The Clareverse

On saturday night the sidekick and I went out in the sleety snowstorm to a nearby Hungarian restaurant for some weather-appropriate goulash. It was the first time we’d been to this restaurant, and we were pleasantly surprised by the cozy wood-lined interior and the wide selection of interesting alcohol available. The waitress brought me a free shot of “St Hubertus liqueur”, and the meal was off to a good start.

Until we got to the soup. The fish soup served with my entree was the most disgusting thing I’ve eaten in years. Imagine chopping a fish - skin still on - into a pot and boiling it for an hour, then serving it in a little cauldron with a ladle so that when you scoop yourself some you get a “body parts from the bottom” effect a la Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It was revolting, and I’m not easily revolted by unusual food.

At the end of the meal the owner came over to chat with us and give us more drinks, and when he found out that we hadn’t enjoyed the fish soup an awful silence fell. “I am very proud of my feesh soup.” he said. “Eet ees only feesh. Zere ees no teeckening agent, no flour, no cornstarch. Feesh only”. I believed him, and I don’t doubt it was an authentic Hungarian recipe for which I have not acquired the acquired taste. And I wondered, if there was nothing but fish in it, why it was red. Ugh. If the color was paprika, there certainly wasn’t enough to taste it.

I’d like to go back to the restaurant while it’s still cold enough for hearty food. It’s not their fault I don’t like authentic Hungarian fish soup, and I give them credit for not changing their cuisine to suit an Americanized palate. And the owner gave me free drinks until I had to beg him to stop, so I’m kindly disposed toward him.

Kim Edwards, 2005.

Let me start by saying I didn’t read this book, as such. I read the first 60 pages, then skimmed through reading 2 or 3 pages here and there, then I read the end. And all the time I was remarking aloud “This book sucks”.

From my survey of the book I got the idea that the author was saying: “Hey readers, children with Down Syndrome can grow into wonderful adults who are loving and brighten our lives, so don’t institutionalize them. Also, don’t fake your baby’s death and lie to your wife about it because deception is bad for marriages”. Sure, there’s a book in that, but I’d like to think it’s a more interesting book than the one I just read. So here are the reasons I hated The Memory Keeper’s Daughter:

1.) It’s boring. Everything you need to know about the book is written in the summary on the inside dust jacket. There is no mystery or suspense because the story starts by relating the event that sets the plot in motion, and then just follows through describing the repercussions, which are exactly what the dust jacket says they are. “Hey, will the family ever discover that their supposedly dead daughter/sister is alive and well? According to the dust jacket, yes, they will. I just have to read 200 more pages to get to that bit.”

2.) Writing style is impersonal and characters are one-dimensional and dull. All character emotions are stated by the third person omniscient narrator, and the characters have no particular personality features besides the one the plot requires them to have. Mother feels bleakness at death of infant girl. Father feels guilt. Nurse loves little girl she raises. Yawn. And all the characters seem to think in the same way and speak in the same voice.

3.) “Redemptive power of love”, my ass. The only person who needs to be redeemed - the father - died before the story was resolved. Nobody else did anything wrong that necessitated redeeming. Did the nurse need to be redeemed from her single childlessness? Did the mother need to be redeemed from years of grief? Maybe in the “to obtain release from” sense but not in the “to make amends for” sense.

I think the book would have been more entertaining if it had started in the middle of the story, say with the somewhat compelling scene of the mother finding the box of photos of girls, and then focused on her trying to figure out what had happened and why. The author could have used conversations or flashbacks to fill in what happened at the baby’s birth. And perhaps the author could have picked one character to get inside and focused on the story from his/her point of view, instead of being so detached with all of them.

4.) The title. The [noun] [verber's] [relative] pattern is so two years ago, e.g. The Time Traveller’s Wife, The Bonesetter’s Daughter. It reads like the publisher came up with something trendy to title the book, not like it grew naturally out of how the author was thinking about the story. If it had been published during the [verbing] [noun] title trend it would have been called ‘Keeping Memory’, or ‘Keeping Joy’ and the missing daughter would be named Joy. Also, the title evokes a magical realism which is totally lacking in the book, so I was mislead and pissed off.

And to show that it’s not just because I hate stories about the magical power of children to enrich our lives, here are some books with themes similar to The Memory Keepers Daughter that I enjoyed quite a bit:

• Our love for children heals us and engages us with the world: Silas Marner.
• Disavowal of a child and ensuing years of deception alienate a husband and wife: Silas Marner again.
• Woman comes to terms with death of infant and rebuilds her life: Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver
• Death of infant erodes core of family: Cat’s Eye, Margaret Atwood. I think that’s the one - I’m thinking of the book where the mother has a miscarriage and then becomes obsessed with her parakeet. It was tragic, creepy, and interesting.

In summary, skip The Memory Keeper’s Daughter and read Silas Marner, which is actually about the redemptive power of parental love and is happy and sweet.

I just got back from a trip to Costco, and I am sad. Not really sad, just “one of my first world luxuries is now more difficult to acquire” sad.

Costco is no longer carrying any kind of Gruyère. Not the cave-aged Emmi, which was the real stuff, or the Comte Jura fake stuff, which was so cheap I could shred it by the quarter-pound into fritattas or fondue and leave the rest of it sitting in a cheese dome on the countertop, where it would usually last almost a week before we munched it all. It was great having chunks of such tasty dairy goodness to come home to.

Sigh. The prospect of a life without ten-dollar-a-pound Gruyère is bleak and flavorless. The knowledge that Costco now sells stroopwafels is little consolation. Woe.

Green County, WI. Near Monroe.

This is a quick sketchy painting I did as a small gift. It took about 2 hours; the original is 5×7.

The scene is a photo taken on a road trip to Little Switzerland in Green County, Wisconsin. I love the Wisconsin countryside, with the rolling glacial hills, cornfields, and red barns. It’s the landscape I grew up in; it just seems like the right way for the world to look.

Here’s my photos of Wisconsin farms: “wisconsin farm” tag on Flickr.

It’s been cold around here lately. If you live in the midwest, you know which cold I’m talking about. The temperatures have been in the single digits for days, and my normally cold but usable downstairs bathroom became cold and unusable when a PVC waste pipe froze solid.

I noticed the problem when the toilet didn’t flush, plunging didn’t help, and the water level began creeping to the rim of the bowl. Always a scary moment, but I kept my wits about me and thought quickly: the rubbermaid trash can! I scooped uriney water out of the toilet and bailed it into the bathtub. Go Clare!

Unfortunately the bathtub drain was also blocked with ice, which left me with both a toilet and a bathtub full of diluted urine-water. Curses! Inevitably, a cat fell into the pee-filled bathtub.

My father-in-law brought over a propane heater and set it up in the crawlspace. It burned all evening but nothing melted. First round to the pipe.

Round two: the next day, I put on 5 layers of clothes and went down into the crawlspace to take the fight to the pipe. I found a foot-long icicle of frozen toilet water dripping from the pipe. Nice. I chipped away most of the peecicle and set up the propane heater, then stripped the insulation off the pipes and piled it up around the edges of the crawlspace to make the space more airtight and trap the heat.

Two hours later, the bathtub and toilet had both drained. I spent an hour boiling big pots of water on the stove and pouring them down the drain to make sure it was clear. Inevitably, I spilled boiling water on my hand.

So I sustained losses of a parboiled hand and a smelly cat, but I persevered. Pipes are clear and water is flowing. Victory!

I’ve been tagged by Sara. Here goes…

1. My hair is not naturally wavy, or at least not genetically wavy. It was straight up until 1989, when I got a perm (1989 was a year of particularly big hair) and ever since then, it’s been wavy. A hairdresser once told me that your hair’s straightness or curliness depends on the shape of the holes it grows out of, and that the chemicals in perms can change the shape of those holes permanently. Not very scientific, but it’s the best explanation I’ve heard.
2. I’m allergic to champagne. Also Zima, wine coolers, and any other bubbly alcoholic beverage, but since I don’t drink those anyway it’s only the champagne problem that affects me.
3. I have an orange belt in tae kwon do, the result of a few classes I took when I was 13 or 14.
4. After college I had a job dressing mannequins at a department store in what claims to be America’s second-oldest mall. It was kind of a dump at the time, and probably hasn’t improved much since. The job caused lots of dreams about naked dismembered limbs and torsos.
5. When I was a kid I accidentally stepped on my brother’s pet duckling and killed it. It was pretty awful.

I tag Dave.