Twelve Sharp

Reading the last page of Janet Evanovich’s novel, TWELVE SHARP, brings the same sensation as the last loop on a roller coaster. It came to an abrupt stop signaling this ride was over, and I put my feet back on the ground. Like a roller coaster, these books make me want to get right back in line for another ride by reading the next installment in the series. The popularity of these books is undeniable for the same reasons people love roller coasters. When you start reading, you almost need to buckle up because although the book swoops and dives in places, the pace is fast and furious nearly the entire ride. Any lulls in the action are just there because the author is taking you up and getting ready to go screaming down again.

Evanovich has a knack for creating loveable, quirky, over-the-top characters. Everyone who inhabits this rollicking tale has a larger than life personality—from her “loony” Grandma Mazur, to her slime-y boss Vinnie, her highly eccentric co-workers, and the various misfits and penny ante criminals she attempts to round up after they skip bail.

Evanovich writes snappy, frequently way off-color dialogue that I found entertaining in the same way a well-told dirty joke is amusing. Knowing your audience is everything with this, and Evanovich knows that there are lots of us out there who will hoot and chortle at the slapstick antics of her protagonist, Stephanie Plum, and gang. Evanovich creates unabashedly sexy characters and situations, often down-right naughty descriptions and clever wordplay with what comes off as an effortless yarn by someone on top of her game. My straight laced father would be disgusted by this book and dismiss Evanovich as a Vulgar-ian who goes for the cheap laugh, but I believe he would be in the minority judging by the times this series has hit the New York Times Bestseller bullseye.

Along with incredibly witty and naughty dialogue laced with puns and double entendres, Evanovich’s physical descriptions of characters kept me in stitches and allowed me to believe these eccentric souls could really inhabit the same planet as the rest of us. For example, she introduced us to Caroline Scarzolli, who they were attempting to haul in after her arrest for shoplifting, as “seventy-two years old according to her bond sheet. She had skin like an alligator and bleached blond hair that was teased into a rat’s nest…She was wearing orthopedic shoes, fishnet stockings, a tight spandex miniskirt and a skimpy tank top that showed a lot of wrinkled cleavage.” I had to take a break and get a drink of water during that passage when I got to the wrinkled cleavage line the author so casually tossed on the end of the sentence. That is a vintage Evanovich detail.

I’m guessing these books may also appeal to guys because of the fast action. I lost track of how many times someone’s gun went off, intentionally or unintentionally. People shot off guns nearly as often as they shot off their mouths, and by the end of the book there were bullet holes in walls, ceilings, cars, telephones and people. Of course, like a comedy, action film, no one takes any of the gunplay too seriously. In fact, this reader was even fairly unconcerned when Ranger was shot during the grand finale. TWELVE SHARP is no suspense thriller. It succeeds brilliantly by not pretending to be anything other than what is is--a rowdy, lightning fast and satisfying escapist read.

The Secret Lives of Bees

I was a bit dismayed when I saw this title on the reading list for our course, as it was the third of the five that I had read before. I remembered that although I had been the person who suggested our book club read it, I was disappointed in the discussion it generated.

There is quite a trick to choosing just the right book for a group to discuss, and I’m convinced that, sadly, a lovely book like The Secret Life of Bees often fails to truly engage the group simply because it is just too well-written and enjoyable. Our discussion fizzled out fairly quickly because everyone adored it. They loved the universal themes of sisterhood and acceptance. They loved the characters and their interactions. They loved Lily’s first person narration and colorful word choice. They found the father and the racist environment of the South in the 1960’s despicable and so on.

Our discussion quickly faltered because we agreed on nearly every aspect of the book. No one piped up to say, “Well, I hate to say anything, but I really just didn’t like the book!”…the fightin’ words that usually galvanize our longstanding group of friends into a rollicking free ranging conversation.

So, although this book is a keeper, I would not recommend it necessarily for a book group choice unless you are dead set on having a book that will fit right in with decorum, carefully polite conversation, crustless tea sandwiches and decaf beverages. Our group has more of the wine and peanut m&m type of gal who enjoys a little bit of a book brawl—not literally, of course!

My perspective about this novel did change, though, because of an experience I had this past year. I changed jobs and was pushed a bit out of my comfort level when I was hired for a new grade level—8th grade. The literary centerpiece of the curriculum is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

These two books are tremendous companion pieces and have myriad similarities. This one would be a wonderful follow up to Lee’s book and help students understand the pace of the change that is occurring and why there is still such a problem in this country. My Johnson County children of affluence do not always see that larger canvas. Both novels have a motherless girl as the narrator, although Lily is a bit older than Scout in TKM. Both novels make a strong statement about social justice and the role of the individual. You can easily draw parallels between Calpurnia in To Kill a Mockingbird and Rosaleen in The Secret Life of Bees. Each woman is a staunch defender of the child they are helping to raise and both have the courage to take small steps toward creating a better world.

It’s almost as if Sue Monk Kidd’s book takes up the same theme a few years later. Sadly, not a lot has changed in the South during the intervening years. Zack still has to be careful around Lily because she is a “white girl” and black people are still beaten and arrested for no cause. In both books, the racism extends both ways, and Lily and Scout both walk in someone else’s shoes, as Atticus in Mockingbird says we must to understand each other. They discover what it is like to be judged simply by the color of their skin. Both authors explore what happens when people begin to see others just as fellow human beings, and both become anthems to the power and grace that accompanies being involved in a just cause even if there is no hope of an immediate victory.

Perhaps comparing these two books rather than discussing just one would have generated a livelier conversation. For everything that had changed from the Depression Era to the 1960’s to 2008, there is still work to be done. As Zack told Lily, “We can’t think of changing our skin...Change the world—that’s how we gotta think” (Monk Kidd 216).

Lovely Bones

The lovely bones of this book are the themes of transformation, overcoming grief and loss, forgiveness and reconciliation. Alice Sebold intertwines a heartrending tapestry of multiple subplots as a community is shattered by the brutal rape and murder of fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon.

Steadily and with an assured, unsentimental voice, Sebold uses the omniscient narration of the murdered teenager to move back and forth between the past and present. Readers are invited into the hearts and minds of the people who knew and loved Susie. After her murder, Susie inhabits a heaven created by her own imagination, a comfortable haven that allows her to hold vigil over the family and friends she was forced to leave behind.

Susie vicariously experiences the life that was brutally stolen from her by becoming a “watcher”. As her sister, Lindsey, matures and comes to grips both with the horrific loss and the notoriety of her sister’s death, Susie tenderly watches over her and rejoices when her sister blossoms and falls in love. We mourn for the life she lost, but the narration does not become maudlin. Susie’s voice is objective and matter-of-fact as she comes to terms with the reality that she can only watch and cannot alter the course of her loved one’s lives, even when Lindsey appears to be headed toward being the next victim of the vicious serial killer.

The novel truly comes into its own, though, as it examines the relationship between Susie’s parents, Abigail and Jack Salmon. On the surface, before the death of their daughter, they seem to have a good, if not perfect, marriage. Sebold does a masterful job of showing the disintegration of their relationship sharpened by the stark discrepancy in how they handle the loss of their daughter. By moving back and forth between the aftermath of their daughter’s disappearance and events from the past, we follow their steady route toward the isolation of unshared grief. Sebold presents these ordinary, flawed characters with gentle compassion, as intrinsically good people who are coping as best they can.

Susie’s mother has failed to fully mature, possibly as a result of her own father’s abandonment. She fancies that she has missed out on the life she imagined for herself as a free spirited intellectual. Motherhood and marriage are an uncomfortable burden. After her daughter’s death, she escapes, first into a doomed affair with the detective investigating her daughter’s death. Using spare and vivid imagery, Susie describes her mother sinking further into a world where she is not required to deal with her daughter’s loss. “Ruinous and marvelous all at once. They [her lover’s kisses] were whispers calling her away from me and from her family and from her grief. She followed with her body….granted her most temporal wish. To find a doorway of her ruined heart, in merciful adultery” (Sebold 196-197) . A compelling, imaginary split screen for this subplot is created when the author simultaneously describes Abigail’s illicit rendezvous with her lover at the same moment her daughter’s murderer slips away unnoticed. Later, Abigail becomes totally overwhelmed and abandons her family altogether. She runs away to California and a dead end job where she can be anonymous.

At the other extreme, Susie’s father, Jack is first occupied by trying to find her killer. Although he soon puts together the pieces that point to an eccentric neighbor, the police and even his wife believe that he is being carried away by his grief and acting irrationally. By the time firm evidence does point to the killer, it is too late. He retreats into his grief, forcing a role reversal with his young son who tried to support and care for him.

The beauty of this book is the healing that finally occurs between these two people who truly do love each other. When crisis propels Abigail back to Jack, Susie looks on from her heaven and is grateful to see “what I had been waiting for, for my family to come home, not to me anymore but to one another with me gone” (Sebold 316). Those who have suffered this type of catastrophic loss will see the beauty of Susie’s poignant question, as she sees her family finally coming to terms with what has happened. She muses, “When was it all right to let go not only of the dead but of the living—to learn to accept (Sebold 318)? Sebold wisely includes a character specifically to show her characters the route to forgiveness. As the family learns to accept and appreciate their eccentric grandmother in her alcoholic splendor, they also learn to forgive and accept each other.

We are left with a comfortable feeling of closure that people can and do overcome even the most devastating losses. In Lovely Bones, sadness is carried forward and becomes a permanent shadow that honors what has been lost, but joy and contentment return with a recognition of and reconnection to what remains. Those are the lovely bones that provide support, bring comfort and allow us to move on.

Jemina J.--Ugly Ducklings and Swans

Jane Green’s wildly successful novel, Jemina J.: A Novel About Ugly Ducklings and Swan,s may delight or bore you. Heading out to the beach? Nursing a broken heart? If you are in the mood for mindless, predictable “chick lit”, this book might be just what the doctor ordered, a cliché you would be likely to also read in this Cinderella/Bridget Jones Goes to America/Snow White tale.

Jane Green has mastered the breezy, humorous writing style this type of novel mandates. If you want a predictable, fast, plain-Jane-girl-with-a-big-heart-gets-the-great-guy story, this one will not disappoint. It’s a little like going to a strange city and choosing to eat at a chain knowing you can order the chicken Caesar salad from the menu with the assurance that it will be identical to the one you would be served in Boston, Kansas City or Phoenix. The publisher attempts to tease the reader with the promise of a bumpy road to love and a surprise ending “no reader will see coming”, but this book wisely does not promise to be anything other than a romp to the altar. The author doesn’t take the story with its conventional conclusion too seriously and neither should her readers.

Green uses so many allusions to happily every after fairy tales, trying to identify them all would leave a girl’s head spinning. A few pages into this soppy saga, we have met Cinderella, the poor girl who quietly does her job while hoping someday her prince who just happens to work in the same office will notice her. Archetypal stepmother characters appear with clockwork regularity. Jemina’s roommates function as comical, conniving step-sisters trying to attract the prince, the prince is seduced by a sexually predatory, evil step mom who just happens to be his new boss, and Jemina’s interim love interest turns out to be a toad. And on it goes…

A good romantic comedy dictates that although there may be plot complications, the reader never seriously doubts that there will be a happy ending. A tongue in check, Greek chorus style third person commentary is inserted regularly between Jemina’s first person, Bridget Jones-style narration to be sure that the reader never loses sight of the theme that true love and goodness will prevail. We cheer for Jemina as she transforms herself from a waddling, overweight Ugly Duckling to J.J., the willowy, graceful, desirable swan. We feel momentary angst when Jemina faces temporary setbacks in her quest for Mr. Right, but since this novel never deviates from the tried and true formula, we never despair. In the end, they will live happily ever after.

While this cheery tale certainly does not qualify as great literature, it has its place. Wordsmiths will not find poetic lines that beg to be read again, the plot will not amaze or surprise, and the characters are predictably one-dimensional. However, timing is everything. Women who want to vicariously enjoy the fleeting and delicious sensation of falling in lust or love will feel a mild flutter of recognition as Jemina finally gets her guy. For most of the sisterhood of females who chronically struggle with weight management, the novel will be like a phone chat with a supportive, loyal girlfriend. Unlike the protagonist in this predictable tale, this novel is going to remain a bit of an ugly duckling, although a charming, pleasing one. Never fear, a quick skim allows the reader to reach a conclusion that lacks the grace and beauty of a swan but gets the job done. For true satisfying “chick lit” that is the gold standard and does allow Jane Green to spin straw into gold and achieve “international bestseller” status.