restingmotion

A New Christening Outfit from Old Lace

I've spent the better part of 2019 so far playing with lace, lace and fabric.  I was making a christening gown for a little girl, using one of her great-grandmother's old cocktail dresses.  Although the skirt was full, Great-grandmother had a tiny waist and there were many seams and darts, seams and darts sewn through many layers of lace and fabric and tulle.

The first order of business was to deconstruct the original dress.  The lace was delicate and fragile, disintegrating in places. I am sorry I didn't take any pictures of the full dress, but it was strapless with a full skirt.  There had obviously been a pink ribbon at one time, threads remained where it had been tacked in place, and several areas of the lace had pink stains.

Once the fabric was in pieces, repairs were made, where possible, by appliqué and embroidery, layering lace motifs and creating new lace chains as needed.  This was the longest part of the job, but in many ways the most enjoyable.  

A week before the baptism, which was this past Saturday, I was given another dress.  The dress was mostly tulle, but there was a panel of embroidered organdy on the front of the dress. Unfortunately the organdy was very white, and the original lace was off-white with a yellowish-green cast.  The two did not look good together and I could not quite figure out how to combine them in one dress in a way that would satisfy me.  I decided to keep the dress out of the original lace, and use the organdy as a coat.   I also decided to use a third shade of white, an off-white silk satin organza which was sitting in my stash, as a lining for both pieces.

The organza was a remnant from Miriam's wedding, and as I hadn't yet used it for anything, I decided that it had been waiting for just this occasion.   It was off-white, with a beige-cast, more yellow than the white organdy, but not as yellow as the lace, although you can't quite tell that in the photo above, taken late in the evening under artificial light, before the dress was finished.  The firm hand of the satin organza also provided stability and protection for the lace.

Both garments were finished with a simple bias binding at the neck.  The dress was tied at the back neck with a ribbon, but I could not find a ribbon to that worked with the hybrid color of the coat, at least not on short notice. The coat remained open.

The coat was made in a simple, sacque shape, and was really the simplest part of the outfit since no great efforts were required to preserve the fabric.

But the two garments worked together, and better yet, looked adorable on Annalyse.  

 

(all photos are mine except for the last photo, from the baptism.  This photo was used with permission of Annalyse's grandmother)

The Week in Review

The first full week of 2019 has come to a close, and already I am not managing to maintain a schedule.  But are schedules necessary?  or are they artificial constructs?  

Actually, if this first week is any indication, 2019 is off to a good start. A week ago Sunday I had a lovely lunch with my step-daughter, chatting and laughing, regaled with tales of her recent trip to California, and getting caught up on visits with her childhood and college friends.   Lunch was at one of my favorite spots in Knoxville, a place I got to eat twice this week, and it was half-way from my house to the UT campus, where I had a concert on Sunday afternoon.  

 

In fact, I was so enjoying our lunch and the conversations that I was late to the concert, late enough to miss the first piece, but I did make it in time to hear Mozart's Oboe Quartet in F Major (which was fabulous, by the way).  This was followed by a Schubert Octet, also beautifully performed, but long.  I must admit I grew restless and slipped out the door early.  This had nothing to do with the concert and everything to do with me, a result of over scheduling and a yearning to be outside.  Luckily, being late to begin with, I was near the door, making it easy to slip out again about 3/4 of the way through the piece.  I spent the remainder of the afternoon planting bulbs, the 400 bulbs I reported planting previously, before impending darkness and the increasing cold drove me inside.  Mozart was bouncing around my head the entire time I was planting, and afterwards, when I lay on the floor with my feet up on the sofa, allowing my back some time to recover.

 

There was more bulb planting over the next four days, another 350 bulbs or so, although planting smaller numbers per day was easier on my back. It all seems a little excessive, no?  Well yes.  I had ordered the bulbs early, almost as soon as the catalogs were available, because I knew some of the bulbs would sell out, ordered the bulbs when I still thought I would be living in my house, before I knew the yard would be torn up, before I knew so many things.  Now the whole order seems excessive, and perhaps foolish, but it is too late for regrets.    Sometimes all one can do is move forward;  sometimes one must just plunge one's hands in the dirt and hope for the best.

Tuesday I went to Knoxville's new Change Center; a trip which filled me with inspiration and hope.  And yet, at the same time, my head was also filled with questions.  I am proud to be a member of a city that is putting such effort into helping at risk youth and yet I also wonder how I can do more, partly just in volunteering to help on an individual basis, but also what role I can play in bridging the divides in this city that also often seems like two cities, the more affluent, educated,  western city, and the less affluent, at risk, eastern city.  It is not a situation that is unique to this city; in many ways we are a microcosm of the country, but that does not make the divide any less shocking, or the need any less crucial. We inhabitants of the western city tell ourselves it is not about race, but of course it is and it isn't.  Even more than about race it is about class, but class is the thing we hate talking about more than we hate talking about race.  Yet neither of those words is enough to contain the problem, they each represent a narrowing and a labeling, and externalizing, if you will. And externalizing and labeling are both forms of avoidance.  Avoidance is key.  Increasingly I think the issue is one of the walls we build and the bubbles in which we enfold ourselves, ostensibly in the name of protection. We console ourselves with labels, just as we console ourselves with our complacency, with good intentions, by telling ourselves "it is not me". Like so many of the divides in our country, the obvious divisions are all too real, and yet are also a part of a greater and more complex interleaving of issues that play themselves out in our individual lives and in our society, on issues large and small.  

 

And so it seems I have been spending much of this first week of 2019 thinking about bubbles, how we each live in our own little community bubbles, and whether our bubble is one of hope or one of despair, we are too often trapped within it, unaware that we are even encapsulated.  Much as I want to help individuals transcend one kind of bubble, I am also torn and worried about all the other bubbles, the bubbles that keep people separate and in ignorance, the bubbles of complacency that, under the guise of security and protection, actually drive us apart. For as long as our lives are contained in our bubbles, and I live in as much of a bubble as anyone else I know,  we are building walls that keep us apart and isolate us, many kinds of walls, and many kinds of isms.  As long as we live in bubbles, I fear we cannot honestly live in harmony and humanity. I suppose what I am really wondering is how we stop being bubbles and return to be being water.

 

I don't know where I am going with any of this.  I still need to figure it out, but it is good to start the year thinking of things that need figuring out, good to question my own assumptions and biases, even as I live within those biases:  lunching with friends, planting bulbs, going to concerts, caught in the activities of my really pretty privileged life.  There was another concert on Wednesday, a fabulous concert that stuck with me more than Sunday's concert, and for which I stayed until the end.  A concert that had my head spinning, and thinking about harmony and dissonance, and the ways bubbles can be burst, yielding new harmony.  There was an hour spent holding a baby on Friday.  There was a christening on Saturday, and another few minutes holding that same baby.  There is nothing like a baby to bring you to center of all things, the center of life, the center of potential, the center of what we call can be.  

 

But these were all distractions in a life, and I am not even sure they were the essential elements. Or perhaps they are exactly the essential elements.  A baby, seeds and bulbs, new life, music, these are all things that unite us and promise new growth, these are all the stuff of potential and promise, fully present before walls and conditions hem them in. 

 

I was thinking about how young babies are just happy to be held, held by anyone who is warm and loving and willing.  It is usually months before walls start to go up, before only parents and known people are wanted, before bubbles start forming. We don't tend to think about the artificially of what we impose and what is absorbed.  What we think of as common knowledge is really just our own bubble, a reflection, something we've been taught.  What we think of as truth is often also only a reflection of what we see inside our bubble.  I am no different.  I am a product of my environment, my head filled with assumptions and biases I am not even aware I harbor. I acknowledge that we need bubbles, we need filters and membranes, but there is a danger when those walls stop being permeable and become rigid. 

 

I think we need weaker walls, softer walls, walls that are more fluid. How do we let the walls of our  bubbles grow softer?  How do we stop harming others by protecting ourselves? How do we let our bubbles live in harmony instead of disharmony?  How do we become water?

 

For some odd reason I have been remembering John Lennon this week, remembering particularly the words to one of my favorite songs: Imagine.  Only bits and pieces are here.  

"Imagine all the people

Livin' life in peace.

Yoo hoo

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

....

No need for greed or hunger

The brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharin' all the world

...

Welcome to 2019.

Perhaps it is long past time we start to change the world. Perhaps I am still a dreamer.  But if it weren't for the dreamers, I think we all would have destroyed each other long ago.  Perhaps, as long as we are here, there is always hope.

 

 

Finishing Off the 2018 Reading Roundup

I hadn't planned on two book posts back-to-back, but oh well.  

I briefly mentioned over half the books I read in December (two novels by Stuart Woods, two by Maggie Sefton, and one by Marie Bostwick) in my last post, so I will not repeat myself as there really is not much more to say. I enjoyed them to varying degrees, but I remain unconvinced that I will read more Sefton.  I won't seek them out, but if I come across one in a pinch, I might yet read another.

 

I saw Oh Ye Jigs and Juleps at our local second-hand book store, McKay's and picked it up for Mom's stocking. We had a copy when I was a girl, I recall that we both enjoyed it, so it seemed like a nice little trip down memory lane.  I reread it before passing it on and still found it charming.

 

The Lost City of Z had been on my stack for years and I finally read it.  It was well written but for me at least, it wasn't worth the wait. The book was filled with hubris and ego and terrible things happening to people in the jungle.  Mostly it just didn't capture my imagination, although there were thought-provoking moments where my mind would be sent wandering tangential paths, wondering about all the harm we do and the good things we don't see simply because we never quite escape our cultural programming.  Of course Divided: Living in an Age of Walls, also sent my mind wandering down similar paths.  This book contained lots of information and facts, and brought situations I was aware of to life in a new way for me, but it felt like a lot of information without a lot of depth.  I will probably read the authors other books though.  

 

Somewhere in the middle of the month I picked up and read Mark Sisson's Primal Endurance.  This is the book started my thoughts about breathing and health, and led me to a few other books and doing some research into medical books and journals.  I don't yet know where this path is taking me, but I am thankful for the insights that have pushed me forward, regardless of where I end up.

 

I started the month with Louise Penny's newest Gamache mystery, Kingdom of the Blind.  I love Penny's novels and this one was no different.  I always sink deeply into the story and am carried forward by the way she combines community with moments of insight, beauty, and just plain old fashioned fun, along with a serious investigation.  I copied a quote from the novel here, an idea that resonates deeply with my own understanding and experience, and which, not surprisingly, has resurfaced in my thoughts as I held this book in my hand before writing this post.  Or perhaps it resurfaced as I reflected on a conversation earlier this week, where some words I spoke, out of habit, not out of thought, were words that were more relevant to the person I was not the person I am now, words related to an idea that will always be in my longhouse, but which can, and should, be allowed to slip away to the corners, not held close to my heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Popcorn Fiction, or The Return of the Bicycle Book, and Moving Slowly

Sunday night I found myself in the gym walking slowly and reading the current issue of the New Yorker.  It was about 8:30 and I needed to walk.  I had tried walking around my apartment complex; the air was still and calming; I thought the night air would be soothing.  But there was too much human disturbance--an altercation involving several police cars at one building, a fighting couple outside another--I retreated to the silence of the gym at night, not all that silent as the tv was on, although I focused on my reading and not the talking heads on the screen.

 

I needed to be walking that evening because I had been working in  the small patch of garden that remains untouched by the construction at my house, a job that has become far more all-encompassing than I had originally imagined.  So much for control. I managed to plant 400 bulbs Sunday afternoon, and Sunday evening my back was stiff and sore.  I knew I needed to walk.  A slow walk on the treadmill was all I needed, not pushing myself to go faster, but just moving, with gentle focus on small things like rolling my hips properly, not falling into a sciatica-induced marionette-pace, and breathing through my nose, calmly and evenly, my pulse remaining low, in the aerobic zone, focusing on releasing and unkinking.  The process was effective, I loosened up, although once I was no longer focused on back pain I realized how exhausted I was overall, and went to bed.

 

In fact, I have become a regular at the small gym that is part of my apartment complex.  I've not really been using the weights, although I might.  Mostly I've been walking on the treadmill, walking slowly and deliberately, focusing on stamina, endurance and health rather than fitness.  I've been focusing on breathing only through my nose when walking, focusing on breathing and keeping my pulse low, in the aerobic zone instead of the anaerobic zone, and it has not been as easy as I had assumed.  Because this form of exercise is different than anything I've done in recent years, I've also returned to reading light fiction.  I used to read on an exercise bike at the gym; this was when I lived in New York State.  Now I read on a treadmill.  Treadmills are boring and I do not find the television to be a motivating factor.  With a book on tape I go too fast.  With literary fiction I tend to want to stop walking altogether. 

 

Hence there will be an increase in the number of  "bicycle books", being read, books I now think of as popcorn fiction, a term I borrowed from someone, somewhere.  I started with the last of Marie Bostwick's Cobbled Court series, Apart at the Seams.  I read most of the cobbled court series between 2010 and 2013, before this book came out.  I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the series, the friendly camaraderie of the ladies whose lives revolve around the quilt shop.  Better yet, the book got me through several hours on the treadmill.

 

When mom was here she read one of Stuart Woods' novels Unbound.  It is part of the Stone Barrington series, although Stone appears only briefly.  It is more about a character named Teddy Fay, who appeared in an earlier Barrington book, and who apparently now has his own series.  I read the book after mom, and I enjoyed it.  It makes no demands, moves fast enough to hold my interest, and led me to revisit the series, starting back with the first Stone Barrington novel, New York Dead, which reminded me why I liked Stone to begin with.  I still like Stone, and I think Woods has created an appealing protagonist here.  It is not an introspective and that is perfectly fine with me.  I never read all the books in the series--there are over 40-- and they will keep me happily in bounds, at least until I can get back outside.

 

But at the moment my ability to breathe through my nose and walk, which I find impossible if the air is chill outside, is keeping me in the gym.  I've been looking into the different ways breathing uses our lungs, and realizing that I have been a mouth breather for decades, even when at rest.  It has been commented upon by doctors and trainers, but everyone assumed that I had to breathe through my mouth because of the way my scoliosis had partially crushed and twisted my lungs.  I am not so sure that is true, the part about breathing, not the part about my lungs, I do not have full lung capacity and never will, but I am seriously beginning to think  I can improve the function of what I've got by focusing on how I breathe.  I realize that I my level of health may not be another person's, but I want to pursue being the strongest, healthiest person I can be, and I have come to realize health and fitness are not the same thing. So for now I am slowing down, looking to eventually find balance, but before balance can come I must first build the fundamentals and undo decades of habits.

 

And therefore I have been searching for light reading. I am sure I will be perusing the paperback best seller lists, but also exploring older books which I may have neglected recently. I  picked up a new-to-me series, a knitting mystery series by Maggie Sefton.  I read the first two books, Knit One, Kill Two and Needled to Death.  I am not yet sure what I think.  I like the lightness of the books, I sometimes find the main character, Kelly, frustrating and none too bright, and the books are light on the mystery side as well, but I didn't really dwell on those things while I was actually reading.  The books remind me of my favorite knitting groups, calming and supportive places of acceptance and companionship, not big issues.  I realize I may place greater expectation on a character in a novel than I do on people I actually meet and converse with in life.  For me the book was more about the circle of friends that are formed, about those non-judgmental circles we form in our lives, where we meet and support other people we might not have met otherwise, where we expand our horizons and form new friendships, where we actually become more accepting individuals.

 

Well, that is too much to put on a book.  But I am reminded not to niggle.  I am reminded to read and to walk and to generally move forward, occasionally backward, without rushing and without judgement.  I am seeing progress.

 

A Few End of Year Projects

This will be my last post for 2018.  My mom is here until the end of the year, and although we aren't doing anything significant, just hanging out, my thoughts are elsewhere, not on blogging.

 

I have been entertaining myself with small knitting projects however.

First, I started this cowl for myself, using some yarn in my stash, a skein of Manos del Uruguay's Wool Classica in the deep wine color, and a skein of Colinette's discontinued wool, Skye.   The cowl started with different yarns and a pattern.  My original yarn choices didn't really work and I ended up ripping and restarting the pattern several times because I didn't like the way the color bands were turning out.  Eventually I modified it into something I liked.  Consider this my practice cowl.

About the time I figured out what I was doing, and just before the final ripping and reuniting of the wine cowl, I decided I needed to change up my planned gifts for my step-daughter Miriam and knit her a cowl.  Family Christmas was on the 23rd and I made this decision around mid-day on the 22nd, so off to the yarn store we went.  I picked four yarns, two by Luisa Harding (Trenzar), a variegated yarn by Auracania (Alumco) and another blue yarn for the background.  I've already lost the tags so I have no idea what yarn I used.

I tend not to be drawn to high contrast, and I was a little worried, as I knit this,  that there would not be enough contrast in the final fabric.  But we are both happy with the results.

Family Christmas was a lot of fun.  Mom carried on the family tradition of wearing one's bows.

I restarted, and finished my cowl.  Historically, I tend to knit cowls and scarfs on a whim, often inspired by a particular yarn.  Apparently there is a theme.  It seems that all of my scarves, except the grey one I knit earlier the year, all fall in the same color family.  Luckily my coats are wine, grey and taupe, but I do think that perhaps I should. branch out, just a little bit, in 2019.

 

See you next year.

 

 

A Scarf and A Question

I am surrounded by piles.  But they are not piles of obligation.  I am not stressed.  I am simply in a place of reconsideration and rethinking, hence the piles.  But I am also find it is perfectly acceptable to leave those piles in place, to release the pressure to address all questions immediately, perfectly acceptable to just do nothing and see what happens.  It is perfectly acceptable to sit back and wait, perfectly acceptable to hold on to the thought that I want to do will become perfectly clear in its own time.

I did knit a scarf for my mom.  It is a simple infinity loop.  I gave it to her yesterday because it was cold and I decided gifts could be given freely, when the time seemed best, rather than waiting for a specific day. 

 

The idea for the scarf was a last minute inspiration.  However the finished result was not what I originally intended.  Mom is allergic to wool so the yarns are cotton and a cotton rayon blend.  The cotton is Cumulus by Juniper Moon, and it is very soft and fluffy.  The multi-colored yarn is Alumco by Auracania.  It is lovely, but it also proved too slippery for my initial idea.  I knitted and frogged, reknitted and frogged again, working through multiple bouts of knitting and ripping before I settled on this very simple idea.  

Although there have been moments of temporary frustration, that entire process of starts and stops, of knitting and ripping and trying again, was actually very calming and freeing.  I was reminded that sometimes you just have to sit back and wait, sometimes you have to fail and try again, but eventually your efforts pay off.  I think in my younger days I was too concerned with production.  I was too concerned with the idea that success in life meant accomplishing as much as possible in as little time as possible.  I see now that this was an error.  Yes it works, but I wonder if that sense of accomplishment is really a false sense of accomplishment. How many potential rewards were cast off because visible results came too slowly?

 

What if  success in the game of life is not about what you have to show for your time, but who your use of time allows you to become?

Holding the Center

I more or less shut the door on the world for a few days.  I went out to see a production of a Christmas Carol Friday night, and Sunday was the Christmas pageant at my church.  Watching little children always makes me smile, the littlest sheep especially.  Somewhere in between the two I watched Alfonso Cuáron's 1995 version of A Little Princess.  All three left me smiling and singing happy little songs to myself. I am no opponent of sappy romanticism.  Sometimes it is exactly what we need.

That also could have been because I spent much of the weekend working on knitting and handwork.  While I watched the movie I did some hand-sewing, alterations and mending on a velvet jacket (above) that I hoped to wear to a couple of holiday parties this week.

But I also did a fair amount of knitting as well, working on a few last-minute gift ideas, as well as a project for myself.  The last-minute gift knitting wasn't particularly pressured.  I'd already done all my shopping and have everyone covered, this was just inspiration knitting.  Ideas popped into my head and my fingers were itching to get started.  One should run with inspiration when it hits after all.  

By Sunday afternoon I had found my equilibrium again and I managed to catch up with the world a bit, reading the Sunday NY Times and this week's Economist between bouts of knitting and a trip to the gym.  Despite the news, and the fact there will be a bit more hustle and bustle over the next few days, I am still humming.  

 

For me, increasingly,  this season isn't really about doing more, but about finding the light and holding the center.   Somehow in my head thoughts are swirling around a bastardization of two metaphors. First there is the idea of life as an aboriginal longhouse, from Louise Penny's newest novel, Kingdom of the Blind, where "Everyoe we meet, every word we speak, every action taken or not taken lies in our longhouse. With us. Always. Never to be expelled or taken away.".  I am juxtaposing that with the idea of a magic circle, rekindled yes, from A Little Princess.  This entire holiday season whatever you celebrate or believe, seems to be about maintaining that circle, about lighting a fire of hope and love, and holding what is important close, be it creativity, friends, family.  Our longhouse is always full and crowded, the busyness of the world always around us.  But within the circle there is love.  What is in your circle?

 

 

 

Can Construction Be A Metaphor For Life?

I've been back from Texas for two weeks and it somehow feels like I am just beginning to get my bearings again.  I do feel like this has been a particularly hard "landing" although I can't really say why.  Perhaps it was just that I felt stressed and a bit frazzled when I left, and returned to some kind of sense of too muchness.  Perhaps I've over-filled my dance-card, with multiple parties and social events every week. Perhaps it is just that everything seems to be suddenly moving forward quickly on the house, and there are all kinds of changes and decisions.  After a long period of waiting, it feels like I've tripped over some kind of ledge, and although I don't actually feel particularly stressed, there is a bit of a lull in any creative energy.

Last week Frances wrote about being "swallowed up" by normal life upon reentry from a trip, and I very definitely felt swallowed, swallowed by a great big whale.  I keep hoping to integrate the various aspects of my life but I also realize that my efforts will continue to prove inadequate as long as I continue to let myself be swallowed, I need to be firmer in defining the boundaries of my own space and of saying, to myself, "this is enough".  Saying no to others is proving to be easier than saying no to my own greedy impulses, my natural tendency toward too-muchness.  But even then perhaps the issue is not so much about defining my boundaries but about accepting them, about thinking of my experience, and what I chose to do or not do, not as a a tug of war, me against the demands of the world, but of a piece.  Perhaps instead I should be thinking what do I want the fabric of my life to look like?  What will make that fabric whole?  And then accepting that my fabric is my own.

Well, all of this is a bit too vague, but then I am feeling a little on the vague side as well.  

At least the house is shaping up.   A mock-up of the kitchen cabinetry was put in place this week, with some temporary framing and some foam board.  This is helping as we refine choices for cabinetry and layout.  Already, walking around in the space, as opposed to looking at it on paper, a few seemingly minor, but I suspect important, modifications have already taken place.  

 

Although the cabinetry mock-up is temporary, the space increasingly feels like it is becoming something.  Friday I could stand in the corner looking out the window, imagining where my expresso machine would be, imagining making a cup of espresso, as I watched  workers digging the footings for the new deck.  By the time I actually make that espresso the deck will be in place, but the boundaries of the space have been defined. Increasingly, I can see what it will become.

I suppose that is actually what is happening here as well, in my life.  I have not been swallowed, I am just building the foundations, the substructure, and eventually the fabric will take its own shape.  We start on a path, with a goal of course, but the path itself can often be confusing and not well marked.  We start with intentions but don't really know where we are going until after we have arrived.  I can't be what I want to be until I have built my own framework, and there are bound to be modifications along the way, but just as each house has its own character, shaped by its physical space and the lives that share it, so do we humans have our own fabric, shaped by our experiences and the people who touch our lives.  We can't control the world we live in, but we can control what we hold close.

 

 

Not many words this week.

Just a few snippets:

 

Windows went into the addition:

You can also get a better sense of the scale of the addition, just a small bit of additional space but it will change the flow greatly.  The exciting thing is that I can now stand in my new kitchen space and begin to imagine the kitchen it will be.  

And the framing is in place for the new master bathroom and closet.

I've been to at least one holiday party and shared a few meals with friends.  Spent too much time in frustration over syncing problems with my phone, only to decide that I was better off doing other things.

Like wrapping sweet potatoes in bacon for a party this evening.  Perhaps time in the kitchen calmed my nerves, and so of course, once I was finished and cleaned up the phone decided to work perfectly.

 

I hope any glitches that show up in your life this week also fall into place so nicely.

 

 

 

 

 

Reading Update

It still feels like I am reading slowly.  That is not necessarily a bad thing.  I don't yet know if it is a good thing.

 

I finished five books in November; none of them were difficult.  One was a cookbook. I was looking for a recipe.  I found it in Marcella's Italian Kitchen, which I checked out of the library.  The recipe, for a fruit sorbet, helped clarify my thoughts on the use of acids to bring out the flavors of fruits.  Then I spent some time perusing the book, which was fun, but more like a trip down memory lane than a new discovery. 

 

The book I enjoyed the most was Dervla McTiernan's The Ruin.  I suppose some of what I found most appealing about the book would be aspects others might find annoying.  It was well-written and tightly plotted. I found Cormac and Aisling to be well-drawn. I found them both believable, even in their inconsistencies., although liking the characters is not something I find necessary in a novel.   In fact their inconsistencies were part of what I liked best about the novel.  The intellectual part of me wants a hard-hitting super-detective but humans aren't really like that.  The people who do well and get ahead aren't always the smartest, aren't any different than you or I; they work hard and learn how to play the game.  We all do that. We want our heroes to be superheroes. We also tend to think we are somehow inferior because we have to learn to play the game to succeed. McTiernan plays on that in this novel.  Cormac is also in a difficult, liminal period of his career, and is not sure which steps are the right steps.  He stumbles.  He has a blind spot.   He cannot see the true nature of an old friend.  But again most of us are like that in the same way.  I was rooting for him even as I was cursing his missteps.  I will read the author's next novel when it is released.

 

The novel I liked the least was Kate Atkinson's Transcription. Juliet's combination of naiveté, cunning, and obtuseness made her a bit of a cipher, which was the point of course.  I suspect, as historical fiction, it hits close to the truth, and to the pettiness of most of life.  Is that what made me uncomfortable?  I'm not certain.  Perhaps I wanted Juliette to become more self-aware, not that I've managed any such thing. Anyway, that is no fault of the novel, merely of the reader. Although the novel was beautifully written, and carried me along while I was reading, it is already fading away in my memory.

 

I enjoyed the other two novels.  I wrote about The Gunners here, albeit only briefly.  The characters are marvelously complex.  And although the plot wends its way through very easy themes and simple storytelling, there are moments when I think it is brilliant and might appeal to more literary readers as well.  I found it satisfying.  

 

Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects is a very different kind of novel.  Even thought it was written before Gone Girl, I found it both more satisfying and more troubling.  The writing in Gone Girl was much tighter and the narrative more compelling, but for this reader at least the humanity seemed missing.  But then I felt Amy's journal read like a contrived piece of artifice from the get-go, and I suppose I never got as angry at Nick as was intended either, as he reminded me of too many hapless young men of my son's generation.  Although I felt no sympathy for either Amy or Nick, Camille was very compelling even if also completely maddening.  But that is the thing, people who are caught in psychosis, who are the victims of abuse, act in ways that to the rest of us seem incomprehensible.  Our towns and cities are full of such people, people whom we usually do not even deign to notice.  Flynn is very good at uncovering the darkness that can lie hidden behind a veneer of civility and the comfortable stories we tell ourselves about our lives and our neighbors.  I suppose this novel also gave me some insight into the later one, in that similar themes are explored, but here we have the softer, more vulnerable underbelly, and in the later novel, a harder shell has been formed.  In Sharp Objects there was much that made this reader squirm in both frustration and discomfort, but there was also hope, a hope that had already been sealed off in Gone Girl.  You can see where my preferences lie.