I guess I should finish with the books I read for the Tournament of Books. Since Frankie has been kicked out a second time (after a judge said the book didn't pull him in. Uh, what?) I have stopped checking the page regularly. That said, here are the posts about the books I read.
Title: Harry, Revised
Author: Mark Sarvas
Rating: 4 stars
After Harry's wife dies, he attempts to revise himself to win the affections of a cute waitress. Trying to win the waitress's attention (he is painfully shy), he starts helping her coworker. In helping her, he gets her evicted and in the hospital, among other things. It's sad and funny when his well-meaning attempts go poorly and even better when they go well. The book starts out kind of light, but progressively gets more and more believable and complicated. A complaint of the judge in the tournament goes something like this:
when I say the book’s “intelligent,” it’s not the kind of intelligence that challenges you, or makes you fall in love with English in a new way, or teaches you something crazy about people, or anything like that. This book is intelligent, like: “Ah, how nice it is to be a literary novel! Would anyone like to read a tastefully chosen word in the context of this boring-ass paragraph about how some guy’s sad that his wife died?" I get his point, but since I wasn't expecting the book to challenge my understanding of the world, I thought the well-chosen words were great. I'm all about literary prowess, I suppose, when it doesn't feel too showy. I really enjoyed
Harry, Revised and thought it was funny without being silly. Despite his being an very flawed hero, I wanted Harry to win out in the end, so I guess he won me over after all.
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Title: City of Refuge
Author: Tom Piazza
Rating: 4 stars
This book follows the lives of two New Orleans families during and after Hurricane Katrina hit. The book was hard to get into and the characters were hard to care for at the beginning. As I started the book, I felt like the author was relying too much on the setting of his story to carry our attention (which it didn't for me). But yet, by the end, I could feel the struggle from all the characters. The book was more about the spirit of New Orleans than anything else, which was interesting since I have been to New Orleans but am not from there. The second half of the book, which dealt with the pain of relocation and the difficult decisions that faced everyone involved: do I go back? should I sell my home that wasn't ruined and can make me a good profit, or do I owe it to the city to return and rebuild? who should pay for this?, was captivating. It was nice to have more than one perspective, which helped it feel less political and more gut-wrenching and is the reason the book deserves to be in the finals of the tournament (which it currently is).
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Title: Home
Author: Marilynne Robinson
Rating: 3 stars
Glory, a 38-year old unmarried woman, comes home to a small Iowa town to take care of her aging father. While there, they receive an unexpected letter from her brother (who had stopped communicating with the family years ago) that he will be coming home. While there are underlying themes of the civil rights struggle in the late 50's and life with a minister father, it is mostly about two siblings forced to face their unfulfilled expectations and the trouble of coming home without anywhere else to go. The book was really slow, but by the end I was pretty interested only because Robinson pegged sibling interactions and dealing with aging parents well. There was nothing wrong with this book other than a lack of action. If there had been any more of a plot, the strong characters could have pulled this book up to 4 stars probably. Josh still makes fun of this one, though, because I listened to it on tape and it is pretty much the opposite of anything he would ever enjoy.
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Title: My Revolutions
Author: Hari Kunzru
Rating: 3 stars
40 year-old Chris has a past life that he's hiding from his wife and daughter (as well as the rest of the world). When a friend from his past shows up and blackmails Chris into making a statement about his past misdeeds, he is thrust into memories of what really happened and the delicate decisions of what to tell whom. This was a really interesting idea and had the action was pretty gripping. It spent too much time on sex and drugs, however, and not enough on anything else. While I wanted to know what happened in the past, it was more interesting to me to watch how the older Chris dealt with having his past show up uninvited. I wish there had been more about that since it's the real conflict in the book. My main complaint was that the "other woman" from his past (and the driving force in his decisions in his past) was completely unbelievable. All the other characters were pretty complex, which made Anna seem even more flat. Therefore, everything Chris did for her was only partially believable because I didn't buy her character.
While we're feeling comment-y, my friend Hillary needs help with makeup and heaven knows I don't wear enough to be an expert. Mom and Ros, I would make you proud, though. I told her all about the joys of eye makeup remover already.
