Novel Therapy

I hold a substantial portion of my retirement fund in equities (the actuarial tables inform me that I'm too young to ride a pure cash/bond route into the sunset), and you could say that the events of the past week have focused my attention. As they say, if things seem too good to be true, they probably are. Just as I was settling into a warm bed of complacency ("This 'investment stuff' is great. All I have to do is go to sleep at night, and when I wake up in the morning, I have MORE MONEY!"), reality, in the form of capitalism gone wild, stripped the sheets and pitched me to the floor in the process.

Conventional wisdom has it that the current market meltdown, albeit grave, will eventually pass; the trick is to batten down the hatches and ride the storm through in hopes that it won't attain Katrina force. My secret for staying reasonably collected in these volatile times? When the going gets tough, the tough get reading. I have a long history of burrowing into a good book during bad times, to wit:

1. I am nine years old, it is midnight, and I have a roaring case of the measles (yes, I know, this dates me). Folk medicine of the day has it that straining one's eyes during a measles outbreak can permanently weaken your vision. In an effort to drive this point home to me, my parents have upped the ante by vaguely alluding to actual blindness. Nevertheless, I am reading a Nancy Drew mystery ("The Clue of the Dancing Puppet," as I recall) by the light of a flashlight (I've also taken the precaution of stuffing a pair of pants into the light-emitting crack beneath the bedroom door -- you can't be too careful). My forehead is hot, my flannel pajamas are clammy, but Nancy's clever detective work has lifted me from my stale sickbed into an alternative universe where measles are irrelevant. (For those who are wondering, I didn't go blind, although I am extremely nearsighted.)

2. Fast forward to ninth grade: my intellectual precocity has consigned me to the fate of a social outcast. An ugly rumor that I read Shakespeare voluntarily (ychh!), together with the fact that I'm a chronic hand-raiser in class (Pick me! Pick me! I know!) have virtually insured a dateless future. Gossip has it that most of my classmates are going to a "mixer" on Friday night, and it's fairly clear by Thursday night that I'm not invited. The rebuff is particularly painful due to the fact that "Twister" (a game invented by the devil himself if ever there was one, my Sunday School teacher tantalizingly informs me) is on the agenda for what promises to be one hormone-fest of an evening. What's a shunned girl to do? Frank Herbert to the rescue. I devour "Dune" for the next four days, transported across time and space from my small town onto an arid planet that is depending upon me to fulfill a messianic prophecy. Who needs to roll around on a plastic mat and tangle legs with Larry Hoffbeck when you can hook and ride a massive sandworm into the pages of interplanetary history?

3. Freshman year, Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri: Things aren't going well. I'm homesick, stressed out (to my surprise, it's not quite as easy to stand out in a private women's college as it was to shine in a graduating high school class of 40 indifferent students), and flirting with an eating disorder. My roommate smokes like a chimney ( a fact that she concealed until about twenty minutes after her parents bid a teary goodbye) and owns the only television set on our floor, guaranteeing a nightly gaggle of Johnny Carson fans yucking it up while I try to study. Miraculously, while browsing the campus bookstore one muggy autumn afternoon, I stumble upon a series that everyone seems to be raving about -- "Lord of the Rings." I decide to give it a try. Tolkien saves my undergraduate life.

4. California Bar Exam, Los Angeles Airport Hilton: This is a nightmare. I'm committed to eighteen hours of exams spread out over three days, I'm one day into the process, and I've awakened with a flaming sore throat. With the aid of a sunny window and a makeup mirror (why are the light bulbs in hotel rooms so damn dim?), I observe white, pus-filled plaques coating my throbbing tonsils. Luckily, there is an "InstaCare" near the airport, and I'm able to see a doctor who confirms my diagnosis and dispenses some antibiotics.

After listening to fellow test-takers bemoan the incredibly low pass rate predicted for this exam, and after realizing that my recovery isn't imminent, I toss in the towel. I decide that I will continue to sit for the exam, but I'm beyond caring. In line with this defeatist attitude, I refuse to study, and instead spend all of my free time reading a paperback book entitled "Nobel House" by James Clavell. I focus on the novel with the concentration of a dog anticipating bacon, complete the exam as a mere auxiliary activity, and fly home with a devil-may-care attitude. Interestingly, I pass the exam.

Conclusion

There are, of course, a few rules to follow when selecting a good book to get you through bad times. A page-turning plot is a huge plus, of course, and I find that the most effective "escapist" fare predictably involves unusual or imagined settings. Whatever you do, don't read a "slice of life" book that addresses the very issues you're trying to escape from. (Don't read "Anna Karenina" if you're trapped in a deteriorating domestic situation, etc.) Accordingly, "Diary of a Bad Year" by J.M. Coetzee may be high on my current reading list, but there's no way I'm going to read it during these times of economic and political absurdity. Suggestions, anyone??

Susan Choi Explores the Psychology of "Otherness"

Susan Choi's newest novel, "A Person of Interest," is a complex thriller that rises above the usual standards for the genre. Professor Lee, an Asian-born mathematics professor at an undistinguished university, has lived an increasingly quiet and isolated life after the exodus of his second wife and the estrangement of his only child. His days are spent teaching calculus to indifferent undergraduates, worrying about how he is "coming off" to others (he wraps his empty beer and wine bottles in newspaper and carries them to the trash bin in cover of darkness so that his neighbors will see no evil/hear no evil), and nursing a festering resentment of Professor Hendley (middle-aged "hipster"), whose neighboring office is under constant barrage by starstruck undergraduates while Lee's office threshold gathers dust.

Lee's sedate existence is shattered when a mail bomb explodes in Hendley's office, killing Hendley and turning campus life on its head. Lee becomes increasingly agitated as he attempts to reconcile his self-contained private nature with the need to appear acceptably grief-ridden in the face of the tragedy (Lee skips out of Hendley's memorial service, and recoils at the sanctimonious orgy of tears, grief counseling, and cancelled exams that follow -- how well could the undergraduates have known Hendley, anyway?)

In the midst of the Hendley aftermath, Lee receives a "mail bomb" of a different sort altogether. It so happens that Lee poached his first wife, Aileen, from a fellow graduate student named Lewis Gaither decades ago -- a graduate student who subsequently disappeared and hasn't been heard from since. A letter addressed to Lee sets his head spinning with long-buried feelings of rivalry, regret, and guilt. His roiled state of mind doesn't help him when two FBI agents arrive at his doorstep to interview him about the bombing, and he slowly realizes that his sweaty efforts to "appear normal" have backfired -- he's obviously a suspect.

Choi weaves themes of estrangement and loneliness throughout her novel. Lee's daughter, Esther, has moved to the Rockies where she spends her days in isolation on the edge of a mountain cliff, patiently feeding abandoned eaglets with meat chunks delivered through a plastic tube. Aileen decamps from her marriage to Lewis when she realizes that their union is, at best, a sham of "togetherness." Her subsequent marriage to Lee is detached from the get-go; only their daughter Esther prevents her from fleeing earlier than she does. Lewis Gaither, an intensely religious man, recovers from Eileen's departure by marrying a fellow parishioner named Ruth, and their subsequent lives are spent wandering from one misbegotten mission outpost to another like fundamentalist nomads. Their itinerant travel has a negative effect on their young son, Mark, who is further isolated by the fact that he doesn't share their religious convictions.

Choi is at her best when she explores the inner workings of characters who are self-aware of their "otherness." Lee is ambivalent about his solitude -- he isn't upset about living alone, but he worries whether the neighbors might feel sorry for him; he is torn between feelings of resentment and relief when students don't visit his office; he is at once pleased and irritated when Gaither invites him to a church social. All of these feelings are intensified by Lee's status as an immigrant who will always remain, at least in his own mind, a "foreigner." "[Lee] had felt that his place in the world was unsteady and worthless, a perch best abandoned and, more than that, not even his." Choi's portrayal of"the immigrant's sense of hopeless illegitimacy and impending exposure" speaks to the occasional alienated (and sometimes paranoid) introvert in all of us.

I've not given away any "spoilers" here. The book's plot line is filled with twists, turns, and a bang-up ending. If you don't read it for its thriller appeal or psychological depth, read it for the prose, which is wonderful:

"The cherry trees had exploded like fireworks and left their pink litter all over the ground."

"She was aware of the need to frame an objection that was calm, logical, but she felt herself flailing around in her mental closet, knocking things off the shelf."

I highly recommend that you read this book.

Flotsam and Jetsam

I usually like to write around a central theme, and there isn't one to be had today. However, as Obama has recently stated, we shouldn't "let the perfect be the enemy of the good," so I'm going to relax and ramble a bit. Here goes:

The Problem with Historical Fiction

I finished reading Nancy Horan's "Loving Frank" two days ago and I'd like to give the novel a qualified thumbs up. Why the qualification? Let me explain.

A novel that is loosely historical and extremely well written can be highly successful. The book's page-turning story captivates readers, who learn a little about the time period involved without concerning themselves with the literal accuracy of each event and conversation that is articulated from page to page. Horan's novel, however, is more than "loosely historical." Horan is a journalist by trade, and the book smacks of fact-based veritas. As for her writing, it's solid, but I wouldn't rate it as an exceptional piece of literary prose.

Ultimately, therefore, "Loving Frank" ends up in a perplexing "literary limbo." You pick up the book because you want to learn more about Frank Lloyd Wright and his mistress Mamah (pronounced May-muh) Cheney, but the book isn't really a biography -- it's marketed as fiction heavily interspersed with facts (but which is which?). Conversely, if the book is truly a work of literary fiction, you expect more writing skill from the author. (You don't expect an official biography to be filled with lush prose or page-turning sizzle, but you do expect such characteristics to be present in outstanding fiction.)

Nonetheless, I recommend Horan's book for the insight it provides into the societal restrictions, changing mores and competing lifestyles that were fighting for legitimacy at the beginning of the 20th century.

Joe Bageant's "Deer Hunting With Jesus:"

Joe Bageant focuses an uncompromising lens on "his people," the white working poor of Winchester, Virginia, and ends up producing a book that is both a scathing send-up and a loving tribute to his family, friends and neighbors in that neck of the woods.

Bageant doesn't pull any punches: "Here, nearly everyone over fifty has serious health problems, credit ratings rarely top 500, and alcohol, Jesus, and overeating are the three preferred avenues of escape." He calls it as he sees it, even at the risk of straining family ties. Joe's brother is a Baptist pastor who claims to cast out demons, but that doesn't stop Joe from writing that "The 2008 elections, regardless of the outcome, will not change the fact that millions of Americans are under the spell of an extraordinarily dangerous mass psychosis [religion]."

None of these people ever had a fighting chance to achieve the American Dream, and yet they are its most enthusiastic, bellicose, flag-waving proponents. Every November, they proudly march to the ballot box and vote for the very policies that will push them further into debt, poverty, and ignorance. Bageant warns that neocon operatives "understand that the four cornerstones of the American political psyche are (1) emotion substituted for thought, (2) fear, (3) ignorance, and (4) propaganda." Grossly substandard public schools, shameful health "care," parochial resistance to progressive ideas and independent thinking, unconscionable lending practices, and the "Jesus palliative" all contribute to tragically squandered lives that the rest of us ignore at our own risk.

Bageant's political views and conceptions of reality couldn't diverge more from those of his Winchester neighbors, but the depth of his compassion and empathy for the plight of these "invisible victims" as he relates their personal stories will make you want to cry. Anyone who has ever recoiled at the thought of NASCAR, tent revivals, or the NRA should read this book. How can you contemplate the experience of a man who performs forty years of physically debilitating menial work without complaint, cherishes a "dream" of someday owning a prefabricated modular home in a former industrial park, and goes home each night to a wife on oxygen support (asbestos lung), and then proceed to mock him for going out and popping a few raccoons in the butt over the weekend for a momentary distraction? I'm telling you, this book will change your perceptions, and you'll be the better for it.

Endangered Pleasures, by Barbara Holland

The sybaritic subtitle of this book hooked me in like a bigmouth bass: "In Defense of Naps, Bacon, Martinis, Profanity, and Other Indulgences." Other pleasures covered by Ms. Holland include bare feet, coffee, staying in, and undressing (for comfort, not sex -- think flannel bathrobe).

I have to quote a passage from her piece on "Happy Hour." If it doesn't make you want to bolt from your office chair and head for the nearest watering hole, I'm sorry for everyone involved:

"For the perfect happy hour, it should be summer, blistering hot, the street clogged with ill-tempered rush-hour traffic and the melting asphalt soft underfoot. Our workday should have been frantic but ultimately successful. After the glare outside, the bar should be almost pitch dark, icily air conditioned and smell of black leather banquettes, and we should be meeting someone there . . . Then, knees touching, neck muscles relaxing, brows drying in the cold dry air, we should drink. Certain things were put upon the earth for our enjoyment, and it's wasteful and wicked to contemn them."

Bravo, Ms. Holland.

A Note On the Origin of the Phrase "Flotsam and Jetsam."

It struck me as odd that these two nouns never stand on their own, so I decided to get to the bottom of the matter by visiting a UK website called "The Phrase Finder." (Warning: this site can become addictive if you are of a wordy disposition).

Flotsam and jetsam are indeed distinct things: flotsam are those items (natural and manmade) which float and bob on the surface of the water as a consequence of the action of the sea (floatsom, get it?); jetsam are those items which have been intentionally jettisoned into the water by a ship's crew (of course, they may float, too). Apparently these two words were traditionally used in conjunction with a third term, lagan, which denoted goods or wreckage at the bottom of the sea. Lagan was rudely booted out of bed by flotsam and jetsam in the early 1800's, never to gain egress again.

If You Read Only One Book This Summer . . .

Most avid readers, if they are lucky, encounter two or three books a year that they simply cannot put down. You know the kind of book I'm talking about. It is usually discovered through sheer serendipity -- a friend's casual suggestion, a snippet in the NY Times, a title that sticks in your mind -- and after reading the first few pages, you throw over life's distractions (grocery shopping, oil changes, sleeping) and dive into the book like there's no tomorrow. You're mesmerized, and the only debate is whether to ration your literary feast or devour the book all at once with the sloppy gusto of a mule eating an apple.

I've just finished a week-long affair with "Child 44" by Tom Rob Smith, and I'm prepared to crown it as my summer reading standout for 2008. "Child 44" is a murder mystery set in the cold environs of Stalin's Soviet Union. The novel is a winner on three fronts: it has the page-turning quality of a compelling police procedural novel; its descriptive prose immerses the reader in a sensory sea of Soviet life, complete with grey weather, grey expectations, and grey housing blocks; and the interpersonal relationships in the novel are explored with literary depth and insight.

Leo Demidov is the golden boy of the USSR's State Security Force ("MGB"). He has a beautiful wife, a luxurious Moscow apartment, and a future that is as secure as can be hoped for in a society in which the slightest misstep -- the slightest rumor of nonconformity -- can destroy a comrade's life overnight. Demidov is under pressure to solve a delicate problem: a murdered child has turned up in his neighborhood, but murders are not supposed to occur in Stalin's USSR, a paradise where all citizens are supposed to live free from the fear of crime. Demidov must diffuse the situation, and quickly. The MGB is rife with backbiters, and Demidov's enemies are more than happy to see how he will wiggle his way out of this one.

The murders begin to mount up, and the bizarre, twisted way in which the young victims were killed points to the work of a madman. The confounding nature of the crimes, speculation as to the nature of the killer, and several well-placed clues and surprises enhance the page-turning quality of the novel, but that is only part of this book's charm.

The author's exploration of Demidov's evolving relationship with his wife, Raisa, as he gradually loses his "golden boy" status and questions everything he has based his career upon, is masterful. (Tidbits for thought: How much can any woman love a man who has the power to extinguish her future at will? How far can spouses be expected to go in order to save their own lives, each at the expense of the other? Why do they, or don't they?).

In addition, the book is a psychological and sensory primer on what it must have been like to live in the USSR under Stalin's rule. Smith writes in such a way as to make the reader experience the paranoia of being "found out" by one's neighbors and reported as an enemy of the state. He explains the Kafkaesque nature of the criminal justice system (all accusations of crime are fatal -- the accusation itself is decisive, since the Soviet system is perfect, and in a perfect system, there are no false accusations, etc.). Similarly, Smith's writing conveys the smell of a two-room apartment occupied by twelve people and twelve pairs of perpetually moist, slush-infused shoes with a verity that will send you to the window for a breath of air.

Smith's prose is also a powerful component of his book's success. I dare you to read the first sixteen pages of the book without reading more. If you read only one book for pleasure this summer, read this one.

More Deaths in Cold Climates:

If you enjoy this book's combination of page-turning suspense, psychological exploration, sense of place, and overall literary merit, I suggest three other novels: "Smilla's Sense of Snow," by Peter Hoeg; "The Yiddish Policeman's Union," by Michael Chabon, and "Gorky Park," by Martin Cruz Smith. I invite other readers to add to this list.

Barbara Cartland Can Save Your Life

A few months ago, I decided to make use of the "dead" time I was spending in my car by listening to a recorded version of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's memoir, "Infidel."

Ayaan is an exceptional woman. Born into a traditional Islamic family in rural Somalia, her remarkable intelligence, strength, and stubborn independence enabled her to endure and ultimately overcome the sexist limitations and indignities inflicted upon her as a girl and young woman growing up in Africa and Saudi Arabia. She eventually escaped to the West (and I do mean escape -- she had to "jump ship" in Amsterdam en route to an arranged marriage), and currently lives in the United States. I highly recommend her book to anyone who wants a forthright, firsthand account of one woman's experience with Islamic fundamentalism.

Where does Barbara Cartland fit into this picture? Ayaan's book discloses that a virtual "black market" in Western romance novels existed among her teenage girlfriends. I like to imagine well-thumbed paperbacks with titles like "Highland Lover" and "My Naughty Marquis" being passed from burqa to burqa like so much contraband hashish. Even established classics like "Jane Eyre" and "Emma" were carefully concealed and read with furtive interest (and astonishment!) by girls in the chancy privacy of their bedrooms.

Most people I know don't hold paperback romance novels up as a paradigm of women's liberation. The heroines usually have matrimony and motherhood on the brain and aren't above scheming to achieve their goals. Most of them are described (in painstaking detail) as beautiful, although the beauty is frequently labeled as "unconventional" (a nod, I suppose, to broadmindedness). The men are frequently characterized as commanding, arrogant, and brutishly virile. Even good literature is a product of its time, and few women today would publicly own up to the matrimonial campaigning and feminine subterfuge contained in Jane Austen's works.

Ah, but we take so much for granted. These fictional women may appear hopelessly "retro" to us, but imagine their effect on young girls boxed into orthodox fundamentalism. Jane, Emma and Desiree must seem like creatures from another universe. They are opinionated and smart. They address men directly, and initiate conversations in public without a second thought. They venture into the public square without male supervision. It is obvious that they are not enshrouded from head to toe, and yet they survive the day without being stoned or bringing shame upon their family. They frequently disagree with their parents, elders, and suitors and yet they suffer no lasting punishment for it. They have firm opinions about those with whom they are willing to spend the rest of their lives. They smile at ridiculous homilies in their minister's Sunday sermon. They are not at all inclined to spend a life of unending submission, suffering, and self-sacrifice in the hope of a post-mortal existence in which they will be rewarded for their pains.

These kinds of books provided Ayaan with the first inkling that another way of life existed, and that it was being experienced by a great number of girls and women, currently, on this very planet. Knowledge is a powerful thing. Infinite possibilities began to present themselves to her. She began to doubt the justice of her current circumstance, and the infallibility of the tenets she had been raised with. In many ways, her journey to freedom could not have begun without those tattered paperbacks passed back and forth between giggling schoolgirls.

Ironically, Ayaan's flight to freedom has been compromised by constant death threats due to -- you guessed it -- the publication of her book. Those who pursue her aren't delusional in one respect: they know that ideas are dangerous things. Books are powerful. Barbara Cartland can save your life.

Nonfiction: Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Lose

In an effort to clean out my current backlog of books (see my post, 6/30/2008), I've finished reading two nonfiction books in the past week. My conclusion: one thumbs up, one thumbs down.

"The thing about life is that one day you'll be dead" by David Shields

This book was spectacularly depressing. I know, I know -- with a title like that, what did I expect? In my defense, I thought that the name of the book was the kind of tongue-in-cheek title that denotes a book of wry and witty essays about a traditionally sobering subject, a la Nora Ephron's "I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman." Wrong.

I should have known better after reading some of the book's chapter headings ("Our Birth Is Nothing but Our Death Begun," "Decline and Fall," "Paradise, Soon Lost" . . . ), and Shield's use of a quote from Schopenhauer: "Just as we know our walking to be only a constantly prevented falling, so is the life of our body only a constantly prevented dying, an ever-deferred death."

Nonetheless, I slogged through this book to the bitter end (no pun intended), fruitlessly seeking some redemptive ray of hope. I did gather some interesting factoids along the way (did you know that when you're born, taste buds cover your entire mouth -- including your throat and the underside of your tongue -- or that from ages 11 to 16, boys' testosterone levels increase 20-fold?), but I can't recommend this book unless the prospective reader enjoys despondence. Even the book's "hero" -- the author's father, who has lived an amazingly healthy, vital life into his 90's -- eventually succumbs to vacant inertia as he awaits the inevitable knock on the door from The Reaper. Spare me.

"Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions," by Dan Ariely

Ariely's book, a New York Times bestseller, strikes a nice balance between respectable reportage of scientific research and "pop-psych readability." Each chapter is self-contained and deals with an irrational aspect of the human psyche that nonetheless dictates many of our daily decisions. What an eye-opener!

Ariely deals with such topics as the power of "free" (Quick! Which would you prefer at a shopping mall kiosk: a free $10 Amazon certificate or a $20 Amazon certificate in exchange for $8?), the "price" of social norms (lawyers are much more likely to participate in a program that offers free services to indigents than they are to participate in a program that offers the same services to indigents for a reduced fee), and the effects of sexual arousal on moral decision making (in one study, college men who filled out a questionnaire while in an aroused state were five times more likely to report that they would "consider" drugging a date in order to obtain sex than those men who filled out the same questionnaire in a composed state).

Besides being entertaining, the book has important social and personal implications (sex survey, above, duly noted). Imagine harnessing the power of "free" to improve public health and the environment by offering free registration and inspection for hybrid cars; free physical exams at set intervals; free weight loss clinics, etc. It's also good to acknowledge that most people are so adverse to losing an option that they will do almost anything to hang onto it, even to their obvious detriment (think personal relationships here . . . ), and that the emotion of "ownership" almost always causes the owner to inflate the value of the owned object (face it, your VW van holds a lot of fond memories, but you need to sell it at market value -- your neighbors are tired of looking at that heap).

Incidentally, the book also reports an experiment in which college students who completed a scrambled-sentence task containing words that suggested old age ("bingo," "ancient," "bifocals," etc.) exited the testing site more slowly than those students who performed a similar task with neutral words. This is yet another reason not to read "The thing about life is that one day you'll be dead." You may be unable to summon the energy necessary to rise from your Rascal (oops -- chair).

The 1950's: America's Golden Decade? For Some, Not So Much

If you're looking for a short, atmospheric novel to read this summer, I recommend Andrew Greer's latest book, "The Story of a Marriage," which recounts the story of one family's domestic crisis in post-WWII California, 1953.

Greer's tale, which follows the lives of the Cook family (Pearl, Holland, and their young toddler, Sonny) as they settle into the newly developed Sunset district of San Francisco, contains several well-placed surprises that I won't give away here. In the course of the story, the author makes it abundantly clear that the 1950's appear "golden" only if they are viewed through the rosy lens of selective memory. If you enjoyed membership in a favored class -- white, politically orthodox, and heterosexual -- the decade had its high points. Otherwise, not so much.

Greer weaves the darker threads of the 50's -- polio outbreaks, communist witch hunts, the Korean War, and the ever present threat of nuclear annihilation -- into his story with language that is evocative, yet understated. He is at his best when he addresses societal restrictions that suppressed personal freedom and dignity. Pearl and Holland live in a world where elegant grandmothers in their Sunday hats, eager to celebrate a special occasion, must request directions to the "special area" of the tea room reserved for blacks. Gay men are rounded up in private club raids and imprisoned for criminal indecency. Interracial couples must assess when and where they can be seen in public without risking physical injury. Conscientious objectors and draft dodgers are run out of their hometowns and forced to relocate in order to reclaim any semblance of a normal life. Next door neighbors spy on each other and suppress their political opinions. Unhappy wives and husbands consider clandestine murder as a preferable alternative to the public shame of a divorce. A repressed blanket of desperation smothers Pearl and Holland's suburban neighborhood as thoroughly as the fog that rolls in from San Francisco Bay each morning.

As indicated by the book's title, Pearl and Holland's marriage crisis forms the crux of the novel. Pearl, Holland, and some integral third parties are all casting about for some measure of freedom, some unfettered definition of their own personhood, throughout the book. Although the novel is written in Pearl's voice, I think that Greer's depiction of Holland's internal struggle offers the more subtle and deep exploration of human nature. Holland is portrayed as a handsome man -- the stunning kind of "handsome" that necessarily affects every aspect of his existence. It is his gift, and his curse. Greer writes (in Pearl's voice): "By being what everyone wanted him to be -- being the husband, the flirt, the beautiful object, and the lover -- by pleasing us all in giving us his gracious smile, he had tortured each of us when it did not turn our way. Beauty is forgiven everything except its absence from our lives, and the effort to return all loves at once must have broken him."

Other characters in the novel seem to have some idea of who they want to be and how they want to escape the box that the mid-20th century has constructed around them. Holland, on the other hand, has lost all sense of himself after years of existing as no more than a mirror image of other people's desires. Everyone has attempted to employ his beauty and use it to actualize their own "dream narrative." He has been a chameleon for so long that he is hard pressed to know his own heart's desire, and the choice he eventually makes may surprise you.

This is a good book on many levels -- I recommend it.