"Hausfrau": A Murky Look Into the Life of a Lonely, Sad Woman

I don't know where I read that "Hausfrau" by Jill Alexander Essbaum was a great book to read.  Even the book jacket says "Intimate, intense, and written with the precision of a Swiss Army knife." Hmm... not sure I'd agree with all that.  My biggest take away from "Hausfrau" is that life can be very sad and very lonely and very destructive for people who are bored  and totally disconnected with themselves.

I am embarrassed to admit that I have never read Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" and maybe if I had I would understand the references to the Swiss trains always being on time unless someone jumped on the tracks.  Maybe I would have understood Anna Benz's sulky, childish behavior and the ease with which she made horrible choices.  When I started the book, I had a hard time following the jumpy narration that vacillates between Anna's Jungian psychotherapy sessions with Doctor Messerli to Anna's German classes during which she often analyzes how the language mirrors her life to Anna's adulterous exploits with a fellow German class student (Archie) and then flashbacks to another affair she had 2 years prior with a man named Stephen who Anna apparently believed she was in love with.  The reader also gets glimpses into Anna's "real life" with her hot headed, banker husband, Bruno whose mother Ursula watches Anna's three young children while she is in Zurich sleeping around, going to German class, and lying to her therapist.

Anna's life seems comfortable enough, but she's bored and disconnected, and rather than "filling the hole" with food (as she later ponders while eating icing from a cake at her daughter's 1st birthday party), she fills it with tawdry sexual affairs.  I'm not sure how I was supposed to feel during Anna and Archie's trysts which were written in graphic detail, or how I was supposed to feel about one of Bruno's friends hitting on and then hooking up with Anna, or about Anna's flashbacks to her affair with Stephen. Mostly I felt sad and disgusted.  I know people have affairs, but Anna's ability to feel nothing - no remorse, no guilt, no emotion was the saddest part of all.

The final third of the book was the most engaging part after Anna is thrown into an unthinkable tragedy which exposes her for the liar and cheater that she is.  It sheds light on what she did have that she took for granted and maybe what she should have left behind before it spiraled out of control.  There are parts that were uncomfortable for me to read, but while I slogged through much of the narration in the first part of the book, I was compelled to read quickly at the end.

There was much to like about this book.  There are many questions about love, marriage, infidelity, lies, truth that we don't want to face, and more about the properties of fire than I ever knew.  The first line of the book is "Anna was a good wife, mostly" but by the end, I wasn't convinced about that.  Nor was I ever convinced that Bruno was a good husband.  The most redeeming character in the whole book was chattering Mary, the Canadian woman who becomes Anna's close friend and caretaker when Anna's depression impedes her from taking care of herself or her children. The conversations with Doctor Messerli brought up good questions about destiny and fate, and I especially enjoyed Anna's conversation with the priest about predestination.  "It's God who doles out the dominoes.  It is we who set them in line and tip them over.  We have no control over the particular lot we're given.  but we can choose how we arrange what we have. And we can choose to start over, when everything's been knocked down and broken."

Anna's life domino arrangement choices weren't so good, and she didn't really know how to mend the broken pieces of her life.  She ended just as sad and lonely and weepy as she began with little thought of who and what mattered in her world.

Maybe my biggest take away is to be emotionally connected to where I am and who I am. As Anna Benz's life proves, disconnecting emotionally or physically leads to more than one wrong turn.

"Belzhar": An almost great YA book

The entire concept of Meg Wolitzer's latest foray into the world of YA literature intrigued me.  Five students are hand chosen for a mysterious and life changing course called "Special Topics in English" taught by the highly regarded Mrs. Quenell. These aren't any ordinary students and this is no ordinary school; they attend The Wooden Barn, a therapeutic high school in rural Vermont for emotionally fragile and highly intelligent students. On the first day of Special Topics in English the five specially selected students gather in class and Mrs. Quenell tells them that they will only study the life and works of Sylvia Plath, the queen of adolescent angst and blinding depression.  Each student is given an ancient journal, and what each student finds out in turn is that when they write in their journals they are  transported to a time where their lives were less stressful and free of the trauma that led them to The Wooden Barn.  The five students secretly meet and come up with the name "Belzhar" (get it Bell Jar?) to talk about where they go when they write in their journals.

It sounds cool, right? Well, it was . . . mostly really good.

I read Wolitzer's highly acclaimed "The Interestings" last year and felt lukewarm about it.  It was long, murky and each of the so called interesting characters turned out to be sad and depressed for different reasons.  This book held promise and because the students are at a school for mostly depressed students, there is no false hope that they aren't already damaged by the misery that life forces on you at times.  The narrative voice, Jam Gallahue, kept me interested from the very first chapter when she explains that her London exchange student boyfriend, Reeve's death, was the reason she ended up at The Wooden Barn.  She seemed fragile, but competent, and after suffering from the loss of true love with a truly original boy, who wouldn't be fragile?  The other students in the class: Sierra Stokes (a beautiful dancer), Marc Sonnenfeld (an overachiever who always wants to follow the rules and do the right thing), Griffin Foley (a moody farm boy who hides behind his hair and hoody), and Casey Cramer (a socialite who is wheelchair bound after a car accident)  have trauma in their lives, too and each disclose their stories as the novel unfolds.

What I liked about this book is the concept.  I love that the writing really matters in Mrs. Quenell's class, and that each student is treated as highly competent vs. highly fragile.  When the students balk about writing regularly in the journals, Mrs. Quenell firmly tells them, "Everyone has something to say.  But not everyone can bear to say it.  Your job is to find a way." The idea of writing as therapy is not just appealing to me, but the reality that I lived for 15 years as I watched my students write their way free of past and present painful experiences and discover their worth and strength as individuals in their words.  Maybe it's just the past English teacher in me, but I wanted to know more about Mrs. Quenell.  Wolitzer doesn't spend enough time developing her, and at times she seemed like a throw away character vs. the inspirational teachers of past YA classics like Mr. Keating in Dead Poet's Society (oh, Robin Williams.  The sad irony of that film still pokes holes in my heart today).

I also loved the idea that each of these students had to travel to the past to understand their emotional pain (and break free of it) in the present.  How tempting would it be to stay in a world where we didn't have to deal with our most traumatic moments and ordeals? But, as Jam finds out in her Belzhar, no advancements or progress can be made in that world.  It is stress free and happy, but no future exists there.

Just like in "The Interestings," Wolitzer assembles an interesting cast of characters who each read like real people.  There is a Breakfast Club type quality about them as they sneak away to their weekly meetings and talk about their experiences in Belzhar and their fears about what happens when the journal is full.

Maybe the biggest let down for me was the truth of Jam's story at the end.  I don't know why, but it made me mad and sad all at once.  I think about all the hopeful young adults out there that get stuck in emotions and allow them to take over their lives to the point of obsession and mental breakdowns. Even with my background teaching and dealing with teenagers and teen angst every single day, Jam's story hurt to read.

There are big questions posed here like how do we deal with grief and how to we continue on after the inevitable tragedies of life occur? There is an even bigger question about reality and what we choose to view as the truth. Wolitzer doesn't dive into these questions, though, with enough conviction to lend them weight.  Maybe if there had been more about Sylvia Plath's life and work and more parallels to her?

I'm not sure what would have made this semi-good YA book really great. I did read it in one day, and Wolitzer kept my attention the whole time.  I know that young teenage girls would love it, and it might even get them interested enough to read more Sylvia Plath which would be a great thing.

"Big Little Lies:" Add it to the list of books you can't put down

Last December I read Liane Moriarty's book "The Husband's Secret."  Although it was highly recommended and I flew through it, I wasn't all that enthralled with it and discounted it as chick lit with a bit of a sinister edge.  I loved the pop culture references thrown in and the converging of the different characters. Moriarty also did a great job of incorporating the themes that we never truly know anyone, that we all have secrets to keep, and we remain blind to truths that we don't want to know about those that we love.

Moriarty's 6th novel, "Big Little Lies" reads much like "The Husband's Secret," but something about it made me think more, read faster and ultimately feel more satisfied at the end.  It could be that I liked the characters better, or possibly that Moriarty set up the mystery even better in this book. The mystery revolves around suburban moms in an idyllic Australian beach community called Pirriwee Penisula who all have children in the same school.  From the very first chapter, the reader knows that something terrible happened on Trivia Night at the school and that it involves one of the main characters.  But who? Could it be the outspoken and stiletto heel wearing, Madeline who on her 40th birthday twists her ankle only to be rescued by the new mom in town? Could it be the new, young, single mom in town, Jane, whose mousy exterior hides her devastating secrets about her son, Ziggy's real father? Could it possibly involve the devastatingly beautiful and wealthy Celeste who appears to have the perfect husband and perfect life? Maybe it's Bonnie, the peace loving yoga instructor who is the new wife of Madeline's ex-husband, Nathan (who just happened to walk out on Madeline and their 14 month old daughter).

As the seemingly mundane situations that arise in normal life - a bully in the classroom, invitations to a birthday party, a book club, and a school fundraising function - become way more twisted and sinister, the truths about the character's lives and hearts tumble out with tragic consequences.

I had to know what happened in the gossipy town that turned ugly (and bloody) amidst the parents who dressed up as Audrey Hepburn and Elvis to attend an annual trivia night.  Without food to sop up their copious amounts of alcohol, tempers flared and situations that may have seemed trivial (on trivia night . . . get it?) turned deadly.

Would guys like this book? No.  Is it Chick Lit? Yes, but it's Chick Lit with a backbone.  It isn't just as the cover suggests, an exploding, neon colored lollipop, and it's worth reading and becoming entrenched in until the very last page (honestly, if you are looking for a book that you won't put down until you get to the end, read it).  Liane Moriarty knows how to capture her readers and keep them guessing until the very last page and do so without over-sentimentalizing. She also masters the art of throwing in subtle human truths (without hitting the reader over the head with them) in the midst of the soap opera scene of suburban moms squabbling.  That's a gift.

If you are looking for books that you can't put down to either read during the cold, long winter, or to give as gifts (or maybe, if you are lucky enough, to take on a winter vacation), here are some of my other recommendations:

YA Literature:
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
Wonder by R.J. Palacio

Memoirs:
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout
Gone Feral by Novella Carpenter (I'm reading this right now, and I can't put it down.  It was actually hard for me to take a break to write this blog post!)
Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan

Books that have romance and substance:
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
Me Before You by  Jojo Moyes
One Plus One by Jojo Moyes
The Rosie Project by Graeme Stimison

Happy Reading this winter, everyone!  If you have a book suggestion for me (something I won't be able to put down), I'd love it!