The Handmaid's Tale Readalong

"The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil.

It was like being in an elevator cut loose at the top.  Falling, Falling, and not knowing when you will hit."

Offred is talking here about the moment her family was trying to cross over the border into Canada and are discovered but she might as well be talking about what happened to all women in the new society.  Certainly there were some men that didn't fare well in the change but we really haven't seen a single woman that has fared well.  Even the Commander's Wives, who certainly appear to have it the best, are prisoners of their homes and, if they are unable to bear children, have to put up with having a Handmaid in their home and watch their husbands having sex with the Handmaids in their own beds while they also in the bed.

In these chapters we also find out that some of the women, particularly the older women, have been sent to The Colonies where they are on cleanup detail.  That is to say, they are exposed to radiation and have to clean up dead bodies.   Others are made to go into prostitution, something that is officially not allowed but which is an option for punishment.  Any of these women, as well as Handmaids that don't give birth to a viable child soon enough, have a very limited lifespan.

Since this book has all along felt like it was showing me a very real possible future, the idea that there are women out there already clamoring that a woman's place is in the home, looking after their man and having babies alarms me more than ever.

Thanks to Trish for hosting this read-along and to Margaret Atwood who has given me so much to think about in this book!

Omaha Lit Fest - Part One

The sixth annual Omaha Lit Fest was held this weekend and what a treat it was for book lovers!  Taking a cue from Lewis Carroll, who wrote "what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversation," this year's event examined the very concept of the book, right down to the shape of the words, with an emphasis on fairy tales.

My experience with the fest kicked off Friday evening with a panel discussion titled "A Tender Violence: The Peculiar Nature of Fairy Tales."  The panel included Lit Fest organizer and author Timothy Schaffert, interdisciplinary artist Janet Davidson-Hues, and author Kate Bernheimer, who is also the editor/found of the Fairy Tale Review.  While the entire discussion was very interesting, the highlight for me was listening to Bernheimer who is not only extremely knowledgeable about the subject but also extremely enthusiastic.  My mind immediately began wondering how I can work more fairy tales into my reading.

After the last panel of the day, there was a lovely champagne and chocolate reception - two of my favorite things!  It was a nice chance to get to meet some new people as well as introduce myself to the panelists.

Saturday there were six sessions; I opted to attend four of them so that I could get out for part of the day to enjoy downtown Omaha.  I spent time in my favorite antique shop, tried a new coffee shop, and visited a used book store that is a story unto itself.

The first session of the day was a panel discussion: "Literary Bibliophilia: Novels About Novels, Fiction About Fiction."  Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, GA headed up the panel; the other panelists were Schaffert, author of The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters; Peter Kuper, graphic author and illustrator, most recently a Mexican edition of "Alice in Wonderland:" and Melanie Benjamin, author of Alice I Have Been.  Each of these authors has either included a novel in their novel or used another piece of fiction in their own fiction.  Each of the panelists also talked about books that had meant a lot to them as a child.  Interestingly, Benjamin did not like Alice in Wonderland as a child but Stefaniak cited it as one that she had recognized her own psyche in that things that happened in the book.  Again the discussion returned to the idea that fairy tales were originally quite dark.  Stefaniak reminded us that all of the stories of the Arabian Nights ended with the message "and so they were happy...until."

Omaha Lit Fest - Part Two will appear on Tuesday.  I'd only planned to do one post but there's just so much to tell.  I can't believe I haven't been to the Lit Fest before!

Mama Shepp's Family Recommends...

The Rhodies have discovered another author they are recommending for readers who enjoy a good thriller.  Like Scott TuroMw and John Grisham, Michael Fredrickson comes from a legal background.  He has worked both as a lawyer and as the general counsel to the state agency that polices lawyers.  But Michael Fredrickson has something that those other guys don't - he studied English literature, as a Rhodes scholar, at Oxford University.  He's also worked as a singing telegrapher, hippy farmer and college professor.  So he's got the literary chops to go with the legal background when it comes to his writing, as well as a rich background to pull from.

Of Fredrickson, the Rhodies say:

"writes a really interesting "suspense" (I guess) novel.  Incorporates the qualities of legal intricacies, police procedure, dialogue a la George V. Higgins, interesting twists and turns and a feel for Boston streets.  I've read three of his titles and wait eagerly for more.  His earliest is "A Cinderella Affidavit".  Well worth looking for."

Macmillan Books says that Fredrickson's "fascination with the ethical dilemmas lawyers face is evident in his crime novels."  I had gotten kind of burned out on crime thrillers, they all seemed kind of formulaic and the writing didn't impress me.  But I think I'm going to have to give Fredrickson a chance.

Does your family like to give each other recommendations?  Do you ever find any hidden gems?

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
507 pages
Published November 2009 by HarperCollins Publishers
Source: TLC Book Tours and the publisher

 Young Harrison William Shepherd is living on Isla Pixol in Mexico when we are first introduced to him in Kingsolver's latest book, that follows Shepherd's diaries from 1929 to 1951.  His mother, a selfish woman who never seems to think of the effects on her son, encourages Harrison to begin his first journal when they are living on Isla Pixol and listening to the howler monkeys in the trees at night.

"Their food might be us, mother and son agreed, when they huddled together inside the spiderweb of bedspread, listening to a rising tide of toothsome roars.  You had better write all this in your notebook, she said, the story of what happened to us in Mexico.  So when nothing is left of us but bones, someone will know where we went.  She said to start this way: In the beginning were the aullaros, crying for our blood."

 Harrison's mother had fled the U.S., leaving his father behind in order to begin an affair with a Mexican attache. But she hates it there and Harrison feels invisible to all the people around him with the exception of the home's cook, from whom he learns valuable life lessons.  It's also on Isla Pixol that Harrison discovers the lacuna:

"Not a cave exactly but an opening, like a mouth, that swallows things."

The image of the lacuna recurs throughout the book as Harrison begins his life journey traveling back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico, never really at home in either.  Along the way, Harrison finds himself immersed in the fiasco that was the Hoover administrations handling of the veterans living in a tent city in the middle of Washington D.C., working for Diego Rivera and involved as well with Frida Kahlo and Leo Trotsky, and esconced in Asheville, North Carolina as a writer of sweeping Mexican epics.

Shortly after I had finished Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible,"  Trish wrote me about this tour.  I had my choice of a number of her previous titles in addition to this one.  As much as I loved "The Poisonwood Bible,"  I was willing to read any of Kingsolver's books but was thrilled to have the chance to read this one.  I went into it expecting to love it every bit as much.

Which, as it turns out, I did.  Just in a different way.  Where as "The Poisonwood Bible" pulled me in immediately with it's beautiful writing and amazing story but let me down some toward the end of the book, "The Lacuna" was a slower start for me but once I fell into it, I never felt a let up.  Kingsolver's writing remains beautiful as ever and her knack for dispensing history lessons while telling a story is unparalleled.  There is no doubt that Kingsolver has an opinion on the events that she's writing about but this book felt less preachy to me.   The book is written as though it were the diaries of a real person, something I wasn't sure about when I started the book, but it worked for me.


I'm not prone to read a lot of books by the same author, which the except of Jane Austen, Mark Twain and Charles Dickens.  There are just too many great authors out there whose work I want to sample.  But having now read two of Kingsolver's books, I can't imagine that I will not, at some point, feel the need to read more of her books.  They are just that good.

Thanks so much to TLC Book Tours for including me in this tour!

Finny by Justin Kramon

Finny by Justin Kramon
368 pages
Published July 2010 by Random House
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

Finny Short feels out of place in her own family.  Her dad is always quoting "great men" and her brother, Sylvan, falls right in with him.  Her mom is vastly more concerned about appearances and manners, it seems, than she is about her children.  Finny, 14-years-old and defiant, seems to rub her parents the wrong way at every turn.  When Finny meets Earl Henckel and his father, a narcoleptic piano teacher, she finally feels like she's found a place where she's comfortable.  But when she and Earl are caught kissing, Finny's parents ship her off to boarding school where she meets the one-of-a-kind Poplan (not Miss, not Mrs. and no first name, if you please) and her roommate, Judith Turngate, who immediately pulls Finny into her orbit.

Over twenty years these people will move in and out of Finny's life as she comes of age, learns the highs and lows of love and deals with loss.

"Finny felt sick herself, like no one would want to touch her or be near her.  Loss always did this to you, pushed you in a corner where no one wanted to go."

Although the novel might be considered sweeping in light of its span of years and geography, it never losses a feeling of intimacy.  One reviewer says that Kramon fills the books with characters worthy of Dickens and I'd have to agree.  From the narcoleptic Menalcus Henckel, to the screeching headmistress to the sneezing morticians, there is no shortage of odd characters in Finny's life. Fortunately, unlike Dickens, Kramon doesn't need 500 plus pages to tell Finny's story. Yet he manages to fully flesh out all of the major characters and even make New York City and Paris feel like integral characters.

"Every little thing thrilled here: the language, the beautiful women, the sour odor of the man holding the pole next to her; the little crank on the metro door you had to turn to get the door to pop open when the train stopped."

 Kramon has split the book into three sections: "Growing Up," "Reunions and New Friends," and "From Here On Out."  Each section deals with a particular part of Finny's life, youth, college years, and adult life, hitting on the high points of each period and ending each section with a brief chapter that brings the reader up to date on other events that pass before the next time period.  Those ending pieces did feel a bit jarring to me--here we were on this lovely slow trip and then suddenly we were accelerating at breakneck speed. While there is plenty going on in the book (a con man, a pickpocket in Paris, death), the book is much more character-driven than plot-driven.  Finny is a character that most of us can probably relate to, at least in some part of our lives--the once strong young girl who finds herself disappearing when in the presence of those she's chosen to surround herself with and then fighting to find herself all over again.

One of my favorite parts was when Poplan came to visit Finny during a break from school.  Finny didn't really want Poplan to meet her family so she had Poplan visit her at the Henckels.  As a gift, Poplan had brought a durian fruit.  Have you ever heard of durian fruit?  They are rumored to be one of the ugliest and nastiest smelling foods on the planet.  Earl and Finny can't stand the smell or taste of the fruit but Poplan and Menalcus eat the entire fruit.  Just as some of the characters found the fruit unpalatable while others enjoyed it very much, I felt like these four characters were much like the durian fruit.  Some people would just not "get" them while others would form lifelong bonds.

Thanks to Trish and TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour.  For other opinions, view the full list of tour stops at TLC Book Tours.

 "Finny" if Kramon's debut novel.  To learn more about Justin Kramon, visit his website.