Flyaway by Suzie Gilbert

Flyaway: How a Wild Bird Rehabber Sought Adventure and Found Her Wings

by Suzie Gilbert

“Wildlife rehabilitators find themselves … faced with a … skeptical public, many of whom seem to believe that wild animals are little more than programmed robots. Some loudly and indignantly question why rehabbers “waste” their time with animals when they could be helping people …”

- from Flyaway

My house feels like an animal sanctuary, and I’m not talking about the homo sapiens living inside. There’s a space underneath our porch that’s been home to at least three families of skunks (yes, it STANK), and now our second or third round of foxes.

The skunks, despite the smell, were an entertaining lot. One year they, for whatever reason, decided to grab hold of the Christmas lights, dragging them into their little den. I told my kids they were using them to light their tree, and we got kick out of that mental picture. Once the holiday was over we pulled the lights out. They were a little chewed, and a lot stinky, and had to be thrown out. But for a month or so it seemed pretty hilarious.

In honor of Gilbert’s book, I also have a bird story to share. Every year we put out two hanging baskets, again on our porch. For three or four years running a little brown bird with a sort of rosy red stomach (smaller than a robin) built a nest in one of them. Then, one year, we put out the baskets later than usual. One day I heard a tap, tap, tapping on the window looking out on our porch. On it was sitting that little bird – or its twin. It went on for days. Then, we put out the hanging baskets. And the bird built its nest once again. Coincidence or a little bird saying, “Hey! Where’s my basket?!”

You tell me.

Suzie Gilbert’s book is filled with stories any wildlife and/or nature lover will identify with. Doubtless this group will find it as entertaining as I did. Those who love biographies with a lighter spin (i.e., not of the “My life was a living hell” variety) will enjoy the frequently humorous prose.

I was especially glad I read it while recovering from knee surgery. Why? Because I needed something upbeat and well-written to pull me out of the “this sucks!” doldrums.  And Flyaway certainly did that.

But perhaps the best thing about this book is its avid championing of the cause of animal rehabbers, a dedicated and selfless lot who often don’t get the credit they deserve:

“Critics may look for numbers, but from that point of view all nonprofit work is the veritable drop in the bucket. Millions are under seige; what’s the point of helping fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand? The point is in the value of the individual, and in the ensuing ripple effect. The drop in the bucket is the convulsing mockingbird; the ripple effect is that a woman brings it to a rehabilitator, who convinces the woman to stop using pesticides on her lawn, and the woman returns home and convinces her neighbors to do the same.”

- from Flyaway

If I thought I had a real life “animal house,” Gilbert’s book shows she’s beaten me by a mile. Her whole family was engaged in her drive to save wildlife – especially birds, but occasionally another species. If they hadn’t been on board I can’t imagine how she’d have done all the laudable work she did. I have a feeling her enthusiasm would still have been there, but her family really deserves much credit for their hard work, too.

I give my full recommendation for Flyaway, the best nonfiction book about animals I’ve read since James Herriot’s All Creatures series, and best nature book since Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  In the spring, when the birds are coming back, its especially good reading.

And who knows? Maybe it will inspire more people to get into animal rehabbing. I have a feeling Suzie Gilbert would find that most pleasing of all.

Paperback: 352 pages

Publisher: Harper Perennial; 1 Reprint edition (March 16, 2010)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0061563137

Visit Suzie Gilbert’s website  for more info.

 

The lifetime experience of reading.

The Graveyard Book

by Neil Gaiman

Remember when you were around age 12 or 13, before life became  cluttered with boring adult things like paying bills, doing laundry, and making meals? Reading was so different then, a whole other experience.

At that age I could curl up with a book and be so into the story it would block out all the rest of the world. It was transporting. I literally did not hear what went on around me. Must have driven my family nuts, but it was worth every precious minute.

Once I had children everything changed. I still read, of course, but through conditioning one ear became permanently attuned to listen for a crying baby, or a disaster connected with said crying baby -  like falling and crashing noises,  never a positive thing.

It’s a habit I still can’t shake, though my “baby” is now 12. Crying noises have, with some exceptions, been replaced with a combination of video game sound effects, a blaring TV and a constant stream of consciousness rambling about school, video games and complaints a brother or sister is LOOKING AT ME MAKE HIM/HER STOP!!!

No matter how gripping a plot, completely falling into a story has become a rarity. A true loss. A big part of what made reading such an obsession all my life was taken away; I could no longer completely lose the world in a book, falling down the rabbit hole with Alice, desperate to know what would happen next.

But… Over the weekend I had a breathtaking experience, a short but intense period in which the whole world – outside of a book – completely disappeared. I was reading Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, a novel meant for children aged 9 – 12, but never mind that. It was so magically wonderful I felt the same absorption I had as a child. I carried it with me everywhere, even walking around the house. Family members would talk to me, but had to repeat themselves two or three times before I finished a paragraph and could look up, impatience written all over my face.

I took it with me in the car (I wasn’t driving, in case you’re worried…), on the way to my in-laws’ for Easter. And I finished on the trip there, feeling bereft once I’d turned that last page, devastated to have left the world of Nobody (“Bod”) Owens and the spirits in the cemetery, his constant companions since he was a toddler.

Immediately, I turned around and told my sons (my daughter, at 16, doesn’t enjoy fantasy), “YOU HAVE TO READ THIS BOOK!,” with enough volume and conviction they looked up from their gaming systems, surprised  to learn the book that had so absorbed me was aimed at their age group, that this was what had made mom bump into doors reading and walking simultaneously.

I wanted them to experience the same feeling, to know what the unbreakable spell of reading an exceptionally gripping book felt like. My feelings of irritation with the internet and gaming age came to a head, realizing the activity of reading – so important to me at their age – wasn’t anywhere near as vital to them as it had always been to me.

They’d been involved in books before (the Tunnels series, and before that the Calvin and Hobbes collections of cartoons), but connecting them with riveting books became more and more difficult the older they got. Gone were the days we’d come to the library every couple weeks, walking out the door with armloads of books they’d pore over for hours. Now it’s all gaming all the time, no matter how I try to push reading. It just can’t compete with crashing cars, visual stimulation happening in front of them rather than in their own imagination.

But with Neil Gaiman, maybe they’ll turn a corner. I’ll require they read the first chapter or two, crossing my fingers it captures them the way it did me. And from there? Gaiman’s written so much more, so many graphic novels that seem a good transition from loud visual stimulation to using more imagination.

Being a librarian, it makes me feel a failure I can’t convince my children reading is transporting. Not with all the competition out there. And they’ve just never been as drawn to it was I was, growing up in a bustling suburb at a time when the digital age has completely changed life as we knew it. I was raised in a rural community, a tiny, quiet town that bored me to tears. Without books I’d have been lost. But I had a library card, and spent every dime of my allowance on books.

I wonder, would my priorities have differed had I grown up in this century as opposed to my own? I’d like to think not, but I can’t say for sure.

One thing I do know, though it’s hard getting through to kids it’s also crucial to at least try to raise them as readers. Even if they only read on electronic devices, I don’t care. Reading is reading. And I want them to experience every bit of it while they can, before their own lives shift to adulthood and all the responsibilities that come with it.  Maybe the key is to read books aimed at them, finding those that rivet me. Maybe there is still hope they’ll put down the games and pick up books. At least I can’t say I didn’t try.

Reading level: Ages 9-12

Hardcover: 320 pages

Publisher:HarperCollins; Later Printing edition (September 30, 2008)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0060530928

 

FYI

 

Lots of books out there on the topic of the information age, and how to tell what’s true and what isn’t. With everyone able to post anything anywhere, how does the average person navigate the web hoping to get the best information? You and I know the answer to that, but I’m not positive everyone else out there does.

True Enough makes great points re: how dubious so many sources really are, and how easily people are led astray by bad information, especially if that information contains elements supporting their own beliefs.

Manjoo also writes at length about experiments conducted to determine how people make decisions, how willing they are to tolerate listening to opposing viewpoints. The group was given a radio not quite tuned into a station espousing the opposite of their beliefs. I.E., a Conservative  would get a station expounding on Liberal views. The subject could bring the station into tune by pressing the button regularly, but the study found, in nearly all cases, everyone chose to listen to static rather than hear opposing views.

What does that say about humans and information?

I find it really disturbing. With the choice of seeking out true information or believing what you already thought was true are you actually going to go with what supports your beliefs? How narrow that is, and how difficult to overcome. Makes me wonder how librarians can compete with a public content to rely on sources such as Wikipedia for all their information needs. After all, if it’s written on the internet it must be correct. Right?

True Enough is an eye-opening read. I recommend it.

Related titles:

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr (6/2010)

You are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier

This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future by John Brockman

Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge by Cass R. Sunstein

 

One of the books I wish I'd written…

Gosh diddly darn it (edited for delicate ears), why didn’t I think of this idea first? I’ve been moaning about this exact topic, not that I have any answers, but I have asked myself a lot of questions about how the distractions of modern, everyday life will affect the future.

I look at my children, like most kids they’re in love with YouTube, video games, etc. Though they do read, and enjoy it, I worry about their constant need to be entertained.

When I was a kid I spent many long stretches bored out of my skull. I grew up in a small town, one so tiny you could practically throw a rock on one side of town and hit someone on the other (preferably someone you had a grudge against). Okay, maybe it wasn’t THAT small, but I did have a graduation class numbering less than 30. That’s pretty darn small.

My kids live in suburbia. Their schools are huge and getting more overcrowded by the day. Between all their activities and their love of entertainment they hardly know boredom at all. That’s a distinct disadvantage. It’s in times of boredom we come to use our creativity to think of things to do, simple things not involving electronics or even spending money at all. In my small town we rode our bikes to the dime store, or even to nowhere in particular, when we were bored out of our skulls. We played with things like big cardboard boxes. That was high entertainment. Heck, I even spent time hanging out in a big, decorative pot my mother had outside our house, looking at the sky and listening to the birds. Then again, that was the time ‘Isis’ was on TV, and I firmly believed I controlled the weather. But that’s a topic for my therapist.

But today? There’s no boredom. There’s text messaging, the internet, and in our house and many others satellite TV. No one spends time just hanging out anymore, or at least few people do. I lounge around reading a lot, but I’m a bibliomaniac, not the average sort of person at all. I also write, whether columns, essays or just in my journal. I fill potential boredom gaps with things that require actual brain power beyond which button to press on the Wii remote.

How will this generation’s lack of attention span affect all of our futures? What could even be done to change it? Those are questions that drive me out of my mind sometimes, especially when trying to convince my kids going to Ravinia and sitting on a picnic blanket, eating cheese, crackers and sushi while listening to lovely music is a good use of time. Or, God forbid, visiting the Chicago Botanic Gardens (though I’ll admit when I bring my camera along that can be excrutiating even for adults) just to see “stupid flowers.”

It’s a real problem, and this book seems to address that. I haven’t read it, but I’ve put it on my list. It may be a good summertime read, for those hours here and there I’m able to scrape together. My kids will be busy with video games anyway, so maybe free time will actually happen, between taking an online MLIS course and all the other things I’m involved with. It could happen.

I just wanted to call your attention (hopefully not limited) to this book. I think this is an extremely important issue. One we would all do well to think about.

 

Touristic Guidings to Glorious Nation of Kazahstan, and Touristic Guidings to Minor Nations of U.S. and A.

It may be prudent to sidestep any questions as to taste, when it comes to the topic of Borat. If you can actually use the words “taste” and “Borat” in the same sentence, that is, without having to evoke a clause from the Geneva Convention or something.

Or, maybe I won’t evade the topic, actually, considering the profession I’m in (or studying to be in, to be more technical), and my hardline stance against censorship. But I will, in this case, tread lightly out of respect for the sensibilities I can understand being a little threatened by such an obnoxious character as Borat.

Objectionable humor notwithstanding, his book, or, more accurately, the book Sacha Baron Cohen’s character inspired, landed on my desk this morning. It came to me via Random House, whose publicity department sent it out to me for potential review on my other blog. However, no interview with Sacha Baron Cohen is likely to be forthcoming here. For one thing, he doesn’t need the publicity. For another, he’s out of my reach without benefit of some really Herculean effort, and frankly, I’m too busy right now for anything that single-minded and time consuming.

I’ve seen the film inspired by Cohen’s character. I have a pretty tough hide, so it didn’t offend me, but that’s not the case for everyone. I wouldn’t even say I recommend the film, except to others similarly impervious to any kind of insult whatever. I’d recommend it to armadillos without equivocation, but to anyone else I’d probably pause a really long time before admitting what I personally thought of it. It’s just that weird, and unclassifiable. I know, there’s so much in it to offend, but it offends everyone pretty much equally. If you offend everyone equally, you essentially offend no one.

Or something like that.

Borat’s “travel guide” will be out in bookstores tomorrow. I’m one of the lucky (?) elect to have it in my hands today. If you enjoyed the film you’ll definitely enjoy the book. If you didn’t? Well, you may not want to put this one on your holiday list.

I hope you like very much!

 

'End in Tears' by Ruth Rendell

As Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell does creepy like nobody’s business. I generally prefer her Vine titles to her Rendells. Though she uses great psychological complexity in both guises, she tends to get more inside the head of the disturbed characters when she writes as Barbara Vine. And to my mind, that’s the more interesting style.

I haven’t read all her books, but I have consumed the vast majority, including several featuring the indomitable Chief Inspector Wexford. Before reading End in Tears I liked him well enough, but really hadn’t enjoyed a Wexford novel as well as I’d hoped. With this latest addition to her oeuvre, I was more impressed.

The plot of End in Tears begins to thicken very early on, after the body count starts piling up a bit. Shortly after what on the surface appears to be a random act of highway violence, a beautiful, unmarried, beautiful mother dies. Then a friend of hers, similarly young, though not the beauty Amber was, is dead. The connection between them is friendship, but considering Amber dies with a thousand pounds in cash still in her pocket, and more stuffed in her desk drawer, Chief Inspector Wexford begins to think there’s more than friendship between these two girls, and whatever they were involved with it included large cash payments. The more he digs, the more disturbing details he finds.

Meanwhile, his own daughter is going through trials of her own. Divorced, she finds she’s pregnant by her ex-husband, who’s steady girlfriend seems likely to shortly become his wife. Dora Wexford is beside herself, understandably, and the family seems on the verge of being ripped apart.

At the home of Amber’s father and step-mother, her young child toddles around, calling “Mama, mama…” Inspector Wexford feels he owes that sweet little boy the resolution to his mother’s murder, though the final denouement turns out to be more shocking than he’d even imagined.

Ruth Rendell has crafted another taut, gripping tale with End in Tears. I’m still not as big a fan of her Rendell books, but this one had me in its grasp. A worthy entry to the world of Ruth Rendell.

 

An Interview with Author Susanne Dunlap, author of 'Liszt's Kiss'

When an author is very familiar with her subject matter, it shows. Author Susanne Dunlap’s life has been dedicated to music, and her passion for that comes through so clearly in her writing.

Liszt’s Kiss is a historical novel set in 19th century Paris, where art and music reigned supreme. It’s a world peopled by the rich and famous, at the same time that the city was gripped by a cholera epidemic. Anne de Barbier-Chouant is a young musical prodigy, a girl taught her love of the pianoforte by her own music-adoring mother. But once her mother falls prey to the deadly disease Anne must turn elsewhere for support in her musical endeavors, as her father doesn’t think it’s a proper occupation for a young lady.

Fortunately for Anne, her mother’s very good friend Marie d’Agoult takes it upon herself to continue her musical education. When Franz Liszt introduces himself to Marie she in turn leads him to Anne, the gifted prodigy. But it’s not Anne that has his eye, and an interestingly convoluted romantic plot ensues, involving misunderstood meanings.

Meanwhile, in the background, a family secret looms large, and Anne’s father struggles to keep that hidden, at any cost.

An Interview with Author Susanne Dunlap

1. What was it about Franz Liszt that captured your attention? What drew you to focus on him, and on this particular period of history?

Franz Liszt is one of the most colorful characters in music history. He truly was the original “rock star” of music. He was handsome, romantic, and he took risks in his life and his music. It was very easy for me to imagine how it might feel to be a young woman and be completely enchanted by him as a man and as an artist.

Musically, Liszt was a little bit of a late bloomer compared to Chopin and Schubert. So his early life, when he first came to Paris, is not as well documented as later on when he was touring heavily and then when he settled in Weimar to teach master classes. I always look for the cracks, for the potential of a “might have been,” when I’m writing my historical fiction, and this early part of Liszt’s life seemed ideal.

As to the time period, I’m a pianist myself, and there is no more wonderful era for the piano than the romantic one, which started roughly with Schubert in the 1820s and continued through the 19th century. I was able to play out (excuse the pun) a little of my own fantasy of being around when the composers who were my heroes were alive.

2. How much time did you spend researching the history in order to write this novel?

That’s always a difficult question. I spent eleven years in graduate school studying music history and writing about music in a more scholarly way. I have been able to rely on that background research for quite a bit of the material of my books.

But there’s such a difference between the research one does in a very particular field and the research one must do in order to recreate a period in history. Whatever I thought I knew, for instance, I was not really aware of the devastating cholera epidemic until I read more widely for the sake of the story.

3. The main female character, Anne de Barbier-Chouant, is a very spirited young lady. Was she based on an actual historical figure, or is she entirely fictional?

Anne is entirely fictional, but I hope true to the period. Her choices were limited. Yet as a member of the aristocracy she would have had a little more freedom and options than women in other classes. On the other hand, the strictures of society also placed expectations on her that a shopkeeper’s wife would not have had.

4. What authors do you feel have most influenced your writing? Which authors do you admire most?

Influence vs. admire. That’s an excellent question. I am a passionate devotee of Virginia Woolf, Henry James, and all the Bloomsberries.

Then there’s F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Kennedy, Elizabeth Bowen—there are too many to list. But my writing is not like any of them.

It’s hard for me to identify any definite influences. Perhaps Anya Seton would be a good example. Problem is, I’d never read any Anya Seton before my first novel was published!

I cut my teeth on Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers and am a huge mystery fan. I always love a book that keeps me turning the pages.

5. Do you keep a strict schedule in your writing? How difficult is it to balance writing and the rest of your life?

I do keep a strict schedule, which is based on the principle of writing whenever I have a spare minute. I set my alarm for 5:15 am and aim to be at my computer by 5:30. That gives me an hour and a half before I have to start getting ready for work.

Which answers in part the other question. I have a very demanding day-job, but in a peculiar sort of way, I think it helps to focus me.

That said, I always accomplish a lot over the weekend and when I go on vacation. I’m extremely fortunate to have a very understanding partner, who not only gives me the time and space I need rather than demand I pay attention to him, but also loves me to read aloud as I finish things. (It also helps that I’m an empty nester. I have tremendous admiration for the people who can write while they raise families AND work.)

6. Have you always wanted to be a writer, or was there one defining moment when you made that decision?

It’s taken me a long time to find my vocation. I was a musician first. I made a few attempts at writing (which I always enjoyed doing) in my 20s, when I gave up the idea of a career as a pianist and started working in advertising.

Then I left advertising to go to grad school and I thought would have a career teaching music history at the college level.

I didn’t really discover that I had inadvertently groomed myself to write historical fiction based on musical subjects until I found out how difficult it would be to get a job I could actually take (meaning in the northeast), even with the credentials of a Yale PhD.

7. If you could no longer be a writer, what career would you choose to pursue?

Well, since I’ve been through so many careers to get to this point, I might just throw my hands up in the air. And in any case, the only thing that would ever prevent me from being a writer would be some mental incapacity—which would make me unfit for any other career anyway. I could no more stop writing than I could stop breathing.

8. What other projects are you working on currently? What’s next for you after Liszt’s Kiss?

More musical subjects, of course! I have two novels simmering: one that takes place in the early 17th century in Florence and Paris, and another in the late 18th century in Vienna. The wonderful thing about music history is that I don’t think I’ll ever run out of stories.

9. As a public library employee myself, I have to ask if libraries played a significant role in your love of books and reading. Do you have any early memories of the influence libraries had on you?

I LOVE LIBRARIES. Did I say that loudly enough? Let me repeat myself. I LOVE LIBRARIES! If I could spend all day every day in a library, I’d be the happiest person on earth.

When I was little, almost one of the first things I was allowed to do by myself (with friends) was to go to the public library. I don’t remember all the books I used to take out, but one or two: The Witch of Blackbird Pond, practically everything Mary Stewart ever wrote. I still remember the local library in Kenmore, New York , right across Delaware Road from the junior high school. I remember the children’s library on the lower level, and the adult library on the main floor. I can still see myself wandering there, an armload of books ready to check out.

I developed a taste for rare books and manuscript archives when I was in graduate school. Days in the British Museum , leafing through Handel manuscripts, or in Vienna at the Staatsbibliothek with Mozart and Salieri’s works, and less well-known composers too.

I should stop now, before your readers start to think there’s something odd about me . . .

——————————————————————————–

Thanks so much to Susanne Dunlap, and to her publicist as well, for sending me a review copy of this book and arranging the author interview.

 

'The Opposite House' by Helen Oyeyemi

From The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi:

“I need my Cuba memory back, or something just as small, just as rich, to replace it, more food for my son, for me. I think I will pretend that I am not from Cuba and neither is my son. The boy and I started a race from that other country, and I got here first.”

The Opposite House reads like a book written by the love child of Virginia Woolf and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, assuming either had been from Cuba. It’s a story filled with yearning for a native country, or for the memory of a native country, despite the fact the main character, Maja Carmen Carrera, only has one memory left of her childhood. Twenty years later she’s pregnant with her boyfriend Aaron’s baby, and living in London. Still, that one memory goes along with her, haunting her dreams.

The book is shot through with so much internal conflict the pain is often palpable, and sometimes raw. An African Cuban, she doesn’t feel she fully belongs in either the world with her memory of Cuba or in an England that doesn’t completely feel like home, either:

“I was seven years old when we came here. I’ve come to think that there’s an age beyond which it is impossible to lift a child from the pervading marinade of an original country, pat them down with a paper napkin and then deep-fry them in another country, another language like hot oil scalding the first language away. I arrived here just before that age.”

It’s the lushness of the language, though, that’s the dominating factor in what makes this such a wonderful book. The sensuous language is woven throughout:

“The day was hot but gentle; beneath its healing steam lay granite, decrepit wood, rocks gloved in blanched sand. The harbour water caught sunlight in layered hoops of petrol-coloured dirt and tried to keep its clarity secret, but the divers told. Small, earth-brown boys kept bobbing up, their backbones hacking out of their skin, hair plastered to their heads, coin pouches around their waists rattling as they added new handfuls of slick bronze to their store.”

The Opposite House is told in alternating narrative, flashing between Maja’s story and the fantastical, alternate reality of a girl named Yemaya, whose connection with Maja really is never completely spelled out. Rather, it’s a more spiritual connection, a reaching across the dimensions between two souls who don’t feel fully at home, or at ease, and whose searchings lead them almost to each other, in a sort of alternate reality that lies between them. It has a lot to do with feeling alien, never able to feel you fit into a culture, but not able to go back, either, because that door has closed. It’s this door, between the two worlds, that seems to be Oyeyemi’s target, this ethereal, intangible “door” that won’t open for either Maja or Yemaya, and it’s this reality that frustrates the both of them. Yet, neither can forget the past, and they carry the weight of it with them while trying to make their lives elsewhere. They are a part of several cultures but don’t completely belong to any one:

“I strip to my underwear and I study myself in the mirror; it is a bronzed sorrel woman with a net of curly hair who looks back, and she does not look Jamaican or Ghanian or Kenyan or Sudanese – the only firm thing that is sure is that she is black. Mami says only Cubans look like Cubans; put three Cuban girls together – white, black, Latina, whatever – and you just see it.”

Ultimately, both women are strong. They are survivors. Despite their feelings of disconnection, they carve out lives for themselves in an adopted land that at the least is rich in opportunity and the potential for making a good life. And it’s through the beauty of Oyeyemi’s prose that the reader is able to explore not just the complexity of Maja and Yemaya, but also the tenuous link that binds them to each other. And the result is a gorgeous book, rich in luxuriant prose that’s a treat to read.

“She fled to be born. She fled to be native, to start somewhere, to grow in that same somewhere, to die there. She didn’t know just then that she wasn’t quickening toward home, but trusting home to find her.”

From Random House website:

HELEN OYEYEMI was born in Nigeria in 1984, and has lived in London from the age of four. She completed The Icarus Girl just before her nineteenth birthday, while studying for her A-levels. She is now a student of Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge University. She has written two plays, Juniper’s Whitening and Victimese; The Icarus Girl is her first novel, and she is at work on her second.

 

'The Interloper' by Antoine Wilson

From The Interloper by Antoine Wilson:

“The word ghost should be like the word pants – it should never be singular. No one leaves behind one ghost. Everyone who dies leaves behind at least as many ghosts as people they knew.”

The Interloper was an impromptu read for me. I didn’t intend to read it right now, with all the piles of review books accumulating around me like ants at a summer picnic. If my hand hadn’t happened to touch this particular book, while I was pawing through a bag of books, who knows when I’d have gotten to it. I didn’t get a review copy of it, so there was no sense of true urgency, but I had an idea it had been lauded as a really good read. And far be it from me not to be influenced by that.

So I picked it up, and read the first couple of pages. Then I read a few more pages, then I said “Hell with it. I’m taking this one to my reading lair…” And the rest is history. It was as close to unputdownable as it gets.

The main character, Owen Patterson, is a man whose worsening mental state pulled me in and wouldn’t let go. As his obsession grew so did mine, and before I knew it there was no escaping until I knew how all this resolved itself.

What would the average man do if his wife felt tortured by the knowledge her brother’s murderer wasn’t paying all that stiff a price for his crime, if the pain and sadness of it had turned her into a person he no longer recognized, and he felt himself powerless to help?

The average man may not be willing to go to the lengths Owen Patterson did, starting up a correspondence with the killer, posing as a beautiful young woman, trying to win his heart and then break it, just as his wife’s heart had been broken. The further Owen gets into his plan, the more his sanity takes a dive, plunging him into obsession. The need for revenge becomes so overwhelming he puts everything on the line, risking his job and his relationship with his wife, hoping against hope that once all is said and done he’ll be able to say he’d maybe not righted the wrong, but that he’d at least balanced it out a bit. And his wife, he reasoned, would feel better knowing he’d loved her enough to do that for her, and maybe, just maybe, she’d snap back to herself again, and everything between them would be as great as it had been before her brother was senselessly and brutally murdered. That’s a lot of maybes, but when maybe is all you have you may just take a chance and grasp at anything.

“Every moment contains within it the seeds of its own destruction.”

The Interloper’s a fascinating read, especially if you love books that delve into the darker side of the psyche, like I do. The prose is beautiful, and the plot grabs you by the throat. A fine, fine book.

Author Antoine Wilson

Check out his website and his blog.

 

Review: Mississippi Sissy by Kevin Sessums

Kevin Sessums’s memoir Mississippi Sissy was one of an armload of review books the Holtzbrinck group sent me recently. In that pile of general and genre fiction, this one leapt out at me immediately. Not only was it the only work of nonfiction in the box, but it’s not everyday you see a title with Mississippi in the title, much less one with as engaging a word as “sissy” to go with it. It gets the attention, it really does.

Just a catchy title isn’t enough, of course, if the book itself doesn’t engage. In this case the style engaged me immediately, and the authentic Mississippi voice was one I could identify with, coming from that state myself.

Sessum’s book tells the story of growing up gay in 1960s Mississippi. It may take a moment for the immensity of that to hit home, but considering this is KKK territory you may rest assured this was one rough ride. Mississippi isn’t exactly a state noted for being liberal, nor especially tolerant of anyone the slightest bit “different.” It was a rough ride made worse by Sessum’s uber-macho father, whose disappointment with his son played a major role in his growing up. Imagine being everything your father despises, yet wanting so badly to be a good son and make him proud. The difficulty of his childhood is painful and poignant, and Sessum reacts by shutting down his emotions, in an attempt not to embarrass his father further.

In contrast, his mother thought his cross-dressing cute and funny, at least until her husband began reacting more violently. If Sessum’s father hadn’t been killed in a car accident the violence and anger would surely have escalated.

Closely following his father’s death his mother also died from cancer, leaving the boy orphaned from a young age. With his mother Kevin had enjoyed a much closer relationship. She gave him the feeling of being loved and wanted, and there was also a certain playful camaraderie between them. They shared secrets, as well as private jokes. Her death left Kevin adrift, disconnected from his immediate family.

Mississippi Sissy is a courageous, warm, and often poignant memoir of what it is to be different from the mainstream in an unforgiving environment. It’s also a testament to Kevin Sessum’s spirit that he was able to weather it all and go on to become a writer known for his celebrity interviews. He’s an interviewer celebrities seem to trust implicitly, and there’s a quality to his writing in his memoir that may give the reader a good idea why that is. He has a genuineness, as well as an unforced honesty, that lends an especially compelling quality to his writing. I’d recommend Mississippi Sissy without hesitation as a truly well-written memoir.