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Reading Wednesday
Jul. 6th, 2016 05:41 pmWhat did you just finish?
Jazz Moon by Joe Okonkwo. A novel set in Harlem and Paris in the 1920s. Ben is a young black man, a poet and a waiter, who lives with his wife Angeline in New York City, though they're both originally from the small-town south. He struggles with what he calls this thing – eventually revealed to be his attraction to other men – a problem which kicks into overdrive when Ben meets the handsome trumpeter Baby Back Johnston. From there on out it's a matter of Ben figuring out who he is and who he loves, and the ensuing tangled mass of complicated relationships – not just with Baby Back and Angeline, but also Glo, a singer and Ben's close friend; Clifford, a rich, sophisticated black man with his own attraction to Baby Back; and Sebastian, a white painter.
The prose attempts to mimic the rhythms of poetry (many of Ben's poems are included in the text itself) and jazz, which sometimes works well, and... well, sometimes doesn't. For example:
The students smiled through their entire argument, then closed their topic with a chummy clinking of coffee cups. The Fitzgerald-endorsing student stood out. His tie askew. Longish hair falling in front of his eyes. A dash of scruff on his ruddy face.
Something in Ben’s pants smiled.
He went downstairs to use the lavatory, the basement dark and medieval-dungeon cool. The Fitzgerald boy was at the sink when Ben came out of the stall. They studied each other through the mirror’s reflection.
“Bonjour,” Fitzgerald said.
“Bonjour.”
Silence. Studying.
“I need to wash my hands,” Ben said.
“What were you doing in that stall to make them dirty?”
He stepped aside. Ben moved to the sink. As water poured over his hands, he felt a nice slap on his backside. Sharp and quick, the sound like a whip. Ben looked in the mirror, saw Fitzgerald at the stall cocking his head in its direction, renegade hair flailing. He went in, left the door ajar.
Ben finished at the sink and moved to exit. He looked back at the stall, felt the smile in his pants again. He hesitated, then hesitated some more, then walked toward the stall with purpose, then reversed course and left.
THE SMILE IN HIS PANTS. THIS IS THE WORST METAPHOR FOR SEXUAL ATTRACTION I THINK I HAVE EVER READ.
But even if the prose isn't always the greatest, I really did enjoy this book. It deals with racism and homophobia in very smart ways and in a setting that I loved, the characterizations are well-done and complex, and the ending is happy if a bit bittersweet. All around, it's a book that I'm very glad exists, and I wish there were more like it.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler. A modern retelling of The Taming of the Shrew, part of a new line where various famous authors take on different Shakespeare plays.
Tyler recasts Katherina as Kate, the daughter of an absent-minded, socially clueless research scientist. His highly valuable assistant Pyotr is in danger of being kicked out of the country when his visa shortly expires; cue the suggestion of a green card marriage between him and Kate. Great idea! I thought. What a wonderful contemporary twist on forcing someone into a marriage.
Sadly, this is the only good idea the book had. I realize that The Taming of the Shrew was always going to be a hard sell, since pretty much no one these days can find much to agree with in the second half of the play, but Jesus did this book fail hard.
My main problem is with Kate. The original Katherina is stubborn, fierce, overly-opinionated, and refuses to bow to social pressure. Kate is... sort of snarky, sometimes? She's a college dropout who's content to keep house for her father and younger sister and work in a dead-end job. She has no idea of what she wants to do with her life and folds easily to the stronger personalities around her. She's intimidated by the elderly women she works with. She's intimidated by cute boys. She's intimidated by her well-meaning father. She has an incredibly low opinion of herself and seems unable to have desires or needs of her own. So yeah, basically the only thing she has in common with the original is her name.
She's also oddly old-fashioned. Based on the way she talks and thinks, I kept thinking the book must be set in the 1950s or earlier, but no: there are cell-phones, there's a mention of 9/11 being in the past. It's got to be at least relatively contemporary, but then there are passages like this:
Once, a couple of months ago, Kate had tried wearing a skirt to school herself. Not that it was swishy or anything; actually it was a denim skirt with rivets and a front zip, but she had thought it might make her seem … softer. The older teachers had turned all knowing and glinty. “Somebody’s making a big effort today!” Mrs. Bower had said, and Kate had said, “What: this? It was the only thing not in the wash, is all.” But Adam hadn’t seemed to register its existence. Anyhow, it had proved impractical—hard to climb a jungle gym in—and she couldn’t shake the image of the reflection she had glimpsed in the faculty restroom’s full-length mirror. “Mutton dressed as lamb” was the phrase that had come to mind, although she knew she wasn’t really mutton; not yet. The next day, she had gone back to Levi’s.
KATE IS SUPPOSEDLY 29. I am 32, and am only vaguely aware of the existence of the saying "mutton dressed as lamb"; it's definitely not something I would ever spontaneously think – not about someone else, and certainly not about myself. ALSO OVER A JEAN SKIRT? I have been acquainted with fundamentalist Christians of the sort that don't believe in dancing or public schools, and they wore jean skirts! (Mainly because I'm pretty sure they believed it was inappropriate for women to wear pants, but still. My point remains.)
Or here she is articulating why she goes ahead with the marriage to Pyotr:
Twenty years from now I’ll be the old-maid daughter still keeping house for her father. ‘Yes, Father; no, Father; don’t forget to take your medicine, Father.’
This is the concern of the heroine of a Regency novel, not a twenty-something in 2016.
On another topic, here is her opinions on Pyotr's accent:
When he was talking shop with her father he had sounded halfway intelligent—thoughtful, even—but on subjects less scientific his language turned stunted again. She couldn’t find any logic to his use or non-use of article adjectives, for instance, and how hard could article adjectives be?
WHOA DUDE. I mean, I suppose one way of updating Kate's "shrewishness" would have been by turning her into a total dick, but unfortunately I'm pretty sure Tyler expects us to be in agreement with Kate here, since it's later treated as a stunning revelation that Pyotr has trouble expressing his thoughts in English rather than just having an accent for funsies.
The plot also doesn't much resemble The Taming of the Shrew. There's no "taming" (which, okay, fair – I probably didn't want to read that anyway), no Latin tutor disguises, no Christopher Sly, no wagers over who has the best wife; instead it follows the standard romantic comedy outlines of opposites attracting and slowly falling in love. However, the one plot point Tyler does make a point of including is Katherina's (in)famous final speech; here Kate delivers a lecture on how it's really hard to be a man because they have to hide their emotions. Which... I do agree with! But it's still a bizarre ending note, considering that it comes out of nowhere and is no way thematically relevant to the rest of the book, and doesn't even work as part of the scene it's in. It's supposed to be a riposte to Kate's younger sister – here called Bunny – who's upset because Pyotr punched her boyfriend. I'm not really clear on how "[Men] a whole lot less free than women are, when you think about it" is a response to assault charges.
(By the way, I am also annoyed at how Bunny is treated in this book, constantly belittled and mocked by the narrative because she's not as smart as Kate and her father and is interested in boys. It's not a feminist retelling if you can't conceal your disdain for the "other girls".)
Anyway, it's not really an entirely terrible book. The prose is fine and it's a quick, light read. I think it would make pleasant beach book if you wanted some fluffy romcom. But it has nothing to do with The Taming of the Shrew, and trying to compare the two makes Vinegar Girl suffer.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
What are you currently reading?
I actually just now finished Vinegar Girl and haven't started anything else, but most probably Hostage by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith!
Jazz Moon by Joe Okonkwo. A novel set in Harlem and Paris in the 1920s. Ben is a young black man, a poet and a waiter, who lives with his wife Angeline in New York City, though they're both originally from the small-town south. He struggles with what he calls this thing – eventually revealed to be his attraction to other men – a problem which kicks into overdrive when Ben meets the handsome trumpeter Baby Back Johnston. From there on out it's a matter of Ben figuring out who he is and who he loves, and the ensuing tangled mass of complicated relationships – not just with Baby Back and Angeline, but also Glo, a singer and Ben's close friend; Clifford, a rich, sophisticated black man with his own attraction to Baby Back; and Sebastian, a white painter.
The prose attempts to mimic the rhythms of poetry (many of Ben's poems are included in the text itself) and jazz, which sometimes works well, and... well, sometimes doesn't. For example:
The students smiled through their entire argument, then closed their topic with a chummy clinking of coffee cups. The Fitzgerald-endorsing student stood out. His tie askew. Longish hair falling in front of his eyes. A dash of scruff on his ruddy face.
Something in Ben’s pants smiled.
He went downstairs to use the lavatory, the basement dark and medieval-dungeon cool. The Fitzgerald boy was at the sink when Ben came out of the stall. They studied each other through the mirror’s reflection.
“Bonjour,” Fitzgerald said.
“Bonjour.”
Silence. Studying.
“I need to wash my hands,” Ben said.
“What were you doing in that stall to make them dirty?”
He stepped aside. Ben moved to the sink. As water poured over his hands, he felt a nice slap on his backside. Sharp and quick, the sound like a whip. Ben looked in the mirror, saw Fitzgerald at the stall cocking his head in its direction, renegade hair flailing. He went in, left the door ajar.
Ben finished at the sink and moved to exit. He looked back at the stall, felt the smile in his pants again. He hesitated, then hesitated some more, then walked toward the stall with purpose, then reversed course and left.
THE SMILE IN HIS PANTS. THIS IS THE WORST METAPHOR FOR SEXUAL ATTRACTION I THINK I HAVE EVER READ.
But even if the prose isn't always the greatest, I really did enjoy this book. It deals with racism and homophobia in very smart ways and in a setting that I loved, the characterizations are well-done and complex, and the ending is happy if a bit bittersweet. All around, it's a book that I'm very glad exists, and I wish there were more like it.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler. A modern retelling of The Taming of the Shrew, part of a new line where various famous authors take on different Shakespeare plays.
Tyler recasts Katherina as Kate, the daughter of an absent-minded, socially clueless research scientist. His highly valuable assistant Pyotr is in danger of being kicked out of the country when his visa shortly expires; cue the suggestion of a green card marriage between him and Kate. Great idea! I thought. What a wonderful contemporary twist on forcing someone into a marriage.
Sadly, this is the only good idea the book had. I realize that The Taming of the Shrew was always going to be a hard sell, since pretty much no one these days can find much to agree with in the second half of the play, but Jesus did this book fail hard.
My main problem is with Kate. The original Katherina is stubborn, fierce, overly-opinionated, and refuses to bow to social pressure. Kate is... sort of snarky, sometimes? She's a college dropout who's content to keep house for her father and younger sister and work in a dead-end job. She has no idea of what she wants to do with her life and folds easily to the stronger personalities around her. She's intimidated by the elderly women she works with. She's intimidated by cute boys. She's intimidated by her well-meaning father. She has an incredibly low opinion of herself and seems unable to have desires or needs of her own. So yeah, basically the only thing she has in common with the original is her name.
She's also oddly old-fashioned. Based on the way she talks and thinks, I kept thinking the book must be set in the 1950s or earlier, but no: there are cell-phones, there's a mention of 9/11 being in the past. It's got to be at least relatively contemporary, but then there are passages like this:
Once, a couple of months ago, Kate had tried wearing a skirt to school herself. Not that it was swishy or anything; actually it was a denim skirt with rivets and a front zip, but she had thought it might make her seem … softer. The older teachers had turned all knowing and glinty. “Somebody’s making a big effort today!” Mrs. Bower had said, and Kate had said, “What: this? It was the only thing not in the wash, is all.” But Adam hadn’t seemed to register its existence. Anyhow, it had proved impractical—hard to climb a jungle gym in—and she couldn’t shake the image of the reflection she had glimpsed in the faculty restroom’s full-length mirror. “Mutton dressed as lamb” was the phrase that had come to mind, although she knew she wasn’t really mutton; not yet. The next day, she had gone back to Levi’s.
KATE IS SUPPOSEDLY 29. I am 32, and am only vaguely aware of the existence of the saying "mutton dressed as lamb"; it's definitely not something I would ever spontaneously think – not about someone else, and certainly not about myself. ALSO OVER A JEAN SKIRT? I have been acquainted with fundamentalist Christians of the sort that don't believe in dancing or public schools, and they wore jean skirts! (Mainly because I'm pretty sure they believed it was inappropriate for women to wear pants, but still. My point remains.)
Or here she is articulating why she goes ahead with the marriage to Pyotr:
Twenty years from now I’ll be the old-maid daughter still keeping house for her father. ‘Yes, Father; no, Father; don’t forget to take your medicine, Father.’
This is the concern of the heroine of a Regency novel, not a twenty-something in 2016.
On another topic, here is her opinions on Pyotr's accent:
When he was talking shop with her father he had sounded halfway intelligent—thoughtful, even—but on subjects less scientific his language turned stunted again. She couldn’t find any logic to his use or non-use of article adjectives, for instance, and how hard could article adjectives be?
WHOA DUDE. I mean, I suppose one way of updating Kate's "shrewishness" would have been by turning her into a total dick, but unfortunately I'm pretty sure Tyler expects us to be in agreement with Kate here, since it's later treated as a stunning revelation that Pyotr has trouble expressing his thoughts in English rather than just having an accent for funsies.
The plot also doesn't much resemble The Taming of the Shrew. There's no "taming" (which, okay, fair – I probably didn't want to read that anyway), no Latin tutor disguises, no Christopher Sly, no wagers over who has the best wife; instead it follows the standard romantic comedy outlines of opposites attracting and slowly falling in love. However, the one plot point Tyler does make a point of including is Katherina's (in)famous final speech; here Kate delivers a lecture on how it's really hard to be a man because they have to hide their emotions. Which... I do agree with! But it's still a bizarre ending note, considering that it comes out of nowhere and is no way thematically relevant to the rest of the book, and doesn't even work as part of the scene it's in. It's supposed to be a riposte to Kate's younger sister – here called Bunny – who's upset because Pyotr punched her boyfriend. I'm not really clear on how "[Men] a whole lot less free than women are, when you think about it" is a response to assault charges.
(By the way, I am also annoyed at how Bunny is treated in this book, constantly belittled and mocked by the narrative because she's not as smart as Kate and her father and is interested in boys. It's not a feminist retelling if you can't conceal your disdain for the "other girls".)
Anyway, it's not really an entirely terrible book. The prose is fine and it's a quick, light read. I think it would make pleasant beach book if you wanted some fluffy romcom. But it has nothing to do with The Taming of the Shrew, and trying to compare the two makes Vinegar Girl suffer.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
What are you currently reading?
I actually just now finished Vinegar Girl and haven't started anything else, but most probably Hostage by Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith!
