Jhumpa Lahiri

Several years ago, I came across an instrument in Hanoi that sounded amazingly like an blues guitar. It had only one string, but it could produce these great slides and bends—fascinating. But after a few weeks of hearing the same slides and bends on the same single string, I began to wonder if maybe there was a reason traditional Vietnamese music hasn’t translated well.

Jhumpa Lahiri is in danger of becoming a very fine one-string guitar.

Interpreter of Maladies is a fine story. I could imagine reading it several more times.

By the time I finished the collection by the same name, I felt as though I had. No, on second thought, that’s an overstatement. Her stories aren’t nearly as redundant as those of Thom Jones, and even Amy Hempel and Don Delillo recycle.

Maybe the problem is that some authors start writing and receiving praise while they’re too young. Their world begins to shrink to fit the praise of their first fans, and they lose appreciation for the characters and themes they haven’t already written.

Interpreter is a collection of traditionally-constructed stories, all set at a slow pace and minor key. “This Blessed House” injects some mild humor in relationships, but the collection seems generally designed for readers who think NPR is a little too light-hearted.

The Namesake develops the male-Indian-immigrant character (there is really only one in her work, although he/it is depicted by a father and a son). Evidently Indian emotions range from bored to mildly depressed, fairly depressed, lonely, alone, discontent, sad, discouraged, bland, calm, passive, pensive, and not really upset. The father’s odyssey involves to America for grad school, settling down, and making occasional trips back to India. The son’s adventures take him from the New England lower-middle-class suburbs all the way to New England upper-middle-class lakesides. His relationships include traditional Indian and traditional yuppie. (I know the word’s dated, but the relationships feel that way, too.) I haven’t seen the movie, but it’s not hard to imagine it being an easy sell to directors who like long close-ups of big-eyed people with pretty skin.

The stories show promise; so far, though, the promise isn’t fulfilled.

David Eggers

Remember that famous painting, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”? It’s a painting of a pipe, but the title says that’s it’s not a pipe. And it’s not a pipe, it’s a painting. But it’s a painting of a pipe. Get it?

Now, imagine that joke being played out for about 400 pages, and you’ll be prepared for David Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. It’s a memoir, written as a novel, that admits that it’s a memoir, which is supposed to be honest, being written as a novel, which is supposed to be contrived, but it admits that it knows its own joke, and… and soon you’re in the land of, “I know you know that I know that you know that I know that…”

The introduction to the book is great. Eggers explains his aim, explains his quandary, has a good laugh at himself and at us, and with us, for buying the book, and all is well.

Then he launches into his story, of having his parents die, being left in charge of his young brother, and proceeding to demonstrate his freethinking independence by doing things that would be universally approved as cool by his upper-middle-class white suburban twenty-something demographic.

I might be willing to read something else he wrote. He’d probably be able to turn out some clever essays, and maybe even a novel. But I won’t read another of his memoirs.

Anne Lamotte

Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamotte’s essays on her spiritual journey, is proof that while it is always dangerous to base your concept of God on your perception of your earthly father, this can be especially unfortunate if your earthly father wants to be Jerry Garcia.

The introductory chapters are the best: her early life in white, affluent hippieville; her full immersion into the stream of that 60s-70s cult known as “counterculture”; and her apparently sincere conversion to Christianity.

After that, though, you have to wonder whether the liberal counterculture, like the sun, can blind you to reality if you stare at it too long. Her San Francisco-centric (San Francentric?) world contains only women who are “objectively” beautiful, only good people who think everyone should be tolerated except for people who don’t believe in tolerance, and that rules of tolerance apply to sexual activity but not to animal training techniques.

I liked parts of it. She’s cute. Her stories are cute.

But maybe that’s the problem: it’s hard for me to stir up respect for 40-something women who try to be cute.

And that’s the underlying problem with her portrayal of God. The Bible describes God as a lot of things, but “cute” is never one of them.

After all, is salvation no more than a positive self image? Is living in truth no more than acting to increase the general flow of warm feelings among friends? Did Jesus undergo the passion just so women with fuzzy hair can sing, “I Feel Pretty,” and mean it?

It’s probably not wrong to imagine God with shaggy hair, John Lennon glasses, a tie-dyed T-shirt, and love beads. And it’s definitely not wrong to see beauty in people and situations that most people overlook.

But it’s wrong to do so at the cost of the power and the glory.

Helen Fielding

Regardless of how funny an author is, her ability to make a reader laugh out loud may depend more on the reader’s situation than on the author’s sense of humor. Keep that in mind as I admit that I laughed out loud often while reading Bridget Jones’ Diary.

I can’t imagine myself ever picking it up in an American bookstore, but I happened to find it in the closet of a house I was staying in while suicide bombers and rebels tore up the streets around my Central Asian city. I thought Helen Fielding was hilarious.

Even in that situation, Bridget Jones: the edge of reason didn’t seem as funny. Many jokes were recycled, and the author seemed to equate preachy characters with redeemed characters, but it wasn’t bad.

If I’m in a similar situation, I hope I can find another one of her books around. But I still can’t see myself reading one in an American suburb.

Anne Tyler

A lot of really good people like Anne Tyler. The Accidental Tourist didn’t show me why, but maybe I’m not part of that really good people demographic.

I remember a lot of scenes from it. A lot of clever things, like the whole idea of a travel writer for people who hate traveling, and looking for American breakfasts in Paris, and very clever dialogs.

But about 100 pages into it, I was starting to feel as drab as the protagonist, and he wasn’t sufficiently redeemed by the end to bring me up with him. I put the book back on the shelf feeling more grey and wrinkled than when I began.

Alice McDermott

Charming Billy beat A Man in Full for the National Book Award, so I read Billy out of indignation. I’m happy to say that, by half-way through the introductory funeral meal, McDermott had won me over.

Not that I think it’s better than A Man in Full, but it’s beautifully written, and it wrestles gently with themes of faith and hope and reality in a way that leaves you feeling like you’ve met some wonderful, real, sad people.

Toni Morrison

In The Bluest Eye, a young girl goes crazy after being raped by her father. In Beloved, an escaped slave kills her daughter and then wrestles with the ghost.

So they aren’t books for teaching sixth-graders about symbolism and poetic language.

But they are beautiful, and they show truth, and redemption rings through them like a fundamental tone.

Playing in the Dark, a collection of essays on literary criticism, is the only book I’ve read by her that didn’t touch me. And I’ll take the blame: I haven’t read Edgar Allen Poe enough to appreciate her criticism.

But her novels grab and compel. I approach them with caution, knowing they will leave me changed.

For the record, I appreciated the movie, Beloved, but for very different reasons than I appreciated the book. I’m not sure if there’s a correlation between liking one and liking the other.

Susan Howatch

Glittering Images is a well-crafted psychological intrigue of an Anglican cleric sent to spy uncover the secret life of a bishop. Howatch does an excellent job analyzing situations from psychological and spiritual perspectives, the latter of these adding a depth that was missing from counseling-as-mystery novels by non-believers. Best of all, Howatch is a believer who seems unthreatened by non-glossy portrayals of believers dealing with problems.

Glamorous Powers starts promisingly enough: a sixty-year-old psychic Anglican priest goes through self-discovery and falls in love with a woman half his age. Unfortunately, it’s not as exciting as it sounds. There are a few good insights, but eventually it becomes clear that therapy does not equal plot. Surprisingly, considering how carefully Howatch observes her characters’ psychology, at several points they commit shockingly uncharacteristic actions without a second thought.

Glamorous Powers burned me, not only on Howatch, but on the fiction-therapy genre.

Nick Hornby

High Fidelity and About a Boy are both funny movies. But as books, they’re hilarious. How to Be Good and A Long Way Down both made me smile, but they didn’t measure up.
The bottom line is that Nick Hornby is a very funny writer. He can set up great scenes, and he can build sympathy for unlikable losers. (Almost always. In A Long Way Down, I didn’t really care if a couple of them made it out of the suicide pact alive.)
When he stays on the funny stuff, he’s great.
But many of his characters eventually stiffen into props for “the lesson” that makes everyone happier and better. When it comes to waxing philosophical… well, Nick Hornby is a very funny man. It’s hard to imagine a sunnier stroll to nihilism.
Think of his books as longer, better-scripted episodes of Friends or Cheers. Laugh with them, but don’t expect to have them provide life’s answers.
If you’d like a sample of his wit without the underlying despair, check out 31 Songs. Hornby’s a good novelist, but he’s an excellent pop music reviewer, even if he doesn’t appreciate U2 as much as he should.

Bram Stroker

OK, I’ll say it: Dracula doesn’t live up to the hype.

After several hundred movie and TV spin-offs, how could it?

But here’s what it does do: It’s a great marriage-builder book! Seriously, if I were a publisher, I’d get rights to change the title to “How to protect your spouse and yourself from infidelity”, and send out a new edition. The types and symbols alone are worth reading the book!