Summer’s end with Colson Whitehead and Chigozie Obioma: with bonus life update!

02-09-1902-09-19 / Lisa Guidarini / Leave a comment

Books mentioned in this post:

An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Insert pithy phrase here about how the summer’s escaped while I was (mostly) busy with other things, because the summer’s escaped while I was (mostly) busy with other things. That’s what happens when you’re a contributing member of society, constrained by the necessity of full-time, gainful employment in order to live indoors and eat something you don’t also feed your cat. Life sneaks by when you’re not looking. Feels like yesterday I was buying patio furniture and flowers, tacking up patio lights and mixing margaritas. All of a sudden it’s getting dark at 7:30, temperatures are dipping into the high 60s at night, and a few leaves are already starting to change.

When the hell did that happen?

I can’t turn my back anymore without something running amok. How can I be expected to carry the lot of you, merely one woman as I am? We’re going to need to form committees. I don’t see any way around it. First call will be for volunteers. After that, a general election between candidates personally chosen by moi.

I tried laissez-faire, and look where that got us.

May 2019 – when lilacs last by the patio blooomed

It’s been a hot summer, a thing I revile, at the same time acknowledging I also despise and dread winter. The greater Chicago metropolitan area offers great weather roughly three days a year. I spend the remaining 362 indoors, sucking in canned air like a freshly-charged Dyson. I am a delicate flower, suited to climate control. You know, like a rare orchid. Or dandelion.

I put the hor in horticulture.

I’ve been busy supporting the publishing industry while the rest of you were out gallumphing through state parks, eating meat on sticks and corn on cobs, watching fireworks and scratching mysterious rashes. That’s a really cute picture of you and your grumpy kids at Old Faithful, but shouldn’t you use this last unofficial weekend of summer to pitch a tent or roast something?

Pssst … The outdoorsy people are gone. It’s just us; I’ll close the blinds.

Gather ’round!

From the Booker Prize longlist: An Orchestra of Minorities

Of course I ordered a few of the Booker longlisted titles, but so far I’ve managed to read just one. When I say “just,” I mean just give him the damn prize.

The book’s that good. If any of the others can surpass it, I’ll be shocked.

“He had joined many others ….all who have been chained and beaten, whose lands have been plundered, whose civilizations have been destroyed, who have been silenced, raped, shamed, killed. With all these people , he’d come to share a common fate, they were the minorities of this world whose only recourse was to join the universal orchestra in which all there was to do was cry and wail.”
– An Orchestra of Minorities

Narrated by the “chi,” or life force, of Nigerian chicken farmer Chinonoso, An Orchestra of Minorities begins and ends with a woman named Ndali facing down her own mortality. Catching her preparing to jump off a bridge at the beginning of the story, Chinonoso rushes to intervene.

Months later, stunned by the grace and beauty he’d understandably missed in the frenzy of their first meeting, he falls madly in love. Only, he’s a poor chicken farmer, Ndali a wealthy and well-educated young woman on her way to becoming a successful pharmacist.

Her parents are adamant: their daughter will not marry this man.

Together, Chinonoso and Ndali are halves of a whole. Raised in a house of privilege, Ndali throws herself into Chinonoso’s world as if she’d never known luxury. Still intent on earning her degree, she sees no reason they cannot be together. Still, Chinonoso’s pride is hurt. An intelligent man, he’d given up prospects for further education when he took over the farm from his ailing father.

Desperate to convince her disdainful family he’s capable of greater things, Chinonoso leaves his native Nigeria – and a bereft Ndali – for the promise of affordable education in Cyprus. Trusting a childhood friend to transfer tuition money to the university and secure housing, before Chinonoso arrives he realizes he’s been duped. A subsequent arrest for a crime he didn’t commit keeps him stuck in a Cyprus prison for years. By the time he arrives home, he’s no longer the man he was. His whole world is gone.

An Orchestra of Minorities lacerates the heart mercilessly. It’s about love and hope, betrayal and loss and revenge. Breathtaking.

Having less luck with Colson Whitehead’s latest, The Nickel Boys, I’m considering ditching it. It’s surprising and a bit saddening. With great faith in his well-earned reputation and the appealing premise, I curled up with it on a Friday evening expecting a rave review by Saturday. I set it aside past the halfway point, underwhelmed.

I reviewed his zombie apocalypse novel Zone One for BookBrowse back in 2011 and loved it. His 2016 blockbuster The Underground Railroad went stratospheric, winning the Pulitzer, NBA and Carnegie Medal for Excellence, even securing a place on the Man Booker longlist. All critical opinions and most reader reviews rave; it’s my sense it’s deserved.

Take out your calendars and note I said ‘I could be wrong about that’ on this date, because that doesn’t happen often.

But I don’t think so.

Holding off on TUR, I thought I’d pick it up after Nickel Boys inevitably blew me away, having myself a little Colson Whitehead binge. That would be called poor judgment, y’all. Nickel Boys is short, but manages to plod. Unforgivable in a new writer, from a seasoned one it’s far worse.

It’s obvious what happened: The Underground Railroad was SO big, SO unique and attention-grabbing the expectation of excellence was untenable. Turning out two stellar books within a couple of years is an unreasonable expectation. He had a great idea, but rushed the execution. In an attempt to keep hold of it and finish in the shortest amount of time, he played it safe. Way too safe, in prose lacking his familiar stylistic grace.

We love Colson Whitehead. He’s a fantastic writer, a quality human being, charismatic and badass as all hell. But The Nickel Boys is not a bravura follow-up.

Just to be sure, I’ll take a dip back into it. I don’t think it will change my mind, but I’m fond of him. I’d love to be wrong this time.

Because BADASS.

It was an excellent summer. The very best. My passport stayed in the drawer, and I didn’t stray further than a few hours away. For the first time in what feels like forever, that was more than fine.

In early July, my daughter married her partner. A Very Big Deal, in the form of a courthouse wedding. Thrilled for the both of them, even if it does make me a mother-in-law.

Oh dear god, I’m a mother-in-law.

I spent much of my available time getting to know the Well-Beloved. Partnering at mid-life is so different, it takes some getting used to. When you’re young, starting a relationship brings two worlds together. After marriage and kids and decades building a life, it’s more like two separate galaxies, around each of us the various solar systems of friends and family and life experience.

It can feel a bit overwhelming, but the alternative is having no separate lives, no interests and experiences of our own. That would be unsustainable. You don’t hit middle age with no track record. So you take it as it comes, enjoying the good and working through the bumps.

But that summer sure did fly, didn’t it?

In Memorium: Taffy Guidarini

February 2005 – August 2019

You were the very best girl.

Review: More Than We Bargained for by John Stefanini

11-08-19 / Lisa Guidarini / Leave a comment

Originally published in Foreword Reviews:

MORE THAN WE BARGAINED FOR

AN UNTOLD STORY OF EXPLOITATION, REDEMPTION, AND THE MEN WHO BUILT A WORKER’S EMPIRE

John Stefanini
Sutherland House (Sep 4, 2019)
Hardcover $29.95 (268pp)
978-1-9994395-3-8

Clarion Rating: 5 out of 5

More than We Bargained For is an enthralling immigrant’s story about overcoming adversity.

John Stefanini’s memoir More than We Bargained For tells a hopeful story of emigration from post-WWII Italy to Canada in the late 1950s, concentrating on Stefanini’s pivotal role as a union organizer and activist in the manufacturing and construction industries.

Stefanini arrived in Toronto in 1959, speaking little English. The job he obtained as a plasterer awoke him to the fact that his fellow immigrants, especially those employed in related fields of manufacturing and construction, endured unsafe working conditions without access to affordable healthcare. Determined to make a difference, Stefanini joined a labor union. Over the course of decades, he proved to be a tough but fair negotiator who lobbied businesses and politicians to assure better wages and safer environments, bringing about positive change for workers in Canada.

Stefanini’s work also examines the influence of immigrants in a positive light, particularly in regard to their role in nation building in post-WWII North America. Reminiscing about his earlier experiences, he identifies with the plight of such invariably poor and vulnerable people, showing how they made long journeys across oceans and found assimilation difficult due to language barriers. Enthusiastic support for immigrants is apparent in accounts of Stefanini’s tireless union work, as well as his assertion that immigrants’ successes contributed much to the economy and infrastructure of Canada.

Addressing the less savory side of activism, the book does not shy away from examining the fact labor strikes occasionally led to violence. In frank language, it describes Stefanini’s frustration over his own imprisonment following a volatile altercation between union and non-union members. The experience becomes a way to delve into inadequacies of the judicial system of Canada, as does Stefanini’s explanation of how his confusion about the actual length of his sentence led to an extended incarceration—yet another challenge to be overcome.

The straight, linear narrative is journalistic in style, putting Stefanini’s story into historical context through painstaking examinations of the political climate of the time and naming key players in the unions, corporations, and governments of Canada and the United States. It doubles as a researched history of labor unions in North America, backed up with references to other works about the struggles of Italian immigrants during Stefanini’s years of activism.

Important for its statement on the positive impact one man can have in advancing a social movement, More than We Bargained For is an enthralling immigrant’s story about overcoming adversity.

Reviewed by Lisa Guidarini
July 23, 2019

Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The author of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the author will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

From Philip Roth’s home to mine: on buying a piece of his estate

06-08-1906-08-19 / Lisa Guidarini / Leave a comment

Since reading Portnoy’s Complaint sometime back in the 90s, I’ve never been a Philip Roth fan. But tell me he’s dead and they’re selling his stuff, and I’m all over it.

I blame it on Twitter: specifically, author and Chicago Tribune “Biblioracle” columnist John Warner, who, on that fateful day, tweeted he’d won an auction for Philip Roth’s alarm clock.

Wait. What?

It was Saturday, July 20. I work part days on Saturdays, and to stave off the boredom and resentment I always have my phone next to me, left hand scrolling Facebook and Twitter limitlessly. Running bang up against John’s tweet, I grabbed the URL for the Roth estate auction.

Ebay made up the entirety of my previous auction experience. I used to drop in once in a while, to snap up old Penguin paperback editions and the occasional oddity, like a postcard from the town in the Netherlands where my family hailed from — hey, big spender.

Litchfield County Auctions is the real deal, where the rich go to pick up Persian rugs and Chippendale armoires. I felt like someone’s hick relative in overalls, sucking on a piece of straw. But such is the beauty of the internet: “belonging” there only means I haven’t reached the limit on my credit card.

It was phenomenal, like someone had taken Roth’s house just as he’d left it, turned it on its side and shook every, single damn thing out. You name it, they sold it. There were ratty old afghans, lamps and tables, fine collectible Chinese vases and figurines, paintings and so many silver pieces. So many.

As it was a live auction, all I had to do was shove my credit card information at them, watching as each item came up and bidding commenced. While some things went for tens of thousands, a few bits and bobs, I noticed, were quite affordable. Tentatively, I hit the bid button for a couple vases. When they rose too high for my blood, I went on to a Chinese figurine. Unwilling to chase it over $ 100, I scrolled ahead to upcoming items.

Then I saw it: a Chinese reverse painting on glass.

I had only the vaguest idea what “reverse painting” meant, but it was lovely and the estimated sale price was in the range I was willing to spend. I watched as one person bid, then another. It wasn’t getting a lot of attention; I held my breath. When last call!, then final warning!!! popped up I swooped in and bid as the gavel came down.

I imagined the glowing face of the high bidder as the auctioneer was ready to call it, mentally measuring out the place he’d hang it next to the fireplace, his new “Roth niche.”

Then, BAM!

“You’ve been outbid, sucker!”

All’s fair in love and auctions.

My impression of Roth’s writing, aside from the narrow scope of my experience with Portnoy, was that he’s a man’s writer. And when I say man’s writer, I’m staring squarely at Ernest Hemingway — poster boy for excess testosterone. Not that I imagine the scholarly Jewish writer had a penchant for big game hunting, nor that he regularly got toasted and ripped off his shirt in his editor’s office, as Hemingway was wont to do.

Roth was a bit more restrained. Just a tad.

Fairly or not (probably not), judging him solely based on a novel about a young man’s obsession with masturbation, I’ve always believed he’s a writer obsessed with sex.

Before you start going all feminist on me, I know full well women have written about sex. I have no issue with that, but, to my knowledge, none have done so quite so famously as Roth, at least not on the topic of young men and masturbation. And I’m not only not interested in young men and masturbation, I actively avoid it.

Perhaps I should use the word masturbation one more time in this post, what do you think.

Hey there, fella. You’re one magnificent bastard.

Since the Roth item arrived, I’ve begun researching his life and work, reading reviews and watching interviews on YouTube. Though it pains me to say it, I may have rushed to judgment. Philip Roth wrote some 30ish novels. The more I read, the more it behooves me to investigate him further before making up my mind he’s not my thing, if for no other reason than I own one small piece of his estate.

That I bought on impulse. Because Twitter made me.

Meanwhile, I have a lovely Chinese reverse painting on glass I need to hang in my Philip Roth niche. I don’t have a fireplace, but I do have an Ikea dresser. Chippendale it ain’t, but what did we decide about “belonging”?

It’s all about having room on your credit card.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones: brief thoughts

02-08-1902-08-19 / Lisa Guidarini / 2 Comments

An American Marriage

Algonquin, Feb 2018

A woman doesn’t always have a choice, not in a meaningful way. Sometimes there is a debt that must be paid, a comfort that she is obliged to provide, a safe passage that must be secured. Everyone of us has lain down for a reason that was not love.”

― Tayari Jones, An American Marriage

Almost without exception, uber-popular novels disappoint me. An American Marriage kicked up so much pre-pub fuss I could see the dust swirling on the horizon as it galloped for town. Each review more laudatory than the last, by the time it hit the shelves I had to wear goggles to keep out the flying debris. When it won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, that was the final straw.

Reader, I caved.

And I wasn’t blown away.

I’ve never differed from my favorite critic before. I do mean never. Ron Charles from The Washington Post is my go-to, the reviewer I trust not to kiss author ass when the rest of the world has puckered up. He praised An American Marriage. That is no small thing.

His opinions are the gospel according to St. Ron:

“Compelling . . . spun with tender patience by Jones, who cradles each of these characters in a story that pulls our sympathies in different directions. She never ignores their flaws, their perfectly human tendency toward self-justification, but she also captures their longing to be kind, to be just, to somehow behave well despite the contradictory desires of the heart.”
—Ron Charles, Washington Post

There’s a formula to hitting that blockbuster sweet spot, a tipping point at which all the review outlets are throwing out exclamation points and trite phrases like a BOGO sale. An American Marriage hit that mark. That’s why I steered clear as long as I did.

At the outset, I loved the book. Lyrically written and initially gripping, it sucked me right in. I thought to myself, here’s the rare exception to my rule about popular books. Beginning on the Friday of a long weekend I knew had to myself, since The Well-Beloved was otherwise engaged, I saw ahead of me 48 hours of reading bliss that didn’t quite materialize.

If you haven’t read it, the book is about a young couple struggling to hold their marriage together after the husband has been wrongfully jailed for assault. Celestial and Roy are still adjusting to married life when he’s convicted and sentenced to prison. Until his appeals are exhausted, the hope he’ll be freed is enough to maintain the bond. Once that’s lost, a yawning gulf opens, leaving just enough room for Andre, the friend who’s loved Celestial from childhood, to declare himself. The two fall in love.

When new evidence proves Roy’s innocence, he’s set free. Life being life, the struggle to right the balance is fraught. I won’t tell you how it ends, but you can imagine the hellish ride. There are a few well-executed subplots, but I won’t go into those. This isn’t a proper review.

A couple things stand between me and loving this book. First, what Ron Charles praises as “tender patience” was, to me, pacing that slowed to a crawl. Somewhere around halfway I put the book down. Wanting to know how it ended, but not thrilled with the knowledge that meant I’d have to finish reading it, I thought about googling for spoilers. I didn’t, deciding instead to plow through.

It’s just not tight enough. I love taut writing, extremely spare prose, and it’s the writer’s job to keep me gripped. Lyricism has its place, but Jones is an over-writer. She relies far too heavily on similes, and that grates. Her penchant for ending paragraphs with a flowery flourish yanked me out of the tale. This was the second stumbling block.

It was like trying to read attached to a bungee cord.

There’s much to admire in the book. For me, the drawbacks prevented me from falling in love. If there’s an upside, at least my disappointment with popular books remains unsullied.

Still, Ron Charles. Now that hurts. Not loving the book is one thing. The discomfort of disagreeing with The Critic is quite another.

I’m going to lick my wounds. I may be a while.

How I single-handedly destroyed book reviewing. Or not.

30-07-19 / Lisa Guidarini / 2 Comments

Bluestalking has served as a portfolio of sorts, initially the humble offering stretched out to publicists when begging review copies, before I had actual publishing credentials. I needed proof I had a platform, and readers who dropped by to listen to me yammer about books, so other publishers would give me more books.

Circle of life.

That’s how early bloggers leveraged their experience to branch out and write for other venues. There weren’t that many of us back in 2006, not like today, when countless cool kids are vlogging and podcasting and going all Facebook live. We reviewed the old fashioned way, in actual typewritten prose. And we liked it.

Instagram? YouTube? Try Blogspot and Blogger — Typepad if you could afford the subscription, then WordPress, once you figured out how to migrate your posts and navigate their platform.

At present, the only book-review videocast that’s widely available is the Washington Post’s The Totally Hip Video Book Review featuring Ron Charles. Charles, the regular fiction critic of Post, writes sincere, uninspiring reviews. The success of the videocast is Charles’s ability to laugh at himself. The episodes are, of course, totally unhip but charming nonetheless.
– Sarah Fay, “Could the Internet Save Book Reviews?”, The Atlantic, May 7, 2012

Get off my damn lawn, lousy millennials. You and your fancily composed tableaux of books, coffee with pretty designs carved in the foam – how do you even have the time? We downloaded cover photos from Amazon.

Guess what? We liked that, too

There used to be websites tracking book blogger rankings. If you dropped your guard your nemesis would sideswipe you, sending you skidding into the tires like an even nerdier version of Mario Kart. Amazon was brand new and already becoming a review site superpower, bloggers an extension of their reach. We became the first top Amazon reviewers just by showing up. Try accomplishing that now.

Try it, punk.

the prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash–though it does involve that, as I will show in a moment–but constantly INVENTING reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feelings whatever. The reviewer, jaded though he may be, is professionally interested in books, and out of the thousands that appear annually, there
are probably fifty or a hundred that he would enjoy writing about. If he is a top-notcher in his profession he may get hold of ten or twenty of them: more probably he gets hold of two or three. The rest of his work, however conscientious he may be in praising or damning, is in essence humbug. He is pouring his immortal spirit down the drain, half a pint at a time.
– George Orwell, “Confessions of a Book Reviewer”

Upstarts like me were yelled at by literary critics of stature, academics bloviating about the ways we were ruining everything, taking their jobs by undercutting them. We weren’t specialized, had no idea what we were talking about. We were not professionals.

It’s funny to me now just how much that pissed me off at the time. Sitting in my living room in 2019, I’m frankly flattered they even noticed. It’s like getting a no thanks note from The New York Times. Usually they just ignore you; embrace the rejection.

– Dorothy Parker, book critic, *The New Yorker*

John Sutherland lead the crusade, positively apoplectic the great unwashed civilian book reviewers put ourselves out there — worse, that readers were responding. After one particularly insulting article I sniped back at him, though I wasn’t his primary target. On behalf of those without specific educational credentials, I felt personally affronted by his elitism. The purpose of reviews is to sell books, I told him. If you don’t sell the books, no one reads them. If no one reads them, his job was rendered moot.

As for reviewers on Amazon, why did you need a doctorate to have an opinion? He engaged me briefly, then crawled back inside his ivory tower.

It was awesome.

Nothing stands still on the web. There is emerging, on Amazon, a corps of regular ‘reviewers’, so called, trusted to kick up dust and move books. Dinahbitching is becoming institutionalised.
Why do the web-reviewers allow themselves to be recruited as unpaid hacks? Partly for freebies. But more because they enjoy shooting off their mouths. And they enjoy the power.
– the Guardian, 19 November 2006, “John Sutherland is SHOCKED by the state of book reviewing on the web”

“THE POWER!” We were mad with it: a vast conspiracy, one small step below the moon landing.

Knowing how it panned out, I can look back with a lot more empathy. His huffing and puffing appeared reactionary, half annoying and half amusing, but turns out the dude wasn’t wearing an aluminum foil hat. His fears were not misplaced.

Overall, the market for writing about books and literature has atrophied almost to distinction, comparatively speaking. Most national papers have cut books sections, those that remain no longer plump and healthy. A large percentage of literary journals have either gone belly up or migrated exclusively online, printing costs skyrocketing past the point of affordability.

It pains me to admit John Sutherland had a point.

Writing in the literary field is not a viable career path; it’s been decimated. If you’re still undeterred, you better be prepared to violently elbow other writers in the ribs and push some prams in front of speeding busses. Respect to the strugglers, but this is why I’m not quitting my day job.

Fair warning: I’d still keep an eye on that pram, not gonna lie.

The internet opened up writing and reviewing to the masses, and when publishing professionals saw that they swooped in. Given a choice between paying an exorbitant wage to an established writer or giving away a few books to popular blogger/reviewers, which do you suppose a financially-strapped publisher would choose?

Word of mouth isn’t so easily separable from book reviews. What is a good review from Michiko Kakutani but a recommendation directly from a reader to hundreds of thousands of her closest non-friends? As with word of mouth, it’s tough to measure the impact of a glowing review on sales numbers. Still, one study showed that reviews do influence libraries’ purchasing choices. Another suggested that New York Times reviews swayed sales. In 2010, GoodReads pulled charts showing massive spikes in certain books’ activity after the books were reviewed or recommended on major platforms.
-Claire Fallon, “Book Critics Don’t Exist to Flatter Your Taste” HuffPo, Nov. 25, 2015

Once through the door, a lot of talented people took advantage of the opportunity and carried it further. That’s called opportunity, and it’s no bad thing.

Are book bloggers responsible for the partial collapse of formal criticism? I still say no: the two markets are very distinct. Everything we’re seeing was inevitable following the explosion of the internet. It would have happened without us.

New York Times chief book critic Michiko Kakutani steps down to write a book about Donald Trump

The arts aren’t immune to rules of supply and demand. When the walls came down, canny writers with drive were able to break into the old boys’ club, throwing their legs over a few wingbacks and grabbing handfuls of Cubans. But maybe this lot of mostly old, white men had grown too complacent. Maybe writing about literature needed an injection of fresh blood.

Shaking things up every few hundred years is no bad thing. A little scary, granted, but necessary for growth.

Blogging opened a lot of doors I’d never have found on my own. I’m still not published in Harper’s, but it’s paid off far beyond the time I’ve invested. There’s more I could be doing, but work-life-avocation balance is a consideration. And I’m not quite dead yet. I nominate myself as one of the top thousand-ish writers to watch under 60.

DON’T BLINK.

I appreciate the opportunity afforded to writers by the grace of the internet. It’s not all good or fair, but was it before? It’s a damn sight more accessible, this I know. It’s also dynamic, still in transition. When I revisit this in another 15 years, who knows?

The exciting part is it’s completely unpredictable; it will never, ever grow stale. As long as there are markets I can barge into, and ribs to elbow, I’m happy taking the good right along with the bad.

Happy Birthday, Beatrix Potter

28-07-1928-07-19 / Lisa Guidarini / Leave a comment

28 July 1866 – 22 December 1943

We know her as the creator of Peter Rabbit, but Helen Beatrix Potter was also a talented illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist.

Life-long lovers of animals, as children she and her brother Bertram – who grew up to become an artist in his own right – kept a menagerie ranging from mice to bats to hedgehogs to – no surprise – rabbits. The two were sheltered growing up, only each other as playmates, educated at home by governesses. Similar to the Brontë children in their insularity breeding expressions of creativity, the two spent summer holidays at Dalguise House (Perthshire) in Scotland and, later, the Lake District of England (Cumbria).

Fascinated by the natural world, they happily sketched and scribbled alongside their artistically gifted parents.

Origin of Peter Rabbit, letter to Noel Moore, 1893.

Though not published in book form until the early 1900s, Peter Rabbit’s origin lies in letters written from Potter to the children of her former governess, Annie Carter Moore. The letters began when Annie’s son, Noel, was recovering from scarlet fever. To cheer him, Beatrix sent a story based on a rabbit she’d had as a child, a Belgian buck called Peter Piper.

Many more “picture letters” followed, telling the adventures of Peter and friends. Annie Moore suggested Beatrix put the stories in book form for publication. Twenty-three books later, the Tales of Peter Rabbit were complete.

Despite the fact so much of her life was devoted to children’s literature, Beatrix and her husband had no children. She was, however, a doting aunt, as well as godmother to Beatrix Moore, daughter of Annie.

“If I have done anything, even a little, to help small children enjoy honest, simple pleasures, I have done a bit of good.”

– Beatrix Potter

A few more interesting bits about Beatrix Potter:

The inspiration for her characters unknown, in 2001 the names Nutkins, McGregor, Peter Rabbett and Jeremiah Fisher were discovered in burial records for Brompton Cemetery, London – the city where Potter grew up. Sounds like more than a coincidence, doesn’t it, especially considering she lived only a short walk away from 1863 – 1913.

2. As a child, budding artist Beatrix was taken by her father to the Natural History Museum in London, as well as the Victoria & Albert, where she practiced sketching.

Accurately detailed watercolors of fungi made her well-respected in the world of mycology, and she created paintings of other flora and fauna, as well. Not content with just drawing them, Potter educated herself in the ways mushrooms reproduced, even conducting her own experiments. What stopped her from pursuing her interest further was the fact women were barred from scientific societies.

Who knows what she’d have achieved in the scientific world.

Lepitoa procera (Armitt Museum and Library) by Beatrix Potter

Drawings of caterpillars by Beatrix Potter, V&A, London

3. Previously rejecting her manuscript, Frederick Warne & Co. agreed to publish a trade edition of Peter Rabbit in 1902. By the end of the year the book had sold 28,000 copies.

Other children’s literature published that year included: L. Frank Baum’s The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, Kipling’s Just So Stories and E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It.

Norman Warne, son of publisher Frederick and also Beatrix’s editor, became smitten by the writer after an increasingly flirtatious exchange of letters about characters from her book Two Bad Mice. Upon their engagement, her parents objected saying Norman Warne was not her social equal. She defied them but, sadly, Warne died unexpectedly of undiagnosed leukemia before they could marry.

Out of town when he died, Beatrix didn’t make it back in time for the funeral. He was 37.

The 2006 film Miss Potter tells the sad story of Beatrix and Norman Warne. Writing about Beatrix Potter’s love of him, Sara Glenn, curator of the Warne archives states:

“Reading Beatrix’s letters, I was surprised to find that her love for Norman never died. We think of Beatrix Potter as a strong, private woman, but these letters show her intense loneliness.”

Norman Warne and his nephew Fred, ca. 1900

Having dreamt of sharing her life with Norman at Hill Top Farm in the village of Near Sawrey in the Lake District, Beatrix purchased the house and land the autumn after his death.

The flowers love the house, they try to come in. … but nothing more sweet than the old pink cabbage rose that peeps in at the small paned windows.
– Beatrix Potter, on Hill Top Farm

Ironically, Beatrix’s brother Bertram made a match that would have horrified his parents, as well, marrying Mary Welsh Scott, a former mill worker. He was astute (and confoundingly clever) enough to keep the union secret for a decade.

His father’s response when his son finally told him of his marriage? He wrote Bertram out of his will.

Difficult to like that man, isn’t it.

4. Later in life, as president of the Herdwick sheep association she won prizes for Herdwick ewes at shows around Cumbria. Upon her death she bequeathed 4,000 acres of land to the National Trust, for the express purpose of sheep grazing.

Beatrix and shepherd Tom Storey, with one of her favorite Herdwick ewes, Water Lily.

5. On 13 October 1913, Beatrix Potter married William Heelis, a property attorney who helped her purchase land in the Lake District of England, located within the county of Cumbria, on which she would raise her beloved sheep.

In their 70s at the time of their engagement, her parents didn’t approve of this match, either. Beatrix and William married despite them, and by all accounts were happy.

Take that, mum and dad.

6. Potter’s father, Rupert William Potter, was an amateur photographer and sketch artist specializing in portraits and landscapes. Photographs provided to his friend, noted landscape painter John Everett Millais, served as inspiration for the famous artist’s work. He also took photos of Millais’s sitters and portaits, which the painter used to aid him.

Though educated as a barrister, a fortune inherited from his father Edmund’s business, Dinting Vale Calico Printing Works , meant he never had to practice.

The Lake District, photo by Rupert Potter.

It was inherited money that made Beatrix’s father feel she was too good for any man. Not land and titles, but her grandfather’s inventiveness in mechanizing the manufacture of previously handmade, labor-intensive calico. Edmund Potter also believed in education for all, building the Logwood Mill School and providing a reading room and library for his factory workers.

Beatrix Potter and Alice Crompton Potter by Rupert William Potter

7. Her mother, Helen Leech Potter, was likewise no slouch as an artist.

Helen also kept a scrapbook of cards sent to her daughter from various relatives and friends of the Potter family, compiled between 1872 and 1878 – an invaluable collection of ephemera relating to a beloved writer.

8. Beginning at age 14, Beatrix Potter kept a coded journal. It would not be decoded until Leslie Linder, a superfan of the author who later donated an extensive collection of materials by and about the writer to the V&A Museum, cracked the code after 13 long years.

In 1966, the journal was published for the first time by Frederick Warne Ltd, the same company that had published Peter Rabbit decades ago.

Potter’s diary is full of hints at her future as an artist and writer. “I can’t settle to anything but my painting, I lost my patience over everything else,” she wrote at the end of one particularly agitated page. Plenty of entries close with the name of a book she had recently finished, or contain one of her signature, detailed, occasionally brutal art reviews.
– Atlas Obscura

I admit I didn’t have much interest in Beatrix Potter until I read the dozen or so articles and online sources from which I extracted information for this post. Though we had a miniature set of the Tales of Peter Rabbit when my kids were small, the stories were too slow-moving for them.

I couldn’t have imagined she led such a fascinating life, and there are loads of books about her. I recommend you visit Amazon to check them out.

Happy Birthday, Beatrix Potter.

The Porpoise: A Novel by Mark Haddon

22-07-1924-07-19 / Lisa Guidarini / Leave a comment

Originally published New York Journal of Books

The Porpoise: A Novel

Author(s): Mark HaddonRelease Date: June 18, 2019Publisher/Imprint: DoubledayPages: 320Buy on Amazon Reviewed by: Lisa Guidarini

“The writing is brilliant, building from a deceptively plain beginning few paragraphs to sophisticated prose that leaps off the page.”

Weaving a horrifying modern tale of a father’s obsessive, increasingly perverted love for his daughter into a parallel retelling of the ancient legend of King Antiochus, Mark Haddon’s The Porpoise is unrelentingly grim, an uncomfortable read.

Losing his wife Maja in a horrific plane crash caused by an amateur pilot’s bravado, Philippe is catapulted into shock. It’s inconceivable he’s lost his vivacious and beautiful former actress wife, doubly mystifying that his money could, for the first time, neither cushion him from life’s random brutality nor offer solace. Grief-stricken, he leans over a building imagining how easy it would be to let go, the prospect of death “like falling into bed.”

In his sorrow forgetting his wife had been 37 weeks pregnant, the subsequent stark realization the child had been cut from her dead mother’s belly was unbearable. He did not want the baby, could not bear to think of her. Still, she was the link that bound him to his late wife.

Unprepared for the child’s striking beauty, when they meet he’s taken aback that she looks like him—dark-skinned and exotic—rather than her fair, blonde mother. Her eyes are riveting; despite himself he’s entranced.

Understandably overprotective, Philippe imprisons his daughter in a gilded cage of wealth and privilege, ostensibly to keep her safe. As she grows older, paternal caresses turn carnal. It’s a simple enough matter replacing employees, once they begin noticing the unnatural attention he’s giving his daughter, easy to shelter her from the world—and the world from coming to her aid.

The years pass. Angelica grows graceful and beautiful, losing her childlike appearance, becoming more womanly. Allowed no television, Internet, or contact outside their home, she has no frame of reference. What her father does to her must certainly be normal. She has no reason to think otherwise.

Turning 14, the age her father’s considers “respectful” for intercourse, things begin to shift. What he does to her starts to hurt. The eyes of the servants, the looks on their faces, begin to make sense. She starts to get it: Her father’s attentions are unnatural.

It isn’t until a handsome young man comes to visit, bringing artwork he knows Philippe covets as an excuse to gain entrance and have a look at the fabled beautiful daughter, that Angelica has the opportunity to appeal to an outsider with the power to help. Within moments, he sees through the charade.

He invites the girl on a drive and is intent on rescuing her, but Angelica’s desperation to get away catches her father’s attention. He grows agitated. Sensing the futility, the young man retreats for the moment. Later making another effort, Philippe catches him, raining down holy hell. In the ensuing violence, the young man is injured, nearly killed, chased away.

Angelica’s only hope gone, she slides into despair. Though it hardly seems possible, the story becomes ever darker. There will be no redemption.

Haddon bases his novel on the story of a king who offers the hand of his beautiful daughter to any man who can solve a riddle, the answer revealing King Antiochus is having an incestuous affair with his child. Enter Pericles, the valiant and very clever suitor. The answer to the riddle obvious to him, he senses admitting that will put his life in danger.

Antiochus has no intention of letting his daughter go. When Pericles asks for a few days to mull over the answer, the king sees through the ruse. He grants the young man 40 days in a show of fairness; as Pericles gallops toward home an assassin follows close on his heels.

Alternating between a contemporary storyline and the myth inspiring it, at first the swings back and forth feel smooth. Kept balanced, it’s easily navigated. However, as the book progresses and Haddon extends the Pericles sections longer and longer, the interruptions become intrusive, breaking the narrative spell. It’s as if The Porpoise is made up of two entirely different books forced together, in a rather ungainly way. Had it been better balanced throughout, perhaps the effect could have been more satisfying.

By turns riveting and repulsive, the sickening story of a father’s descent into an incestuous relationship with his daughter is the more compelling narrative: difficult to read, yet impossible to put down. The story of Pericles, just as skillfully written, cannot quite keep up. The ever-lengthening fable begins to feel interminable, such is the power of Angelica’s pull.

The writing is brilliant, building from a deceptively plain beginning few paragraphs to sophisticated prose that leaps off the page. The Porpoise remains unbalanced, yet the end of Angelica’s story is epic Greek tragedy. Haddon pulls the columns from the temple, buckling the walls, the crashing stones crushing the life from his characters. The reader stands in awe, squinting through and covered with the dust, as the curtain falls.

In its crushing power The Porpoise is ultimately redeemed.

The Valedictorian of Being Dead by Heather B. Armstrong

22-07-1922-07-19 / Lisa Guidarini / Leave a comment

From dooce.com

Gallery Books (April 23, 2019)

That’s another thing that people don’t understand about depression: we don’t want to take a shower, we don’t know why we feel this way, and even if we did, it wouldn’t make us stop feeling this way. We have lost all interest in doing anyting, especially anything that once brought us joy – because that thing will bring us joy, and we can’t bear the meaning of that.

Valedictorian of Being Dead

If you’re thinking this kind of book isn’t my normal fare, you’d be mostly right.

I’ve been a fan of Heather’s hugely popular blog Dooce nearly a decade, give or take. Fired from her corporate job for taking hilarious – though unappreciated – jabs at co-workers, originally she was just a snarky, damn funny writer.

After marrying and having a baby, she graduated to “mommy blogger”, going stratospheric. With her uber-honest writing about everything from the ups and downs of pregnancy (including particularly memorable sharing about constipation) to stunning photography and monthly love letters to her child, Leta, she shot up the ranks becoming one of the top 25 most influential blogs on Time magazine’s list.

Years later, dooce is still going strong, a highly personal and often funny account of parenthood, pregnancy, struggles with depression and cancer, and life as a former Mormon living among Mormons. Dooce’s strength is its unflinching honesty.

Time, 2009

After the publication of her first book about crippling depression, a local Chicago paper found Bluestalking – which had garnered attention through mention in The New York Times, a book about literary blogs, and winning a couple lit blog awards – and wanted to interview me about the reasons I wrote, and how it related to mental health. So, when Heather announced she was in the process of writing a book about an experimental treatment aimed at drug-resistant depression, I made time for it.

The Valedictorian of Being Dead describes in depth how and why a team of medical professionals took her brain function to near zero, then essentially brought her back life, in an effort to reset her brain. Related to ECT, this new therapy is thought to have less side effects, though it’s so new long-term data isn’t yet available.

It has so far worked for Heather, which is encouraging. She no longer wishes she were dead. Sounds like a victory to me.

Characteristic of the honesty and thoroughness of her writing, it’s not a straight relation of medical facts. Heather talks about the history of her depression, its impact on her children and family, and the evolution of dooce.com. She also opens up about her marriage, and the reasons for its demise.

Not as well written as I’d hoped, it was worth reading both for its explanation of this fascinating new treatment and further honest revelations about her life. I overlooked how over-written it is, occasionally cringe-worthily so. Though we’ve met and interacted only briefly, like millions of other readers of her blog I’m fond of Heather, and identify with what she’s been through.

It won’t make the shelf of iconic memoirs relating battles with mental ilness. It’s no Darkness Visible or The Noonday Demon, but fans of dooce.com will appreciate hearing this part of her story. Likewise, those battling depression unresponsive to traditional treatments may find hope knowing doctors are pioneering new approaches.

2019 so far: a recap

21-07-19 / Lisa Guidarini / Leave a comment

2019 marks the fourth anniversary of my divorce. I’d like to say I’ve settled into the next chaper of life, but in lots of ways I really haven’t.

The best part of post-marriage is the weight of a 25-year incompatible relationship falling off my shoulders. I chose a man who was steady and a good provider, knew his way around car and home maintenance, and could fix my computer- very practical things, if not terribly romantic.

Make that not at all romantic. See that red flag waving? So did we, but chose to ignore it.

We really didn’t like each other. He’s extraordinarily intelligent, but cold and inflexible, quick to anger, and lacking empathy. His life lacks passion; I pity that.

My dreamy, artsy, laissez-faire personality irritated the living hell out of him. I refused to take little things seriously, parented too liberally, and chose reading over house cleaning.

Opposites may attract, but without mutual respect and a core connection it’s unsustainable. Post-divorce we’re able to get along on a superficial level, civil and friendly. The kids will always connect us, but we’re so much happier apart.

Divorce has meant the freedom to make my own decisions – some wildly, epically irrational, most eccentric but basically safe. I look at him and think dear god, your life is so safe and boring. I take risks, unafraid of falling on my face. He’ll always take life far too seriously.

Fast-forward to 2019, and I’m living in my fifth home. Spending two years in my first rental, my ~~crazy~~ edventurous nature reared its head when I took off to live with – and potentially marry – a friend in Scotland. Back in the States a year, for the second time I sold off or stored all my stuff, moving back to the UK.

Sitting here in my third over-prized suburban Chicago apartment, I have loads of weird – though wildly magical – memories, and absolutely no regrets, but feel rootless. Restless since crawling out from under the constraints of marriage, all that flirting with life as an ex-pat cured my wanderlust.

I want to be anchored, settled in one place, and steady. I want to belong, in ways I haven’t for a long time. I own that I’m partially feral, but the part of me that’s domesticated is damned tired of being alone.

In one staggering way I’ll get to shortly, I didn’t see 2019 coming. Accustomed to serendipitous surprises, I’d have been disappointed otherwise. The process of nesting I anticipated, and I love my little place. Already over-crowded with stuff, it’s not Ikea perfect like my Pinterest board, but I accept it’s a work in progress.

Professionally, I’m in flux. My current day job is stable, but unsatisfying. A creative idea generator with a penchant for – brace yourselves – writing, there’s little call for my skill set in this environment. On the other hand, fast-paced, intricately complex work in finance has honed all new skill sets I never dreamed I’d have. After four years I’m crazy good at multi-tasking, agile and comfortable navigating two screens full of databases while listening to and empathizing with clients. As experience goes, it’s valuable.

If creativity remains an avocation, I’ll try to come to terms. But I’m not giving up.

Romantically, 2019’s taken my breath away. Back in the States less than two months, I decided what the hell, life’s had some stray slow moments. Let’s dip a toe in the water and stir things up. I’ve dated pretty extensively in four years, between two marriage close calls. I’ve both made some good friends and experienced staggering weirdness, and was ready to close up shop again one date before fate stepped in.

Maybe that’s just the way it happens. When you’re just about the close the door, life says hold my beer and dig this.

The One. Him. The synchronicity of two fated souls meeting.

I’m not overstating; I do nothing by halves.

I suspected it from our first date, knew it not long after. In a few days we’ll hit five months, but I’m not going into a lot of detail now. Plenty of time for that. No update of 2019 could go without mention of it, no other change in my life as profound.

All the rest of it – the reading, the writing, the vagaries of existence, etc., etc. – will come out in time. Dynamic and shifting in so many ways, in this I’m beginning to take root. I don’t believe in a god or divine plan, but when I threw it out there that I’m ready, life said okay, how about I surpass all expectations?

I can’t explain how it happened, but I don’t expect life to provide answers. It’s real and it’s thriving and I’m no fool.

I’m going to run with it.

It’s passed the middle of 2019. I’ve learned around the corner surprises lie, and this year has proved no exception. I have hopes for the future, very specific ones. Patience isn’t my strong suit, but I’m not without diversions to work on in the meantime.

It’s headed in the right direction. And I’ll take it.

Good lord, is that the time?

17-07-19 / Lisa Guidarini / 2 Comments

You know you’ve been away from your blog a very long time when you not only cannot recall your password, but can’t even find the bloody website. I started typing T-Y-P-E-P-A…. then recalled I haven’t been hosted by Typepad for at least a decade.

Typepad? Really? What’s next, aol.com?

I dropped off the face of the blog around the time WordPress changed its format, because I really do despise it. If I’d worked with it a bit longer before trotting off in a huff, perhaps it would be comfortable and familiar by now. As it is, I’m sitting here feeling quite annoyed I can’t even find the scroll bar.

WHERE IS THE SCROLL BAR.

Nothing is where it’s supposed to be. WHERE ARE ALL THE THINGS.

All this to say I can’t use the “I’m still settling in after returning to the States” excuse anymore if I’ve been back six months. Good effort, but it’s worn thin, like “I’m still carrying the baby weight” when you baby is 21. I’m also not supposed to be writing this sort of apology for my absence, according to my career coach, but I’m flying in the face of all that professional nonsense because, drat it, I OWE YOU THAT. All of you who’ve been around a while, I mean. Who’ve stuck with me through lots of nonsense over the past dozen plus years.

You know who you are. And I love you for it.

What I’m supposed to be doing is posting book reviews and generating interesting original content. More interesting than whining, which interests me and me alone. It’s self-indulgent, counter-productive and lots of other hyphenated words and phrases. I fully realize that.

I just needed to get this out of the way. I needed a placeholder, I don’t care what anyone says. Something to say yes, there was a gap, but I’ve been off in the world doing worldly things. I’ve not been slacking off in the slightest, and slapping up a book review published elsewhere without a word of explanation just seems silly.

That’s out of the way, and thank goodness for it. My palate’s cleansed, I’ve acknowledged my sins, and I can resume regular programming.

Also, I found the scroll bar.

Now we can all rest happily.