I read three books this week, and it turned out I read them in the order of how much I liked them, the first being least and the last the best.
First, upon reading a blurb about it in Entertainment Weekly (I know….not exactly the source of reliable literary recommendations), I read A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick. For a Gothic romance, it was strangely bloodless. It was reviewed as a complex “bodice-ripper” but I found it to be a stark and depressing version of a story that should have had either less sympathy for its characters (or maybe more?)
I can’t quite put my finger on why I was so disappointed in this book, except to say that it built far too slowly to the heart of the plot, slugged along with its descriptive narrative, and in the end had me wishing everyone in it would just die already! The story is that Ralph Truitt, a wealthy widower in 1907, places an ad in a Chicago newspaper for a wife, and Catherine Land answers the ad and arrives in his Wisconsin town with a past of her own, and shocking plans for their future.
It doesn’t end quite how one would expect, but for sheer Gothic, bodice-ripping suspense and shockery (is that even a word?) I would recommend skipping this book and instead, read The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber. I mean, really, if you’re going to go to the trouble of reading a steamy Gothic romance as an embarrassing and guilty pleasure, why not go all out and read one that has 848 pages and weighs almost three pounds?
Next, I read Bloodroot by Amy Greene. I could not put this book down; it was a very dark and weird story, set in the Appalachians and revolving around Myra Lamb, a girl descended from bewitching mountain women, with “haint blue” eyes and a past, present and future full of tragedy.
Myra’s story is narrated in the first person by an old admirer, then Myra’s grandmother, then her children, and then by Myra herself. The vernacular is very authentic, and I could hear the accents in my head while I was reading. At times, the thematic elements of the story seemed to get in the way or the author seemed to be trying to hard to keep things in the story that just for sheer symbolism, but didn’t really succeed in tying them together. It doesn’t really matter, though, because the story itself was so powerful and intriguing.
After I finished this book, I was unsettled and couldn’t stop thinking about it, whereas almost immediately after reading A Reliable Wife I had forgotten the title and the names of the main characters.
Finally, after being recommended by dozens of people, I read The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. All I can say is you need to read this book. I was prepared to be depressed by the subject matter: a father whose selfishness and wanderlust and unappreciated brilliance wreaked havoc on his family. I didn’t think I was in a good place to read it, but I started the book in the morning yesterday and read off and on all day, then woke up early today to finish the last section. It is riveting, heartbreaking, hilarious and terrific. My favorite line in The Glass Castle was “…one thing about whoring: it put a chicken on the table.”
Parts of it reminded me of a less self-depracatingly comical version of Mary Karr’s memoir The Liars Club and parts of it were a little like The Kids Are All Right by the Welch siblings. After you read it (and then check out the other two I just mentioned), you might also read Daughter of the Queen of Sheba by Jackie Lyden. And then thank your parents for not being as awful and dysfunctional as the ones in these books. For eye-opening perspective adjustments, these books are hard to top.
Of course, now I have that terrible emptiness you get when you’re out of new books to read. Any recommendations?