The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

A single father. A child with special needs. Both of them trying to make sense of this world.

Let's have Christopher introduce the main characters:

Father:

He was shouting, “I want to see my son,” and “Why the hell is he locked up? And “Of course I’m bloody angry.”

I stepped outside. Father was standing in the corridor. He held up his right hand and spread his fingers out in a fan. I held up my left hand and spread my fingers out in a fan and we made our fingers and thumbs touch each other. We do this because sometimes Father wants to give me a hug, but I do not like hugging people so we do this instead, and it means that he loves me.

Siobhan:

Siobhan understands. When she tells me not to do something she tells me exactly what is that I am not allowed to do. And like this.

For example, she once said, “You must never punch Sarah or hit her in any way, Christopher. Even if she hits your first. If she does hit you again, move away and from her and stand still and count from 1 to 50, then come and tell me what she has done, or tell one of the other members of the staff what she has done."

Christopher:

My name is Christopher John Francis Boone. I know all the countries of the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7,057.

I find people confusing. This is for two main reasons.

The first main reason is that people do a lot of talking without using words…

After Christopher finds his neighbor’s dog dead he decides to write a book. That is why this is book is so great. The narrator is Christopher. So the reader gets a sense of how he experiences the world. Fortunately, Christopher is a very attentive kid so he provides plenty of details so we know exactly what is happening. Siobhan told him that when writing a book you have to include descriptions of things, and “it was best to describe things that were interesting or different.”

People are confusing. Strangers and change makes him feel unsafe. However, some events occur that force him out of his comfort zone. It is very intriguing to hear what Christopher believes to be “interesting or different.” Once I started reading I didn’t want to put the book down, and you won’t either. Be sure to check out Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

This is Where I Leave You

Jonathan Tropper is magnificent in his recent novel This is Where I Leave You. Judd recently discovered his wife’s affair, and his father just died. He is going through a state of anger, sadness, loneliness, and depression. So the setting is perfect for a comedy. Tropper pulls it off beautifully.

The rarely practicing Jewish family was led by their atheist father. For some reason in his final days he met with God, and his dying wish was for his family to sit Shiva… for seven days. The four adult children were quite reluctant to this idea, but when they started to present their excuses their mother stepped it, “Stop It! Your father lay dying in his bed for the last half of year or so. How many times did you visit him, any of you? Your father made his last wish known, and we will honor it. All of us. For the next seven days you are all my children again.” That was that. For one week the family dysfunction would be on display for the reader to enjoy.

Their mother made the speech while still flaunting her inappropriately large fake breasts, and a parenting book she authored years ago. (The book managed to offer embarrassing and detailed accounts of each of the four children without any attempt to change their names.) Each of the siblings brought their own character flaws and family history into the mix. Just imagine if your own family (including multiple generations) was jammed into a small living area sitting on miniature chairs for an extended period of time.

The story was told through Judd’s perspective as he contemplated his life and his relationship with his family, and doing so while relegated to the basement because this visit he came without a significant other. His mother, whose fake breasts and short skirt didn’t fit her age or the situation, always believed in openness and honesty. The book is written in the first-person as Judd describes various situations like when Betty Allison, the mother of one of his grade school classmates, came over to pay her respect:

“I’m so sorry to hear about your father.”

“Thanks.”

“Betty’s daughter Hannah was divorced last year,” my mother says brightly, like she’s delivering a nugget of particularly good news.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say.

Betty nods. “He was addicted to Internet porn.”

“It happens,” I say.

“Judd’s wife was cheating on him.”

“Jesus Christ, Mom!”

“What? There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Judd becomes self-conscious as other people in the room may be noticing the conversation, but the two mothers continue the ploy. Betty adds that she is sure her daughter would love to hear from Judd.

Betty and my mother smile conspiratorially at each other and I can hear the telepathy buzzing between them. Her husband was addicted to porn, his wife screwed around . . . it’s perfect!

“I’m not ready to start dating anytime soon," I say.

“No one said anything about dating,” my mother says.

“That’s right,” Betty agrees, “Just a friendly phone call. Maybe a cup of coffee.”

They both look at me expectantly. I am conscious of Phillip’s elbow in my ribs, his low, steady chuckle. I’ve got six more days of this, and if I don’t nip it in the bud, my mother will be trumpeting my situation to the entire community.

“The thing is, I enjoy some good Internet porn myself, every now and then,” I say.

“Judd!” my mother gasps, horrified.

“Some of it is done very tastefully. And especially now, being single and all. It’s a great resource.”

Phillip bursts out laughing. Betty Allison’s face turns red, and my mother sits back in her chair, defeated.

Tropper brilliantly takes you inside one man’s head, and creates a story that had me shocked a couple times, once openly saying “please don’t, please don’t,” and bursting up laughing several times. Even with only fifty pages left I found myself asking, “Will Judd try to salvage things with his wife, pursue something with his old high school fling, or go a different route all together?” Not only was I unsure how the book would end, I was unsure how I wanted it to end. But I would certainly enjoy the rest of it.

And it ended just as it should.

Water for Elephants

I got on the airplane to Dallas and opened up my book. I began to read:

I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other.

When you’re five, you know your age down to the month. Even in your twenties you know how old you are. I’m twenty-three, you say, or maybe twenty-seven. But then in your thirties something strange starts to happen. It’s a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I’m—you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you’re not. You’re thirty-five. And then you’re bothered, because you wonder it this is the beginning of the end. It is of course, but it’s decades before you admit it.

…What’s on the menu tonight? I know some of us don’t have teeth, but I do, and I want pot roast. My wife’s, complete with leathery bay leaves. I want carrots. I want potatoes boiled in their skins. And I want a deep, rich Cabernet Sauvignon to wash it all down, not apple juice from a tin. But above all, I want corn on the cob.

Sometimes I think that if I had to choose between an ear of corn or making love to a woman, I’d choose the corn. Not that I wouldn’t love to have a final roll in the hay—I am a man yet, and some things never die—but the thought of those sweet kernels bursting between my teeth sure sets my mouth watering. It’s fantasy, I know that. Neither will happen. I just like to weigh the options, as though I were standing in front of Solomon: a final roll in the hay or an ear of corn. What a wonderful dilemma. Sometimes I substitute an apple for the corn.

Later came a beautiful scene where one of the nurses gave Jacob a bowl of fruit she had brought for her lunch. It had strawberries, melon, and “apple, for God’s sake.”

This was just the first chapter. I kept reading. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.

Jacob never remembers if he’s 90 or 93, but he remembers a lot of other things. Gruen takes you through those memories beginning with how he found himself in the 1930's working on a traveling circus.

Gruen was asked how she approached the plot for the book.

Her response:

For Water for Elephants, which was the first historical thing I’ve written, I did all the research ahead of time. I needed to feel that I new the subject matter in and out.

I hate outlines. I hate outlines, hate them, hate them.

I usually know what the crisis of the book is going to be, though I don’t know how I‘m going to get there. I try to make it bad enough that I don’t know how I‘m going to get out of it. And when I get there, I have to get out of it. I just get myself geared up, and I write every day and see what happens.

One night after I learned I had gall stones I opened my fridge to make a salad. As I sat across from my friend eating a fat chicken burrito, I ate a salad with lettuce, bell pepper, and apple. Jacob got to eat apple before we got out of chapter one. I’ve had many apples over the course of my life. However, the best apples I’ve ever had have been since reading this book. Like the small apple pieces I cut up in that salad. For some reason I never fully appreciated the taste until now.

The book ends as beautifully as it began. The ride there was a memorable one. Water for Elephants.

Feeling Copacetic

I just finished reading The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao. Junot Diaz depicts a Dominican family across multiple generations. He does it by piecing the information together. The narrator is constantly changing; he switches from first, to second, to third person. The story is not chronological. Although he writes in English there is enough Spanish that if you don't know the language at all it could be frustrating.

Switching narrators without preface, writing in Spanish and English, jumping around to different parts of the story, to tell you it in the order he wants to--not necessarily the order you want or expect, until the entire picture is painted and you can put the pieces together to understand the past, and doing all this, with excellent writing, phenomenal story-telling, superb grasp of the English language, and the occasional sentence that goes on way too long. For those of you that know me you can guess why I appreciated the book.

Oscar goes through a lifetime of tumultuous events ranging from depressing to horrific. Toward the end, just weeks after the most terrifying event of his life, he stops by a friend's house to ask a favor.

"Jesus, Oscar, I said. Come up, come up. I waited for him in the hall and when he stepped out of the elevator I put the mitts on him. How are you, bro? I'm copacetic, he said. We sat down and I broke up a dutch while he filled me in."

"I'm copacetic." Yeah, me too.