The Convalescent, by Jessica Anthony

To be quite honest, my recent foray into the book publishing world via social networks (mainly Twitter) has left me disillusioned. Every book I pick up I seem to have heard 1001 things about, leaving my judgment altered. I enjoy a little glory every once in awhile: I like to be the one who finds the gem.

And finally, I have. The Convalescent, by Jessica Anthony.

When I scooped it up in Barnes & Noble (don’t judge me), I was drawn mostly to the cover. The book is a brilliant golden yellow. Its undersized jacket has the most arresting cover, simulating a woman of sorts within a web of multi-colored veins. The cover in itself was well worth the purchase, but it was admittedly quite deceiving.

What I would have guessed to be a twisted self-discovery story of some quirkily beautiful girl turned out to be the story (and history) of a deformed, diseased, and all together unpleasant little butcher named Mr. Rovar Pfliegman.

Rovar is a mute midget. He sells (stolen) meat from his inoperable school bus in the middle of a field in Virginia and falls victim to his own “benevolent erections.” His skin peels off and he can’t quite shake a hacking cough.

But despite these shortcomings, Rovar proves quite endearing through the skilled pen of Jessica Anthony. While he may defecate in a bucket, a portion of his bus is set aside for his “Reading Center.” Though he grunts instead of speaks, he eloquently writes the secondary narrative of The Convalescent as a letter to the object of his affection.

In fact, in regard to his love of reading and keen assessment of the absurd social world, Rovar is not dissimilar to another character with whom I’ve recently fallen in love: Madame Michel of The Elegance of the Hedgehog (though she is arguably lovelier and, frankly, cleaner).

Those around Rovar prove equally as intriguing. Marjorie taps his window each morning just to say hi and slices those who threaten Rovar. (She is a tall blade of grass.) Mrs. Kipner will never leave his bus. (She is a beetle who grew fat from eating a can of tomatoes and then grew too fat from said tomatoes. Thus, she is stuck in the can.)

Beneath this odd telling of Rovar's world, Ms. Anthony weaves an intricate history of Rovar's ancestors in eastern Europe. It may be more aptly described as a mythology, with its fantastical details, sordid twists, and stunning nature imagery. Case in point: Ms. Anthony manipulates the motif of the river so that it strays from the Disney/Pochahantas convention and rather becomes a powerful force of magical birth coupled with fantastical destruction.

She transforms the cliché image of the butterfly into something wholly new and imaginative, even stretching it to include the beetle, Mrs. Kipner. This butterly image, along with others such as that of the bird, is used to pull together otherwise unconnected events into a fate that is both firmly planted and frustratingly elusive.

Thus the teeniest things in this world (the butterfly, the bird and Rovar among them) get reinvented and exalted in Ms. Anthony’s work. She writes, “Only the gravitational force, by far the weakest force of all, guides the destinies of the universe” (116). Which is of course just an imaginative way of saying, “Good things come in small packages.”

In addition to this use of common motifs, she openly pulls from some of the most established traditions in literature (namely, Kafka). However, Ms. Anthony does so in a way that is not only skillfully executed but is also entirely her own.

Keep a lookout for this author… I’m expecting (and hoping for) further greatness from her in the near future.

A Mercy, Toni Morrison

It’s easy to come to these two conclusions: Toni Morrison hates men. Toni Morrison hates white people. If you read her work with a certain slant, you could probably even support these two rather simplistic hypotheses. (And if you fit into either category, you may even slump away from the text feeling impossibly but inexplicably guilt-ridden.)

But Morrison is simply not that simple. Her works, to be cliché, are like onions. Maybe the world’s biggest onion. Peel one layer away, and then there’s another. And another, and another, and another. Pretty soon you are cringing with every meticulously chosen dagger of a word, but you just can’t stop reading.

I’ll make a little confession before I go on: I listened to this book on CD during my brief stint as a commuting bookseller. But I don’t think it counts as cheating since Morrison’s voice is far more powerful and haunting than the mousy one in my head. Her voice rolls over what can better be described as lyrics than words, singing the parts that are sweet (few) and drumming in the parts that are harrowing (many).

I still contend that Paradise is Morrison's best, but A Mercy is a close contender. (NYT disagrees.) It is told in the Paradise-like fashion, with chapters alternating perspectives in a tightly wound story. Unlike most of her works, which take place in the twentieth century, this one takes place in the early colonial years. Morrison, I think, seems more suited to the 1960s than the 1690s.

But what is most impressive in her rendering of the 1690s is what she does not do. It is a historical era that could easily lend itself to stereotypes and caricatures, and Morrison deftly and masterfully avoids them. Lena, an unfree Native American, is tragically beautiful yet commits deplorable acts. Sorrow, a red-headed floozy, proves a dedicated mother. Jacob Vaark, the man in charge of them all, despises the slave-trade but benefits from it. Florens, the black slave-girl whose story brings them all together, has a dreaming soul and yet is capable of bloody and frivolous sins.

With this cast of complicated characters, Morrison creates a masterpiece and maintains her place as one of America's greatest writers. A Mercy will surely join the ranks of the revered (though probably hotly contested) contemporary classics.

The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls

(Sorry to start your Monday off with dense subjects but here goes...)

Usually the nonfiction table of a bookshop is like the negative charge to my positive charge. I steer clear without even glancing at the table.  I especially always wonder why people read those blood-curdling memoirs of people like Dave Pelzer (A Boy Called It, A Man Named Dave).  A chronology of an awful childhood? I'll take a raincheck... It's the stuff of nightmares, not of literature. 

But after reading Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle, I think I might be starting to understand why.

If it hadn’t been out since 2005, I would be trying to alert the masses about this one. Dreaming but drunk father.  Storybook move to New York.  Absurd success story. And on the flip side? Endless fires. Despicable adults. Pernicious predators. 

Jeannette Walls' chronicle of her family's peculiar life reverses what most see as an American journey of dreams, westward ho!  Normally, one begins in the claustrophobic East Coast city laden with expectations and suffocating normalcy. One then deserts all social norms for the promise and dream of the West, of the other.  

But the Walls family all but embodies that otherness of the West, and the reality is both gruesomely horrifying and grippingly beautiful.  Mr. Walls steals from his children while instilling them with endless imagination.  The children often go hungry yet grow up with every kid's fantasy of full freedom.  But such a life is not what Jeannette and her siblings crave, and each ends up in the city of all cities: New York. 

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Walls' lifestyle I somewhat glossed over is that they would hate the word you'd probably use to describe them: poor.  It implies there was no choice in their lifetstyle, and it implies there is pity to be poured upon them.  Au contraire. The Walls family, as is duly noted throughout the The Glass Castle, chooses this lifestyle, and the parents maintain it until their dying day.

So you may think I am now a convert to nonfiction, but to be honest, I don’t think that anything is going to live up to this little gem. The only two who are getting a chance are Julie Andrew (who I prefer to call Fraulein Maria) and Joan Didion (because I want to be her).  (Recommendations encouraged here.)

And my last concern? That after this fine work of art Jeannette Walls will have nothing else to write about. I guess we shall see with her upcoming fall release, Half Broke Horses. It's a "true life novel," whatever that means.