Stephen King’s Family Business

Here is a lovely story about the King family, from the New York Times.

Quote. Henry Rollins

Girls aren't beautiful, they're pretty. Beautiful is too heavy a word to assign to a girl. Women are beautiful because their faces show that they know they have lost something and picked up something else.

from Smile, You're Traveling: Black Coffee Blues Part 3

Lipshitz 6, or Two Angry Blondes

by T Cooper 

This is the story of the Lipshitz family. Hersh and his wife Esther leave their native Russia to flee the pogroms that are steadily increasing and cost Esther's sister-in-law and her little niece their lives. Hersh and Esther set out for the new world with their four children to join Esther's brother Avi in Texas.

As they arrive on Ellis Island, while waiting in line, they suddenly realize that their young son Reuven, a boy unusually blonde for a Jew, is missing. They don't find him again on that day. Nor do they find him in the months they spend in New York after. Finally, they continue their journey to Texas, leaving behind not only Reuven but also their oldest, Ben.

One day Esther visits a man that reads palms. The man tells Eshter that Reuven is still alive, she will however not be reunited with him but will recognize her son when she hears of him. There will be great tragedy in his life but he will survive it. Gullible as she is Esther believes every word.

Then in 1927, when Charles A. Lindbergh becomes America's hero for his flight across the Atlantic, Esther becomes convinced that Lindbergh is in fact Reuven. From then on she follows his career closely, sending letters warning of impending tragedy to him and his family. Tragedy, of course, does strike and has been well documented.

Esther gets so caught up in her quest to warn Lindbergh and maybe some day reunite with him, she alienates the rest of her family. Hersh, her meek husband, does not quite know how to help her, or indeed, what is even wrong with her. He ends up working first for Avi's family and later for his son-in-law Sam's business. Ben, who was the only one informed of his mother's belief of who Reuven is in one of her rambling letters, returns to his family eventually, also working for Sam. Shmuel, the second oldest, goes off to war and perishes of sickness right before coming home to Texas. Their youngest, Miriam, marries the successful business man Sam.

The writer, T Cooper, is Sam and Miriam's grandson and wrote this fictionalized account of his family story.

But then....

After the tale of Esther and her misguided beliefs wraps up the book starts into an autobiographical, well...rant by T Cooper, that may be telling of how he came to write the story but does it in an extreme and weird change of voice. From beautifully told family struggles to full-blown swearing....

In conclusion I loved part one and hated part two.

6/10

The English: Are They Human?

Is this real? I need this to be real.

Vacation

by Deb Olin Unferth

I really enjoyed this book. Partly because it is non-linear, which I sometimes dig and partly because the writing is brilliant.

Soon after they got married, Myers' wife starts calling to say she has to stay late in the office - a job that requires no special skills and never requires her to stay late. Her husband, of course, is suspicious and starts following her, most evenings. She appears to be walking through New York without going anywhere, sometimes she stops for tea or coffee. It takes Myers a few weeks to realize that she is following a man. But she doesn't know the man or, indeed, the reason she tracks his movements. Her husband, however, realizes that he knows him from college. The man's name is Gray.

Gray has his own marital troubles. He left his wife and young daughter and now strolls around New York. After a few months of man following woman following man, Gray leaves again, leaving the wife stranded and the marriage of the Myers in tethers. Eventually, Myers decides to leave. He sets out to find Gray to execute some sort of revenge. The journey takes him to Syracuse, NY, where Gray lives but has just left for Nicaragua.

The two men are in e-mail contact and Myers follows Gray to Nicaragua. The final destination is one Corn Island aka 'the most beautiful island'. Only, it appears to be very difficult to get to, with multiple stops along the way and boat after boat after boat. Canceled credit cards and injuries suffered in an earthquake make the journey all the more difficult for Myers, who loses his real purpose along the way. And Gray is not actually in Nicaragua but only thinks he is.

Then there are two stories of daughters looking for their fathers, one is linked to Myers, whom she saw out of a train window in Syracuse and recognizes later in a photo showing her father. The other is Gray's daughter, now grown, still looking for him in Nicaragua years later.

It will all make sense in the end.

8/10

The Collector

by John Fowles

Wow. Fred/Ferdinand/Caliban couldn't have picked a shallower, more self-righteous snob to kidnap than this Miranda.

Reading her part of the book (part 2) was so exasperating I was constantly on the verge of throwing it against the wall in frustration. Not that the writing was bad, mind you, but that woman is such a stuck-up idot! Fancies herself superior to, well, everyone, really (although she does admit at one point that she is only smarter than most men, not all). Also, she is constantly oozing drivel about one G.P., who apparently is the be all and end all. He sounds like the same arrogant idot she is to me.

The collector himself is, of course, a weirdo with no social skills whatsoever. After all, he kidnapped a girl to basically just look at her and be her friend. But I find it easier to sympathize with him than with his victim.

But then, maybe that was the point.

6/10