The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard

There are some literary books, I have to admit, that aren't meant for me. I think of myself as omnivorous when it comes to books, reading many genres, many styles, fiction and non, and liking many unexpectedly. Then there are those with which I never can connect.

This is one of those books. It is written almost poetically, in short sentences and paragraphs, almost abruptly. Odd little bits are added to paragraphs, as if they are thrown in later, an afterthought.

It is a short book about the lives of Toby Maytree (always referred to as "Maytree") and Lou Bigelow (always called "Lou"), together and apart, from when they met to the end of their lives. It is about the nature of love, what it means to love, as well as the nature of life, what it means to live. The story is told in the third person and conversations are reported within paragraphs, usually without distinguishing punctuation. The effect, even though often the words are exact, was to me an effect of distance, as if I weren't really there hearing those words.

A paragraph:

Two years later they were dancing in the kitchen to "Lady be Good". Maytree turned down the radio and ran his notion by Lou. It is an unnameable boon love hauls down, that people rightly prize as the best of life, and for which it fusses over weddings. Not only will a cave-dwelling pair cull food and kill so kids thrive, but their feeling for each other, not to mention for the kids, brings something beyond food people need. Each felt it between them when they danced. It was real as anything the mind could know. Her eyes' crystal, her split-faced smile, agreed. He rolled the volume knob. Oh sweet and lovely.

I never really got to know them, although I had a general feeling I did not like Maytree and I somewhat liked Lou, what I could grasp of her. I was irritated by the names and means of some of their companions - Deary and Reevadare, for example, for no reason I can name. I simply never connected. I have read other reviews by those who so loved this book that they read it twice. I am missing what they have, and am perhaps poorer for it. I hope this book finds another like that.

Earthly Possessions, by Anne Tyler

A short, easily-read novel of a woman who, essentially from birth, wants to leave everything behind, wants to part with her "earthly possessions".

Charlotte Emory grows up hearing stories about her birth: her mother, who was fat, gave birth unexpectedly, not knowing she was pregnant. She was in such a fog that afterwards she contended that she'd been given the wrong baby. Charlotte's father, a distracted portrait photographer, dismisses the idea but Charlotte thinks it's true. Certain incidents in her life give some credence to the idea.

Somewhere along the line Charlotte simply thinks she is living the wrong life and she needs to get out. She tries to get rid of things again and again, only to have the persons in her life bring them back. She tries to get out on her own but is more than once drawn back by the needs of her parents. Then, almost out of the blue, she gets married and again is stuck.

Not that she doesn't try to get away. She does, but ends up returning. At the opening of this book she is planning another escape when instead she is taken hostage by a bank robber.

There were times when it seemed like the story might turn into a cute road trip story, full of bizarre characters and incidents. Fortunately, it did not. Instead, ultimately Charlotte realizes what travel really means.

There Is No Me Without You, by Melissa Faye Greene

Greene brings home the AIDS epidemic in Ethiopia in this book, by making it personal. She doesn't spare us the statistics, which are too large to be comprehensible, but she intertwines the numbers with the names. A small sample of names, drawn mostly from the orphanage created by one woman, Haregewoin Teferra.

Haregewoin is already on the wrong side of middle age when she loses her grown daughter, one of only two. She has known grief before, with the loss of her husband, and the loss of her daughter drags her down to an unrecognizable state. So when she is approached by a Catholic organization to take in and foster a couple of AIDS orphans, she initially can't see why she would do such a thing. But then she realizes that the priest is handing her a lifeline, bringing more children into her life when she desperately needs them. From then, she can't say no.

She takes children into her little compound, comprised of a small brick house and some metal shipping containers, surrounded by a wall. A day hardly passes when there isn't somebody at the door with another child. And Haregewoin has enough love for them all. For she is that rare person who loves deeply, who touches everyone with that love. For some time she survives with help from her other daughter Suzie (sending part of her paycheck), from donations from other friends, and from whatever she can dig up. When she is approached by an organization to adopt out some of her children, she moves into a different stage financially.

She begins to obtain more funding and more children, and is able to secure better accommodations. But money continues to cause her distress and soon the number of children has become so large that she no longer recognizes each by name. Through this detailed description of Haregewoin's life and work with orphans we learn that "even saints aren't saints", that having a passion for children is not enough.

We learn, too, how it is that millions in Africa have simply been written off because drug companies are unwilling to allow them access to effective AIDS drugs at reasonable cost and how politicians unfortunately back the drug companies. In other words, the AIDS crisis in Africa is as much a tale of greed as anything else.

Surprisingly, at least to me, it appears that the genesis of AIDS and its later spread have had nothing to do with sex. There is a lot of information in this book. There is also a touching story of one woman, along with brief stories of many of the orphans she saved. It is therefore highly readable and a way to bring some perspective to a problem so huge our minds can't comprehend it.

You Must Remember This, by Joyce Carol Oates

One of the good things about reading Joyce Carol Oates' novels, for me, is that she is so prolific and I have read so few of her books. I was taken by the first I read, I don't even remember which it was, and have scooped up those that have crossed my path since. Oddly I have not ordered them specifically, just found them on shelves in used book stores and in book boxes and in bookcrossing zones.

I had not heard of this particular book and it sat on my shelf for quite some time. Finally its time came.

Some of the critics' comments, on the cover and inside, suggest that this is one of her best, possibly her best. It may be. Written in the 1980s, though, probably not. There have been so many since.

The main character is Enid Marie. She is young, growing up in the 1950s in a small town in upstate New York. The 1950s she lives through certainly remind me of those I lived through as well, although I am eight years younger than she. Small towns in this country perhaps resembled each other, wherever they were, in that time. In the fifties television was just catching on and larger incidents and political decisions were reaching the general public as never before. It was the time after the Atomic bomb and there was no escaping the speculation and the fear. I remember my own nightmares of that time. Much of this time in this novel is familiar, and not in a warm and fuzzy way.

Thus we have Enid, a bright and curious and strong child, growing up Catholic in a world when certain things were not spoken about, a cloud covered certain topics. She is a quiet child, a good child, except for a part of her known as "Angel Face", a part of her willing to take risks, a part that laughs at the world. Is it this part that finds a certain attraction to her young uncle?

Bit by bit, through her eyes and through his, we see Enid and her uncle Felix find each other, resist the pull and finally we see Felix break through when drunk and - what word do we use? molest? rape? These are true, this is what happened, yet as in Lolita it isn't necessarily simple. Yes, I blame him for not holding back, but I also see her forwardness and understand it as well.

Fifteen-year-old Enid has an affair with her uncle, twice her age. She hides it well, she feels the emotional pull as strongly as perhaps only a teen can. The two are discreet, finding places to be together where nobody cares. And so it continues. The scenes are so real as to be breathtaking. I am there when I read them, I am Enid. I know her although she is not me, not really.

We meet not only Enid but her uncle, and we follow him around on his business dealings. We meet her father Lyle, owner of a used furniture store, scraping by, and we meet, less closely, her mother, her sisters, and a bit more closely we see her brother Warren. Each is affected by the time, the events, the possibilities and the problems. Each springs to life here, genuine, accurate.

It may be that because I lived through the fifties I felt this novel deeply. I think, too, though, that I felt it because of my own character and experiences, some of which might well have been shared by others not my age. Enid's experiences reminded me of some of my own, different yet of the same intensity and with the same shame. A book that brings part of me back to myself is a book I consider great.

After Dark, by Haruki Murakami

With spare, simple prose, Murakami evokes a dream-like story, full of allegory and illusion - or is it?

The main character is Mari, a 19-year-old student who is spending the night away from home. We find her in Denny's at first. A young man comes in, recognizes her as someone he met once a while back, and sits down to talk. The talk tends to be about Mari's sister Eri. Eri is beautiful, so beautiful she apparently stops traffic. Two years older than Mari, she is the center of attention wherever she goes. Mari knows she looks nothing like her sister, and she is a serious student, presumably the genius in the family rather than the beauty.

It soon becomes obvious to us that Mari is a bit distant. She is honest and blunt, almost to the point of incivility at times. She is not used to pleasing others, like her sister, and therefore has no problem being simply who she is. As she goes through this night, having a conversation with this young man, then helping with an injured Chinese woman, later meeting the young man again, and conversing with women who work in a "love ho" ("love hotel", rooms by the hour), we find she is admired by others for her directness and honesty, for having a strong sense of herself.

Her sister, though, we get to see too, in a different way. We watch her sleep, then watch as she appears on the other side of a television screen in her room, and as she awakes, finds herself in a strange viewless room and fights to get out, to get away from the emptiness.

Mari finally tells somebody about her sister's sleeping. Through the night she seems to take in another way of seeing her relationship with this sister and perhaps of setting aside her own frustrations for a moment.

A simple tale, really, quickly read, very visual, like an art film. In its quiet way, a story about love.

The Girl Who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson

Second in the three-part series by Larsson. Too bad there can't be any more!

This one is a real thriller, almost from the beginning. There is no guessing which way it will turn and who will get hurt.

We begin with Mikael Blomqvist, journalist and publisher of Millenium, a magazine that exposes the truth about a wide range of issues through extensive investigative work, discussing the publication of a "themed" issue on the subject of the sex trade in Sweden, as well as publishing a book on the subject, with his staff and the guy who is writing the book. The group gives the idea the green light and the race is on to get the magazine together and the book done in time for both to be published simultaneously.

Meanwhile, Lisbeth Salander, diminutive but tough "girl with the dragon tattoo", has taken time off from any kind of work to assess her options. She has accumulated enough money to last her lifetime, so when she returns from spending over a year abroad she sets about getting herself another, larger apartment. Consistent with her constant paranoia, she makes sure nobody can find her. Yet she hangs on to her old apartment, and in fact offers it to an occasional lover who could use a little more room. She had cut off all contact with Blomqvist when she left the country and is not interested in seeing him again. She found she cared too much for him.

It turns out that Lisbeth's and Mikael's lives are bound to cross again, however. The sex-trade investigation leaks into parts of Lisbeth's own past. Because so many people's reputations (and perhaps free lives) are going to be adversely affected by the publication of the book, there is a good chance of danger to those involved.

In one night everything goes to hell and Lisbeth is on the run. Or, perhaps more correctly, in hiding. In different ways, Mikael, the police, and Lisbeth, as well as Lisbeth's former employer, are all trying to put the pieces together to make sense of a horrifying tragedy.

This one had me short of breath at times. I couldn't easily put it down and had to make promises to myself, to reward myself with more reading after I had done the things that had to be done around the house. I am glad I had a break from the first in the series because it increased my anticipation of the second, and now there will be another break before I read the third. During this break I intend to find out more about Larsson, about how he became such an advocate for women.

The Bonesetter's Daughter, by Amy Tan

I didn't particularly like The Joy Luck Club, finding the voices too much alike, and did not really want to read this one. However, it found its way to me and I decided to give her another try.

Again, Tan focuses on the differences in cultures and generations in China and the U.S., contrasting the "modern" with the traditional Chinese and Chinese-American. More, though, this story is about one woman, middle-aged, seeking her place in the world, reconciling her roots with her present family.

Ruth is a successful "ghost writer" or co-writer, particularly for writers of self-help books. One day she finds a picture that her mother, LuLing, says is of her (LuLing) with her mother. But then she discovers that the woman LuLing calls her mother is not Ruth's grandmother. So what happened here? Through LuLing's memories and incidents in Ruth's life we learn of LuLing's real mother, the bonesetter's daughter. As with The Joy Luck Club, the voice of LuLing is halting English, English as spoken by an immigrant from China. LuLing's beliefs, too, come from China and from her past and her parents' past.

The main difference between Ruth and LuLing is in the "mystical" or perhaps "mythical" beliefs LuLing holds, cultural stories that have made their way down several generations. Like Ruth, I found myself impatient with all of the insistence on the importance of this or that action, this or that word, on the future of a person. I personally have difficulty with the concept of living a life through belief in messages from the past, from the dead. I felt, though, that Ruth was actually more sympathetic to her mother's way of thinking than she let on. Perhaps she will eventually cling to such beliefs herself.

It's an interesting story that brings in a lot of history of China from the WWII years, as well as the continuing conflicts between native-born Chinese and Chinese-Americans.