Lucia, Lucia, Adriana Trigiani

Vogue, 1953

(April 30)This book is the poster-child for the concept of a "light" read -- it's pleasant and engaging, it's a bit of a chick-lit book but not in the formulaic, insulting sense, it's a good story. Angela recommended it to me as light and fun, and after two books about horrible people, it seemed it might be a good palate cleanser.

And so it was! Trigiani very skillfully brings to life the experience of living in New York in the early 1950s as a first-generation Italian. She lovingly recreates the clothes, the home decor, the food, the ambiance of New York, the trends and preoccupations of post-war America, and not in a cataloguey way, but as the natural backdrop and props appropriate to a young woman's story of making her way in the world. A lot of the drama and suspense of the book relates to Lucia's love life, although the story isn't a romance per se, and Lucia is a bit of a feminist, though not in a way that makes it an anachronism. All very satisfying.

The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker

Edvard Munch, The Scream

(April 24) I was leery of this title because I'm against fear-mongering, but on Occupation: Girl people were talking about how the book discusses intuition, which sounded interesting (and I wondered if The Gift of Fear would support or contradict Blink).

It turns out that Gavin de Becker is also against fear-mongering and sensationalism in the media, because he thinks they dull our natural intuition about looming danger. (So I have to once again envision an Evil Publisher, who this time saw the value of a title with the word "fear" in it.)

On the other hand, de Becker is able to show he knows how to sort out threats because of a long career of protecting celebrities and political figures, and evaluating the activities of hundreds of stalkers... so all these stories make the book a sensational read. Huh.

But, on the third hand, because de Becker can produce example after example to prove his points, he does convince you not to engage with certain types of people, not to worry when a stalker verbally threatens to kill you, not to underestimate your own abilities, and so on. So ultimately a reassuring book. Huh.

The Dust of 100 Dogs, A.S. King

Carol Hegarty, Girl Running With Dog

(April 14, 2009) Again, a synopsis that sounded fabulous:

In the late 17th century, famed pirate Emer Morrisey was on the cusp of escaping pirate life with her one true love and unfathomable riches when she was slain and cursed with the dust of 100 dogs, dooming her to one hundred lives as a dog before returning to a human body—with her memories intact. Now she's a contemporary American teenager, and all she needs is a shovel and a ride to Jamaica.

Does that not sound great? So I was expecting something like The Pirates of the Caribbean writ modern, or maybe The Golden Compass with a nautical twist, or even possibly a kind of historical saga like the Outlander books.

But it’s not that at all -- it's more like Angela's Ashes minus the humour mixed with a Raymond Chandler-style hard-boiled detective novel minus the noir stylishness. It’s just sad and depressing from beginning to end. People are cruel to each other now, and were cruel to each other 400 years ago, and are also cruel to dogs.

There is nothing redeeming at all. Nobody is likable, nothing is presented in contrast to the bleakness of human life, there’s nothing to invest in whatsoever.

It’s hard to believe this book falls into the Young Adult category. If this is the literature young adults want and / or the literature publishers think they should have, then... yikes.

Actually, it seemed at times that I was reading extracts from a much longer novel, perhaps a 700-pager. The plot set-up gives the impression of a way longer trajectory than it eventually takes, and there are many scenes and characters that are amplified and expanded upon in such a way that you think they’re going to be important eventually... but they never are. There’s all kinds of gratuitous gore, the result of either violence or the indignities of the human body or both, which probably was the tipping point for the YA categorization, because it’s totally adolescent. But I could see it all working in a long historical novel full of richly imagined passages through which we come to know and like the heroine, or learn fascinating details about the differences between life in the 1660s and now, or gain crucial contextual knowledge that puts a little clothing on some narrative themes.

I could totally see that novel existing, and being decent, and the author being told, “We’ll only publish this if you cut it back to 300 pages.... and you must retain all the gory bits intact.” That would explain Dust. The only other explanation I can imagine is some kind of authorial ADHD.

I’m giving it a star only because the concept was so great, and because there are lots of descriptions of jewellery.