Review - The Believers

I read this book because it was a selection of the Twitter Book Club. This book club first caught my attention with its previous selection of Olive Kitteridge, one of my favorite novels. Why not give The Believers a try?

From the publisher:

When radical New York lawyer Joel Litvinoff is felled by a stroke, his wife, Audrey, uncovers a secret that forces her to reexamine everything she thought she knew about their forty-year marriage. Joel's children will soon have to come to terms with this discovery themselves, but for the meantime, they are struggling with their own dilemmas and doubts.

Rosa, a disillusioned revolutionary, has found herself drawn into the world of Orthodox Judaism and is now being pressed to make a commitment to that religion. Karla, a devoted social worker hoping to adopt a child with her husband, is falling in love with the owner of a newspaper stand outside her office. Ne’er-do-well Lenny is living at home, approaching another relapse into heroin addiction.

In the course of battling their own demons — and one another — the Litvinoff clan is called upon to examine long-held articles of faith that have formed the basis of their lives together and their identities as individuals. In the end, all the family members will have to answer their own questions and decide what — if anything — they still believe in.

Although there are many quirky characters, I was immediately intrigued with Audrey:

Audrey nodded warily. She had never cared for conspiratorial female conversation of this sort. Its assumption of shared preoccupations was usually unfounded in her experience, its intimacies almost always the trapdoor to some subterranean hostility.

As the story moves forward you see that Audrey has become adept at channeling her hostility into an integral facet of her personality. Her acid tongue actually defines her relationship with others -- by turns shockingly funny or plain mean. It's playful banter with her husband; it's tell-it-like-it-is honesty to her friend; and it's definitely one way she carves out some power for herself as the physically small woman living in the shadows of the larger-than-life man. Respect or fear -- doesn't matter, she isn't interested in being liked. What was once an attention attracting cheekiness has over the years ripened to a full-blown up yours attitude in middle age.

This book is one of the most tightly written satires I've read in ages. It's wickedly funny. As I read along, I kept wanting to stop and mark the really great lines but every paragraph produced a zinger of insight about one of the characters.

Here's an example (again about Audrey):

It was terrifying, certainly, to think that her sex life was over for good, but marginally more terrifying to think that it was not. She did not want to become one of those hormone-replacement floozies bopping around in a leather skirt, boasting about her still-vibrant sexuality, trawling in the back of the New York Review of Books for someone to share her love of Pinter and Klee and rainy days in Montauk.

While I was thoroughly entertained and, at times thrilled with Heller's writing, this book will not be popular with everyone. Like all great satire, it pokes a sharp stick at beliefs. Not just any beliefs, but the ones we hold on to most strongly to give our lives meaning and to define ourselves: religious, political, family roles, loyalty, betrayal, gender roles, racial identity, etc.

Will The Believers be made into a film? I'd be surprised if it isn't. Cate Blanchett as Audrey? Helen Mirren?

Recommended if you liked The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen.

Note: The Twitter Book Club will discuss this book on October 26, 2009 at 9:00 pm Eastern Time

Book Love

Not so long ago, if asked about my reading preferences I would have said I prefer nonfiction to fiction. This has started to change beginning with reading "The Road" this summer and "The Senator's Wife" not long after. Cormac McCarthy may not be exactly what first comes to mind for poolside reading but I was captivated. Since then, I've been checking out blogs about books and the joys of reading for pleasure. As a result, I've learned about great books, mostly fiction but some nonfiction too, and have been motivated to read more novels.

Here are some recently read books that have captured my heart:

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

"While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination."

This quote is taken from the final story "The Third and Final Continent" which ended up being my favorite. I think this story could be adapted to make a wonderful film.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

"The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy. Even at night, as if on purpose, the development held no looming shadows and no gaunt silhouettes. It was invincibly cheerful, a toyland of white and pastel houses whose bright, uncurtained windows winked blandly through a dappling of green and yellow leaves … A man running down these streets in desperate grief was indecently out of place."

Such beautiful, bittersweet writing...

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Can't say it better than this from the New Yorker:

"And there in every story, like a tree that’s been blackened by lightning but still leafs in the spring, stands Olive Kitteridge, a retired math teacher who loves her tulips, bullies her husband, and barks at anyone foolish enough to irritate her. You loathe this woman at the book’s beginning; you long for her at its finish."

Annie Dunne

Annie Dunne by Sebastian Barry

This is a book tailor made for the hesitant reader of fiction whose first love is the well-written memoir. A meld of lyrical prose describing the sense of place, rural Ireland, and time, the summer of 1959, and a character brought fully to life from love and memory.

Annie Dunne at sixty, and not possessing wealth or beauty (in fact she has a physical deformity from childhood polio), has entered a time of life when her options and possibilities have narrowed considerably. This makes her dependency on the decisions and actions of others unbearable. Her fear over the lack of control she has over her destiny complicates her relationships with everyone around her, including the great-niece and great-nephew for whom she has deep affection. As her fear grew due to the possibility of losing the security and enjoyment -- despite the hard physical work -- of her life on a small farm owned by her cousin, Sarah, it seems Annie's perceptions of others became increasingly distorted. She made her tenuous way through every interaction riddled with self-doubt and anger. Added to this was a heavy weight of guilt with regard to her inability to care for her father in his last days.

It's not possible to select just one or two favorite passages from Annie Dunne. It's so beautifully written that for me it is one long, extended favorite passage. But, here's a bit from the end that speaks to our desire to leave behind a legacy of some sort. Something that says our lives had meaning:

But, although it will be winter soon, the wind of friendship will blow eternally from the south. And even after we have gone, something of that friendship will surely linger hereabouts. We will survive in the creak of a broken gate, the whistle of a bird, the perpetual folding and unfolding of the blossom of my crab-apple tree, a thousand little scraps of crinoline fiercely crushed and fiercely released.