The Mars Room

Female prisons are the trendy curiosity with series like Orange is the New Black and Wentworth being so popular. There's no shortage of drama and violence in those series, but fortunately The Mars Room wasn't about that, it's about the characters. It's far more interesting to learn how someone ends up in prison, and this is what author Rachel Kushner does in The Mars Room. 

Hardened double lifer Romy Hall is given a perceptive, sharp thinking, creative voice. 
She reflects on her years stripping: "These men dimmed my glow. Made me numb to touch, and angry. I gave, and got nothing in exchange, but it was never enough. I extracted from the wallets - which was how I thought of the men, as walking wallets - as much as I possibly could. The knowledge that it was not a fair exchange coated me in a certain film. Something brewed in me over the years I worked in the Mars Room, sitting on laps, deep into this flawed exchange. This thing in me brewed and foamed. And when I directed it - a decision that was never made; instead, instincts took over - that was it." 

She calls out double standards: "Did you ever notice that women can seem common while men never do? You won't hear anyone describe a man's appearance as common. The common man means the average man, a typical man, a decent hardworking person of modest dreams and resources. A common woman is a woman who looks cheap. A woman who looks cheap doesn't have to be respected, and so she has a certain value, a certain cheap value."  

Her calculated approach when she wanted something from a guard: "But when I saw Hauser, something flipped in me, a switch. I called out a friendly hello. You don't decide to intentionally alter your tone of voice. It happens automatically. Needs ate the gearbox of the voice. Needs shift approach, adjust tone to something higher, more sympathetic. It wasn't calculated, but everything had changed for me since I'd seen him last." 

Romy accurately stereotypes public defenders & prosecutors. Public defenders, who arrive late to court with loose papers, have bad posture & hair, ill-fitting suits, wide ties and scuffed shoes. The prosecutors meanwhile, are rich, well rested Republicans, she notes. 

About a plumber who was persistent about trying to get with her, her view is pessimistic and realistic. She said she didn't want to be "subjected to his happiness, which seemed to be based on nothing, a thin layer of good cheer stretched over emptiness."  

I enjoyed reading Romy reminisce about her childhood, and her thoughts on "where it all began." She's certainly a fascinating character, and her intelligent observations are not quite what I expected at first, and I couldn't wait to hear what happens next. Which makes for an ideal protagonist. 

I received The Mars Room in a GoodReads giveaway. 

Until next time,

Kara 

Big Potential

Happiness author Shawn Achor is at it again, letting us know how transforming the pursuit of success raises our achievement, happiness, and well-being.
Achor starts his case of how teamwork leads to success by pointing out examples of anti-teamwork. Toddlers are praised for doing things by them self - and so it begins. Children are reminded that their future success depends on individual grades and test scores. The problem is, kids who test so well struggle to work with others, Achor says. At the workplace, we value what we accomplish on our own.
"We spend the first twenty-two years of our life being judged and praised for individual attributes and what we can achieve alone, when, for the rest of our life, our success is almost entirely interconnected with that of others" points out Achor. 
Achor says this emphasis on individual achievement is due to "the rise of technology and social media (which) allow us to broadcast individual accomplishments 24/7, constantly feeding competition while simultaneously stoking insecurity." Also the competition schools and companies put on us as a way of measuring higher success by individual accomplishments.

Big Potential's message is that we achieve our highest potential not by survival of the fittest, but survival of the best fit.
Happiness is an interconnected choice, not just an individual one. Our potential is interconnected with others. Small potential is limited success you achieve alone, whereas big potential is the success you can achieve in a virtuous cycle with others.
Achor asserts that research proves this in a variety of ways:

• A study of male lightening bugs lighting up in unison to attract more females. When they light up randomly, their success rate is just 3%. When done together, it's 82%. 
• The 1948 Framington Heart Study on cardiovascular health and social connections finding that healthy people in a network increase the chance of others being healthy. 
• He reminds us of when Aristotle's famous quote "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." 
• Edison worked with a team of collaborator inventors.                                                                

Achor's Virtuous Cycle is every success achieved gives you more resources, which leads to greater success. To create Virtuous Cycles of potential, you need to plant SEEDS which are surround, expand, enhance, defend and sustain.
His chapters on these SEEDS with practical ways to apply them, and personal anecdotes make for an interesting read.
Big Potential's message of working together, not alone, to achieve success, is really such a basic idea at the core. "Big potential is about gaining a competitive advantage not by limiting others' success rates, but by raising them." So in other words, be more social, less self-centered, and work with others to achieve success, which ultimately is happiness. 

I received Big Potential in a GoodReads giveaway. 

Until next time,

Kara   

Asymmetry

Like the stuff of a Woody Allen movie, in the first part of Asymmetry, a young editor meets a famous elderly author and immediately begins a relationship with him. Besides being taken care of financially (Ezra gives Alice money for a wardrobe and school), it's always a curiosity what a young adult would see in an aging senior. Grandfather complex? Seeking comfort, security, no pressure? Likely. In Folly, Alice and Ezra's stories are so well written, I could see they had a somewhat sweet relationship.

I thought when author Lisa Halliday compared an orthopedic bed to feeling like fudge, that was aptly described. "His mattress was made of special orthopedic material that made her feel as though she were slowly sinking into a giant slab of fudge." 

Another description I could see come to life was "A helicopter changed its direction like a locust shooed by giant fingers slicing through the sky."

In Madness, Part 2, Amar, an Iraqi American, is detained at a Heathrow airport while on his way to Kurdistan to see his brother. While he waits in the holding room, his narration is filled with vivid memories of his brother, life in Iraq, and a Catholic live-in girlfriend in New York that he didn't tell his parents about. 

An interesting observation Amar makes is with the men playing military issue cards with Saddam Husein as the ace of spades, his sons clubs and hearts, and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash the five of hearts. 13 of the cards had a black oval resembling a hooded head like the grim reaper. "And yet it was these cards, I thought, as the man nearest me laid down a flush - the cards without faces - that had the most humanizing effect. Maybe because their featurelessness more steadily suggested that you, too, could have been born Adil Abdallah Mahdi (deuce of diamonds) or Ugla Abid Saqr al-Kubaysi (deuce of clubs) or Ghazi Hammud al-Ubaydi (deuce of hearts) or Rashid Taan Kazim (deuce of spades). If only your parents had taken a later flight. If only your soul had sparked into being on a different continent, a different hemisphere, a different day." 
There but for the grace of God go I. 

Part III is author Ezra Blazer's animated radio interview where he reminisces about his time as a soldier in Germany, his secret family in Paris, and love. 

I received Asymmetry in a GoodReads giveaway. 

Until next time,
Kara  

The Dictionary of Animal Languages

Writer Heidi Sopinka gives us a fascinating and unusual character in Ivory Frame. She's an artist and biologist, and after 90 years of age, she is stunned to learn she's a grandmother. This is so shocking to her because she tried to forget that she had a child, since she was told the child died at birth. 

I couldn't always follow The Dictionary of Animal Languages, but noted some memorable Ivory musings including when she describes her distant, detached mother: "I live in equal parts of fear and awe of Mother. A brusque contrarian. Her obsession with cleanliness, both inside and out, was delineated by purges, the necessary ritual for those seeking perfection. It's why she didn't like sunny days,though she would never say it. Because they show all the dust. It is also why she had to be the thinnest woman in the room. It is not only that it makes her the most envied,but that, I suspect, she is actually disturbed by her own corporeality. Though she was not entirely a devastating presence. When I was allowed to visit her in her sitting room, she would hold me rapt with her descriptions of the paintings I loved... But when at the conclusion of these visits I was given a chocolate, I saw what I was. A guest." 

Ivory on convent school: "I am expected to have no emotions. Do as I'm told. And though I understand this would be the easier course, I cannot help but do the opposite. It is a life of indoors full of silence, full of blame. Not unlike the precise attention of my parents, constantly obsesses with correcting my behaviour, my posture, my manners. I love being outside. What I miss is air. Cut off from sounds of my childhood, I feel unethered and dull. When I arrive, the nuns' first words are, Rule number one." 

On getting older and aging: "Your powers flag. When you are old you are transparent. Is it possible to hide and yet be annoyed when no one notices you? ... Beauty is wasted on the young. Like leaves in autumn at their most brilliant, when the tree doesn't need them."

Upon seeing a young woman in complicated sandals with wrap around slave girl ankle straps, Ivory says, "For all its practical improvements, feminism has not yet freed women from a sense that their value resides in how they are seen by men." How true. 

Her honesty about new motherhood: "... you don't sleep for months, and you are stuck in this grueling toil. If the baby is screaming and I am half starved, do I still make a sandwich for myself while he cries? While he sleeps inside, is it illegal for me to be sitting here, on this bench? I feel unhinged, she says. Like I am capable of doing something crazy."  

Her painfully detailed memory of going into labour and then being left alone without her baby afterwards is heartbreaking. Sopinka packs a lot into her writing. Ivory's thoughts are full and she doesn't hold back, which makes this a big and gratifying read. 

I received The Dictionary of Animal Languages in a GoodReads giveaway. 

Until next time,

Kara  

Summer Cannibals

I was hoping for an easy breezy summer read, the kind of escape you can get into by the pool.
Melanie Hobson's first novel wasn't exactly that. We were "tricked" with a pleasant beginning, an idyllic description of the large family house. But then we meet David in chapter 2.  

There is so much hostility in the Blackford family, it's a dominant part of each personality.
David is an outright asshole. He's "resigned" to women: is forever lamenting over how hurt he is that he had three daughters, and figured getting married would mean regular sex. Certainly not in the least, he's abusive he to his wife. Other snippets into his far from redeeming personality include his insulting views on Africans, and how he looks down on the modest homes on his street. So yeah, there was nothing likable about main character David. 

Margaret is unhappy with David, who she thinks is always trying to best and outmaneuver her. She resents how deeply he sleeps, as she sleeps very little. And no wonder, for Margaret has a disturbing secret. Her life is filled with betrayal and cruelty. She has a lukewarm, often curt manner with her children. She is a victim, but her twisted relationship with her husband comes to a head after a garden tour gone awry. Hobson delves into her troubled psyche to reveal why she does what she does.
Her choice of cake that she's constantly making that weekend is interesting. Fruitcake, particularly in the summer, isn't what most people crave. Margaret seems to makes it out of obligation, just like how it's eaten.  

Daughter Jax has a perfect family that others envy, but she is intent on hurting her husband. Her quest to be unfaithful to him gives her a spoiled and ungrateful image. 

Pitiful pregnant Pippa is disillusioned with motherhood and her all male home. She too was a victim, taken advantage of in her vulnerable teens.  

Eldest daughter Georgina tries to keep it all together. She's the stable one. But as with most responsible types, she puts up a good front. 

I couldn't find anything redeeming about any of the family members, although I did get satisfaction and relief in how it ended for Margaret and Pippa.
I'm glad I read Summer Cannibals, for the simple fact of being grateful that I didn't live in such a household! 

I received Summer Cannibals in a GoodReads giveaway. 

Until next time,

Kara 

Lands of Lost Borders

Travel writer Kate Harris, with her childhood friend and fellow adventurer Mel Yule took on a tremendous challenge of cycling across the Silk Road. Harris documents their triumphs and pitfalls in her vivid, captivating memoir Lands of Lost Borders.   

Just the thought of traveling such treacherous terrain and cold wet conditions as they did on bicycles makes me legs feel weak. But unable to go to Mars, her true goal, Harris chose the Silk Road. 
  
It was wonderful to hear that total strangers treated them like long lost family and took them in for a night. 
When they stayed with a Turkish family, they went with them to a  tween birthday party. It was interesting how they don't generally say the word no, considering it blunt & dismissive. 

Harris contemplated "how we long our whole lives for things we've never known, places we've never been, abstractions that come alive to us in unexpected ways. What does the Silk Road have to do with Mars, except everything? Perhaps the great task of modern explorers is not to conquer, but to connect, to reveal how any given thing leads to another: the red planet to the Silk Road, bicycles to the moon, a modern Georgian highway back in time to the Ujarma Fortress." 

There was plenty of humour and confusion on their trip, like the misunderstanding of the meaning of words. A Georgian protected areas official mistook endangered animals with dangerous animals. When Mel explained she meant species at risk, he assured them, no, you aren't at risk! A restaurant owner who gave them tea, also spoke to them at length, but they didn't understand a word of what he told them. 
Harris figured a great way to train / bulk up for her one year biking the Silk Road was with baklava.  

I particularly enjoyed her detailed description of the Kazakhstan train trip. The friendliness of the Kazakhs was felt, how they shared their meal, which included a goat's head; children happily played in the aisles, and no one went to sleep; and the cramped stifling sleep bunk. 

The photographs were lovely, and gave me a useful sense of the vastness of the land they traveled on. 

Mountains and lakes and rivers are the oldest kinds of borders, Harris said, and the only she fully respects.  "The problem with borders, I was beginning to realize, isn't that they are monstrous, offensive, and unnatural constructions. The problem with borders is the same problem with evil that Hannah Arendt identified:  their banality. We subconsciously accept them as part of the landscape - at least those of us privileged by them, granted meaningful passports - because they articulate our deepest, least exalted desires, for prestige and permanence, order and security, always at the cost of someone or something else. Borders reinforce the idea of the alien, the Other, stories separate and distinct from ourselves. But would such fictions continue to stand if most of us didn't agree with them, or at least quietly benefit from the inequalities they bolster? The barbed wire begins here, inside us, cutting through our very core."  

I received Lands of Lost Borders in a GoodReads giveaway. 

Until next time,

Kara 

Tiger Tiger

Johanna Skibsrud's latest collection of 14 short stories gives us glimpses into the not-so-ordinary lives of a child to a senior, and everyone in between. 

I liked how she told the soldier's story in A Horse, A Vine. It came out very easily and naturally, his thoughts fast and literal. 

The Weatherman too, comes off in the same manner. His sort of stream of consciousness dialogue takes us through his suicidal thoughts over the mundaneness that is is career, and life. 

In The Last Frontier - her take on reality TV - we discover when people aren't interested anymore, you're literally on your own. In this case, the show takes places on Mars. That's a scary thought.

Skibsrud explores how a "super human" suffers in The Remember. Does a data bank have feelings? What else are they to do with all the knowledge that's pumped into them? Of course a range of flip flopping emotions ensues.

A lot of regular people facing not so regular situations in Tiger Tiger. 

I received Tiger Tiger in a GoodReads giveaway. 

Until next time,

Kara