Review: She Left Me The Gun by Emma Brockes

I want you to read this book. It's going to win a basket of awards. It's the memoir of the year, for certain. I don't care who writes a memoir this year, Brockes has the top spot sewn up. There are some second half issues and the author occasionally loses her way but it doesn't matter. Because this book is everything. She Left Me The Gun is about the complexity of the mother / daughter relationship. It's about clashes of culture and class. It's about the inability to have cross generational understanding until one of the parties has gone. The questions come too late, the understanding of what we didn't know part of the hole left in the leaving.

Brockes and her mother speak different languages. They come from different countries, homes, classes and times. The thing that holds them together is the parent child bond, something Brockes mother has had to create from whole cloth. I found She Left Me The Gun compelling because Brockes is very clear eyed about her own reactions. She sees where she resisted when her mother would allude to her life. She sees the involuntary judgements she makes on her distant family as she meets them. Brockes is aware that she has not lived the experiences they have, that she is unknowingly shaped by them but apart from them.  There is a passage midway through the book between Brockes and a friend that I think (by it's inclusion) sums her self awareness up.

"Fascists under our bonnet," I say to Pooly. 

"Yeah," she says. "Be grateful you're not the black one."

By the time the third biker pulls over we are so numb to the situation that when he takes his helmet off and turns out to be a woman, with long blonde hair and a weather beaten face, the relief hardly registers. - Emma Brockes

Brockes gets many of the small details right. She understands that she cannot, on a fundamental level, understand. The rules of her world don't apply to those of her mother or her mother's siblings. In the same way that she was a British daughter of a South African woman so too is she the protected child of an unprotected parent. Some gulfs of experience cannot be filled, they can only be bridged. Ultimately, Brockes is writing a letter of love and respect to her mother and in so doing she offers a unique insight to what it is like to be successfully raised by an abuse survivor. Too many memoirs focus solely on  unbroken cycles while the world itself offers far more possibility. 

Review: Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris

I pushed Dead Ever After up the TBR list to answer one question and one question only. "Can 437 one star reviews be wrong?" The answer is yes, yes they can. I liked Dead Ever After as much as any chapter in the Sookie Stackhouse series. Harris is the nickelodeon of popular authors. You drop your penny in and she slowly starts moving. You know what you're going to hear. It's not the smoothest or most polished rendition, but it's reliable and recognizable. Before you're ready she's ground to a halt and everything is silent.

So yes, I think Dead Ever After is not only a fitting end to the Sookie Stackhouse saga but also the only ending (short of Sookie's death) that fits the trajectory of the series. I worried Sookie would never get here, I worried Harris was taking so many side roads she'd get lost, but eventually she worked it out. I could review the book properly, but Robin/Janet has covered most of the points I'd make. I am far more interested in those 437 (and counting) one star reviews, as well as the passion driving down votes of positive reviews.

"To be honest, I would have been more satisfied had Eric kidnapped Sookie determined to turn her against her will"

"He is left emasculated and victimized."

"Like Harris' main character, Sookie Stackhouse, I, as a reader, feel raped, abused, and betrayed."

"I think you got personally offended by your fans LOVE OF ERIC. So you don't want them to be a couple instead you want Sookie to be a narrow minded racist"

"He was the knight on the white horse, always there to protect her."

"but coouldn't she be artificially inseminated and still be Eric's wife???"

"Charlaine Harris KNEW the majority of her fans read this book series because WE ALL LOVED ERIC AND SOOKIE!!! KNEW IT!!! And did she care? No. She just wrote what she wanted. "

Within the series Sookie frequently showed contempt for the Fangbangers. These are humans who hang around vampires hoping to be turned, hoping to be fed upon, hoping that the vampires will fleetingly notice them. Sookie herself is a Fangbanger, something she doesn't initially realize. Her relationships with Bill and Eric are abusive. They pass her around like a party favor. They save her from situations they created. (These situations often benefited them.) Because Eric is written as attractive (George Wickham in The Lizzie Bennett Diaries?) and says pretty things when he needs to, Sookie gives him a pass. On the page Eric is ruthless and power hungry. Other vampires fear him. He sets up multiple controls over Sookie's emotions and person while assuring her he respects her agency. He withholds information. He expects to be her priority while keeping her his option. Eric's power grab is presented to Sookie as out of his control, yet he not only does nothing to stop it he negotiates multiple benefits to himself. Eric ends the book in a position of expanding power while Sookie ends the book having refused to be his piece on the side. She has come to understand which of her relationships are toxic and which are truly supportive. Sookie places a value on herself that she long denied. In doing so she sees the esteem others hold her in. It's a classic coming of age story.

Sookie was never a good match for a vampire. She loves the sun. She wants to do the right thing, even when she doesn't know what that is. She craves family and tradition and shuns political power games. She is a Christian down to her toes. While she is attracted to the novelty of the vampire world it's daily reality repels her. When Sookie takes stock of what makes her happy, where she finds contentment, it becomes clear that the undead can't provide it. Many readers are reacting to this rejection as a rejection of them by the writer. ("She just wrote what she wanted.") I am pleased that what Harris wanted to write was a woman recognizing her own value.

The abusive (but loving) hero is a popular narrative in romance. Readers who respond to it emotionally will excuse away any action by the hero. "He did it for her own good. He was protecting her. He had no choice. He really loves her, though. In the end, he saved her. She is different from those other girls. He just had to find the right person." It is a rare book that examines the psychology and structure of domestic abuse. The common fictional answer is that if the heroine will just love him enough then he will change. Because love is magic. I appreciate that for all her structural flaws (and Harris will admit she has them) she loved Sookie more than Team Eric did. Harris has shown the predator in Eric and Bill all along, it is Sookie and the reader who refused to see it.

Review: The Many Sins of Lord Cameron by Jennifer Ashley

People love this book. I get it.

I waited a few weeks to review The Many Sins of Lord Cameron because explaining my negative feelings about it requires spoiling some key plot elements. I should probably wait a bit longer (fans of the book will suggest forever) but I'm going to take the plunge. I'll tell you when we get to the spoilery bits. River Song is really... (no, I'm just kidding).

Right, so Dr. Who references aside, here is what I loved about The Many Sins of Lord Cameron. In Ainsley we have a very original heroine. She's doing the whole friend of the Queen thing, but she's doing it for money instead of love. Ainsley is the widow of a much older husband whom she both respected and slept with (is that a spoiler or just a shocker?) and now she runs sensitive errands for Queen Victoria. Ainsley is interesting. She's also a bit inconsistently drawn, but only a bit. If the whole book hung on my feelings about Ainsley we'd be sitting pretty right now. Cameron carries over well from his previous appearances. He's still treating women like Kleenex while haphazardly single parenting an overly precocious son. (Bonus points for the way said son tries to parent his father. That rings true and shows he's got some tightly packed baggage of his own.) So, consistent Cameron and appealing Ainsley should make a perfect evening, right? Here comes the plot revealing part of this. Meaning now. Duly warned!

It's Scottish Romance meets Telenovela. Cameron's dead wife wasn't just crazy. She was maniacal played by Jack Nicholson we'll sell you the whole seat but you only need the edge crazy. Cameron in an abusive relationship? Sure. His wife being manic, or bipolar, or suffering from postpartum depression? I'm right there with you. A completely unhinged sexually voracious suicidal murderess who sodomizes him with a poker? Um, make up your mind? Cameron is afraid to sleep with women because his wife repeatedly attacked him despite his attempts to confine her or protect himself. It's the repeatedly that gets you. Sure, she shoved a poker up my ass, maybe even a few times, but that's no reason to lock her up away from the kid and me, is it? Sure, she's crazy as all hell and sleeps around when she's not lying to my face, but I have to keep her close just in case she's having my kid! My crazy dad was still alive, so my options were limited!  It's a bit much to ask of the reader. Yes, there are people that crazy and there are people that live with them, but I wasn't willing to believe it of this group.

Adding to that, you've got what borders on a bad case of Magical Romney. Why can't people just have met? Why does someone have to have saved someone's life? Why does one side of the equation have to be servile (yet appropriately disrespectful) to the other? Then you've got the mustache twirling bad guy who lives only for profit, unless that profit is made from a a Scottish purse, in which case he'd rather try to... I couldn't even follow it. There's this horse, right? And this crazy dude wants to race it so he bullies Cameron into training it. Horse doesn't win, guy ramps up the bullying, but Cameron is just training the horse because he likes it. Guy won't sell the horse because Cameron is Scottish. Guy wants the horse to win so he can sell it. Cameron says name your price and the guy refuses because, again, no doing business with a Scotsman that you're already doing business with. Guy isn't just mean to horses and a bad businessman, he's a bigot! Because no one in this book ever says "Eh, WTF, let's find something else to worry about." No, they have Epic And Unsolveable Problems.  Of course, it's Ainsley who makes the shocking realization that someone else could buy the horse. Someone who (wait for it) isn't Scottish! You can see why the Queen trusts her to deal with blackmailers and stuff.

Victoria is her own issue. Depending on the needs of the plot Ainsley is either entirely at her beck and call or able to freely leave her side. When the queen is utterly displeased with Ainsley and sends her away, Ainsley responds by making physical contact with the queen and speaking freely. You know, as you do with a boss you just totally pissed off. You give them a smooch and a few words of advice while they're firing your ass. (I don't think Ainsley is going to be eligible for rehire). I didn't hate The Many Sins of Lord Cameron, but I struggled to finish it. The flaws were not enough to put me off the series. I'll be back for the next chapter. I hope it's a bit calmer than this one. I'm an old(ish) woman. I can only take so much drama without a nice lie-down.

Review: Composed by Rosanne Cash

It's interesting - in trying to write a love letter to her father  with Good Stuff Jennifer Grant ended up making the reader think less of them both. Rosanne Cash takes a different path. In Composed Cash is at pains to be honest, about herself, about her father, about her conflicted feelings.  Her fearless style reminds me of a lyric by Simple Kid.

"Buddy, it's as simple as that / When you see past all of the crap." 


Rosanne Cash absolutely sees past the crap. While completely unfamiliar with her musical work, I left the book interested in exploring it. She's a likeable narrator, a woman you'd want to spend a day hanging out with. Her memoir is not a linear or exhaustive work. She focuses on brief periods of her life and her feelings about them before turning the light to a completely different time. She does not exploit a life made for exploitation, reserving what she should and illuminating what she wants. I respect her all the more for protecting her children from a blow by blow account of her relationships. I respect her for confessing her frustrations as a parent and as a child. What emerges from Composed is a portrait of a woman finding herself while multiple lives pull at her. The life she's set her feet on suits her, the city she's chosen to live in is a good one for maintaing perspective. Her parents emerge as people sometimes overwhelmed by their circumstances yet leaving their children a legacy of love. Not an easy achievement, and one that requires the child to meet them more than halfway.

For me the most resonant passage is during a trip to Ireland. Rosanne happens to meet a living link to her father in the form of a shopkeeper. I have had those moments, I have had a letter from a woman who played in the street a hundred years ago with my lost family member. She had pictures too. It's an amazing and inexplicable experience to find yourself somewhere you didn't really plan to be only to find your family waiting for you. Truly a memoir rather than an autobiography, Composed is out in paperback next month and it's worth spending some time with.

Review: The Sugar King of Havana by John Paul Rathbone

After reading The Sugar King of Havana I felt empathy for Cuban exiles. That might seem a simple thing to feel, since these are a people who have lost their way of life and (the older generation) largely live in a shadow culture. My relationship with the concept of the exile community is a bit different. It's sort of like being angry at Holocaust survivors - no one is going to sympathize with you because your loss is nothing compared to theirs. There used to be a smaller, sleepier version of Miami. I liked that Miami.

Miami has always been a haven for whatever wave washed up on it's shores. Cuban exiles, Haitian refugees, New York snowbirds, Yankee victors, escaped slaves, mafia retirees, Spanish conquistadors - they all arrive and try to make it 'just like home.' The more recently assimilated invaders send them into the swamps hoping the gators are hungry. (Even the gators have to contend with new neighbors - anacondas have infiltrated the swamp.) Florida changes and changes again. Still, for me, the concept of Cuba is a knee jerk one of infighting and unreasonable expectations. Cuba was a paradise, nothing bad every happened there, Castro is evil and everyone hates him, nothing good ever happened from Revolution, everyone will go back when he dies and the streets will run with liquid gold. To hear some exiles tell it, probably five people live on the entire island and all of them focus their energy on evading the secret police. 

John Paul Rathbone has actually been to Cuba. This is a fantastic thought. People go to Cuba? Cuba is forbidden! It's the no man's land! To even venture near to Cuba's shores is to invite imprisonment or death! Except, it turns out, the Cuban exiles of Miami  represent a very small percentage of Cubans internationally. Most Cubans stayed in Cuba. Many initially supported Castro's revolution because something had to change, and even if they didn't know exactly what would happen it would certainly be better than what they had. Until it wasn't. I imagine if Castro died and the exile community returned home they would be greeted (again) the same way they were greeted here, as strangers with a strange culture bringing things the inhabitants aren't sure they want. 

Using Julio Lobo as the face of Cuba's upper classes Rathbone illustrates why their way of life was destined, by the history of their people, to end. Like many in Cuba, Lobo supported Castro and believed strongly in patriotism over self interest. Lobo was set on the road to exile when idealism and reality collided. The Sugar King of Havana is not only well researched and enjoyable to read, it explains so many things previously inexplicable about the relationship between Cuba and Miami. In doing so it doesn't quite justify a world with The Miami Sound Machine, but it certainly explains the religious fervor of Elian's custody fight. 

Now if someone could do something about hipsters wearing Che shirts, we'd be in good shape.