know other people like this - where I have to read a book before the movie comes out.  I heard through the grapevine that this book may be made into a movie.  To be fair, it's been a book that I've wanted to read for a while now and the movie prospects moved it to the top of my list.  Maria Semple did however create a winner here.

The main character in this novel is the title character - Bernadette.  She's a Type-A, successful, MacArthur grant winning architect who is married to a successful computer programmer and who suddenly decides she's not going to work anymore (first world problems I tell you!). The story is told from the perspective of Bernadette's daughter. 20 years prior to the events in the novel, Bernadette was living in California working as an architect and was at the cutting edge of "green" design. Her main project was a popular "localvore" project meaning that Bernadette got all of her materials from the area that she lived in. After much conflict with her neighbor, Bernadette gives up and moves to Seattle with her husband, a TED talk genius who loves living in Seattle. Not so much for Bernadette who essentially becomes a hermit, except to emerge to engage in an internet scam and with confict with the local parents, whom she calls gnats.

This book was both screwball and decidedly sweet, in a satirical fashion.  I really think that at the bottom of this novel is the relationship between a mother and her daughter, the daughter being an only child who obviously idolizes her mother. I loved it.  Semple's style is also really interesting. This is not a straight narrative in the traditional sense but is told through a mix of emails, journal entries, letters, police reports and first person narrative as well as school reports. The material is compiled and stitched together by Bee, Bernadette's daughter, who is valiantly trying to figure out what caused her mother to disappear. I loved it.  Just loved it.  Go get this book right now!

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward is becoming a household name in large part because of books like this one. While her previous books were novels, this one is a memoir and it really isn't for people that want a lighthearted beach read. This books deals not only with the stresses of living in poverty in the South but it also deals with suicide, overdoses, shootings and death in general.

Jesmyn Ward grew up on the Mississippi gulf coast, which figures prominently in this book. I really enjoyed how rich and evocative her storytelling style was. It could have gotten really morbid really quickly but instead it was almost lyrical in its matter of factness in its narrative of what it was like to grow up black, poor and female in the Deep South in the modern era. In addition to the seriousness of the deaths that occur, there are also some very familiar coming of age narratives: weed, alcohol, sex and boyfriends, school and family. But there are also some very sobering narratives as well that deal with destitution and delinquency. I found myself particularly drawn in by Ms. Ward's narrative about her own family and her family life. She details the demise of her parents' relationship, her own social isolation at a predominantly white private school and later when she leaves to attend a prestigious university and her brother's descent into the world of drug dealing.

While I don't think it was intended this way, Jesmyn Ward's memoir is a powerful narrative of the sociological, political and psychological impacts of growing up poor and black in the South. A definite must read.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Elena Ferrante is a complete enigma.  No one knows what she looks like or even when she was born, let alone what her real name is.  I think it's because the books that she has written seem to be pretty personal. In this particular novel, which was translated from Italian to English, a young girl is followed growing up in Naples, yearning to be a writer. There are a lot of fairly heavy topics that Ferrante addresses in this novel: everything from physical violence, to economic and class differences to child sexual abuse.

In this book, the main character is Elena Greco - called Lanu - and her best friend Lila.  All of the children in this neighborhood are tight, much as the neighborhood itself is tight and they all know who stands where in the power struggles. There is a scene where, for instance, Lila turns the power dynamics on her head by threatening the sons of a wealthy store owner with a knife after they tried to grab Elena and pull her into their car (the implications of why are there but never explicitly stated, which makes Lila's actions even more noble).

What I loved about this novel and, I hope, about her future novels, is that this one seemed to be a very intimate and thorough examination of growing up female in Naples at a particular time in history - this was the 1930's and 40's in Italy.  I have to admit, because my grandmother grew up in Italy during this time period I was drawn to it maybe a bit more than the average person. That being said, this book was phenomenal and I look forward to reading more.