"All My Puny Sorrows"

With the release of the movie Women Talking, you may be curious about the book from which it's based. You could read the book or (about its author here or here), but I also recommend reading one of her earlier works, All My Puny Sorrows. This is a repost from 2015.  

“Our house was taken away on the back of a truck one afternoon let in the summer of 1979.” So begins the novel All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews. In it, Yoli’s family can’t seem to catch a break. In childhood, it’s because her family balks against the rules of their conservative Mennonite village in Canada. They harbor a forbidden piano to foster her sister Elfrieda’s musical talents. When not at the piano, Elf spray paints the letters AMPS (“all my puny sorrows”) around the village in further rebellion.

In Yoli and Elf's adult years, the family suffers from Elf’s unhappiness. Elf’s career as a concert pianist is overshadowed by her multiple suicide attempts.Yoli has been traveling back and forth from Toronto to support her mother and brother-in-law and sit at her sister’s bedside. When not at the hospital, Yoli can be found sitting on her friend Julie’s porch. It is here the novel provides cathartic humor to balance the sadness of the rest of Yoli’s day. 

Toews brightens the pages of this devastatingly sad novel with Czech violinists, Italian agents, huffy nurses, and eccentric aunts. The brightest character, however, is Yoli. Her struggles to see her sister’s point of view, her texts with her teenage children, her endless to-do-lists, her trysts with mechanics and violinists, and her sometimes flinching optimism all carry the reader onward - even when the Kleenex box is empty.

"the whole world opened up"

Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson

To be a teen in the 90s in small-town Tennessee means going to the community pool, watching daytime TV, or driving listlessly to all the usual haunts. For Frankie, whose triplet brothers don’t shy away from mayhem, it also means having access to a photocopier they somehow procured. She and her new friend Zeke, an artist, revive the copy machine and decide to use it to create something artistic. She writes the words, a manifesto of sorts. He illustrates. And they both splatter the page with a constellation of blood. 

After they begin papering the town with their flyer, all kinds of conspiracy theories emerge, causing unease, and then panic, as rumors spread farther afield. By the end of the summer, the havoc they’ve unleashed dismantles their friendship as well. 

Twenty years later, a journalist reaches out to Frances, a semi-successful YA writer, about her involvement. Frances must decide whether to tell her story, reckoning with her past, or keep silent.

Wilson never disappoints with his exploration of the phenomenon of combustible human relationships. If you haven’t yet read his work, The Family Fang and Nothing to See Here are must-reads too.

Grappling with mental health aka "quirky"

Years ago, I began labeling books with the moniker quirky after noticing that “quirky situations” merited a movie rating of PG. Although the following list includes some 2020 releases, some are simply those I discovered this past year. Although old favorites made the list (see Kevin Wilson and Aimee Bender), others were included for the unique way the characters grapple with depression, ignition, death, identity, thirst, and divorce, among other more run of the mill challenges. All, fittingly for 2020, are memorable.

Inland by Tea Obrecht

“Might the dead truly inhabit the world alongside the living: laughing, thriving, growing, and occupying themselves with the myriad mundanities of afterlife, invisible merely because the mechanism of seeing them had yet to be invented?”

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

 “A philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if a woman who's wholly alone occasionally talks to a pot plant, is she certifiable?”

Ordinary People by Diana Evans

“His life required a dramatic change, a splintering, some kind of scandal or shock or tremor, when he most wanted to flee, to rip off his suit and run screaming from the building, and go – where?”

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

“We just rode in silence the rest of the way, the radio playing easy listening that made me want to slip into a hot bath and dream about killing everyone I knew.”

The Butterfly Lampshade by Aimee Bender

“The conversation from the Living Room recorder between us all was the only one I could listen to in full, because if was the last I had, and the easiest to rewind to, and didn’t cause the same kind of ache.”

This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel

“Just because it’s made up, doesn’t mean it isn’t real,” said Penn. “Made up is the most powerful real there is.”

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

“Most adults claim not to believe in magic, but Klara knows better. Why else would anyone play at permanence--fall in love, have children, buy a house--in the face of all evidence there's no such thing?”

Best of 2018

The week after Christmas always feels a little meh. To cheer myself up I decided to look back over my favorite reads of 2018. I couldn’t quite come up with enough titles to fill the “quirky” criteria, but each of these have their own quirks.

Circe by Madeline Miller

The Child Finder by Rene Denfeld

Beartown by Frederik Backman

Harmony Series by Philip Gulley

Sourdough by Robin Sloan

Doc by Maria Doria Russell

Mr. Dickens and His Carol by Samantha Silva

Turning Ten

Like all good origin stories, this one begins in a garage. No, wait. With a birth.

Ten years ago, my son was born at the tail end of August. I had a semester off from teaching, so I felt like I had a little time on my hands to do some writing. A coworker suggested I try a blog. So I did.

Four cities, four libraries, four book clubs later, I somehow have kept it going – in all weathers.

Only recently have I begun sharing my posts on Facebook. Before that, I would intermittently  send out an email, casually mentioning the link. After I shared it with a Moms book club I belonged to, I heard about the following conversation:

“That blog M* sent out. It’s so funny and smart.”

“Morningstar writes it.”

 “She does??!!”

Since the blog turns 10 this month, I’ve compiled a list of 10 of my favorite posts I hope you’ll enjoy reading (or re-reading).

Because, well, that’s kind of the point.

2008 That thing is Toad!

2009 Candy, Nuts and Ladies Underwear

2010 One Night Stand (or the other)

2011 Under the Wire

2012 Happenstance

2013 Care of Wooden Floors

2014 “The pulse of the post-strip-club shopping crowd”

2015 In Storage

2016 I Have My Own Quirks

2017 “Barbie and Ruth”

“Youth isn't wasted on the young, literature is.”

Quirky literature, perhaps more than most. This past year has been light on quirky reads. I’ve expanded the list to include a few that evoke the peculiar rather than the zany.

Butterflies in November by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
“You need a cemetery to go through life.”

Be Frank with Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson
“Sometimes just explaining your predicament--to a bartender, a priest, the old woman in a shift and flip-flops cleaning the lint traps in the Laundromat dryers--is all it takes to see a way out of it.”

Perfect Little World by Kevin Wilson
“It amazed Izzy the way the children rushed through so many complicated emotions without space between each one. Everything rose so quickly to the surface and then subsided, like firecrackers, and what had originally been so jarring to her, their unguarded emotion, now filled her with great comfort, that anything, no matter what it was, would eventually give way to something else.”

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
“Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon . . . is not the dragon the hero of his own story?”

The Weight of Feathers by Anna-Marie McLemore
“The sense of falling did not touch her, not as long as her body was between the hands of this boy who felt steadier in the air than on the ground.”

Be Frank with Me

To Kill a Mockingbird –type novel Pitch is on every school’s reading list. Author Mimi Banning retreats from the limelight never to publish again. Or so she thought. 

After losing her money to a Ponzi scheme, Mimi is given no choice but to write another book. Her publisher hires Alice Whitley to fly to California and watch over Mimi’s 9-year-old, so she can complete the task.

Alice has her hands full with Frank. A fan of movie-inspired fashion, arcane trivia, and routine, Frank charms as much as he exasperates. With the help of Banning’s friend and part-time handyman Xander, Alice is able to entertain, console, and care for Frank. Xander entertains Alice.

Frank, who can expound on the national dance of the Dominican Republic, the link between tax filing day and the Titanic, and the works of Picasso, doesn’t do so well fitting in.  A bullying incident at school requires him to abandon his top hat for the guise of a normal kid - khakis. This doesn't do much for his spirit. 

Alice's solution is to give Frank a break from school. All is going well, or at least not any worse. Mimi even comes close to finishing her book. However, an ill-timed birthday present for Frank proves disastrous for everyone. Mimi disappears, and Mimi’s publisher, Mr. Vargas, is forced to fly in for the rescue.

The novel’s romance, humor, and sleuthing are punctuated with bits from old movies, Frank’s trivia, and Alice’s insecurities. It’s as madcap as it is heartwarming. 

A Good Kick

We all have a curmudgeon in our lives. Someone who laments the loose morals of today’s kids. Someone who doesn’t get the Internet. Someone whose jaw twitches when the student driver stalls out when he’s teaching her how to drive a standard. Someone who takes his cat for a walk and gets hamburgers thrown at him from passing cars. Someone who gives his grandkids permission to go swimming, but only if they don’t get wet.

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman chronicles the days in the life of one such curmudgeon after his wife has died. Ove is the man who is flabbergasted that the neighbors can’t back up a trailer without knocking over his mail box. On his morning inspection of his neighborhood, he muses, “Can’t a man calmly and quietly stand over a cat-shaped hole in a snowdrift in his own garden anymore?”

Only wanting to reunite with his wife, he finds suicide attempt after suicide attempt thwarted. He’s interrupted by his pregnant neighbor Parvaneh, the cat he’s reluctantly adopted, and the man whose seizure causes him to fall on the very tracks Ove is about to jump onto. This leaves him no choice but to save the man instead.

Eventually, despite his distaste for engaging with others, he begins to see a way to begin living again through small acts of kindness. Begrudgingly he concedes, “Tomorrow’s as good a day as any to kill oneself.”

And those people in your life that make you cringe or cry? They are just as likely to make you smile or even laugh because maybe like Ove’s, their hearts are too big. 

I Have My Own Quirks

Although this article argues otherwise, I often deem a book worthy to be read if I like the quotes-superlatives-blurbs-(dare I say)reviews on the back cover. In this case, I'm working backwards to share a cover quote of a book I’ve already read in the hopes of enticing you, dear reader, to do the same.

Of the books I’ve read this year, the following (in no particular order) have made it onto the coveted “quirkiest reads of the year” list.

The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie

“A literary novel with a squirrel subplot may sound improbable” The New York Times Book Review

The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss by Max Wirestone

"Dahlia's story is a zany, hilarious, laugh fest that made my inner geek girl sit up and search for a caper to solve!” Rebecca Zanetti, New York Times bestselling author

A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

“a careful balance between hilarity and heartbreak”  Michael Cart, American Library Association

An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender

"This novel is light as a zephyr and unique as a snowflake." The Washington Post

Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin

“smart, serious, heartfelt and confessional without being maudlin" Janet Maslin, The New York Times

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

“Kevin Wilson commands the cavalry riding around the vastly important Army of the Loopy.” Padgett Powell, author of Edisto, Aliens of Affection, and The Interrogative Mood

The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen

“Twin Peaks meets the Brothers Grimm” The Telegraph (UK)

"Come, Mrs. Bunny, we must hop!"

This week’s challenge was to read a book out loud to someone else. Mr. and Mrs. Bunny Detectives Extraordinaire! by Mrs. Bunny (translated from the Rabbit by Polly Horvath) was just the thing to amuse both the reader and listener.

Madeline is disappointed in her parents’ disdain for graduation ceremonies and the need for a pair of white shoes for said ceremony. However, new shoes seem less important when she comes home to find a note that her parents have been kidnapped by “The Enemy.” Meanwhile, on an island nearby, Mr. and Mrs. Bunny have decided to become detectives. Mr. Bunny suspects Mrs. Bunny is looking for an excuse to buy a new hat. Mr. Bunny is right. However, their detective skills (and new fedoras) are soon put to the test when Madeline asks for their help in rescuing her parents from, dramatic pause, the foxes. With the assistance of a code-cracking Marmot, a mooching neighbor called Mrs. Treaclebunny, and plenty of carrot cake, the bunnies solve the case.

The charm in reading this story out loud is giving voice to Mr. and Mrs. Bunny’s quick-witted exchanges. Equal parts sarcastic, long-suffering, and endearing, Mr. and Mrs. Bunny are just as eager to criticize as they are to compliment each other. Also amusing are Madeline’s off the grid parents and their dealings with their kidnappers.  

Next on the list is Lord and Lady Bunny – Almost Royalty! This time writing credit goes to both Mr. and Mrs. Bunny. 

Hon no mushi

Ironically, it was after I traveled to Japan that I began reading Japanese writers. My husband introduced me to Murakami, and I discovered the short stories of Hisaye Yamamoto in one of the anthologies I was assigned to teach.

Upon arriving in the Northwest I reconnected with another teacher I had met while participating in the JET Program in Japan. She immediately got me to join the Pacific Northwest JET Alumni Association, and I immediately signed up for their book club. Be sure to click on the link for a great list of Japanese authors and titles.

This month’s book, published by Seattle’s Chin Music Press, is Why Ghost’s Appear  written by Todd Shimoda and art by LJC Shimoda.

Mizuno Ren, an entomological illustration specialist, has disappeared. His mother hires a private investigator to find him. The search leads him to spurious fortune tellers, government clerks, travel agents specializing in sex tours, and, yes, a doppelganger.  Throughout the search, the detective feels his own soul splitting apart as he speculates on another case he investigated 20 years before.

Returning again and again to Mizuno’s mother, the detective finds her a much more complex personality than he had first thought. He observes “most people, nearly all I should say, are quite simple. They’ve developed a routine in life, they exist by four or five rules, have four or five experiences on which they’ve defined their lives.”

I kept waiting for the narrator to reveal himself, ala The Sixth Sense, to be an obake, but that never happens. I think. Like a lot of Japanese fiction, this novel is mystical and sometimes mysterious. 

#firstworldproblems

You’ve all seen the hashtag. The kid didn’t get into the gifted program. The furnace is on the fritz. Her vacation will be in Miami rather than Paris. The housekeeper quit.

Enter Eleanor Flood.  In Maria Semple’s new novel Today Will Be Different, a once-upon-a-time animator of a popular TV show is now writing her graphic memoir and shuttling her 8 year-old son from private school to make-up counter. She and her surgeon husband (with a side gig on the sidelines at Seahawks games) have agreed on Seattle for 10 years for him and then back to New York for 10 for her. In the meantime, her mantra is “today will be different.” And the day of this novel is. 

With her customary wit, quirky flourishes, and uncanny depiction of the familiar, Semple has created another character, like Bernadette, that will stay on your mind long after you’ve closed the book. Despite the (first world) problems Eleanor encounters, her desire to do better and be better resonates with thrilling (and depressing) accuracy.  

Smart, Modern Women

Not since reading the Flavia de Luce mysteries, have I been so intrigued by the amateur sleuths that crop up in Emily Arsenault's books.

In What Strange Creatures, Theresa Battle writes copy for a candle company catalog by day and procrastinates writing her dissertation by night. When her brother is arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, she tries to prove his innocence.  By seeking out the girlfriend’s current and former acquaintances she often draws inspiration from her dissertation subject, Margery Kempe. Weaving Kempe’s story with Theresa’s, Arsenault ventures to ask us to examine our own vocations.

Miss Me When I’m Gone centers around Gretchen Waters, the author of Tammyland, a memoir of the author’s love of female country music stars. When Gretchen turns up dead after a reading, everyone is shocked, including Jamie, her best friend from college. Gretchen’s mother asks Jamie to be her literary executor and turns over the journals, files, and notes Gretchen was working from for her second book. Originally intended to be a book about the men of country music, Jamie discovers that this second book is actually Gretchen’s attempt to find out more about the identity of her father. As Jamie pieces together the notes left behind, she travels into Gretchen’s past and finds out more than the murderer bargained for.

The Broken Teaglass follows two young dictionary editors as they start finding random citations from a  mysteriously quirky story called The Broken Teaglass.  As the excerpts turn up out of order, they intriguingly reveal a corpse, a guilty conscience, and a love affair all set in the very dictionary offices from which they are working. What could be better than a novel that combines unrequited love, murder, and words? Arsenault builds up the suspense with each excerpt, and helpfully puts them all in order in the later chapters revealing that context matters.

“The best I could manage was light chagrin”

Since the kids are at the grandparents this week, I ran (somewhat) amok in the DVD section of the library. A series called The Guild caught my eye. Apparently, I’m not the only one to think so because it was heavily scratched. My husband, in seeing my frustration, casually commented, “Why don’t you just watch it on YouTube?” Aha. Turns out I’m about 5 years late to this Internet series. But whereas the DVD from the library only had seasons 1 and 2, YouTube has them all.

Part of the reason it caught my eye was that I had recently read a book about gamers called The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss by Max Wirestone. Dahlia Moss is an aimless 20-something. When she is approached by someone at her roommate’s party who wants to hire her as a private detective, she jumps at the chance to earn some cash. Her mission is to find the Bejeweled Spear of Infinite Piercing…an item that only exists as part of an online game. When the guy who hires her ends up dead, she must reach out to the other members of his gaming guild to solve the mystery. Hilarity, well, you know. 

Half insightful, half clueless, Dahlia is a delightful narrator. As she says,

“…sometimes you just have to take some chances, right? And maybe things do get a little unfortunate. What of it? If you ask me, an unfortunate decision here or there can change your life. In a positive way, just so long you don't killed in the process. Admittedly, that's the tricky bit.”

And the tricky bit of watching Internet series? Watching only one season at a time. 

“Pudding wrestling with kangaroos”

The Northwest weather is conducive to naps. I’ve probably taken a few too many naps in the past few months to be considered healthy. But now that the sun is shining more, I seem to be a little more productive. Also back on track this week is my reading challenge. Funnily (surprising not ha, ha) enough this week’s challenge was to “read a book with a main character that has a mental illness.”

Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson is a collection of essays on how she deals with her anxiety by hiding under desks, stays in bed as needed due to her depression, but mostly tries to live her life by finding ways to be “furiously happy.”  From a hashtag she created for her blog to this collection of essays, this phrase “furiously happy” refers to seeking out wacky adventures while one can in order to look back on those moments when one can’t.  

Mental illness not only affects her as an individual, but friends and family members as well. Lawson writes how she constantly debates her mental stability with her mother who insists she’s normal.  She comments she loves these conversations with her mother “because she gives me perspective. It’s also why she hates having these conversations with me. Because I give her details.”

Details which may include the side effects of the antipsychotics she’s taken, taxidermied giraffes, coffins filled with scabie glitter to thwart grave robbers, cannonballing possums, and stunning uteruses (uteri?).

She also exasperates her husband Victor with Rory-the-dead-raccoon. Rory tends to pop up in the background of Victor’s conference calls or can be seen riding cats at midnight. As Lawson states, “Other women might show their adoration with baked goods or hand-knitted slippers, but mine is channeled through animal corpses.”

One of the most enlightening parts of the book is the spoon theory. She uses spoons to explain the limits of people living with chronic illness. For instance, each task one must accomplish in a day is represented by a spoon. Healthy people have an unlimited amount of spoons, but those living with chronic pain or an autoimmune disease may only have, say, six. So if someone chooses to use a spoon to pick up the dry cleaning, he or she won’t have a spoon left to clean the house. Or as Lawson tells it, she may have even fewer spoons the next day after she tries to explain to her husband how she ran out of spoons, gets frustrated when he misunderstands, and has the argument in her head instead because, yes, she has no more spoons for defending herself.

When she is running low on spoons and cannot get out of bed, living a furiously happy life means Lawson can still go to “a storeroom in the back of [her] mind filled with moments of tightrope walking, snorkeling in long-forgotten caves, and running barefoot through cemeteries with a red ball gown trailing behind.”

That image alone is worth staying awake for. 

Sweet and Salty Squid Candies

I turn 41 today. If I were to write a food memoir, it would have to include these moments...That simple Spanish breakfast I had in Madrid when I was 8.  The baklava I tried in Greece when I was 20. That apple empanada I inhaled outside a Oaxaca bakery when I was 28. Those sweet potato fries in Ann Arbor when I was 37. Since 1) I can’t draw and 2) these were all pre-Instagram, they’ll have to remain in my memory (and thighs).

Luckily for us, Lucy Knisley can draw (and cook) and has captured her unforgettable food experiences in Relish: My Life in the Kitchen. She charmingly illustrates her childhood growing up with foodie parents, her teen rebellion in sneaking McDonald’s fries on a trip to Rome with her father, and first adult job as a cheese monger. Each chapter has a nice finish with a step by step depiction of a favorite recipe. The strata of huevos rancheros on page 75 will have you digging out the frying pan and adding queso fresco to your shopping list. Trust me. 

Since I'll be in Chicago next week, I've already earmarked page 159 for ideas of foods to try while I'm there. More memories in the making. 

Poignant is the new quirky

Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper

“I keep your photo in the pocket on the side without the gun. For balance.” 

Irma Voth by Miriam Toews

“The director said he's got a haunted soul and a natural sweetness.” 

Based on the author’s experiences making this movie, says Wikipedia.hmmm

The Sunlit Night by Rebecca Dinerstein

“You know what happens to me? Goodbye, ladies. Hello, my grandmother. Superfine.”

Lost and Found by Brooke Davis

“It seems strange to want to find yourself. Wouldn’t you want to find somebody else? Aren’t you the one thing you can be sure of?”

How to Steal a Dog by Barbara O’Connor

“Half of me was thinking, Georgina, don't do this. Stealing a dog is just plain wrong. The other half of me was thinking, Georgina, you're in a bad fix and you got to do whatever it takes to get yourself out of it.”

The movie version is a must.

"like holding a butterfly"

I hesitate to call Rainbow Rowell’s novels delightful…but delight is what I feel when I’m about to read, am reading, or have just finished reading one of her books. Go. Read.

Attachments

“Every woman wants a man who'll fall in love with her soul as well as her body.”

Eleanor and Park

“You can be Han Solo," he said, kissing her throat. "And I'll be Boba Fett. I'll cross the sky for you.”

Fangirl

“Underneath this veneer of slightly crazy and mildly socially retarded, I'm a complete disaster.”

Landline

“Neal didn't take Georgie's breath away. Maybe the opposite. But that was okay--that was really good, actually, to be near someone who filled your lungs with air.”

Carry On

Coming October 6^th...

See?

“airport, car door, buy a shower curtain, get divorced”

“Our house was taken away on the back of a truck one afternoon let in the summer of 1979.” So begins the novel All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews. In it, Yoli’s family can’t seem to catch a break. In childhood, it’s because her family balks against the rules of their conservative Mennonite village in Canada. They harbor a forbidden piano to foster her sister Elfrieda’s musical talents. When not at the piano, Elf spray paints the letters AMPS (“all my puny sorrows”) around the village in further rebellion.

In Yoli and Elf's adult years, the family suffers from Elf’s unhappiness. Elf’s career as a concert pianist is overshadowed by her multiple suicide attempts.Yoli has been traveling back and forth from Toronto to support her mother and brother-in-law and sit at her sister’s bedside. When not at the hospital, Yoli can be found sitting on her friend Julie’s porch. It is here the novel provides cathartic humor to balance the sadness of the rest of Yoli’s day. 

Toews brightens the pages of this devastatingly sad novel with Czech violinists, Italian agents, huffy nurses, and eccentric aunts. The brightest character, however, is Yoli. Her struggles to see her sister’s point of view, her texts with her teenage children, her endless to-do-lists, her trysts with mechanics and violinists, and her sometimes flinching optimism all carry the reader onward - even when the Kleenex box is empty.

Year in Quirk

1. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman 
2. The Explanation for Everything by Lauren Grodstein 
3. The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee by Marja Mills 
4. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami 
5. The Transcriptionist by Amy Rowland 
6. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion 
7. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan