brainsplotch

After reading Gwendoline Riley's The Palm House and finishing it on May 6, I returned to Riley in the final week of last month and finished her book My Phantoms on June 30. As much as I enjoyed The Palm House , I liked My Phantoms even more. It's hard to neatly describe why I find Riley's books so enjoyable and compulsively readable. There is very little action or plot twists--not that any of that matters much to me. It comes down to the sharply drawn characters and Riley's ability to notice and artfully describe the small details of ordinary life. My Phantoms is narrated by Bridget "Bridge" Grant, a 40-something academic living in London with her partner, John. Bridget's parents, Lee and Helen (aka "Hen") divorced when Bridget was two years old. Bridget has an older sister, Michelle. Early in the book, Bridget describes her and Michelle's awkward court-mandated visits with her father. Lee frequently picks on and bullies the gir...

We just got back to our motel after watching a mid-week matinee of the movie Disclosure Day at the Harbor Springs Lyric Theater. It felt fun to be the youngest people at the theater, though the ticket seller/concession woman asked us if we wanted adult OR senior tickets, so maybe we don't look as young and vivacious as I may have felt. We went to the movie--while on vacation--because the weather forecast called for lousy weather, so I felt vindicated with our decision when we stepped out of the theater at 7 PM to see it slate grey and pouring. As for our motel, the OTIS. I can't decide if referring to it as merely a "motel" is selling it short. It's arranged like a motel in that it's all on one level and the doors of the units open to the outside. However, it has a stylishly decorated common area with a bar, restaurant, cafe offering various espresso drinks, and mid-century modern decor. Jenna Bush-Hager stayed here on a book tour, so that has to lend it som...

I don't have another book to write about...yet, so allow me to discuss a movie I watched last night, Mile End Kicks . The year is 2011 and the setting is the hip Mile End area of Montreal, which I must admit I knew nothing about until recently. Nor did I know that, at this time, Montreal had a thriving indie rock scene. (And I call myself a music fan?). 22-year-old music critic Grace (played wonderfully by Barbie Ferrera, formerly of Euphoria ) leaves her job at Toronto's fictional Merch magazine for Montreal, where she plans on writing a book about Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill in the 33 1/3 book series. Grace arrives at her rented room (acquired through Craigslist) only to hear her new housemates having loud sex in the other room. Shortly afterwards, a slightly embarrassed Madeleine and her decidedly less embarrassed boyfriend (and third housemate) Hugo introduce themselves. Both are native French speaking Quebecois. Madeleine is friendly, but Hugo ...

Here is another "verbal vomit book review," this time for The Book of Mother by Violaine Huisman. Though I didn't LOVE The Monuments of Paris , I liked it enough that I thought I should definitely go back in time and read Huisman's first book in her series of books exploring her family (she has a second book, The Rose Desert , that I'm not sure has been translated to English. I can guarantee you my French is way way way too rusty and awful to read it in French). So let me dig right in. Violaine's mother Catherine Cremnitz was a complicated and mercurial woman. Born in humble circumstances, dealt with plenty of shit as a girl and young woman (I'll force you to read the book to find out), and had one brief and unsuccessful marriage before being almost literally swept off her feet by Violaine's father, (named "Antoine" in the book, but actually Denis Huisman).  The first third of the book is Violaine describing life with her mother....

I was a bit worried that my "hey, that book that crossed my desk looks interesting, I will read it" strategy would finally fail when I was about halfway through The Monuments of Paris by Violaine Huisman. Huisman's book is a semi-fictional exploration of her flamboyant father, Denis Huisman, and her grandfather, Georges Huisman. I wasn't finding her family nearly interesting enough to hold my attention despite all the book's Parisian references. But then the focus switched to Violaine's grandfather and I was all in. The narrative picked up speed, as Violaine told the story of Georges' exile and underground existence during World War II.  Georges Huisman came from humble background and rose to prominence in France's Department of Fine Arts prior to the war (and founder of the Cannes Film Festival). But as a Jew, he was forced to flee the country in a saga that could have come straight out of the movie Casablanca . But that's not all: he...

My strategy and/or streak (of reading books that pass my desk and look promising) continues to pay dividends. I have to admit that the striking cover shot of two long and shapely legs is what initially grabbed me. The cover of Gwendoline Riley's The Palm House would lead one to believe the novel is a steamy erotic potboiler. As it turns out, there is little sex in the book and what sex there is decidedly unglamorous. The Palm House is centered on 40-something Laura Miller, a magazine editor trying to make it in contemporary London. Along the way, we meet various people in her orbit, most notably: Edmund, a 50-something friend and co-worker; Laura's somewhat prickly mother; and Lawrence Wells, an eccentric stage actor with whom Laura has a brief fling, (though it doesn't seem she enjoys any of it).  In the most compelling section of the novel, we flash back to a teenage Laura living near Liverpool. She develops an infatuation with a laddish stand-up comedian f...