Restingmotion

The trip to Texas was successful in that I was able to completely relax and just spend time with my mom in a focused way that has happened for many years.  Being the people we are, some of that time was spent companionably sitting and reading not-very-important novels. Here is a brief list of what I've been reading lately.

I did however, finish Nightwoods before I left.  I thought it was an excellent novel.  The main characters are really rather modest people, seemingly minor characters, the kind of people who are often overlooked or ignored, or who are just too often dismissed.  But as in life there is more to each character than meets the eye, if only one is willing to take time to see what lies underneath the surface. Frazier reveals his characters, along with the setting, slowly and resonantly and you come to know them and care about some of them much in the way you would people you have met and gotten to know over time.  It is a novel of character: of loss, of love, of courage.  The prose can be lush or flinty as necessary, but it is never overdone.  Highly recommended.

On the flight to Texas I read Diane Mott Davidson's Crunch Time, the newest in the series about the exploits of caterer Goldy Schulz.  It was enjoyable enough, but it didn't seem quite as humerous in its exploits of Goldy's fellow citizens as I remember the early novels being, or perhaps I just enjoyed Goldy's comments about her fellow Episcopalians.  Goldy reminded me of a Virginia Cary Hudson wanna-be, without ever quite pulling it off.  

On the flight home I read Stuart Woods' Grass Roots.  This was the first Will Lee novel I have read, although I have encountered Lee in several of Woods' other novels.   It was actually a bit more compelling than I expected, although some parts of the story line did seem incredibly far-fetched, and I enjoyed reading it.  It took me a little longer than my other weekend-reading, perhaps it was a bit more absorbing, and I finished it up yesterday afternoon.   I would say it was better than most of what I have read recently from Woods, but then it is not that new, and I just noticed that it was written 20 years ago, so that may be the explanation right there, but perhaps I will read some of the other Will Lee novels when I get my next entertainment itch.

Over the weekend I indulged in even lighter fluff, fluffy birthday visit reading:  Hotel Vendome and Happy Birthday by Danielle Steel.  Both perfectly nice and entertaining though repetitive and predictable, mostly read in snatches here and there, and they were perfectly well suited for that. 

And that leaves me with a book I actually read back in January, but never wrote about here, The Cry of the Go Away Bird by Andrea Eames.  This was another book with powerfully evocative prose and I wish I had written about it earlier, when I remembered the details more clearly.   It had been recommended to me as a good coming-of-age novel, and I suppose it is, but it did not really strike me very strongly in that sense, even though it is a powerful novel about a young girl whose world is being ripped apart as she is growing up.  But I didn't see Elise, the main character as really growing up in this novel.  She is a young girl trying to come to terms with a world she does not understand, and although that is a part of the coming-of-age theme, Elise is still a girl here, a girl with moments of profound wisdom, the kind of sharp wisdom girls have when they are on the cusp of verging into adulthood, and which they all too often loose.   When Elise leaves Africa she is still in the midst of this process of trying to find understanding and she is still a girl in waiting.  I do think this is one of the strengths of the novel.  One gets the sense of it being a remininscense, as if it is being told by an older Elise, looking back on her younger self, looking back with yearning and sadness and love.  

We are finally settling in a bit, and we have had a couple of peaceful quiet evenings.  There is still much unpacking to do but it is going a little bit more easily as G as getting settled into his new surroundings and is no-longer quite as confused and agittated. Anyone with any experience with Alzheimer's/dementia patients would aniticpate this, but even anticipated, it is still exhausting, and the first week was spent more in acclimating ourselves to our new space than in unpacking.  It is not the way I would have thought I would go about settling in but one must make the best of what curves life throws one's way.

Our first completely quiet, peaceful evening we sat contentedly reading in the new sunroom/sitting room, still a work in progress, yet transformed since my last post into a cozy nook.  Here is a picture of Sam, on the arm of G's chair, next to the book cart, which contains my current "to be read" pile.  I haven't unpacked the bookends yet, so various foodstuffs and cleaning supplies have been called into action to keep everything in place.

We had already been to the local library and G was reading Simon Winchester's Krakatoa, which has actually been on my to-read list for a while now.  I hadn't read anything for a couple of weeks, with all the stress of the actual closing and move, which is not a story I am in any way ready to share, and was perfectly content to settle down with some light mindless escapist reading, so I read Danielle Steele's novel, 44 Charles Street.  It was exactly what I needed, not very realistic, certainly not a book that will stand up to critical reading, but an enjoyable bit of escapism.  Considering that reading one of these novels only takes a couple of hours (you have to be willing to suspend disbelief), or about the same amount of time as a movie, I tend to find it more rewarding than the average movie simply because reading engages my imagination in a way completely different from what I experience when watching a film. 

Last night we spent another quiet evening, reading part of the time and then watching Morley Safer's interviews with Dolly Parton, Anna Wintour, and Meryl Streep on "60 minutes".   We split a new-to-me gluten-free beer, Green's Amber Ale, which was actually GOOD.  Yes, the emphasis was needed as too many of the gluten-free beers I have tried just take like amber colored sugar water with a hint of hops.   I'm not really much of a beer drinker, as I find it terribly filling, and half a bottle was perfectly satisfactory. It is nice to think that there is some beer to cook with again, however, and I see a rarebit or a carbonnade in our future. 

I started reading Charles Frazier's Nightwoods, and I although I am not far along, I am ready to sink into the author's beautifully rendered, resonant prose, which seems to perfectly capture the essence of a person and a place.  At the moment though, what resonates with me the most is this particular passage:

"You try your best to love the world despite its obvious flaws in design and execution.  You take care of whatever needy things present themselves to you during your passage through it.  Otherwise you're worthless." 

But perhaps this is just my all-too-human brain seeking connections and ways to tie the various parts of life into one continuous whole.