At first I had a vague idea that I might take a poll and see if the girls would be interested in all reading the same book and discussing it. However, within two minutes I realized it wouldn’t be necessary. Each little bookworm had brought her own book, and for half an hour there was utter silence in the room as we all sat and read. We were all startled when the bell rang.

I had planned to bring Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which I am still loving although it’s taking me a while to get through. Part of the problem is that the battle chapters are just unbelievably gruesome. Still, that was my plan, but then the mail came just as I was about to leave, and in it was the latest issue of One Story. And the one story in it was by Andrea Barrett. Andrea Barrett! Who writes historical fiction about biologists! What a perfect break from Captain Corelli!

NOT! Barrett’s story, “Archangel,” turned out to be a totally gruesome WWII story. Different front (Russia instead of Greece) but equally gruesome. I don’t recommend it. I do, however, recommend “quiet reading” with fourth-grade bookworms if you’re looking to rack up some brownie points with the PTO.

I’ve been reading The Atlantic for several years now, but I didn’t know I had much in common with Flanagan until she confessed that she hates YA novels because they “bore” her. Well, me too. Ok, yes, there are a few that I’ve been reading and rereading since childhood. But in terms of picking up new ones, now, as an adult, that I didn’t first read as a kid… nope. Can’t do it. Am hard pressed to think of any kids’ books I’ve enjoyed as an adult. Oh, The Lightning Thief! I did like that one. And the first Children of the Lamp book wasn’t bad either. But I couldn’t finish Inkheart even when my own son gave it to me as a gift. Harry Potter? No thanks. And in fact (here’s where Caitlin and I disagree) I didn’t even particularly like Twilight. Oh, it held my interest enough that I did manage to finish it, but… meh.

Oh hell, I sound like such a curmudgeon. Could be I’m reading the wrong kind of books. Lena subsists on a steady diet of fantasy, especially all those animal fantasies like that series about cats and that other series about owls. If there is a genre that I categorically can’t stand it’s Books With Talking Animals As Protagonists. Also, I know I’m not being very careful about distinguishing between children’s books and YA, if that distinction even matters. Anyway, maybe I’m reading the wrong kind of books… or maybe it’s just that I’m a grownup.

Remember the conversation here and here about The Thirteenth Tale and how our experience of reading has changed since adolescence? Flanagan talks about the same thing:

The salient fact of an adolescent girl’s existence is her need for a secret emotional life — one that she slips into during her sulks and silences, during her endless hours alone in her room, or even just when she’s gazing out the classroom window while all of Modern European History, or the niceties of the passé composé, sluice past her. This means that she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs — to be undisturbed while she works out the big questions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others — are met precisely by the act of reading.

Yup.

But the fact is, I really haven’t had anything to say. The election was one major distraction; there have also been some distractions on the home front — good distractions, but still distractions — and the upshot is, I just haven’t been feeling very bookish lately.

Until yesterday afternoon, that is, when I read the first four pages of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. And I was so amazed at — well, not at the first four pages in and of themselves, but at the way they unfolded for me as I read them, that I was filled with an overwhelming desire to tell someone about it. Particularly I wanted to tell my friend Les, who dammit is out of town again.  Then I thought… hey! I’ll liveblog it. Oh, don’t worry. I’m not going to liveblog the whole entire book (I don’t think). But the first four pages, I can’t resist.

Choosing the book

So first of all, I’m trying to decide what to read next. I just finished Prep, which was good but hard to read. It’s a painfully intimate portrait of a young girl at boarding school. Imagine a female Holden Caulfield who, rather than dismissing the “phonies,” buys into their crap and tries unsuccessfully to be like them and be liked by them. Prep is well done, but God, it makes your toes curl. Sooooo… I was looking for something that would take away the prep school taste from my mouth. I wanted something grand in scope, and with humor of the Robertson Davies “God is a rum old joker” variety. Thanks to BookMooch I have some interesting things on my TBR shelf right now (in fact, it’s thanks to BM that I have an actual TBR shelf at all, instead of just a mental list). I considered something by Robert Graves, oh and I’ve got a Christopher Morley which I’m really excited about too, but in the end the one I pulled off the shelf was Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.

I’ve read one other book by the same author, Birds Without Wings, which I wrote about here. The gist of it is: BWW is a book with a split personality. One personality is charming, hilarious, Dickensian. The other personality is a truly gruesome war story, so gruesome I almost couldn’t finish it. I don’t know anything about CCM; haven’t seen the movie, have no idea what it’s about. All I know is 1) I was in the mood for something with the first, but not the second, personality of BWW, and 2) we own a mandolin and I sort of know how to play it. So the big question is: how similar to BWW is CCM? Would it be the perfect remedy for what ailed me? Or would it be too tragic to read?

It occurs to me now that I should have read page 69, but at the time (i.e. yesterday) I simply opened up the book and read the first paragraph.

The first paragraph

Well, I think I’ll let you read it for yourself rather than try to describe it. Here ’tis:

Dr. Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse. He had attended a surprisingly easy calving, lanced one abscess, extracted a molar, dosed one lady of easy virtue with Salvarsan, performed an unpleasant but spectacularly fruitful enema, and had produced a miracle by a feat of medical prestidigitation.

Oh ha ha ha! I. Love. It. This is exactly what I was hoping for! Actually, I wanted to call Les right then and there. She is in nursing school and this week she had her first clinical experience. She had to catheterize an old woman who moaned “Oh God, take me now” the entire time, and I just knew this paragraph would totally cheer her up.

So, I am thrilled. We’ve got the charm! And the humor! And it’s about a doctor! And a calving! And medical procedures! Oh I am so in heaven already. Sure, it’s gross, but it’s not gruesome — not in a serious, tragic, war-story way. Gross is actually good. Rubbing my hands gleefully, I continue reading.

The next four pages

Um. Did I just say I was excited about reading about gross medical procedures? *swallowing nausea*

The next four pages go on to describe, in horrific detail, the aforementioned “feat of medical prestidigitation.” Dr. Iannis… well… again, I don’t think my description would do it justice. Read on if you dare:

He had gone to old man Stamatis’ house, having been summoned to deal with an earache, and had found himself gazing down into an aural orifice more dank, be-lichened, and stalagmitic even than the Drogarati cave.

Ewwwwwww!

He had set about cleaning the lichen away with the aid of a little cotton, soaked in alcohol, and wrapped about the end of a long matchstick.

Ewwwwwww! I should probably mention here that I am absolutely obsessive about ear hygiene. I feel about earwax the way some people feel about zits and scabs (fascinated and repulsed and can’t keep their hands off *cough* like my sister *cough*). I go through Q-tips like there’s no tomorrow. To continue…

He was aware that old man Stamatis had been deaf in that ear since childhood, and that it had been a constant source of pain, but was nonetheless surprised when, deep in that hairy recess, the tip of his matchstick seemed to encounter something hard and unyielding; something, that is to say, which had no physiological or anatomical excuse for its presence.

Oh. My. God. It turns out that the something unyielding is a pea which old man Stamatis presumably had stuck in there himself, as a toddler. A pea, tightly packed in there, with a “hard brown cankerous coating of wax.” He ponders how to remove it, and now we have a bit of comic relief:

“You have an exorbitant auditory impediment,” replied the doctor, conscious of the necessity for maintaining a certain iatric mystique, and fully aware that “a pea in the ear” was unlikely to earn him any kudos. “I can remove it with a fishhook and a small hammer; it’s the ideal way of overcoming un embarras de petit pois.” He spoke the French words in a mincingly Parisian accent, even though his irony was apparent only to himself.

Ok, now they go get the fishhook and hammer. Can you believe this? And here comes the part that I most wanted to share with Les:

The doctor carefully inserted the straightened hook into the hirsute orifice and raised the hammer, only to be deflected from his course by a hoarse shriek very reminiscent of that of a raven. Perplexed and horrified, the old wife was wringing her hands and keening, “O, o, o, you are going to drive a fishhook into his brain. Christ have mercy, all the saints and Mary protect us.”

Now I’m laughing hard. At this point the doctor has second thoughts about attempting to remove the pea this way, and instead instructs them to “fill his ear up with water and mollify the supererogatory occlusion.” So old man Stamatis spends the day lying on his side, with an earful of warm water. You know, just like you would soak your peas before you cook them. Softened, the pea comes out easily…

Encrusted with thick dark wax, rank and malodorous, it was recognisable to neither of them as anything leguminous. “It’s very papilionaceous, is it not?” enquired the doctor.

The old woman nodded with every semblance of having understood, which she had not, but with an expression of wonder alight in her eyes. Stamatis clapped his hand to the side of his head and exclaimed, “It’s cold in there. My God, it’s loud. I mean everything is loud. My own voice is loud.”

“Your deafness is cured,” announced Dr Iannis. “A very satisfactory operation, I think.”

And oh what a very satisfactory reading experience!

This too was a terrifically entertaining good read. These stories are all set in the same world (more or less) as Strange & Norrell, and they are written in the same style and with the same sly humor and even with some of the same characters. If you liked Strange & Norrell you’ll definitely like this. If you tried to like Strange & Norrell but found it too long and rambling, well, you just might like this anyway.

Now I must admit I approached this book with some trepidation, not because I didn’t like Strange & Norrell, but because I don’t usually like short stories. I try, but I always feel like I’m missing something, especially the kind of stories that are (I guess) meant to show a slice o’ life and don’t have much plot. I have thought a lot about why this is and one of the conclusions I’ve come to is this: I don’t know when the story is going to end. With a novel you can tell “where you are” by how many pages you have left. I don’t mean this as a “gee only fifty more pages and I’m done” kind of thing. Rather, it’s being able to comprehend the structure of the story. Knowing “where I am” helps me to appreciate the writer’s craft, I think. And with a short story in a collection, unless it’s the last one in the book, I often feel like I’m flying blind.

I used to read tons of science fiction short stories and I never felt like I was flying blind. And I didn’t feel that way with The Ladies of Grace Adieu either. I enjoyed them one hundred percent, with no worries that a story would end unexpectedly. I believe this is because these faerie tales (like sci fi shorts) follow a very conventional plot arc, with an obvious beginning, middle, and end, and often with typical fairy tale plot twists like things coming in sets of three. From the very beginning of the story you know there’s going to be build-up, tension, and a satisfactory resolution. Voilà!

Now, I don’t think that a short story has to have a conventional plot arc in order for me to like it. I think maybe I would appreciate more “literary” short stories if I could just know “where I am” while I’m reading them. I suppose I could place a bookmark at the end of the story, but I don’t think that’s as good as simply being aware of the thickness of the stack of remaining pages. A bookmark would require conscious checking.

I recently subscribed to One Story. It’s a little magazine that publishes a single short story at a time, one every three weeks. I received the first one (haven’t read it yet) and it’s exactly as advertised: it’s simply a cute little pamphlet that contains nothing but the one story. No ads, nothing. And because it’s just the one story, I’ll always know “where I am,” even if the story turns out to be a slice o’ lifer with no plotline. So, heh heh, I can test my hypothesis.

What do you think? Do you like short stories?

Here is my post from two summers ago — I believe this post gets more search engine hits than any other I’ve ever written. It seems there are lots of people who want to know what “twisted box stitch” looks like, and even more who apparently are looking for material for their own “how I spent my summer vacation” essay.

So we’re in a frenzy of laundry and packing and organizing and of course the biggest decision of all, what books to bring. Oh my gosh you won’t believe this. I was already excited enough about all my recent BookMooch acquisitions, and then what should happen but my sister-in-law, known to you as Aunt Sara, came to town because she is part of the clan going up north. And what should she bring along but a copy of the childhood favorite that I’ve been pining for: Lotte’s Locket by Virginia Sorensen. She found a beautiful used copy with library binding and card pocket intact (the book was last checked out in 1993), with pages slightly yellow and oh-so-soft around the edges and that delicious library book smell… oh! Thank you Sara!!!

Then of course I will bring The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. And what else? I have In Praise of Lies by Patricia Melo, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Prep, another serial killer book, and a few others that are upstairs and I can’t remember the titles. I think Capt. Corelli would be appropriate now that I am the proud owner and plucker of a real mandolin but I am open to suggestions.

I’ll be back next week, and I look forward to catching up when I return. Happy reading, everyone!