Weekly Book Watch: Madame Bovary

This week I'm reading Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert. (Obviously I'm reading a translation. The only French I know includes such essential terms as crepe suzette, Jacques Cousteau and French fries.)

I'm not quite at the halfway point. Emma Bovary hasn't started any of her shenanigans just yet. She's just had a baby, though (not due to shenanigans, but rather, with her husband, the longsuffering and rather clueless Charles). For those of you who know me, I'm sure you can guess that I expect to find it difficult to sympathize with any of Emma's struggles. Well, not with her struggles, exactly (the boredom and frustration of a bad marriage and a husband who doesn't know you from Adam) ... with the solutions to her struggles that I already know are coming. For the past decade or more, I've had a lot of trouble relating to main characters who decide that infidelity is a solution to marital issues. Can't fault me for that, I suppose, but I find I sometimes dig in my heels about such characters being portrayed sympathetically. Any book or movie that is trying to coax us into thinking, "Well, the poor thing had no choice -- look how unhappy he/she was!" or "Can you blame him? Look at what a bitch his wife was!" really irks me.

I suppose I just don't go in for situational ethics in any form, not even in my literature and cinema.

Don't get me wrong: I've written characters with plenty of sins, some of which are meant to be sympathetic. But, I think I draw the line when a book or movie portrays evil as good and good as evil. So, I can identify with a character who is sinning like crazy ... as long as there is a struggle with those sins. Heck, as long as the character is still calling them sins.

But once the character gives up and starts to justify his or her sinful actions as inevitable or as mere "mistakes," then I'm outta there, especially when those sinful actions involve betrayal, lying and adultery.

With Emma Bovary, I have yet to see what her own feelings about her upcoming actions will be. And that will largely determine my overall reaction to this classic.

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Update on The Memory Keeper's Daughter: I felt this book had a lot of potential, and individual scenes often lived up to that potential. But the way Edwards handled the broad scope of the novel (hopping years ahead every few chapters, skipping huge chunks of time as if we wouldn't notice or be curious about them) didn't work well for me. And, without giving away the ending, let's just say I was disappointed in it. It felt contrived and a little too ... tidy. The tone of most of the novel was melancholy and sad; the change in tone at the end jarred me into thinking this wasn't even the same story.

All in all: Good plot idea, lovely storytelling in general, but the execution felt choppy and insincere in spots. Sometimes -- at crucial moments -- people did things I didn't expect or see coming. And not because Edwards is good at plot twists, but because they suddenly did things I hadn't seen in their personalities before that point. Too many times I thought, "Hey, he [or she] would never do something like that!"

I'll give it three stars out of five: * * *

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Weekly Book Watch: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

I'm currently reading The Memory Keeper's Daughter, by Kim Edwards. I'm going through a rash of "current" books, mostly feeling my way around by what sounds interesting or looks slightly out of the ordinary. (Suddenly I see why those one-minute book blurbs we learn how to write are so important.) After having just finished reading Water for Elephants (which I loved) and The Dante Club (which I also loved), this book is so much slower in pace and tone that I'm having trouble adjusting and allowing it to be what it is without comparing it to those other two bestsellers.

It is, though, a book that breaks so many of the current "rules" of writing fiction: There isn't all that much dialogue, and it all seems so very polished and smooth. There is a ton of slow, deliberate description (compared to so many sparsely written novels nowadays). The book starts semi-fast (having read Noah Lukeman's The First Five Pages, I can't say it starts as fast as he recommends, which I feel tries to put everyone in a "thriller" box anyway), but then slows down its pace and seems to stay there.

I'm enjoying where the book seems to be taking the reader, although I find it jolting to find she jumps ahead years at a time from one chapter to another. This makes me constantly reassess where we will end up at the end of her story. And for now, that kind of plot-driven curiosity has been enough to keep me engaged in the story.

Next will probably be Stephenie Meyers's Twilight (first in her triology of YA vampire books—I have the other two waiting in the wings). I have most of Anne Rice's vampire books, and I read Bram Stoker's original decades ago (and reread it in recent years), so I think reading this popular vampire series right around Halloween ought to be fun. My daughter is already finished with the first two books (no small feat considering how fast she read them!), and we're awaiting the Amazon delivery on the third volume tomorrow! (She and I are trying to keep busy with our reading while we both await the publication of Libba Bray's third volume in her own YA trilogy in December.)

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Resurrecting the Past

It's time to resurrect the ol' Blogspot blog, and get it back on track as a place for writing- and publishing-related posts. The "other blog" (which shall remain nameless) will stick to more family-oriented and personal posts. Right now, it seems my entire life is related to publishing in one way or another:

• I've restarted my Journeyman course with the Christian Writers Guild. (In fact, I'm sitting here with the current lesson open and half-finished.)

• I've started a new semester as a writing coach for WriteAtHome, an online writing course for homeschoolers. I'm grading papers for 8th grade composition again, which I enjoyed last term. I'm personally maxed out at a dozen students, but I have a friend who's got about three times that many. Apparently she dislikes the word "hobbies."

• Although I've put freelance projects on hold during September, I'm theoretically doing freelance copy editing*, proofreading, and typesetting. I may have to scale some of this back. The spouse is slightly concerned about something called a "tax bracket." I secretly wonder if it's like a parenthesis or brace, but I also secretly have a feeling I am way off.

• I am scrambling to finish the first novel in a cozy mystery series in time for a contest deadline in early October. (This explains putting the freelance projects on hold this month.) It has been slow going during this first half of the month. Which can probably be explained partly by this:

• I am putting in eight days in-house at my previous job with my denominational publishing office, a job I have now started with them four times in two decades. This time I am merely filling in a few days this month while they find someone willing to come in on a more semi-permanent basis. As for me, I have too many self-induced projects to consider going back to the job. Plus, once I factor in the huge commute, nonprofit pay scale, and price of gasoline for aforementioned huge commute, I clear less than five dollars per hour. I mean, I love these people, but not THAT much.



• Due to a furniture gift from my mother of a comfy wing chair recliner, a Levenger lap desk I bought on sale, a book light I got for free, and several trips to Amazon and Barnes & Noble, I am finding time each day to read. I've recently finished Cold Mountain, The Dante Club, A Great and Terrible Beauty, and am currently reading Rebel Angels and Lord John & the Brotherhood of the Blade. And, waiting in the wings are The Glass Castle, The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Water for Elephants, Madame Bovary, and too many other books to mention. So many books, so little time. It's been enriching and fulfilling to set aside time each evening to put my feet up and read how others have accomplished the publishing tasks I am yet trying to master.



All of these endeavors take up the brunt of my brain space each day. And, they are certainly more than the sum of their parts, for they've made my current lifestyle and routine the kind of thing I've been striving for my whole adult life. I get out of bed each morning eager to start my day (well, except for those eight days this month I have to get up and commute to the office -- that's still a buzz-killer). Who even knew such a thing was possible?


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*I really wish they'd officially make this one word, like "proofreading" and "typesetting." I find it perversely ironic that copy editors haven't stormed the lexicographical castle over this yet. If somebody brings the torches, I'll bring the pitchforks.