Catching up!

EEK--it's been six weeks since we've had a post on The Salt Water Chronicles--sorry about that! I don't know where to start (and it doesn't help that I'm distracted by "Monsters, Inc." on TV...)--with travels (past and upcoming), or all the books I've been reading, or the whole new world that's opened up because Stephen bought a color printer so we can now print photos and cards and make calendars and and and...

Maybe I'll start with books because the my main solace for the past couple of months has been reading. Reality is hard these days--intense work, unstable world--and the easiest vacation I can take is hiding for a little while in fictional worlds. I finished "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" in early October, and it absolutely lived up to its hype (see Gregory Macguire's review in the NY Times, which makes an unfortunate reference to the book as "Hogwarts for Grown-Ups," which I did not find to be the case--I'd say it's more like Jane Austen mixed with magical realism). I suggested that the bookclub I sort-of joined read the book, but people balked because it's too big to read on the subway...which is true, but I carried it back and forth every day anyway--it's *that good. (Karen, it's in the mail...)

My latest read was Gish Jen's "The Love Wife." I had read her previous collection of short stories called "Who's Irish?" and enjoyed her gentle and funny exploration of ethnicity and "American-ness"--she asks questions about what it means in today's American society to be an immigrant, or of mixed heritage. And even though I was born in New England and am only mixed insofar as one can consider Irish and Scottish heritage "mixed," I think the sense of loss of homeland that immigrants experience, and wondering how to fit in to groups of people who are not "like" you is something that many people understand. In "The Love Wife," Jen takes her exploration to the level of a mixed family and how the arrival of an unexpected distant relative from China reveals the fractures and fragility of a modern family. The most masterful aspect of the novel is the narrative structure--it reads almost like a transcript from a family therapy session (and in a sense, it is a musing on the dissolution of a family). The story discomfited me--I don't like to read about infidelity or the breaking of bonds between people who are close--but the subtle shading of the characters (all except Blondie, who is a bit unfarily treated like a stereotypical suburban Boston working mother concerned with doing good in the world but translates that concern poorly within her own family) kept me reading.

Now as a palatte cleanser I'm winging through Douglas Adams' "The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul." You can't really get more eclectic that that...

Okay--more thoughts soon. Sooner than six weeks from now, I promise.