Sad Books Say So Much

Everybody plays the fool...sometime.
There's no exception to the rule - listen baby!
It may be factual, it may be cruel...I ain't lying.
Everybody plays the fool.

- AARON NEVILLE

When the lie becomes the truth, when the fool wields all the power, when there are no rules, and exceptions abound....betrayal is around every corner.

It's human nature to act on what you think you know.  We trust in the belief that others operate based on the same set of assumptions.  But life is really just a dance, and some people dance better than others.  They move in the right circles.  They play the game.  They make sure good things happen to them, and if bad things happen to you?  Well, that's how the dice fell.  Nothing to do with them.

Gorky Park can be a profoundly depressing book.  It depicts a world that is not so different from 21st century North America as we might wish to believe.  A world where the ancient good guy - bad guy dichotomy gives way, and we are all revealed for what we truly are.  Survivors.  Just trying to get by.  Damn the consequences.

And yet...there is a strange fascination in watching people squirm.

Dear Aaron Paul Lazar,

i took a risk with you.  I accepted a free copy of your book, not knowing when I'd read it, and fearing (even as I read it) that I would have difficulty providing you with the honest review you had requested.  But, as I think I've told you, you made me want to read your books.  You're a kind, generous soul who doesn't over-promote, and you make a genuine effort to connect with people on a human level.

I wasn't entirely happy with the physicality of the love scenes depicted herein.  Sex isn't love.  It's raw need, and power, and self-expression, and desire.  And Finn and Libby's love story did not begin to ring true to me until they were tested.  Did I want them together at the end because they were so often parted by circumstance, or because they were meant for each other?  WHY were they meant for each other?  What did they share that bonded them through it all?

But I'm not the target audience for this book.  Romeo and Juliet was never my idea of a classic.  I'm hopeless, but I'm no romantic.  I'm jaded, and cynical, and I look for imperfections everywhere (often finding them).  So I can't fairly say the romance fell flat.  Only that it wasn't MY cup of tea.

i loved the interlocking mysteries, and the war between the McGraw siblings, and the shocking conclusion was the best part by far (I have never rocketed through the last quarter of a book so fast, but I had to know!)  I felt the book depicted family very accurately, in its various levels of complexity.  

Some time this year, I'll read the other book you gave me.  I feel the need to get a better sense of who you are as a writer.  You mentioned in the foreword that The Seacrest isn't your usual genre.  I look forward to continuing our journey together.

Thanks for offering a small taste of what's to come.

To the tune of "Cabaret"

What good's pretending life's always a joy?

Be who you want to be.

Death may be looming, c'est la vie.

You're still in Gay Paree.

Old misconceptions, they're out the door
You've got a world to see.

Death may be looming, c'est la vie.

It's booming in Gay Paree.

Come taste the wine.
Come hear the band.
Come blow that horn.
Start celebrating right this way.
Your table's waiting.

War is depleting, sapping your soul

The city you love's not free.
Death may be looming, c'est la vie.

You'll fight for Gay Paree.

Endings aren't always happy, you know

The sad price of victory.

But she will live on for eternity

Majestic is Gay Paree.

Like The End of Your Life Book Club, this was a book about death and dying that reminded me just how cynical and judgmental I have become.

I like to say that I "lead with compassion".  In my work assisting a local legislator, i have been exposed to many social issues, including dying with dignity.  I believe that each and every one of us should have the opportunity to leave this world on our own terms, in our own unique way.

i admire the author for her strength of character, and for her commitment to live out her final days without dwelling on her condition or the loss of so much that makes us feel human.  However (here comes the cynical and judgmental part!) this book BOTHERED me, on a number of levels:

1.  For someone living on borrowed time, someone who writes so passionately about her love for her children...why spend so much of the time you have left far from home, away from them?

2.  Some of the most meaningful portions of the book involved the author's discovery of her late birth father's homeland and his wonderful, welcoming relatives.  Why not introduce your children to that aspect of your life while you can still see it through their eyes?  Why wait until you are gone to make the introductions?

3.  The "moments" depicted often feel manufactured and put on.  I'm sorry, but a woman should try on her first (and hopefully only!) wedding gown when she has a ring and a date, and is hopelessly in love with Mr. / Ms. Right.  Not before.

4.  Permanent make-up???  Really???  The "setting" of this book - Palm Beach - plays a vital role in how I approach this book, and in how I perceive the author.  We're not talking Compton, California here.  That makes a heartbreaking journey just a little more comfortable, and so much of the book had me rolling my eyes at the resources and connections that helped ease the way;

5.  The decision not to be honest with the kids about how the journey will end was a source of confusion and sadness for me.  Yes, children should be sheltered from adult tragedies, but these are not babies.  I think the youngest is ten or eleven.  One of them has Asperger's.  There are truths that can be shared, gently and kindly, without shattering their hearts or their souls.  And they probably know far more than we think they do.

But...well...who am i to judge?

This book is extremely well-written, and I discovered a new favourite narrator, Karen White.  But it is a true story, and I needed more from it than it delivered.  May lightning strike me down for saying so :)

This is a good book.  It is not, however, a great book.  It aspires to be.  It even purports to be.  It does not quite get there.

i was very impressed with this book when I read it in high school.  But that was 25 years ago, and reading it now, I don't find it as compelling.  I have read so many books since Lord of the Flies.  Darker books.  More disturbing books.  Books that forced me to sit up and take notice.  In that sense, LOTF disappointed me.

i am a discerning reader now. I want to know more.  How and why are the boys on the island? The book alludes to the reasons, but does not explore them.  Who were they before they got here?  We understand too little about them.  What happens to them after the final scene?  I'd like to know.

Will human beings do anything to win?  Yes, they will.  Will kids born of privilege do whatever it takes to remain at the top of the pecking order?  Sometimes that's all they have - "their place in life".  Will the disadvantaged, the different and the disengaged have to fight twice as hard to be noticed and recognized for who they are?  Sure.  But there's beauty in the struggle, even though the climb is arduous and long.  Golding doesn't tell us that, though.  He tells us that life's a bitch and then...well, you know the rest.  Gee, thanks.

Ironically, reality TV took these themes to another level, and made the journey believable and the travelers identifiable.  Golding could have learned a lot from Survivor.  I learned far too little from LOTF - and that's a pity.

"I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape."

"Scars are just another kind of memory"

Yes.  Yes, they are.  But we have a choice.  They can haunt us forever, or heal completely, or stay with us always as a mild pang of remembrance.

 I'm disabled.  I know all about letting go, about accepting what I cannot change, about avoiding the victim trap.  But sometimes we just need to acknowledge what IS, and mourn the loss of possibilities, the roads not taken.  It's not healthy to pretend that we haven't missed out, that we haven't compromised, that we haven 't lost something along the way.

When people are asked, "How many children do you have?", the question seems so simple, so benign, to the questioner.  But there are a thousand buried truths, a million land mines, in that question.  My mother was pregnant 5 times, but only has two children, because she miscarried three times.  Another parent might have a child who is deceased, or missing, or homeless, or estranged.  They may be at a quandary as to how to answer the question without opening up the whole can of worms to a stranger.

Hannah and Frank Roennfeldt had a daughter named Grace.   Isabel and Tom Sherbourne had a child named Lucy.  Does the fact that they are one and the same - a bundle of joy loved by so many - really change the dynamics so dramatically?  She is not property, to be auctioned to the highest bidder.  She is a child, and what happens to her now will inevitably shape the woman she becomes.  Perhaps at 24 there is no lasting damage.  Who can say what the consequences will be when she is 44, or 64, or 84?  This "choix déchirant", as we put it in French (loosely, a choice that rips you apart) was made FOR her, based on considerations that did not always include concern for her well-being.

I am a lawyer.  I'm supposed to approach these scenarios dispassionately, set aside my emotions and recommend what is right and just and good under the circumstances.  But it's because I don't always know the "right answer" that I've chosen not to practice law in the traditional sense.  People call my office and cry.  They rage.  They implore.  And I ride the roller-coaster right along with them.  it's that compassion that is my guide in everything I do, even when I have to tell someone I cannot help them, or worse, that theirs is a problem without a solution.

In Lucy-Grace's case, the courts would ask (in 2014) "What is in the best interests of the child?" They would discard the selfish motives and interests of both adult parties, and they would make a decision that would try to ensure the child 's safety, stability and short-term and long-term happiness.  The custody issue would likely be deferred until the criminal matter was disposed of.  I'd like to think Tom and Isabel would be awarded custody, with liberal visitation for the Potts family.  But it's hard to tell.

i can't separate this heart-shattering tragedy of a story from the time period in which it is set.  All the characters are a product of their time, so moral absolutes are of no use here.  PTSD, separation anxiety, mediation - all these terms were unknown at the time.  I do think this cavalcade of losses could have been avoided if a war-scarred veteran and a flighty small town girl had not been so far from home, for so very long...but it happened, and they all had to pick up the pieces.  Not much else they could do but carry on, the best way they knew how.  That's what people did in that era.  Who am I to judge them?

WAVIN' FLAG by K'Naan - partial lyrics

So many wars, settlin' scores,

bringing us promises, leaving us poor,

I heard them say, love is the way

Love is the answer, that's what they say

But look how they treat us, make us believers

We fight their battles, then they deceive us

Try to control us, they couldn't hold us

'cause we just move forward like Buffalo soldiers

And together at the end of the day.

We all say

[chorus:]

When I get older

I will be stronger

They'll call me 'Freedom'

just like a wavin' flag

and then it goes back, and then it goes back

and then it goes back, and then it goes . . .

REVIEWER NOTE:  this was going to be my very first one-star review, but I just couldn't do it.  I don't regret reading this book.  I don't regret that a friend from a Goodreads book club chose it for me so that it might read it as part of a challenge.  I just wish it had been better developed and more authentic.

****************************

Dear Danielle,

By now, you'll have heard from my lawyers, so you know what my plans are.  You're probably feeling confused, perhaps even bewildered.  This must seem to come out of the blue.  But I'm not having a mid-life crisis, Dani.  I'm re-examining my life.  You should give some thought to doing the same.

I told you I was going to a retreat for burned-out professionals.  That wasn't true.  In fact, I'm undergoing some pretty intense therapy at an in-patient centre on the West Coast.  I need to understand why I enabled your destructive behaviour for all these years.  I don't like the person you've become, Dani.  I am especially devastated by the price you've forced others to pay - Finn, Toby, our precious girls.  You've done damage that can never be repaired, and I can't talk to you face-to-face about any of it because your modus operandi is to humiliate anyone who questions your decisions.

i've been a fool - and what's worse, I've been a coward.  For years, I've silently watched our daughters pull away from each other, bit by bit, without saying a word in protest.  I watched you pit them against each other, encouraging divisive competition, comparing them unfavourably, seemingly doing everything in your power to drive a wedge so deep they'd never free themselves.  The fact that they are slowly finding their way back to each other is a testament to their own courage and to the influence of two marvellous men - your brother Finn and his partner Toby.

Did you ever stop to think, Dani?  Two men, dying of a disease they acquired because sadly, theirs is a love that still to this day, dares not speak its name.  They deserved to have time.  Time with each other.  Time with the girls.  Time to say goodbye.  But you selfishly took that from them.  June has come to believe that saving her sister's life was what?  Murder?  Treachery?  Toby was out in those woods that night because of events you set in motion.  Greta was there in a raging thunderstorm because of what you could not face.  Love isn't meant to be locked in a vault, Dani.  It's meant to be shared, openly, freely, honestly.  I pray I haven't learned that lesson too late.  I pray June and Greta can forgive themselves for what amounted to little more than falling into a trap set for them by their own mother.

So, as you know by now, our marriage is over, and I've taken steps to dissolve our professional relationship as well.  I've been the invisible man for so long I barely know my own name anymore.  I've been subject to a code of silence, and the only way to break the code is to uncover the pattern and vow not to repeat it.  This is the first step on a long and winding road.  But I won't walk alone.  My girls will be with me in spirit.  I have much to atone for where they are concerned.

Wake up, Dani.  You thought you lost everything that mattered when Finn left home all those years ago?  You stand to lose much more if you don't try to examine what makes you lash out, what compels this punitive side of your character that threatens to destroy our daughters.  It will destroy you too, Dani.  Perhaps it already has.  You have so much to offer the world.  Go out there and make it happen.  It's your turn now.

With deep regret,

CHRISTOPHER

To the tune of Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks:

Farewell, so long, the world we knew

To old traditions we bid sad adieu.

Forever died, and now we grieve.

For the Earth we are bereaved

All those lies that we believed.

Goodbye true love, for you I mourn

i often wish that we could be reborn.

Know the freedom of a child

Risk it all and just run wild.

We must face what we defiled.

Nights were calm, days were bright

Till we waged war with the light.

Now we wait in the gloom

With a growing sense of doom.

We were not frightened of the dark

Though experts thought the danger seemed so stark

They tried to tell us we were wrong

But we sang a different song

We were fooled for far too long.

My darling Seth, our sun has set

Ours was a love that I will not forget.

How I long for yesterday

Why'd you have to go away?

Miss you more than I can say.

Nights were calm, days were bright

Till we waged war with the light.

Now we wait in the gloom

With a growing sense of doom.