There have been two times in my life where I was reading a book and it made me cry. The first was Bridge to Terabithia in fourth grade. My friend Sarah put her hand on my back and said, “Hey Amber, are you ok?” and I shook my head.

“This book has made me so sad!” I sniffed and held it up for her to see.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, “that one is a bummer.”

The second is Ken Wheaton’s first novel, The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival. I cried, because by the time something sad happened to someone in the book, I was so emotionally invested in the characters that I felt sad, too! The people in this book are vibrant and well-crafted; they are folks we care about, root for, dislike, laugh at, and love. It is a novel for those of us who appreciate character-driven stories.

The setting is a fictitious version of Grand Prairie, Louisiana, and Father Steve Sibille is the protagonist. He’s a nerdy 30 year old priest with a whole slew of bewildering women in his life, ranging in age from flirty teenage alter girls to a spicy, whiskey drinking “one hundred something” year old African American woman that helped raise him and just can’t stop sticking her nose in his business. “You need a woman!” she tells him often, waving her wrinkled hands at his vow of celibacy.

When a rival Baptist preacher shows up threatening to bring an even bigger, badder church to the town, Father Steve starts scheming up an event that he hopes will keep his flock in the fold: the first annual Grand Prairie rabbit festival. The planning is a little shaky – and that Baptist preacher isn’t going to make things easy on Father Steve and his crew – but this motley cast of characters comes together, and help arrives from unexpected, and hilarious, places.

There’s an elephant, a few trips to the gay bar, and a lot of drinking, too.

On Amazon here.
Listen to my interview with Ken here.

Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer’s Life reminded me of On the Road – a little wordy for my internet-addled ADD brain, but good, just good, and written in a tone that makes you want to meet the narrator, if only so he could be someone you met that one time that was intimidating, but very, very interesting. To be honest, I had a hard time getting through this book in the busy, dizzy end-of-the-year crunch going on. I had to make myself read it, and, like forcing yourself to go to the gym, I enjoyed every second of it once my rear was on the couch with the book light on and my email was closed down and in another room. I know that hardly sounds like a ringing endorsement, but it really is a great read, and it wasn’t the book, it’s me – I have a tiki drink attention span, and Michael Greenburg is a 25-year-old scotch, neat.

It helped that the book is broken into pieces – each chapter is an essay by itself, and they all make up the entire novel. The story is a memoir of Michael Greenberg’s life. He is invited to become part of the family scrap-metal business but refuses; he wants to be a Writer. Odd jobs become his way to survive, and in each he is introduced to different characters in New York City that he observes and writes of with a skill that makes them interesting, and sometimes beautiful, even if they are not. He also manages to capture the absurdity of living here in a way that I wish I could because, my god, this place has the most ridiculous people! Even the city itself (herself?) becomes a character in the novel; he imagines that the streets have feelings and seek their revenge if he changes his nightly course home.

The book is a documentation of the journey to becoming a successful writer and will be assigned to literature classes, I am so sure, in the years to come.

They’ve developed an interactive site (MichaelGreenberg.org) meant to recreate the spirit and experience of the book visually including a fineart map featuring some of the places mentioned in the book, and you can appreciate it whether or not you’ve read the book yet.

Someone sent this book to me, and this was the pitch, in part:

Author Irene Vilar is a successful and beautiful mother of two; grand-daughter of famed Puerto Rican activist Lolita Lebron. She finished high school at 15, became an academic star at Syracuse, and distinguished herself in publishing as a top acquisitions editor, literary agent and chair for a major non-profit. Hidden beneath her success however, was a life marred by 15 abortions in 16 years, the result of a complex addiction, years of manipulation and abuse, dysfunctional relationships and depression.

I’m going to start reading it shortly for review, it sounds compelling and controversial, and if you want to read along you can buy the book and share you thoughts, too. It’ll be cool to hear other people chime in.  The book is on sale on Amazon here: Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict

The problem with me and dystopic novels is that I can’t ever quite shake them off as “something that would never happen”. The level to which people become complacent, so long as they are well-fed and unruffled, un-nerves me (never more so than when I recognize it in myself). It’s really easy to pick on the white picket fence suburban dwelling home-owners to illustrate this point, but we’re all doing it: those that live in glamorous high-rises in Manhattan with loads of money and important, morally-bankrupt jobs, and those working on a farm taking government money to grow way too much corn. As long as the status-quo is maintained, we stay quiet, and chains can easily slip around us.

Anyway, I was sent a dystopic novel to review and I couldn’t talk about it for a while even though it was really, really good; it shook me up a bit. Then we moved, and and it got backburnered, but I’m pretty excited to share this one now. It’s kind of like the Giver meets Soylent Green.

The Unitby Ninni Holmqvist is set in the not so distant future, in Sweden. The people in society known as “dispensables” are sent to live in the Second Reserve Unit Bank where they are given comfortable one-bedroom apartments sealed in a huge facility that provides them everything they need to live out their last days rather luxuriously: swimming pools, a library, five-course meals, a museum, and fun social events are all provided at no cost to them. In the heart of the Unit is a winter garden perpetually blooming with flowers that becomes the favorite hangout of Dorrit Weger, the narrator, who was sent to live in the Unit shortly after her 50th birthday. (In a sexist plot twist we learn that one becomes a dispensable by failing to have children, contributing to the economy or being registered as “loved” by family or a lover by age 50 for women, while men have until age 60.)

In exchange for all of this, the dispensables are used for involuntary drug and scientific experiments, and donate organs, one at a time for a few years, to those outside the Unit who are “needed” by society. Eventually the time comes for all of them to give their “final donation”.

In striking contrast to a lot of dystopic stories, everyone in the Unit is completely aware of what is happening to them. Rather than be horrified, it is accepted simply as The Way Things Are.  Most  of the inhabitants are more focused on enjoying the close friendships and sense of belonging they’ve found in the Unit for the first time in their lives, and who is going to be donating what is a frequent topic of glib dinner conversation: “Next week, they’re giving my kidney to a mother of four!”

It sounds completely horrific, but the book is written so cleverly and in such a way that Ninni brings us to the point where even the most fundamentalist theist would start to think, “Ok, maybe…?”, and THEN she hits us with a plot twist so unexpected I literally said out loud, “SHUT! UP!” and dropped the book in shock (which was awkward because I was on the subway).

By the end of the novel it’s quite clear that this system has created a sort of hell outside of the Unit, with teens having babies as young as possible to ensure they won’t end up in the Unit, and kidnappings skyrocketing among those whose time is coming to go. Standards for dispensables change to become broader, so they can include more of the people who were formerly protected.

Despite the heavy topic this is an easy read, making it a good, cerebral alternative to the fluffy chick-lit beach books available to us women. It is an inspection of what it is to be a thinking female, a critical look at rampant ageism, and an examination of the struggle to find a worthwhile identity in society as an un-married, non-childbearing woman. In other words, it’s a look at a caricature of a society not entirely unlike our own.

To buy it:

When I was asked to review this book by Charlotte Greig, I was excited because it was a novel. I don’t usually read them, and not because I don’t want to but because I have a hard time finding books that aren’t silly “chick lit” but still interesting and non-depressing.  (I do enjoy good literature geared towards women.)  I know, everyone says they can’t stomach the genre and yet it remains so popular, but I genuinely get bored and angry reading female characters who are totally vapid. (Trying to watch the Real Housewives of anything has me foaming at the mouth.)

Here, finally, is a lead female character that has a brain. Susannah is a philosophy student in Sussex, England in 1974, although the 70’s part didn’t play in so heavily that the book felt like it was telling a 35 year old story. There were concrete references to the era – a John Martyn concert in a student center for one, a note that the new, acceptable term for homosexuals is “gay” for another – but the story feels timeless and easy to relate to. Susannah, a sophomore, turns to the major European philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries to help determine major life decisions, and as a humanist thinker I appreciated reading a book where the first obvious answer was not turning to a higher power. The “crash course” on major philosophers was fascinating, too.

There is romance in the book, but it doesn’t dominate annoyingly, and it’s not all sweetness either.  There is no obvious happy ending looming all throughout the book, and Charlotte Greig does an excellent job of making things not just what I want them to be, but what they must be.  A major theme in the book only debuts in the second half, letting the reader get to know Susannah and her life’s circumstances first so we really feel it when the twisty party comes.

This novel is beautifully written, and I’m very excited to be sharing it with you.  It’s on Amazon here.

I left with plenty of time to get to my appointment today but I went to 8th Avenue, not 8th Street. With fifteen minutes to spare, I drove the few miles to the proper address and arrived at 3:04. Ok. Not bad. I dropped off my gear and dashed off to park, thinking it would take me no time at all.

I ended up driving about ten miles in a three-block radius. After about fifty swear words, several angst-filled poundings on the steering wheel, and a handful of prayers to gods I don’t actually believe in, I found a spot and arrived back at 3:45. This was a new personal low of mine, and I was ashamed. Also, we are nearly out of gas, and I’ve gnawed off several fingernails.

My interview went well; I get to meet the most interesting people and today was no exception. Lotta offered me water, I accepted, and it came sparkling, in a glass, with a lime. Classy! Note to self: buy limes and put them in guests’ drinks. It shows thoughtfulness.

Her newest book comes out today, and I flipped through it while we were interviewing. The projects really do seem simple, and there are several patterns included with the book. There are things to make for toddlers, too, including bibs, rattles, crib bumpers and quilts.

Order here