Three Stages of Amazement by Carol Edgarian (Scribner, 2011)
As the central character, Lena Pepper, puts it, in modern marriage there are two “states” – “plateau and precipice” -- and in her second novel, Carol Edgarian explores these two states against the backdrop of urban family living in “the gorgeous sugar cake” of San Francisco, amidst the hope of a new Obama administration, a failing economy and the ugly strains of a Bernie Madoffesque society. Lena’s husband, Charlie, a doctor by training who feverishly peddles a newly patented robotic surgical device, is strung between “two irreconcilables” – his desire to succeed and his desire to be good to his wife and family -- while Lena longs to be a mighty career “star” as well as a good mother, all while searching to achieve an elusive grace. The domesticity covered here, while hip and contemporary, can verge on dull and is tinged with melodrama, but the writing is superb and leads the reader willingly via various bad decisions and regrets through the titular three stages of Silence, Disbelief and Talk (8/10).
Monday, March 28, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
RollnSmoke Reviews: THE PARIS WIFE by Paula McLain
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain (Ballantine, 2011)
In her second novel poet-novelist Paula McLain re-tells the legendary tales of Ernest Hemingway’s earliest days as a struggling and married writer living in Paris in the early 1920’s primarily from the point of view of his first, and perhaps most beloved wife, Hadley Richardson. The rowdy escapades included here among expatriates like Pound, Anderson, Stein and Fitzgerald are mesmerizing, though McLain herself adds neither an original writing approach nor illuminating new information to what is already literary lore. She simply connects the dots of an intriguing life. Perhaps it is because Hadley and Ernest “drink too much and want too much” that their marriage is doomed, with a somewhat meek Hadley left as The Paris Wife, Ernest Hemingway’s first of four (7.5/10).
Thursday, March 17, 2011
RollnSmoke Reviews: LIFE by Keith Richards
Life by Keith Richards with James Fox (Little Brown, 2010)
The infamous guitar player for The Rolling Stones offers up an account of his own, spirited and adventurous life, very much in his own words – unliterary and British raw -- so that it feels like you’re sitting with him, as friends, discussing his escapades in person over a cup or two of tea. An only child born at the end of World War II, young Keith was bullied as a kid, which may explain his “lovely and lasting rage against authority” which, throughout his life, keeps him ever and only one step ahead of the law. We learn about his stint in art school, his decade-long heroin addiction, his long friendship and personal war with childhood friend Mick Jagger, the death of his infant son, his first, turbulent marriage and second, still-lasting one, all laid against the backdrop of a rock star’s life loaded with drugs, sex and touring his Chicago-blues rooted music. True to its title, this is indeed, quite a Life (8.5/10).
The infamous guitar player for The Rolling Stones offers up an account of his own, spirited and adventurous life, very much in his own words – unliterary and British raw -- so that it feels like you’re sitting with him, as friends, discussing his escapades in person over a cup or two of tea. An only child born at the end of World War II, young Keith was bullied as a kid, which may explain his “lovely and lasting rage against authority” which, throughout his life, keeps him ever and only one step ahead of the law. We learn about his stint in art school, his decade-long heroin addiction, his long friendship and personal war with childhood friend Mick Jagger, the death of his infant son, his first, turbulent marriage and second, still-lasting one, all laid against the backdrop of a rock star’s life loaded with drugs, sex and touring his Chicago-blues rooted music. True to its title, this is indeed, quite a Life (8.5/10).