Barbarism in this Beauty

Buntings and bourbon fly through Buenos Aires and small town New York. A teenager looks for romance in a Chinese restaurant/brothel, an invalid heiress elopes with her swim instructor, and a majorette catches herself on fire. These stories have alighted in Lauren Groff’s Delicate Edible Birds.

In the title story, a female journalist must evacuate with a team of male reporters during World War II. She is nicknamed “l’ ortolan” for the delicacy diners devour while veiling their faces with a napkin. She herself proves to be a dish when she and her colleagues are captured by a sadistic German.

When you’ve finished these stories, you’ll want to turn to Groff’s first book – The Monsters of Templeton. Truly epic in heft and scope, Monsters is a story of origin. One woman researches the town lore to discover her father’s identity. In doing so, she unravels a complicated family tree with chapters giving voice to minor characters from her past.

Mythical Realism. I don’t know if this is a thing, but Lauren Groff should be the poster child. Her work contains the same unsettling plot twists you’ve come to expect from stories of metamorphosis while her prose may prove as timeless as Sisyphus’ task.

Banzai Akita

Lately I’ve been running hills. I was feeling pretty good about my endurance until I read this book about a man who also runs. Up mountains. To kill bears.

Morie Sawataishi, the subject of Dog Man by Martha Sherrill, engages in these activities to train his prize winning Akitas. Although the book describes Morie’s quest to breed the ultimate Akita, this is no Best in Show. Through chapters named for the dogs he raised over a lifetime from No Name to Shiro, we read about the venture from both Morie and his family’s perspective.

Despite the money to be made selling dogs – first to the American servicemen and then to avid Akita fans - Morie refuses to take money for a dog, preferring to give them away. This causes some raised eyebrows (and voices) in his household, since his wife Kitako, a society girl turned mountain mama, remembers the lean times. Little rice, little meat, and little heat was to be found in their remote village in post-war Japan. Despite the deprivation, the dogs never went hungry.

Later in the book we hear from Morie’s children – a vet, a Vidal Sassoon hair stylist – about Morie’s enthusiasm for all things Akita. And his reticence when it came to his own children.

This is a book about a man who loves dogs. What he loves most about them isn’t their physical appearance or their promise of riches. And he most certainly doesn’t teach them tricks. What he really strives for is a dog with kisho. Funnily enough, it’s this kisho, or life force, that Morie himself embodies in these pages.

MS+JF= BFF

Some rely on Harlequin romances. Some on cat mysteries. Still others on Stephanie Myers. My guilty pleasure? Juvenile fiction.

Recently I dusted off some old favorites by Lois Lowry, Ellen Raskin, and Cynthia Voigt. Somewhat disenchanted with the last, I decided to see what young readers today have to pick from. Luckily, I've been following just the blog to help me choose.

First on the cart - Cassie was Here by Caroline Hickey. In this one, eleven-year-old Bree sways between a friend who’s too childish and one who's too mature. I found myself shifting allegiances, also. First, I was rooting for cool Cassie but then found myself feeling sad at the demise of Bree's (ahem) imaginary pal.

Next in line - My Life in Pink and Green by Lisa Greenwald. Lucy, a wannabe make-up artist, tries to save her family’s pharmacy by going green. I liked this one as well but found the beauty tips at the beginning of each chapter a little silly. But then again, I'm not exactly the target reader.

Shhhh. Don't tell.

Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte

I’ve broken every rule in this book. I’d say more, but I’ve got some Power Points to revise.

“not all beer and skittles”

So remarked Ezra Jack Keats after winning the Caldecott Medal for The Snowy Day. His quote reflects the controversy his books sparked for being done by a white illustrator featuring multicultural characters. Although his character Peter was inspired by a picture of a little boy he saw in a copy of Life, Keats drew from his own life - he grew up in a Brooklyn tenement during the Depression - to create Peter’s world.

All this comes from Keats’s Neighborhood, a collection of 10 stories compiled on the 40th anniversary of the publication of The Snowy Day. The treasury also includes a short biography of Keats and remembrances of his life and work from other children’s illustrators including Eric Carle and Reynold Ruffins.

My favorite story of the collection, apart from The Snowy Day, is A Letter to Amy. In this story, Peter’s having a birthday party. He decides to invite a girl to the party and writes his friend Amy a special invitation. On his way to the mailbox, a storm whips the envelope from his hand. Amy finds it, but before she can pick it up, Peter snatches it so he can mail it according to plan. The party day arrives and we wait to see if Amy will indeed show up. Waiting isn’t hard, since it gives us time to take in the details of the party hats, curtains, and Peter’s tie.

My daughter’s favorite stories in the collection include Peter’s Chair and Jennie’s Hat. In her words, “what I like about them is I like the story.” But what I like about them is the illustrations. Keats’s technique of marbeling and cutting paper for collage makes his pictures vibrantly pop off the page. From hodgepodged hats of valentines and eggs to weathered circulars peeling off the bricks outside the Chinese laundry “How Soon,” Keats can set the scene.

Charmed, I’m Sure

Once upon a time there were three sisters. Fluent in the make-believe language Arnish, they spent their dreaming moments in a faery realm. Banished from her daughters’ secret world, their mother spent most of her waking moments cultivating heirloom tomatoes in her garden.

Years passed. Once so close, the sisters realigned allegiances in high school when the eldest, Elv, began rebelling. Betrayed by her sisters into rehab, Elv met Lorry. Lorry instantly ensnared her heart with a tale of a youth spent living underground in abandoned subway stations. The two storytellers, with a little help from heroin, managed a life together. Meanwhile the youngest, Claire, unable to deal with life’s loss, moved into her grandmother’s Paris apartment. After a slice of Honesty Cake (fresh eggs, flour, sugar, lemon rind, anise seed and dry cherries), Claire was hired by a family friend to work in a jewelry store. Eventually, Claire won her sister back through charms crafted for Elv’s daughter Mimi. And they all lived happily ever after.

Or did they?

Alice Hoffman, like the protagonist of The Story Sisters, is a born storyteller. She breathes life into characters that join us on our commute, read over our shoulders, linger over dessert. Like others we spend our days around, they annoy, entrance, humor, and perplex us. Equally as perplexing is the ending. Heartbreakingly tragic or sigh-of-relief sweet? I’m still not sure. Maybe I’m just disappointed the tale had to end at all.

It's Your Turn

It all begins with a storybook wedding. Sex. Kids. And then either:

A) both parents work, children are cared for by someone else
B) one parent works, leaving the other parent as the “stay-at-home”
C) one parent works, one parent stays-at-home writing, and a housekeeper and nanny are hired

It’s a good thing she chose C.

Caitlin Flanagan has compiled a mope-conquering collection of essays examining woman’s work in To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife.

I first discovered Flanagan when I came across her article “Housewife Confidential” in the Atlantic. To Hell with All That includes an expanded version of this article which examines what the original housewife authors from Bombeck to Bracken had to say – don’t throw out your sense of humor with the dishwater.

Flanagan moves on to discuss the phenom of today’s mother’s little helper. Not valium. The nanny. After investigating the rise of the governess culminating in Disney’s Mary Poppins, Flanagan relates her own experience as the mother of twin boys and employeer of help more likely to be named Maria than Mary. Paloma, it turns out, is a godsend. She cleans, she cooks, she quiets the boys with a look. And Flanagan loves it. When she’s not questioning her own role in the whole endeavor.

After the boys have grown, Flanagan hires a housekeeper to take up where the nanny left off, which leaver her more time to manage the family’s schedule (and its clutter). Essays on both resonate and cheekily point out the ridiculousness of it all.

And then there’s the husband. Poor him. Really. He’s gone from the housewife’s main preoccupation to an afterthought somewhere between Little Gym and pet vaccinations in the stay-at-home’s day planner. Flanagan’s words from page 36:

“He must somehow seduce a woman who is economically independent of him, bone tired, philosophically disinclined to have sex unless she’s jolly well in the mood…and still doing a slow burn over his failure to wipe down the countertops and fold the dish towel after cooking the kids’ dinner. He can hardly be blamed for opting instead to check his e-mail, catch a few minutes of SportsCenter, and call it a night.”

I’m going to tape that quote to my fridge. Just as soon as I wipe that crusty stuff out of the produce bin and alphabetize the chutneys.