Vida, true to its name, is full of life

Patricia Engel's debut Vida is a collection of short stories that all center around one character named Sabina.  These straight shooting stories tell it like it is about love, lust, friendship, and family.  In each of her stories, there are descriptions and interactions between the characters that are pitch-perfect, fresh, and blunt.  Engel writes, "The boyfriend grew up on a dusty patch of land where chickens became dinner," and, in a different story, "We tuck into each other like origami, fall asleep like captive hamsters, our lips touching, pretending we're each other's reason for surviving the cataclysm."  Engel also writes about Sabina's experience as a daughter of Colombian immigrants, writing, for example, that while "gringas" don't know of their heritage, "...my parents know our family lines five generations wide and ten generations back, down to the last conquistador."  Engel brings a distinctive, edgy new voice to fiction.  While these stories may not make you look at the world in a totally new light, they'll entertain you with their sharpness and impress you with their intelligence.

Review: I Curse the River of Time

This was the first book I have read by Per Petterson.  It was a quiet, moody novel with little dialogue and a lot of gray sky.  Ironically, East of Eden is highlighted as one of a few works on one of the main character's bookshelf.  I can't say I sympathized with the protagonist, Arvid. a 37-year old soon to be divorced man who hopes to reconcile with his dying mother.  The book takes place in Norway in 1989.  Unlike the honorable men in Steinbeck's classic, Arvid can at times barely walk across the room without falling to his knees in sadness and he forgets gloves in sub-zero weather.  He can hardly take care of himself.  While Petterson writes some great passages in simple language and creates a starkly atmospheric backdrop, I didn't feel any emotional connection to the characters.  There were a few sentences and passages I re-read, as they were very well-crafted, perhaps my favorite being the phrase, "...my head filled with shapeless, wild thoughts."  And yet, sometimes we want our protagonist to shape those thoughts into something palpable, so that we can reach in and feel what he is feeling.  On the continuum, this would be about a 7.5 out of 10.

Re-Visiting Steinbeck: An early contender for best book read in 2011!

Whatever your weekend plans are, you might want to strongly consider canceling them and getting your hands on a copy of East of Eden.  Recently recommended to me by a colleague, I remembered reading Of Mice and Men in school (was it Mr. Schneider's class?).  I don't remember being particularly fond of that book, but East of Eden is a very early contender for one of the best books I will read in 2011 (and possibly of all time).  


My copy was exactly 600 pages, and I would have kept reading had Steinbeck kept going.  East of Eden is the epic tale of the Trask family and the Hamilton family at the turn of the 20th century in Salinas Valley, California, not so very far from where I sit here writing this post.  The characters are beautifully rendered, the dialogue smart and gritty and achingly honest at times.  The reader comes to know the characters intimately, through both their words and their silences.  This is, ultimately, the story of brothers growing up and growing differently.  There are so many memorable scenes in this novel, particularly between the Trask brothers.  Here are a few of my favorite quotes:


"Oh, strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!"


"Don't you want our rabbit?"


"It is probable that Adam did not even know he did it, but the caress brought such a raging flood of emotion to the boy that he saved this special joy and used it only when he needed it.  It was a magic to be depended upon."


I will let you discover your own favorite passages.  I will be reading more Steinbeck very soon, though I may have to space it out over time so as to have his wonderful, luminous writing to look forward to for a long time to come.