August is real estate's slow season. Any experienced realtor can tell you that, and they 're really not kidding. July 31st was busy and booming like any Monday, but August 1st hit, and SLOOOOOOOOOW down, we're coming up on a traffic jam that won't quit until early autumn. The phones don't ring, the houses don't sell (and they haven't been selling for months), and I am left with virtually nothing to do. I have done perhaps 45 minutes of real work today. The rest of the time, I have checked my email, read the news, and snuck chapters of my latest book, Green Rider by Kristen Britain. The book has turned out to be quite good, and I'm dying to know what happens next. But I'll save the review for when I finish.
I picked up a copy of Marie Claire today. I don't read most magazines aimed at women unless I'm going on vacation, but I read in the New York Times that the magazine was switching editors, and that the new editor, Joanna Coles, was looking to change the magazine's focus to "confident, professional women." The main things that turn me away from women's magazines are endless articles praising whatever star has a new movie coming out, and the fascination with things that I consider childish. I've picked up Marie Claire in the past because there are articles about managing situations at work and how to meet your significant other's parents for the first time. Articles that actually apply to my life. So I think I might enjoy this change. I wouldn't mind finding a new magazine to enjoy. I love reading InStyle precisely because it bypasses the subjects that should only interest teenage girls, and I really enjoy getting National Geographic Adventure again. Even if I never climb Everest, I'm still fascinated to read more about climbing, surfing, and particularly good hiking. I'm hoping to incorporate hiking and adventure more into my life, especially if we move to the West Coast next year. Hiking always gets my minding spinning with stories because I can imagine so many scenarios in my mind. It was hiking in Taos' mountains that inspired 30 pages worth of one of my novels. And I so love the feeling of a good story buzzing in my brain. At the moment, there's just a faint hum.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Monday, August 14, 2006
Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
My most recent book was Midwives by Chris Bohjalian (ain't that a mouth full?). I've wanted to read it for years, and finally pulled it off my shelf a week or two back and took it up.
At first, I was uncomfortable with the "hippie" attitude of the parents of the protagonist. I wondered if I had to buy into pot-smoking, flowers in guns, and that love is all you need. But Bohjalian is very good at never requiring you to buy into a belief to enjoy his story. You can even believe that Sybil, the midwife accused of manslaughter after her patient dies in childbirth (and she subsequently delivers the baby via C-section with only a sharp kitchen knife), is actually guilty throughout the novel and still appreciate the drama of the courtroom scenes and the tense situation her family finds herself facing every day.
I once wanted to be a midwife, or an Ob-gyn. I thought it was such an interesting field, and I thought I would really like helping women through labor. Now, I'm not so sure. I think hanging out around women's vaginas is really not what I'm intended for, considering how much annoyance I experience around women. But the fascination is still there, and Sybil's diary entries, which punctuate the chapters of her daughter's narration, were fascinating and provided a welcome insight into her character. What women wouldn't want to know about massaging a perineum with baby oil to ease the passage of a baby and avoid cutting the mother? Well, many women probably don't want to know that, but I do. I like the idea of finding solutions to such difficulties in labor. I also like Sybil's word for contractions: surges. It isn't a contraction, which sounds like tightening and pressing and fighting against something. It's a surge, a wave rolling through your body to help you labor, to help you press the baby out into the world. I think I'll hold onto that idea when I first go into labor - the idea that each surge is a wave that helps me get my child into the world, that helps press my child out of the ocean and onto the beach. It also syncs well with the article I just read in National Geographic Adventure about surfing. But, yes, I like the idea.
And the novel was beautifully written. Prior to reading Midwives, I finished Leonardo’s Swans by Karen Essex, her first novel if I recall correctly. While I love historical fiction and loved the descriptions of paintings and the portrayals of two very powerful sisters (each strong in very different ways), the novel jumped in time from one moment to another. At first we would be in the 1st person with one of the sisters, and they would be a few years ahead of the last chapter, and disgusted or delighted by some recent occurence, and then the novel would slowly catch us up, backtracking and piecing together moments to explain how we got to this place. But the suspense of so many moments is severed by the very fact that we know the fate of Isabella and Beatrice. The novel is ruined because we are told at the very beginning who will die and who will survive. Two different women, each ruling over their court in very different ways, but only one's method will preserve her against her husband's infidelity and other men's mistakes. The final chapter really is triumphant as we view the victor and how she has stayed alive and charmed her way into success, and we are happy for her. But again, the repetitiveness, the loss of suspense, and the annoying repetition of facts - first Leonardo reveals a detail in his notebooks (the entries of which punctuate this book much as they punctuate Midwives). Then we hear the same detail all over again from one of the characters. Midwives impressed me so much because of the fact that it never repeated itself - if a journal entry said one thing, the narrator did not repeat it, and I was charmed by the creativity and attentiveness of this fact. I love reading for pleasure again, but I can't help noting techniques I would like to emulate in my own writing, as well as critiquing novels that show less attentiveness than one would desire. I am looking forward to reading more of Bohjalian's novels.
*One more note: I must credit Chris Bohjalian (a man) for writing so convincingly in two women's voices. I pray my own male characters may feel so real and come so close to what it is to be male as his female characters come to what it is to be a woman.
At first, I was uncomfortable with the "hippie" attitude of the parents of the protagonist. I wondered if I had to buy into pot-smoking, flowers in guns, and that love is all you need. But Bohjalian is very good at never requiring you to buy into a belief to enjoy his story. You can even believe that Sybil, the midwife accused of manslaughter after her patient dies in childbirth (and she subsequently delivers the baby via C-section with only a sharp kitchen knife), is actually guilty throughout the novel and still appreciate the drama of the courtroom scenes and the tense situation her family finds herself facing every day.
I once wanted to be a midwife, or an Ob-gyn. I thought it was such an interesting field, and I thought I would really like helping women through labor. Now, I'm not so sure. I think hanging out around women's vaginas is really not what I'm intended for, considering how much annoyance I experience around women. But the fascination is still there, and Sybil's diary entries, which punctuate the chapters of her daughter's narration, were fascinating and provided a welcome insight into her character. What women wouldn't want to know about massaging a perineum with baby oil to ease the passage of a baby and avoid cutting the mother? Well, many women probably don't want to know that, but I do. I like the idea of finding solutions to such difficulties in labor. I also like Sybil's word for contractions: surges. It isn't a contraction, which sounds like tightening and pressing and fighting against something. It's a surge, a wave rolling through your body to help you labor, to help you press the baby out into the world. I think I'll hold onto that idea when I first go into labor - the idea that each surge is a wave that helps me get my child into the world, that helps press my child out of the ocean and onto the beach. It also syncs well with the article I just read in National Geographic Adventure about surfing. But, yes, I like the idea.
And the novel was beautifully written. Prior to reading Midwives, I finished Leonardo’s Swans by Karen Essex, her first novel if I recall correctly. While I love historical fiction and loved the descriptions of paintings and the portrayals of two very powerful sisters (each strong in very different ways), the novel jumped in time from one moment to another. At first we would be in the 1st person with one of the sisters, and they would be a few years ahead of the last chapter, and disgusted or delighted by some recent occurence, and then the novel would slowly catch us up, backtracking and piecing together moments to explain how we got to this place. But the suspense of so many moments is severed by the very fact that we know the fate of Isabella and Beatrice. The novel is ruined because we are told at the very beginning who will die and who will survive. Two different women, each ruling over their court in very different ways, but only one's method will preserve her against her husband's infidelity and other men's mistakes. The final chapter really is triumphant as we view the victor and how she has stayed alive and charmed her way into success, and we are happy for her. But again, the repetitiveness, the loss of suspense, and the annoying repetition of facts - first Leonardo reveals a detail in his notebooks (the entries of which punctuate this book much as they punctuate Midwives). Then we hear the same detail all over again from one of the characters. Midwives impressed me so much because of the fact that it never repeated itself - if a journal entry said one thing, the narrator did not repeat it, and I was charmed by the creativity and attentiveness of this fact. I love reading for pleasure again, but I can't help noting techniques I would like to emulate in my own writing, as well as critiquing novels that show less attentiveness than one would desire. I am looking forward to reading more of Bohjalian's novels.
*One more note: I must credit Chris Bohjalian (a man) for writing so convincingly in two women's voices. I pray my own male characters may feel so real and come so close to what it is to be male as his female characters come to what it is to be a woman.
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