The House on Mango Street – Sandra Cisneros

The edition I had was Knoph’s tenth anniversary “celebration” of the book’s initial publication. It’s actually a mini-book – small in size, almost a square, and the font is large; it’s 134 pages long. The publisher deems it a “coming-of-age classic.” It’s a very easy read about a Chicano family living in poverty in Chicago. It’s episodic, filled with colorful characters. It’s not an angry book, not an indictment; there’s no grinding of axes. It moves nicely. But I only made it about halfway through. It just wasn’t for me. Maybe it was too simplistic – I’ve appreciated quite a few coming of age books by women writers, but they were more complex, more geared to adult sensibilities. If I was a young girl (especially one who was culturally different from my peers) I would have finished the book (especially since it is now assigned reading in many junior high school classrooms). Anyway, it made Cisneros famous. In her introduction she acknowledges the novel’s autobiographical aspects. And she also keeps referring to Iowa. Why Iowa? – need you ask? It’s interesting that the road to fame for this poor Chicano girl would go through the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop. There, in that simple fact, is a lesson for those with literary ambitions to take heed of.

Everything to Live For – Paul Horgan

This is the second of the three “Richard books.” (The first, Things as They Are, is on my Most Memorable Books list.) The two differ in a number of significant ways. Things is in the first person, is episodic (like linked stories), and Richard is a child. Everything is in the third person, has a definite plot that covers events in a single summer when Richard is seventeen. He’s spending that summer with very wealthy relatives. Actually, he finds that he’s been invited there to be a stabilizing influence for Max, the son of the family. Max is twenty-one, and is a complex character. Though he has everything to live for – good looks, intelligence, the love of a terrific girl, money he’ll be inheriting – he’s going off the rails emotionally. Why is he so unhappy, why does he act in such an objectionable way, why is he so reckless? So bent on self-destruction? We get an answer, which I found to be on the weak side. Max’s behavior and emotions dominate everybody, and I found a reaction gradually setting in: Really, is he so damn important? The whole premise struck me as shaky. Not helping matters is that Richard came across as unusually self-assured for his age. And the book is often over-written, over-thought. Still, despite all these negatives, I stayed involved. Many aspects of Everything are good (particularly the portrayal of the secondary characters). I believe that Horgan was too emotionally invested in the material. (Why? – was he Richard?) This is one of those novels that should have been done with more detachment.

Post script: I’m not doing re-reads anymore (at least not for now), but after I finished Everything I found that, in 2008, I had written a review of it. Seventeen years is a long gap, but I never had the slightest inkling of having read it before. And in my previous review (which was negative) I give a reason for its failure that never occurred to me this time around. Makes one wonder . . .

The Wife – Alafair Burke

The author is the daughter of the crime novelist James Lee Burke, so she had her foot securely in the publishing world. Yet she has other irons in the fire. She went to Stanford Law School and then worked as a deputy district attorney in Portland, where she prosecuted domestic violence cases. And, besides writing a lot of books, she’s a professor of law at Hofstra University. So she knows how the legal system works as regards crime cases, which lends a valuable authenticity to The Wife. But can she write a good novel? Well, yes, but with limitations. There are two lines of narrative: one is in the first person, in which Amanda (the titular wife) relates events. The other is in third person and follows a detective named Corrine. The story opens with Amanda’s husband – a professor of law at NYU – being accused by a student of making inappropriate sexual advances. Things escalate (mainly a rape accusation from another source). Then one of the accusers disappears. Things get very complicated (and involve Amanda’s past). Too complicated? Too many loose ends floating around? Yes, in my opinion. But my main problem is the first-person narrator. This type of novel depends on surprising the reader, but that’s most often based on the author using misleading tactics. Near the end of The Wife we find out that, in the version of events Amanda has given us (and why would we not have believed her?), much has been withheld or is outright false. Since I react badly to being misled, I wasn’t happy with this twist. And the novel, with all those complications (which keep growing), is too long and is filled with texts and emails and cell phones and internet searches – all of which law enforcement can use to trace your actions (potential wrongdoers beware!). I did stick it out to the end only to find that some important things were left unresolved. So I have a few questions for Ms. Burke: Was the husband convicted of murder? Does Corrine follow up on leads that implicate Angela – as she states she’ll do in the book’s final sentence? Is there going to be a sequel? Is the movie deal still on? Please reply at this site.

Hotel Savoy – Joseph Roth (German)

This short novel – an early work by Roth – was published in 1924, yet it seems quite modern. The prose is spare but sharp, the first-person narrator is mostly a noncommittal observer, there’s an absence of a plot. Gabriel fought in WWI and had been in a Siberian prisoner of war camp. On the opening page, on the street in front of the Hotel Savoy, he thinks: “After five years I again stand at the gates of Europe.” (Where, exactly, in Europe we never know.) He plans to stay in the hotel “a couple of days or a week,” but that span of time grows into what must be months. Since he has little money (and no luggage), he’s given a room on the sixth floor of the seven-story hotel. Room 703: “I like the number – I am superstitious about them – for the zero in the middle is like a lady flanked by two gentlemen, one older and one younger.” Since I’m on that page, in the elevator with Gabriel, I will add more of his thoughts, for they impart the main virtue of this novel: “I enjoy the swaying feeling and calculate how many wearisome steps I would have had to climb but for this noble lift. As I rise even higher, I throw my bitterness, my wanderings and homelessness, all my mendicant past, down the liftshaft from which it can never reach me again.” While the two lower floors of the Savoy are opulent, reserved for the very wealthy, the top two floors house the poor in dismal little cells. The hotel is a microcosm of the world, in which there exists a scale of different classes. Is this a social protest novel? Is it about the impoverished, who would work if there were jobs to be had, rising up, at the end, in violent revolution (which is crushed, but not before leaving the hotel in ruins)? Not really. The novel is mostly composed of Gabriel’s interactions with various characters, all odd in various ways and to varying degrees. It’s these characters, including both the wealthy and the poor, that stand out – that give the novel it’s richness. At the end Gabriel is on a train, headed for parts unknown. And that’s it. This is a major talent stretching its wings on a limited stage. *