"She was hungry for it, she would stuff the world whole into her mouth and bite down." - Nick Derringer, Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussmann
It has been a crazy month since my last post.
And boy, do I wish I had a zinger to bring to you to make up for it. Alas, my radio silence was barely worth it, for today's entry into this scrapbook of memories and memoirs is a handful of sentences about a book I did not enjoy.
And boy, do I wish I had a zinger to bring to you to make up for it. Alas, my radio silence was barely worth it, for today's entry into this scrapbook of memories and memoirs is a handful of sentences about a book I did not enjoy.
I have this weird compulsion, you see. If I start a book, I have to finish it. I force myself to do so, and quite often I am left even less satisfied than expected at its end. There is no relief, there is only the annoying ache of wondering if I could have spent those hours reading a book that entertained me (or at least made me think).
Combine that with the point of this blog, and you may as well have strapped the book to my ankle. Lightest ball and chain ever.
Upon glimpsing the cover, I'll admit, I was intrigued. I was hoping it would be something kind of Gatsby-esque (The Great Gatsby being one of my favourite books), seemingly set in the same time frame. Centred around a young woman and her cousin, and the course their lives took after marriage, Tigers in Red Weather tells of summertimes in Connecticut: heat, boredom, and a dash of scandal.
I only got the boredom.
The book was confusingly written, from four points of view, and flickered back and forth between present day and the past without actually giving you a date or timeline of any sort. I was lost quickly - despite that I barely put it down. I really couldn't read it fast enough... so that it would be over sooner.
There was one sole passage in the entire book that I liked, and that I linked to my mother. Just one. I had little patience for any of the characters involved, and frankly couldn't have cared less whether they cheated on each other or murdered their hired help or drank themselves to death. (Clarification: None of these parts of the book relate to Mom. Yikes.)
Daisy, Nick's daughter, catches her mother and aunt Helena outside late one night: "[She] had been holding her breath so long she thought her rib cage might shatter. But she was mesmerized. It was as if her mother and aunt had been snatched away by goblins and replaced with fairies of some sort. They looked so beautiful to her, and so different, the movement of their heads and their hands in the low light throwing graceful, arching shadows across the wooden porch. They could have said anything, and she would have loved them. Just the lilt of their voices, the smell of their mingling perfume brushing the air, was like a love song. She wanted to be with them out there on the porch, under the too-bright moon, crushing ice and letting a strap slide off her shoulder. She wanted to be part of that enchanted world they seemed to have made with hurricane lamps and music and laughter."
I used to watch my mother at parties. She moved so gracefully through rooms, in a swish of a shoulder-padded dress and a whiff of perfume (Heaven by Gap, the same her mother wore during the last years of her life). She was transformed into a completely different woman than the one I knew, and I loved that. I felt like I, too, could be funny and beautiful and full of joie de vivre if I put on a patterned frock and some blush. Mom was the life of the party when she was younger, sparkling more than the glass of wine in her delicate hands. Her laugh was infectious; I look at pictures of myself laughing and I swear the slight glint of mischief in my eyes is the same as that of my mother. So I understand young Daisy's admiration and even longing for that world.
At a certain point, though, you get older and realize that there were lots of things you miss amidst the haze of celebration. The looks exchanged, the cutting remarks, the washing-up alone in the kitchen. These flashes of life were more Grant Wood than Norman Rockwell, more banal in their reality than quaint and emotionally rich. And to be honest, so was this book.
Combine that with the point of this blog, and you may as well have strapped the book to my ankle. Lightest ball and chain ever.
Upon glimpsing the cover, I'll admit, I was intrigued. I was hoping it would be something kind of Gatsby-esque (The Great Gatsby being one of my favourite books), seemingly set in the same time frame. Centred around a young woman and her cousin, and the course their lives took after marriage, Tigers in Red Weather tells of summertimes in Connecticut: heat, boredom, and a dash of scandal.
I only got the boredom.
The book was confusingly written, from four points of view, and flickered back and forth between present day and the past without actually giving you a date or timeline of any sort. I was lost quickly - despite that I barely put it down. I really couldn't read it fast enough... so that it would be over sooner.
There was one sole passage in the entire book that I liked, and that I linked to my mother. Just one. I had little patience for any of the characters involved, and frankly couldn't have cared less whether they cheated on each other or murdered their hired help or drank themselves to death. (Clarification: None of these parts of the book relate to Mom. Yikes.)
Daisy, Nick's daughter, catches her mother and aunt Helena outside late one night: "[She] had been holding her breath so long she thought her rib cage might shatter. But she was mesmerized. It was as if her mother and aunt had been snatched away by goblins and replaced with fairies of some sort. They looked so beautiful to her, and so different, the movement of their heads and their hands in the low light throwing graceful, arching shadows across the wooden porch. They could have said anything, and she would have loved them. Just the lilt of their voices, the smell of their mingling perfume brushing the air, was like a love song. She wanted to be with them out there on the porch, under the too-bright moon, crushing ice and letting a strap slide off her shoulder. She wanted to be part of that enchanted world they seemed to have made with hurricane lamps and music and laughter."
I used to watch my mother at parties. She moved so gracefully through rooms, in a swish of a shoulder-padded dress and a whiff of perfume (Heaven by Gap, the same her mother wore during the last years of her life). She was transformed into a completely different woman than the one I knew, and I loved that. I felt like I, too, could be funny and beautiful and full of joie de vivre if I put on a patterned frock and some blush. Mom was the life of the party when she was younger, sparkling more than the glass of wine in her delicate hands. Her laugh was infectious; I look at pictures of myself laughing and I swear the slight glint of mischief in my eyes is the same as that of my mother. So I understand young Daisy's admiration and even longing for that world.
At a certain point, though, you get older and realize that there were lots of things you miss amidst the haze of celebration. The looks exchanged, the cutting remarks, the washing-up alone in the kitchen. These flashes of life were more Grant Wood than Norman Rockwell, more banal in their reality than quaint and emotionally rich. And to be honest, so was this book.
No, everything was new now, just waiting to be discovered.
Agreed; my mind is now fresh to read something else.