Have you heard about Room, by Emma Donoghue, the novel that has been on a lot of best-of lists this year? It’s the kind of book to attract a lot of attention, because it’s from the perspective of a five-year-old, and one who is in a very unusual and horrifying situation. Jack’s entire world is Room, Ma, and Old Nick. He was born in Room and has never left it — and his mother is the prisoner of a sinister man who has kept him there in a kind of fortified dungeon for his own sexual exploitation. Emma Donoghue went down a risky road by trying to capture this horrific scenario with the voice of a bubbly five-year-old boy who has no understanding of the horror of his situation. Though it seems to falter in a few places, Room does manage to pull off this trick, and creates a moving and ultimately joyful world in the relationship between mother and son.

Room is a strange hybrid novel. While reading it, I was aware of at least three different ways my mind wanted to read it, and how I kept jumping back and forth among the three. In one way, Room is a fascinating and detailed psychological portrait. It captures the mindset of an adult imprisoned for seven years in a room as a slave, helpless and forced to be submissive to protect herself. It also explores the admittedly intriguing psychology of a child raised in an eleven-by-eleven foot space, raised to believe what he saw on television was all fake, that no other people in the world exist but himself, his mother, and the man who brings them everything they need, but also keeps them imprisoned. For Jack, the world is complete and satisfying; it’s all he’s ever known, and so it is not lacking in any way. He is playful and finds ways to make toys out of garbage or household objects. He can’t conceive of trees or wide open space or animals. All this is gripping stuff for me — I’ve always been very interested in psychology. But that is only “Room” on one level.

After the jump: the review, continued.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s review is of another book I finished recently and that is a daring and controversial entry into the world of religious debate. Let me say right off that I’m an ardent fan of Philip Pullman and his revelatory, breathtakingly original series His Dark Materials. In this trilogy of young adult novels, Pullman uses an exciting adventure-and-fantasy story to put forward a powerful argument about the poisonous corruption of organized religion, most notably the Catholic church. Needless to say, this was a controversial and somewhat scandalous story, with its elements including the death of God, homosexual angels, young love, and other touchy subjects! But if you are interested in a critical and probing look at the effect of organized religion in our lives, His Dark Materials is unmissable.

All this is a long lead-up to Pullman’s latest, deeply interesting work, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Pullman’s medium is fantasy; he uses fictions and re-imaginings of old stories to espouse daring truths. In this novel, he is reimagining the New Testament itself. One of the more compelling critiques of His Dark Materials was that it did not acknowledge the virtues of Christianity, including love and charity, a strong community of believers, and non-violence. These things are present in the teachings of Jesus, but they go hand in hand with more troubling arguments. In this fascinating novel, Pullman tackles the two-faced nature of the Jesus we know by splitting him into two brothers, one eager for peace and revelation, the other bent on uniting humanity under a triumphant new banner. By addressing the different events in Jesus’ life and showing how easily they can become twisted and changed, Pullman writes a novel that is ultimately about how stories themselves are made, and how individuals become legends.

In keeping with his source text, Pullman uses a simple, Biblical style, writing with an archaic rhythm and feeling of antiquity. I always enjoy that religious feeling of timelessness and I found myself reading with great enjoyment about these two mythical brothers, not being hit over the head with arguments on doctrine and faith. When Pullman does step back to analyze, his writing is eloquent and his ideas are hauntingly beautiful. When he describes the religion he wants, he writes of a great branching tree, welcoming to all, with each individual contributing to and supported by the whole. Pair that with his images of the cold high towers and waving war banners of religion as it often is, and it’s enough to make you ache.

You will only find The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ interesting if you already have an interest in and knowledge of the Gospels. But if exploring religions and how they are made is your cup of tea, you won’t want to miss this startling, thoughtful book.

It’s a new year, and I’m excited to have a new stack of exciting books on my plate. I’m already diving into the quirky, odd, and oddly fantastical Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson, and also digging happily into this year’s Best American Short Stories 2010, edited by Richard Russo. You can expect reviews of those coming up in the next few weeks as I finish them. In addition to those, I’m looking forward to Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, which was on a lot of year-end best-of-2010 lists. Also coming up from my Christmas list: the Dickens classic David Copperfield, the new Pushcart Prize anthology, The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk, and several others.

I’m lucky to be given these books for my own enjoyment and edification, but it’s gotten me wondering how you decide what books are the best to have on your list. Do you go from a best-of list? Do you take recommendations from friends? From siblings? From parents? From enemies? Do you go into a bookstore and pick based on the covers or back-cover blurbs? How do you decide? And what do you do to ensure you’re getting a thorough and satisfying fiction experience?

I’m opening it up to you, readers — how do you decide what to read next?

  Image from Totallyher.com.

For this week’s review, I decided to do the first book review I’ve done in a long while. I couldn’t resist, because I just finished Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and I was so excited by it that I had to write about it right away.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, translated from the Japanese, begins with a young man cooking pasta who receives a mysterious phone call from a stranger. In short order, his cat has disappeared, and during the search for the cat, the man’s wife disappears as well. Our hero is soon pulled into a dreamlike and ominous world of mysterious characters, psychic disturbances, sinister villains, and shocking memories of violence and destruction. This novel is large in scope, but stays deeply compelling because of the very personal, intimate nature of the husband-wife relationship at the core of the story.

Murakami is a celebrated author of the surreal, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle could certainly be called surreal: most of the time as you read, you won’t be sure whether you’re walking through a dream or reality. Most books like this I find tiresome and contrived, but this novel keeps you on the edge of your seat, completely engaged with the action. It is more like a noir crime novel than a dreamy meditation; you’re kept wondering what will happen next.

The writing (in translation) is beautiful, but what will hold you most is the plethora of compelling stories. At times, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle begins to seem like The Arabian Nights as new characters come forward and tell their stories. Each has something shocking to tell, whether it is about World War II atrocities, lurid sexual pasts, or troubling family dramas. The final climax had me practically tearing at the pages as I read on the subway. I couldn’t read fast enough, which is always an exciting experience to have with a book. It had been a while since I was so delighted and enthralled by a novel; now I know why so many people have raved about this book. If you can tolerate surrealism, this is a book to read. I’ll be eager to try Murakami’s other novel, Kafka On the Shore.

We’re very proud to report that our own Darin Strauss, professor in NYU’s MFA program and executive editor of Washington Square, has just won the National Book Critics’ Circle Award for his memoir, Half a Life. Published by McSweeneys, Half a Life is a searing and honest memoir that has been praised by pretty much anyone who has picked it up, including top book critics. Congratulations, Darin!

I always snap up the year’s Best American Short Stories eagerly. It’s a great way to learn about some of the best stories published in the past year. Almost without exception, this collection does not disappoint, and it has the added pleasure of having a different flavor each year, thanks to changing guest editors. I must say that the year Stephen King edited the collection I was doubtful, but that turned out to have some of the most memorable stories I’ve ever read (“The Wait” in that collection is a top ten list story).

This year, the guest editor was Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo, most famous for his novel Empire Falls (which I admit I haven’t read). He shows himself to be a capable editor in this selection, choosing fascinating and poignant stories. I was glad to see the young virtuoso Karen Russell making another appearance, though I liked her first Best American story better (another Stephen King pick!). Other standouts in this collection included a graceful and riveting Safari tale from Jennifer Egan, a beautiful and lyrical tale of clown-acrobat love in the circus by Brendan Matthews, a funny, sensitive portrayal of gender roles in a family by Lori Ostlund, and a hilarious letter from a wife to her former marriage counselor. These stories all had unusual surprises along with tender, graceful strokes of character.

A few of the stories were disappointing. In particular, Russo showed a weakness for McSweeneys and its earlier project of having writers write stories set in a fixed year in the future (I think 2035). That meant there were several stories in this collection that talked about global warming and made it a story point in a rather uninteresting way. The technicalities of dam building and dyke resistance was just not that interesting to me. Ultimately, this was a solid entry in the Best American line, but it won’t be that memorable; the stories reminded me of the subtle ways stories can work to surprise us, but nothing shattered me the way several stories in that Stephen King collection did.

As always, I’ll be looking forward for next year’s collection, and hoping that a few more gripping, fantastical, or really bold stories come to the fore.