Storymusing: My Friends by Fredrik Backman

My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

A patron at the library where I work had told me for years that I should read A Man Called Ove. I said sure but I put it off, thinking it would be very literary and possibly boring. Man, was I wrong. It was one of the funniest and most beautiful books I’ve ever read. (Albeit a lot of dark humor, which I very much appreciate.)

My husband and I both loved it, then we watched the movie, and that was fantastic. (The one with Tom Hanks is good, but if you love Backman’s writing, watch the Swedish film with the subtitles. It’s worth it.)

I’ve read a couple other books by Backman since then, and loved each one. I haven’t read all he has written, but this book, My Friends, is so painfully beautiful and so funny, that it may well beat out A Man Called Ove for me. I have read it with excruciating attention, not skipping a word, and in short bursts to make it last.

There is a piece of advice for writers that is purported to come from film writer Joss Whedon which says, “Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.”

For my sensibility, Fredrik Backman has created the perfect blend of heart-breaking stories with humorous and heart-warming interactions and moments of beautiful connection between people. It’s almost a tall tale, in some ways, but gritty and real in others. In that way, it reminds me a bit of Big Fish.

The story begins with Louisa, who is nearly aged out of her foster home, and has run away while grieving the loss of her friend Fish. Fish, “fled from reality, down into bottles, out into the fog.” They kept each other safe for a long time, but “…the most dangerous place on earth is inside us,” and so Louisa determines that “Fish was murdered by reality.”

Louisa goes to an art show to see the piece of art that has captured her imagination for years, a painting that everyone says is of the sea, but she knows it’s really a painting of something else entirely. There she runs straight into the story of the painting and a couple of the people who are part of it. She runs into the artist, literally, but it is Ted who she ends up taking an amazing journey with. As they travel, he tells her story after story about the friends in that picture.

I adore the narrator’s interjections as well. “Adults really are out of their minds.”

As writers we are often admonished to make sure we show instead of telling the story. Backman is the type of master who can take a rule and break it in just the right way.

So many times, while reading this book, I have had the urge to write a note to the author, just to thank him for writing this book. I doubt he’ll ever see this blog, but I do thank him for this book. It is the type of book that tells beautiful truths through fiction. I will be buying it for Christmas, for whoever of my family and friends that I think will read it.

We also have an author talk with Fredrik Backman in our Library Speakers Consortium listing that you might enjoy. https://libraryc.org/ssclibrary/22473 

 

Storymusing: Nightfall in the Garden of Deep Time by Tracy Higley

 

Nightfall in the Garden of Deep Time

by Tracy Higley

Kelsey is running the Chestnut Street Book Emporium for her “Gran,” who is actually her adoptive grandmother. She doesn’t know who her parents were at all. But Gran has had a stroke and is now living in assisted living.

Unfortunately, a developer and the city itself are breathing down Kelsey’s neck to get Gran to sell. There’s a big luxury hotel going in next door and the developer wants the property. The city is after her for back taxes as well. She either has to commit to paying a chunk of the back taxes and doing installment payments or they’ll seize the property and auction it off. Can she commit to those payments when Gran is in care and the facility also needs to be paid?

Kelsey has also put her own dreams on the back burner. She wanted to write for a living but a little bit of discouragement from two sources over the years sent her reeling pretty quickly. She stuffed the manuscript in a drawer and left it there.

And Kelsey’s boyfriend? Don’t get me started. Not exactly supportive, but then they’ve only been dating for a month.

“Despite everything going on, I savor this moment in my happy place, grateful for this bookshop that is everything I love stacked and bundled and shelved into one cavernous and glorious space with a hundred mysterious corners.”

The author creates for us an old-time bookstore, and the city neighborhood replete with a variety of shop owners, old and young, of varying backgrounds. It feels like a bit of Sesame Street that lives in so many of our hearts.

“Listen, Kelsey, you let me know if you need me to chain myself to the bookshop or anything, to stop the bulldozers. You know I will.”

Was that her neighbor William or …?

The story is picturesque and idyllic in places, but in contrast to the heartbreak and pain of life.

When Kelsey visits Gran to talk about all this, Gran mutters cryptic statements about the garden being the key. But there’s no garden. Can things get worse? Of course they can!

Then, one night, Kelsey finds the garden in the walled off lot next to the store, and a host of people inside, both demanding and supportive. Is this just a dream? If so, it’s a very literary one. Can they help her figure out how to save the bookshop?

I loved so much of the story, it really is for readers and writers, in particular. She has so much to say about imposter syndrome without naming it.

I feel a certain kinship with Kelsey – pushing my own writing aside so often for the more immediate necessities of family life and work at the library. “Imagination doesn’t pay the bills,” Kelsey thinks to herself in the first chapter. Thankfully, my work at the library includes the writer’s group, which keeps bringing me back to my own writing.

The biggest problem I had was that the author “read” it while I’m used to voice actors “performing” a story. I still enjoyed it, but it took a while for me to get into the story, and I think I would have enjoyed reading it more if I’d read it in a hard copy instead of listening to it.

First person and present tense is an interesting choice, bringing a sense of immediacy to a rather long book. It’s a lovely homage to the arts. There’s a bit of a side quest that didn’t really connect to me. I felt like it could be tightened up a bit and still keep the lush prose and deep dive into what it means to be an artist and persevere. It’s a strong 4 stars for me. I’m definitely glad I spent the time reading it and would recommend it to others.

Book Review of Queen Bee by Dorothea Benton Frank

 

Queen Bee

by Dorothea Benton Frank

My thematic book club selected the theme of “Queen” for May. I ran a little late in picking my book so I decided to grab an audio book from our Hoopla catalog that I could listen to on my commute. (Most books run 8 to 14 hours on audio so I can easily listen to it during the course of my weekly commute.) I did a quick search for the term Queen and scrolled down the list looking for something that would catch my interest.

My eyes alighted on Queen Bee by Dorothea Benton Frank. I have adored Frank’s writing since her first published novel, Sullivan’s Island. I have read at least half the novels she wrote but lost track of her at some point.

The atmosphere of the low country, the islands on the coast of South Carolina, the use of language, the characters, which are so real and far from perfect people, and the mystery just made for a perfect read for me.

I downloaded the audio book and started it in the car that night. By the time I got home, I was so hooked that I downloaded the ebook so I could keep reading that weekend.

In Queen Bee, Holly Jensen is a dutiful southern daughter, living with her mother, who she and her sister refer to as the QB (Queen Bee), to help care for her as she has grown into something of a hypochondriac.

Holly occupies her free time with tending her bees, volunteering at the local library, occasional substitute teaching as she tries to get a full-time job teaching at the elementary school, helping the widower and his two small boys next door, and then she gets a job decorating cakes at the local Publix store.

The truth is Holly has a very severe crush on the next door widower, Archie. But even as she is taking care of his two sweet young boys after school and bringing them meals, he goes out on a blind date with someone else. Someone horrible. What to do? Hold on for the roller coaster ride.

Then Holly’s sister, Leslie, returns home in tears when her accountant husband of six years reveals a hidden dream of his own to become a drag queen star in Las Vegas. (This is a fantastic story line that I did not see coming and Frank takes it in totally unexpected and beautiful directions.)

Meanwhile, Holly and Leslie’s mama, the QB, falls out of bed twice and gets taken in for some scans which reveal that she is not quite the hypochondriac the girls assumed. Again, unexpected twists and turns abound as the story unfolds in a beautiful way. Have your tissues ready.

Frank’s books are a truly immersive reading experience, transporting you to a different location. Just sitting here writing this review, I feel like I fell back into the book and traveled miles away.

I’ve already picked out another book by Frank and am listening to that one, All the Single Ladies. Sadly, Dorothea Benton Frank passed away in 2019 but, fortunately, she left us twenty wonderful novels to read and listen to.

One of my treasured possessions is a book of Frank’s that my sister had her sign for me, a copy of Pawley’s Island. In it, she wrote, “Dear Michelle, If I can do this, so can you. Keep writing! Dottie.” So sweet and full of the characteristic style of having her female characters prop each other up.

I was just thinking I might go back and listen to someone read Sullivan’s Island, if I can find a good recording of it.

It’s perfect summer reading.

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy

The Dud Avocado

by Elaine Dundy

Guest review by Tarren Young – Thank you, Tarren!

I LOVED this book! Although it took me a month to read it, it wasn’t because it wasn’t fascinating; rather, it was the fact that I borrowed it from the library and had to stop every two to four pages to jot down ideas, quips or quotes from the book instead of being able to highlight in my own copy. This WILL be added to my personal library!

I was floored when, somewhere around page sixty-ish, I realized that this book was fiction and NOT memoir! And that is the number one reason why I loved this book: it’s fiction, but reads like memoir.

The book is told from the perspective of Sally Jay Gorce, a young (we’re not actually told her age, somewhere between eighteen and twenty-two) American who has finally made it to Paris on her Uncle Roger’s dime, in exchange for stopping her numerous runaway attempts from prestigious, and boring, boarding schools on the East Coast of America.

But the problem is, Sally Jay is, as we learn through her foibles, The Dud Avocado—and she doesn’t realize it through most of the story - that she’s green and just a kid. In fact, she gets rather temperamental at the mere mention of someone calling her “kid” which, coincidentally, happens a lot.

I really couldn’t help but laugh at Sally’s insights on her new friends who are “artists” in Paris, or as she calls them “The Hard Core,” and her pet names for all of them - such as the two that have beards and, even thought not related, look so much alike that she calls them “Beard Boring” and “Beard Bubbly.”

I truly think the reason I connected so much with Sally Jay is the fact that she is young and naïve and reminds myself of a younger me, sans the traveling and living in Paris on a two-year monthly stipend from a rich uncle.

Bunny trail: I just realized that mirrors are symbolic in the story because they appear every couple pages or chapters at the least, and I didn’t realize how much they were mentioned throughout the book until now. But it makes sense, as Sally Jay, often looks in and at mirrors, but has a hard time seeing the truth reflected back at her because she is so young and green. She is always trying to run away from something or run into something new and exotic instead of slowing down to reflect on things in her life, until it’s too late. By then she’s already wrapped up in a hot mess of trouble.

Pg. 44 “And in a way I kind of gave up on myself. I gave up wondering if anyone was ever going to understand me at all. If I was ever going to understand myself even. Why was it so difficult anyway? Was I some kind of nut or something? Don’t answer that.” ~I just can’t get over how much Sally Jay talks and thinks like me!

Part two is laid out in a journal format, still with chapters though. Of course the whole book is in first person, Sally Jay telling her own story. But I think it was nice to read the diary format and get into some really deeper things, and some things just quick and nitty gritty.

The avocado scene brings the whole story together. The whole metaphor behind the title, and ultimately true story of Sally Jay’s naivety and realizing that for how much she tried to act and tell herself that she wasn’t naïve, that she wasn’t green, that she was part of the “club,” she never really was, and the realization that she is a Dud Avocado really depresses her.

Honestly, I think this has, hands down, the best love scene I have ever had the pleasure of reading. It’s very sensual without being overly erotic. It makes you stop to admire all the background details and pine away to know the backstory and dream, longingly, that you too could also be one of those beautiful woman.

I still think Sally Jay is still a bit naïve at the end, even though she is getting married. She has spent her whole life running away from what society tells her she has to do—she doesn’t want to get married. She doesn’t want to have children and cook and do the domestic thing, so when she finally decides to say yes to marriage, she still thinks that’s the end of her life. That she will no longer have the chance to be exotic. I mean, “…it’s the end…!”  Is it not?

Corduroy Mansions by Alexander McCall Smith

Corduroy Mansions

By Alexander McCall Smith

I was looking for a nice relaxing book on CD to listen to on my ride to and from work this past week when I saw an Alexander McCall Smith that had been recently returned to the library.  I’ve really only followed his Isabel Dalhousie series set in London but this looked promising, with the picture of a small dog on the front, Corduroy Mansions.

It has been a little different than I expected.  There is a fairly large cast of characters, unlike the Isabel Dalhousie series.  It’s quite civilized and pleasant then something startling happens, sometimes even something rather ugly.

It all centers around an apartment building called Corduroy Mansions.  The book is set up in a series of 100 short scenes moving from the people in the apartments out to all those they are involved with. 

There are four flats in Corduroy Mansions.  The top floor is where William and his son Eddie live, the girls are on the first floor and the ground floor is occupied by Mr. Wickramsinghe.

Here is a rundown of the tenants and their major relationships in the story -

William – Wine merchant who is trying to get his 24 year old son Eddie to move out.

Eddie – William’s son, rather ungrateful, he steals Freddie de la Hay to put in a dog fight.
Marcia – Caterer and friend of William but she would like to be more. 
Freddie de la Hay – Vegetarian Pimlico Terrier that William is “sharing.”. 

Dee – First floor neighbor, works in a vitamin shop.

Martin – works with Dee at the vitamin shop.

Jenny – First floor neighbor, Personal Assistant to the odious MP, Oedipus Snark.

Oedipus Snark – Odious MP.
Berthea Snark – Oedipus Snark’s mother and a psychologist, who is writing an unauthorized biography about her son.
Terence Moongrove – Berthea’s new age hippy brother
Barbara Ragg – Literary agent and Oedipus Snark’s girlfriend.  She breaks up with him then immediately picks up a young man in the car park.
Hugh Macpherson – young man Barbara picks up.
Rupert Porter – partner at literary agency with Barbara – annoyed that his father sold Barbara’s father a flat at market value that he wanted.

Caroline – First floor neighbor, doing a masters course at Sotheby’s in Fine Art.

James – Caroline’s friend in classes at Sotheby’s, who may or may not be gay.
Tim Something – photographer who once took Caroline’s photograph for a magazine.

Jo – First floor neighbor, Australian ex-patriate, first girl in the flat at Corduroy Mansions.

Mr. Wickramsinghe – Ground floor neighbor, an accountant who only shows up a few times, but he feels like a major character.  Hopefully he will be back in future books.

Though the book is character driven there is a thread of plot that ties things together very neatly with some intelligent and interesting observations.  I highly recommend it and look forward to the next one.