Travel: Days and Nights in Rome

by anneMoore on May 18, 2013

When a best friend heads to Italy for a month to research a travel guide the only logical thing to do is follow her. Not for the whole time, of course, but for a few choice days, along with a friend she enjoys, too. http://romewithkids.com/

That’s how I found myself, quiet happily, in Rome earlier this month.

Our home in Rome was the Albergo del Senato, a three-star hotel in Piazza della Rotonda, with an eye-popping view of the Pantheon. It’s a perfect hotel: rooms and bathrooms are fashionably outfitted and very clean. Charming front desk personnel steered us to fabulous restaurants. Included: a delicious and filling breakfast. www.albergodelsenato.it/

We checked in and headed out. I’d never been to Rome; our friend Deborah led the way, map in hand. In no particular order over the next few days we visited the Basilica di Santa Maria sopra Minerva and the Bernini elephant outside of it, Caravaggio’s St. Matthew cycle in the French cathedral San Luigi dei Francesi, the layered Basilica of San Clemente, which dates to the 2nd century, the extraordinary Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Cathedral and Michelangelo’s Pieta, which brought me to my knees, even thought it is behind glass and I was buffeted by tourists snap snap snapping photos instead of looking.

Also the Pantheon, about which no blog post could cover: it is one of civilization’s great buildings and after 2,000 years remains the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome.

Most of a day was spent at the ancient Forum and its Palatine Hill. Worth it. (Go for the small-group guided tour offered at the Forum ticket office.) Along the way, we hiked the steps to Basilica di Santa Maria in Ara coeli al Campidoglio, first a temple devoted to Juno.

We were shut out of the Galleria Borghese; no amount of asking around/bribery could get us in to the famous sculpture hall. Be advised: tickets for timed entry sell out  one month in advance.

A pleasant surprise: the Museo Frati Cappucini e Cripta Ossario (known as “the bone church”) was uncrowded and offered relics from the Franciscan order, including — Deb and I loved this — a handheld confession counter.

We stopped often for caffe latte, made from wood-roasted beans, at San Eustachio.

We ate well. (Don’t laugh: Rome is overrun with tourists. It pays to ask, study menus and declare yourself a foodie.) My favorite: Il Falchetto, recommended by hotel staff. In season, stuffed zucchini flowers, deep fried. Braised artichokes. Also cacio e pepe (our waiter tried to talk us out of it: “too simple!”) We loved the casual Ristorante La Sagrestia for its thin, crisp pizza. Another standout: Ristorante Sapore di Mare, where we dined in a quiet outdoor alley on cold seafood salad, creamy risotto, and grilled fish. (Again, arranged by our concierge.)

Grazie Mille, J.M., for arranging our stay at Albergo del Senato, which set us up for perfect days and nights in Rome.

 

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Reading: McEwan’s “Sweet Tooth”

by anneMoore on April 5, 2013

“My encounters with books I regard very much as my encounters with other phenomena of life or thought. All encounters are configurate, not isolate.” — Henry Miller

And so it goes with Ian McEwan’s dozen or so novels, linked not only by their author and his smart prose but also by the extremes I’ve experienced reading them.

I threw “Atonement” (2003) across the room because, really, her crime is so great there’s no atoning.

His “Saturday” (2006) had me in its grip — until it didn’t. That home invasion was not believable.

But then I gobbled up “Solar,” (2011) McEwan’s delicious satire of science and academia.

So what’s a girl to do when McEwan puts out “Sweet Tooth,” his newest book, to good reviews? Buy it, of course, pre-release. In hardcover.

And then I set it on my stack.

From which I snatched it, packing for a week and more in the Florida sun, where I could read beside the pool and at night in the comfy-chaired lanai, while my family watched re-runs of “30 Rock” or some such in the next room.

I am returned from the fla la life in the sun and have this to report: “Sweet Tooth” is my new favorite McEwan, and one of the best reads of the past year.

What makes it so good? Unity of time, place and action. Also its narrator and main character, Serena Frome. In the book’s first sentence she tells us that as a young woman in the early 1970′s she botched a job working for the British Security Service (M15, their CIA) ruining her own career and that of her lover’s.

It’s a catchy, trashy start, but there’s nothing cheap about this story’s telling. Beautiful Serena, a Cambridge graduate and Bishop’s daughter, lands an entry-level job at her country’s intelligence agency. The Cold War shows no sign of defrosting; Serena is recruited to offer financial support, through a fake foundation, to a promising writer whose articles and novels might celebrate the good life in the West.

Along with Serena we read the work of Tom Handy, a candidate for the stipend. These stories within the story are magnificent…and twisted…and hard to shake. They gave me nightmares.

Handy gets the stipend. He also gets the girl. From there the plot turns with loud, enjoyable creaks. Who Serena loves — where and when and why — creates outrageous complications.

At its end, “Sweet Tooth” delivers a neat and pleasing twist.

A wonderful read. (Harry liked it, too.)

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Life: Things I’m Liking

by anneMoore on February 21, 2013

I’m stealing this subject line from David Lebovitz, the funny, smart, worldly blogger who writes from Paris about life and food and cooking and things in France and other places. http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2013/02/things-im-liking/

He’s liking small cassoulet bowls, a variety of oils, buckwheat cookies…

Here in Chicago I’m liking the service — from booking the reservation to my coat handed back to me at the end our meal — and the Dark and Stormy cocktail at Gather, an American bistro at 4539 N. Lincoln Avenue, in Lincoln Square. I liked the vibe, too: noisy but not loud, chic, un-fussy. Also our darling waitress, who advised us well, especially on a red wine that would pair with seafood, oxtail, and a mushroom pasta. (A Zinfandel from Storybook Vineyard.) My one gripe: entrees are the size of an appetizer, which left the two men at the table looking around for the rest of their dinner. http://www.gatherchicago.com/

Also in Chicago I’m liking the view — a swath of Millennium Park, and its reflective bean — from Henri, a jewel of a French restaurant at 18 S. Michigan Avenue. I appreciated the gracious service, brown velvet walls, nicely spaced tables, and the tiny raw quail egg emptied over my steak tartare. (Thanks for the treat, Dino.) www.henrichicago.com/

The view from Sixteen, in the Trump Tower, will take your breath away. (401 N. Wabash Ave.) The price of their lunch will, too: $35 for two items, $46 for three, $57 for four. Portions are small; the service phony. We were one of a handful of filled tables; now we know why.

I’m heading to La Fournette for a midday meal with my friend Suzanne. I’m liking everything about that sentence. La Fournette is a French bakery and cafe at 1547 N. Wells Street, walking distance from my Old Town home. I’ll order a latte, plus chaud (necessary after a 15 minute walk in 15 degree weather.) Soup? Tartine? Quiche? I’ll let you know. http://lafournette.com/

In books, I was liking a lot until the last few chapters Jami Attenberg’s “The Middlesteins.” So much to like! Edie Herzen Middlestein is eating herself to death in the suburbs of Chicago. After nearly 40 years together, husband Richard has left her, infuriating daughter Robin, who has drinking/boyfriend/religion problems, and son Benny, who gets high every night in his suburban back yard with wife Rachelle, who’s planning their twins B’nai Mitzvah. (Chocolate fountain, or no?) So rich, so sharp, so wise, so funny. Why did I lose interest? Too many narrators.

Finally, I’m liking the dramatic start to my day, walking my dog in Lincoln Park. From the far side of the boardwalk a woman, also walking her dog, waving her arms and yelling: “Coyote! On the island! Be Careful!”

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Books: “Me Before You”

by anneMoore on February 15, 2013

Some books should be sold shrink-wrapped with a box of tissues. Or two. That would be Jojo Moyes’ “Me Before You,” which brings new meaning to book grief.

Louisa Clark is 27 and newly unemployed in an English tourist town where there aren’t a lot options. She’s not educated or worldly. She lives at home and sleeps in a  windowless closet; her extended family is sweet, funny and kind, but they’re on the downslope of prosperity.

When she accepts a job as companion to a wealthy quadriplegic, her life changes. So does his.

Will Traynor, 35, is an urban sophisticate trapped in a wheelchair. He’s already tried to kill himself; Louisa is hired for six months to keep an eye on him and spell his male nurse.

Why six months? That’s how long Will promised his parents he would continue to live. After that, he’s to go to Switzerland, where they’ll assist his suicide.

Louisa wants to, but can’t quit this job: she’s the sole provider for her family. And by staying and caring for Will, she becomes organized, resourceful, curious, daring, decisive. She grows up.

Will sheds his long hair and bushy beard; he charms, goads, teases, educates. He is thoughtful, generous and quietly good-natured about his limitations. We learn what he cannot do: remove an itchy tag, cook a meal, feed or bathe himself. Have sex.

An invitation from a classical musician friend forces the two out for an evening. Louisa is awakened to the magic and power of a live music performance. Will is simply happy to have been transported out of his physical misery, even for a short time. “‘I don’t want to go in just yet,’ he says. ‘I just want to sit and not have to think about…I just…want to be a man who has been to a concert with a girl in a red dress. Just for a few minutes more.”

This could have been a cheesy beach read; it’s not. Think Bronte sisters. Or David Nicholls’ “One Day.” Moyes is a gifted writer and assured storyteller; she takes her time unspooling this tale. Louisa’s first day on the job is “a filthy, low-cloud sort of a morning, where the rain spat meanly against the windows…” and later, near her last day, “…the ground (is) cracked and the grass wispy, like the last hairs on the head of balding man. The flowers in the tubs looked defeated, as if they were already half preparing for autumn.”

Theirs is a powerful, odd love — but it’s not enough to save Will. “I loved my life, Clark. Really loved it. I loved my job, my travels, the things I was. I loved being a physical person. I liked riding my motorcycle, hurling myself off great heights. I liked crushing people in business deals. I liked having sex. Lots of sex. I led a big life…I can’t be the kind of man who just…accepts.”

His resolve is understandable, and heartbreaking.

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Books: Reading Fashion Week

by anneMoore on February 10, 2013

I didn’t plan to, but found myself reading Grace Coddington’s delightful memoir “Grace” during this most recent New York Fashion Week.

Kismet!

Coddington, you may recall, is the imperious red-headed creative director who didn’t plan to but stole the show from Anna Wintour in “The September Issue,” the 2009 documentary about the inner workings of Vogue as its staff assembles their most celebrated issue.

On the heels of “The Devil Wears Prada,” the documentary made Coddington a household name among fashionistas, recognized in salons, shops, restaurants and the streets of New York City.

Coddington didn’t seek the spotlight, but now sees the delight in it. “…there was an extensive Q and A session with a room full of journalists who kept saying, ‘Oh we think you are so wonderful.’ So I grew to like it…I’m kidding, but it was quite pleasant.”

The younger of two girls, Coddington grew up at the windswept Welsh resort hotel her family owned. World War II ends, her father dies young from lung cancer, books and movies open her mind to a life outside Wales. By 18, she and a girlfriend set off for London, where Coddington quickly became a top fashion model.

It was the early Sixties: models earned two pounds per day, and styled their own hair and makeup. “My bag was huge…I had to drag it everywhere. In it I put all my makeup, wigs and hairpieces, hairpins and hair lacquer, gloves of all lengths, fine stockings in beige and black, safety pins, a sewing kit, false eyelashes, false nails, nail varnish…an apple, a sandwich…a cheap bottle of wine if the shoot went on into the night….stiletto pumps (in) beige or black…costume jewelry… heated hair rollers. You had these if you were madly up-to-date and avant-garde, which I was.”

Coddington’s story is a clear-eyed telling of the lucky breaks she caught, the odd situations she found herself in, her hard work, the car crash that sliced off her left eyelid, her failed marriages, her sister’s decline and death from drug abuse. She smuggles film out of Russia, makes big money working for an American designer, comes home from a far-off shoot to find that her newlywed husband has left her.

In these pages you’ll learn what it is to be colleague and friend to Anna Wintour, Calvin Klein, Bruce Weber and others in the fashion world.

I especially appreciated Coddington’s thoughts on aging well (she’s 71). She’s allergic to the sun, so her ultra-pale skin was spared. Moisturizer, foundation — she has to mask scars left from eyelid surgery — lipstick, hair color and cut. That’s it. “What’s wrong with a few wrinkles, anyway?”

The book is filled with Coddington’s line drawings, as well as photographs from her youth, her modeling days and the fashion spreads she created at British and American Vogue.

In a postscript, Coddington thanks the assistant who urged her to tell her story. I’m glad she did. Hers is a full life, well told and illustrated: the perfect read during Fashion Week. (Thank you, Jeff and Georgia.)

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Books: Reading Florida

by anneMoore on January 8, 2013

Does it matter where you read a book? A “beach read” on a city bus? A retelling of “The Iliad” on a Southwest flight? The story of 9-11 lakeside in Quebec?

A good read, by definition, transports. But sometimes it’s just plain fun to read a book where it’s set. That’s why I’ve read each and every crazy, hilarious, weird and smartly told Carl Hiaasen novel in Florida, where they unfold.

Heading back to Florida this Christmas I had no Hiaasen to bring. (If you’ve never had the pleasure of reading him, try any. “Stormy Weather,” “Skin Tight” and “Lucky You” are among my favorites.)

What I packed instead was a thick book I hoped would be just as good and maybe even better than a Hiaasen, since they’re so scarce: a new Tom Wolfe, “Back to Blood.” It’s set in Miami, and while I was north of there, in posh Gulfstream, I read Wolfe’s wicked and wise satire under the same sun, beside the same surf.

“Back to Blood” is the marvelous stew that is Miami: WASP journalists, an African-American police chief, a Haitian professor and his beautiful daughter, Cubans, Cubans, Cubans, a Russian oligarch. An ace art forger who works out of his apartment in his retirement community. Also a doctor who treats men addicted to porn.

The story begins with Nestor Camacho, a Miami cop sent up a yacht’s mast to bring down a man fleeing Cuba. Camacho does as told — heroically, hand over hand, captured on cell phones and broadcast. He’s a hero, right? Not in Hialeah, where his family, neighbors, even strangers shun him: bringing the man down the mast and into police custody before he reached land cost the man his freedom.

An outcast, Camacho hopes to reunite with his outrageously beautiful girlfriend, Magdalena. She dumps him for the porn doctor. Can things get any worse? Of course they can. During a crack-house raid, Camacho beats and taunts an African-American drug dealer; that sorry event is recorded and promptly posted on You-Tube.

Camacho loses his badge and his gun.

There’s more and more and more, of course. (This is Wolfe!) What I love about this read is its layers — truly, this is a cast of thousands — and its immediacy. You are there: you are on that mast, outside the forger’s apartment, in the Haitian professor’s head.

Wolfe, 81, tells a big story, masterfully, then ties it up neatly, with a just and perfect ending.

Bravo.

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Books: Best of 2012

by anneMoore on December 15, 2012

“Indeed, reading might even kill them, as was said in the Scots Magazine in 1774, to have been the case with the wife of the First Earl of Effingham. One night, in her rooms at Hampton Court, she became so absorbed in her book that she failed to notice that her clothes had caught fire. She died.” –From Joan Acocella’s “Turning the Page: How Women Became Readers,” The New Yorker, October 15, 2013

 I’ve never caught fire reading a great book, but I do become so absorbed I miss my el stop (three times in one day) or realize an hour into the train ride when I look up from my book and and think I’m at O’Hare airport but find I’m an hour the other direction, on the southwest side of Chicago. (Yes, I missed my flight.) My behavior is no better on airplanes: I’ve routinely ignored my children, since they were toddlers, for a book. I’ve left cookies, breads, dinner and myself, in the sun, to burn…all for a good read.

This year I lost myself in Richard Ford’s “Canada,” a long dark tale of a family undone by a bank robbery. Harry is right: the last section is deus ex machina, but…it had to end somehow, right? My favorite book of the year.

Another great read was Jess Walter’s “Beautiful Ruins.” During the1963 filming of “Cleopatra,” an inconveniently pregnant movie extra is shipped from the set to a failing seaside resort in Italy. Woven into that story — hello, Richard Burton! — is present-day movie-making in L.A. This is a magical read, very funny and wise. I I liked it so much I bought it — full price, in hardcover — and shipped it to my mother for Christmas. Ouch.

I’ve been remiss in recommending “Toby’s Room,” by Pat Barker. She’s best known for the “Regeneration” trilogy; this new one is set during the same time — World War 1 — and concerns characters we first met in “Life Class.” Incest, pedophilia, suicide, disfigurement among artists and siblings in London, and at the French front. Read any of her books. They’re magnificent.

Again I’d like to note my admiration for Kevin Power’s “The Yellow Birds,” which concerns three soldiers in Iraq. Beautifully written and put together, we must follow this narrator home and get to this story’s end, when he reveals the horror of the crime that leaves him the only one of the three alive.

Finally, a story collection. Dan Chaon’s “Stay Awake” are stories linked by a disturbing tone: a couple gives birth to a two-headed baby, a housepainter looks in a window and sees the faces of his murdered siblings. If you’ve never read Chaon, this is a fine start. From there, proceed directly to his most recent novel, “Await Your Reply.”

Nonfiction must read like fiction for me. This year’s best is Richard Seaver’s “The Tender Hour of Twighlight: Paris in the ‘50s, New York in the ’60’s, a Memoir of Publishing’s Golden Age.” Paris, New York, publishing: what’s not to like? An American life worth reading.

Overrated, forgettable, maddening: John Irving’s “In One Person,” Gillian Flynn’s, “Gone Girl,” Maria Semple’s “Where’d You Go, Bernadette,” M. L. Stedman’s “The Light Between Oceans,” Michael Chabon’s “Telegraph Avenue.”

Here’s to the New Year, and more great reads. Watch out for flaming bedclothes.

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Books: Perfect Endings

by anneMoore on November 30, 2012

Can a great novel — a classic! — have a bad ending? Joan Acocella’s thoughtful post on the New Yorker’s “Page Turner” blog calls out the lame last halves and endings of, among others, Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn,” Charles Dicken’s “David Copperfield,”and Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights.”

Her point: the characters’ intense struggles — for freedom, for success, for forbidden love — at the heart of these great novels is what engages us. It’s what we remember and treasure. The rest, she says, is filler. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/on-great-novels-with-bad-endings.html#ixzz2DeOWzkx0

She’s right,of course, but it hasn’t kept me from reading, and loving, all of those books.

With her complaint in mind, I’d like to tip my hat to novels that grabbed me by the throat and never let me go, novels that end inevitably but not predictably.

In Dan Chaon’s “Await Your Reply” an identify-theft ring involves a a high school history teacher and his student, brothers who may be the same person, and a college student who loses his hand in the story’s first pages. The ins and outs of this thrilling read I have mostly forgotten; its ending, never. That teenage girl who leaves her dull Ohio town with her cute teacher? She’s headed to Rome, alone, with a ton of cash.

In I.B. Singer’s “Enemies, A Love Story,” Herman Broder finds himself married to three women. Believing his first wife dead, he marries the Catholic Polish girl who kept him hidden during the Holocaust; she’s pregnant. In the U.S., he marries his Jewish mistress Masha, his true love. His first wife reappears, very much alive. Herman is devoted to each, in his own crazy way. That’s one thread of the story; what’s chiefly at play is Herman’s inability to shake the terrors of the Holocaust. Even on a beautiful day, beside a lake in the Catskills, he hears the Nazis coming for him. His exit, by his own hand, is fitting.

Read Junot Diaz’s “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” It’s an encyclopedic story of Dominicans in New York and in their home country, past and present. Our hero, Oscar, is a fat misfit and nerd in New York’s Washington Heights; in college at Rutgers University in New Jersey, he’s… a fat misfit and a nerd. Why do we keep reading? Oscar’s impossible love for a Dominican whore, whose boyfriend is a cop. That Oscar dies in a field, beat up by the cop, is the only possible ending to this astonishing story.

Military prison? It’s the only safe place, and proper conclusion, for the “hero” of Kevin Power’s “The Yellow Birds,” a novel of the Iraq war.

Others that end memorably: Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre,” Edith Wharton’s “The House of Mirth,” Bernard Malamud’s “The Assistant,” David Nicholl’s “One Day.”

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Life: The Chicago Humanities Festival

by anneMoore on November 19, 2012

The 23rd Chicago Humanities Festival ended mid-November; I’m sorry to see it go. A month long event, the Festival offers one hundred programs centered on a single theme. This year, America.

There was a one-man play, a cabaret, and talks by scholars, writers, educators, thinkers, politicians, and comedians. I felt like I was back at a university; by its master we were brought along an idea or theory or subject. None of the events are lengthy; most are an hour or 90 minutes. http://www.chicagohumanities.org/

My smart, worldly friend Deborah Clarkson kept me company, which made every event more fun, even during the one we loathed. (“The Other 60’s.” How could anything with that title be so limited, and dreary?)

That lecture is my sole complaint; the festival is a feast for any thinking person.

First stop: New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik in conversation with Chicago Sun Times columnist Neil Steinberg, on the subject of eating. Gopnik is best known for “Paris to the Moon.” He came to talk about his new book, “The Table Comes First: Family, France and the Meaning of Food.” Gopnik can hold his own on stage — he’s wise and witty — but the presence of Steinberg created an intimate discussion. Here were two tremendously accomplished writers sharing a talk that covered everything from sourcing locavore protein to the secret of a long happy marriage. (Gopnik: “Lust, laughter, loyalty.”)

The next week we heard ethicist Ezekiel Emanuel on American health care. Emanuel is a (squeaky) natural on stage. He took us through American health care spending — we spend more on health care than most other countries spend on everything. Interestingly, the costliest segment of our spending is chronic disease, i.e., heart disease, cancer, stroke. How to lower cost? More thoughtful care, not less, to minimize hospital stays.

Next we brought our husbands to a lecture about the banjo, that very American instrument and sound. Duke University historian Laurent Dubois, an expert on the Caribbean, traced the banjo to Africa. Slaves  made similar instruments in the Caribbean and colonial America. We topped that afternoon lecture with cocktails at nearby J. Parker, the bar that tops the Hotel Lincoln. (1816 N. Clark St., 13th floor.) What a view!

With a child still at home I try to limit “school night” lectures. But I had to hear Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, lecture on objects. He was behind “A History of the World in 100 Objects,” a BBC radio series and book. The charming scholar narrowed his talk to objects that played a part in the evolution of the Americas: a Clovis spear point, a golden Inca llama, a West African drum. I sighed listening to him connect the dots.

Last, a perfect evening. Novelist Richard Ford read from and talked about his latest prize-winning book, “Canada,” and the art and craft of writing. Among the treasure he shared: when he finishes a manuscript, he reads it out loud to his wife, over five weeks, eight hours per day. Together they stop to question word choice, and phrasing. When he becomes frustrated, she says, “Come, let’s take a walk.”

 

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Books: The Literature of War

by anneMoore on November 11, 2012

My eldest son and I have an ongoing discussion about “The Shelf,” an imaginary but distinctive resting place for the best war literature.

He referred to it after I finished Karl Marlantes “Mattherhorn,” a 640 page slog — in the best sense of the word — through the Vietnam War. (We agree to disagree on whether “Matterhorn” belongs on the shelf. It’s on mine, along with Tim O’Brien’s “Going After Cacciato” and Michael Herr’s “Dispatches.”)

I’m putting a newly published novel about the Iraq war on The Shelf. Kevin Powers “The Yellow Birds” is the story of two soldiers who do the wrong right thing after discovering the mutilated body of a fellow soldier.

Powers is a poet; he was a machine gunner in the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq. This is his first novel.

Powers unfurls this story slowly; we are in many places at once. We are back home in Private Bartle’s Virginia, where he’s unable to reconnect with his family or hometown friends. We are with him and his buddy Private Murphy in Iraq: tired, dirty, thirsty, bored, hot, scared. Finally we are in Germany: Bartle is AWOL and drunk in a bar, on the way home from something we sense has been more terrible than the war itself. At the bar, Sergeant Sterling warns Bartle that only they two know what happened to Murph; Sterling “owns” Bartle.

Later we learn that Sterling is a suicide. What happened to these three in Iraq? The answer is stunning, but fully believable.

When we leave Bartle, he’s serving time in a military prison.

It wasn’t until I finished “The Yellow Birds” that I appreciated its breadth and power. It’s not a long book — 226 pages — but it’s well told, a full read. A devastating story about duty and honor.

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