Doesn’t matter if it’s balmy (ahhh, Florida in December) or bitterly cold (Chiberia, Day 2): either place you’ll find my head in a book.
I’ve read some really good ones lately. No duds.
First, Dave Eggers’ The Circle. I loved Eggers’ last, A Hologram for the King. That’s the kind of reader I am, like a girl dating: if you showed me a good time, I’ll go out with you again. If I threw your book across the room, no second date.
Back to The Circle. Eggers is a master at drawing you in. Right away we know where we are and who we’re with and maybe where we’re going. His writing is smart and smooth.
Here’s the story: Twenty-something Mae Holland joins The Circle, a technology company gobbling up privacy. This is full-blown satire, so Mae dives in deep, ignoring obvious red flags. In the process she both saves and alienates her parents, sends her high school boyfriend far from society and to his crowd-sourced death (really) and causes her best friend Annie — who brought her to The Circle — to lose her mind.
Mae becomes an automaton for the corporation; she is self-serving and cruel. Unlikeable? Of course! Through her we experience the hideous effect of knowing everything about everyone at all times. This book is overly long — but please, read to its outrageous and fitting conclusion.
Next I read A.S.A. Harrison’s The Silent Wife. My friend Jennifer thought this a dumb read — and it certainly is by its confusing end — but I found it interesting to see a polished professional come undone and plot the murder of her husband, who has left her for his pregnant college-age girlfriend. Does he deserve to die? Gosh, no. Set in Chicago.
My favorite recent read is an old one, from 1958. Alfred Hayes’ My Face for the World to See is set in Hollywood. At a party, a screenwriter rescues a young actress who has drunkenly tumbled into the surf. He is married — his wife is in New York — but later seeks out the girl. After all, he saved her.
I love a train wreck, and this is one from the first page. It’s a short read — 130 pages — richly told. I was so taken by Hayes (1911 -1985) and his world-weary style I ordered his other books, In Love, and The Girl on the Via Flamina.
It will take me forever to get through the essays in Sari Botton’s marvelous collection, Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York. I’m not complaining. I read one essay a night, as the soup or stew or tagine cooks. These are funny, sad, smart tales of creative beings coming to, and giving up, New York.
Finally, I am enjoying Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings. I’ll let you know.