Helen Fremont, After Long Silence: A Memoir
Ursula Hegi, Stones from the River
Tracy Kidder, Home Town
A. S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Matthew Rettenmund, Blind Items
Anne Lamott, All New People
Myla Goldberg, Bee Season
David Krajicek, Scooped!

After Long Silence: A Memoir by Helen Fremont (2000). This is a book about identity, about family secrets, about truth. Helen Fremont, a public defender who was raised Roman Catholic by parents who fled Europe after World War II, shares the story of how she and her sister uncovered their family’s history. After living with strange silences and unexplained omissions for over 30 years, Fremont and her sister together discovered that both their parents were Jews, survivors of the holocaust who later came to America and lived as Catholics, reshaping their lives into something that seemed safer for themselves and their daughters.

In After Long Silence, Fremont undertakes the challenge of telling her family’s story across the boundaries of time and geography. She weaves together the account of her own growing suspicions of her heritage; the research she and her sister conducted to learn the truth; the gradual and painful thawing of the silence in her own family; the history of her parents’ childhood in eastern Europe; the horror of their experiences before, during, and after the war; their emigration to America; stories of her own childhood and young adulthood; and her thoughts on family bonds, especially bonds between sisters. I was very impressed with Fremont’s ability to arrange these disparate threads into such a cohesive narrative, because I sense that one of the biggest challenges of writing this book – aside from the obvious emotional difficulty of gathering the content – must have been organizing the story itself.

To me, Fremont’s accounts of her conversations with her mother are among the most powerful scenes in the book. Her mother seems to have lived five lives in the time most women her age live once. Imagine taking on a new identity so completely that you actually forget your home, your family, your beliefs, and your original name. Imagine leaving that old identity behind, fifty years ago on another continent. Imagine finally being brought face-to-face with that distant life, against your will. The picture seems strangely familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. You sift through your memory, only to find most of it missing. Fremont describes her mother’s experience with heartbreaking, sensitive detail.

Yet at its heart, the book is Fremont’s story, her memoir. She never lets us forget that we are seeing the past through her modern eyes, and I appreciate her honesty on this count. There are times when the story seems almost tentative, reaching for some kind of understanding of the events it relates, but rather than detracting from the effect of the book, it is good to see the respect and care with which Fremont treats her family’s story. And it is also good to feel how the power of telling the story resonates through Fremont’s life, helping her to understand the experiences of her past, and inspiring her with the courage to do the things she fears at first, such as discussing her heritage with her cousin and aunt, and coming out as a lesbian to her family.

As with many modern memoirs, sometimes it almost feels as though the book is a novel. Fremont has imagined the details of many of her parents experiences during the war and its aftermath, and she is careful to point out to the reader on several occasions that some of the scenes she has presented were not described to her by her mother or father, but were scenes she wrote with the knowledge she gained through her research or through her own observation and imagination. But the book is not a novel, and the secrets of the family are not resolved in the final pages.

After Long Silence leaves us with questions as large as the ones that started it, not the least of which is, how will Fremont’s parents take the publication of this story? (Not their story, exactly, but a version of their story.) Although, as a reader, I find the lack of resolution that results from all these questions somewhat unsettling, I respect it, too. It is the nature of the greatest storytelling to be flexible and fluid. To tie up all the loose ends (even if one could) seems disrespectful to the lives and the personal histories of the inhabitants of the tale. Because that’s the point: it’s not just a tale.

Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi (1994). This novel, like the memoir After Long Silence, explores the themes of storytelling and self-discovery against the backdrop of World War II Europe. Stones from the River is the story of a German town as seen through the eyes of Trudi Montag. Trudi occupies a unique space in her town's culture, appearing as both an insider and an outsider: she is a dutiful daughter, a working woman, a non-Jew, a dwarf, a storyteller, a victim, a heroine. Living among her neighbors and townspeople, she inhabits a shadowy realm that exists both inside and outside their lives.

An astute observer, Trudi collects the secrets and the stories of those around her, reveling in the power she gains through her knowledge. Through much of the book, she trades in the secrets of others, giving up a little to learn something even better, or worse. But she always keeps her own secrets. Through her story, Hegi explores what it means to be part of a culture, yet not a part of it.

The book is many things at once: a cross-section of a town in distress; an examination of mob dynamics and individual heroism; a portrait of a character learning to reconcile black and white, good and bad, the past, present, and future. And, what fascinated me most, it is a finely-rendered portrait of a place, with a level of detail that fixed the book in my head long after I read it. I enjoyed this book very much.

Home Town by Tracy Kidder (1999). Here's another writer grappling with the representation of a place. Tracy Kidder, an accomplished journalist, has attempted to capture the spirit of Northampton, Massachusetts in this ambitious book. His approach to telling the story of the town employs the methods of news reporting, history, personal narrative, geography, sociology, business, architecture, and psychology, to name just a few. The result is a wide-ranging examination of a place and its people: a book that is in turns fascinating, exhilerating, heartbreaking, comical, monotonous, and insightful.

Tracy Kidder clearly loves Northampton and the surrounding area of Western Mass. To research the book he spent over a year meeting and getting to know the people of the town and its environs. He spent a lot of time riding with a local cop, talking with a Smith College student, and getting to know the most eccentric lawyer in town. In between these activities he must have spoken to hundreds of others who live in Northampton, many of whose stories appear in Home Town. He also attended town council meetings, researched the history of the town and its buildings, and (must have) spent an awful lot of time organizing and sifting his material. It's quite amazing that so many stories could be woven together into a book that is so almost wholly interesting to read. In a few spots, mostly towards the end of the book, I found myself drifting or wondering why yet another new person was being introduced at this late stage of the game, but in general the book held my interest for all 432 pages.

In my Internet searches, I learned that the responses of Northampton natives and dwellers to this book are quite disparate. For every person who expresses agreement with Kidder's view of the town, there are several who disagree vehemently, calling the book one step away from pure fiction. In a way, I find these differences of opinion gratifying. The truth is, it's impossible for a writer to capture every side of a place (much less every side of a person) on the page. What I like about Kidder's wholehearted attempt is that he does not claim that his view of the town is the "only" view or even the "right" view. He seems quite aware that even lifelong natives of Northampton could possibly read this book and find very little that is familiar in it. One might even ask, "where are all the lesbians?" Yet he recognizes that possibility and still writes his book, piecing together stories and trying to make sense of them as a whole. It's an ambitious undertaking, and as a reader I respect it and appreciate it.

Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt (1991). Byatt is known as an intellectual writer, one who does not make allowances for readers who may not share her considerable knowledge of literature and the classics. The kind of writer whose jokes frequently require at least a master's degree to understand, and who is enjoyed mostly by crusty academics, repressed graduate students, and other intellectual snobs. That is why it is quite astounding that Possession should have become the international blockbuster that it did. It broke records in Britain, the US, and all over the world. It won the Booker Prize. And it is simply one of my favorite novels of all time.

Possession is a finely-crafted work of fiction, a joy to read. The novel follows two British academics as they uncover a secret liaison between their respective Victorian poets. In this romance within a romance, Byatt builds a platform where she can exercise her considerable literary talents, unfolding the story through a vast collection of letters, poems, lyrics, journals, and other narrative forms. It's equal parts detective story, romance, academic satire, and literary exercise; it's a tale of international intrigue set in the world of literary study. And even when questions are answered, they aren't answered: as the mystery of the past unfolds, it reveals the mystery of the present. Every time I read this book, I am amazed at Byatt's narrative accomplishment. It's as close as you can get to a romp in this genre. Just a wonderful, breathtaking book.

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles (1969). Oh my oh my, if you haven't read this one before, you're in for a treat. John Fowles has written a Victorian novel with the sensibility of the twentieth century. I mention it next to Possession because it clearly prefigures Byatt's novel in some ways, but it is also its own masterpiece. It is the story of a proper Victorian gentleman who finds himself attracted to a most inappropriate woman. Fowles has a way of drawing you into the story, painting the characters with such vivid strokes that you forget he is playing at being a Victorian writer. Then he walks right into the scene himself, pulls out his Freud and his modernist ideas, and reminds you of the whole construct of the novel. It's deliciously self-aware.

You can also learn a lot about Victorian British society from Fowles, although he'll never make you feel like he's lecturing you.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943), a new English translation by Richard Howard (2000). What a wonderful book. In the desert, a pilot meets a little prince who teaches him how to look at the world without being held back by grown-up assumptions and ideas. The story of the prince's life on his home planet, his journey to Earth, and his encounters with others is a deceptively simple tale that presents one of life's most important lessons: "One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes." The book is appropriate for children or adults.

This is a new English translation of the French classic. I like it better than the original English translation by Katherine Woods, although not everyone feels that way. I also like the pictures in this edition -- the colors have been restored so that the drawings are much closer to the originals.

Blind Items by Matthew Rettenmund (2000). Have you ever wondered what it would be like to meet your favorite celebrity? Or what it would be like if he fell in love with you? David Greer is an editor at a gay porn magazine (not nearly as glamorous as it may sound), and his best friend Warren Junior is one of the most notorious gossip columnists in New York. Then David's life is turned upside down when he meets Alan Dillinger, one of the hottest hunks on television, and realizes that the guy is coming on to him. Next thing you know, there's a picture of Alan kissing David in People magazine and Warren's having a fit on David's answering machine. Can Alan and David make this work? Can David fix things with his friend? Can Alan come out without sacrificing his career?

This is a delicious book, as close to a guilty pleasure as you can get without actually plunking money down for The Star or The Sun or The National Enquirer. It's full of fictional blind items and great musings on our culture from someone who grew up in the 1980s. What more could you want?

All New People by Anne Lamott (2000). The latest novel by Anne Lamott reads very much like a personal memoir of her childhood. If you've read Bird by Bird, Operating Instructions, and her earlier novels, some of the situations and characterizations will feel familiar. And that's not a bad thing.

This isn't a novel so much as it is the portrait of a girl and her family, made up of vignettes taken from everyday life. Nanny, the main character, is embarrassed by her strange family. She just wants a normal mom and a normal dad, like every other kid in the world seems to have. Instead, she feels like a misfit in her life. These people are easy to care about, and hard to let go of.

Lamott is a very giving writer who is willing to expose her own insecurities and weaknesses in her non-fiction, and is seemingly unafraid of addressing those same topics in her fiction. I respect her immensely.

Bee Season by Myla Goldberg (2000). One of the strangest and most interesting books I've read all year. It's primarily the story of 11-year old Eliza Naumann, who wins the school spelling bee and -- to everyone's amazement -- makes it all the way to the national competition. But it's also the story of Eliza's brother, Aaron, and her parents, Saul and Miriam. Each member of the family, in his or her own way, is looking for a kind of mystical perfection in unlikely places. Eliza seeks the face of God in the letters of the spelling bee words. Saul is looking for a kind of spiritual growth through teaching his daughter about mystical Judaism. Aaron, behind his father's back, throws himself into Hare Krishna in search of surrender and elevation. Miriam hovers at the edge of reason, seeking perfection by building a physical manifestation of her own interior world. The four characters live side by side, each engrossed in his or her own quest, not recognizing their own spiritual connections with the rest of the family. A strange and compelling book.

Scooped! Media Miss Real Story on Crime While Chasing Sex, Sleaze, and Celebrities by David J. Krajicek (1999). David Krajicek is a former New York Daily News reporter who left the profession when he realized he could not fight the trend toward tabloid-style reporting in the mainstream media. This book is an examination of the connection between how crime is reported and how our society views crime and makes crime policy. Krajicek also provides a fascinating history of the print news medium and the growth of "tabloid TV." It's an interesting book, although I wish there were more suggestions for changes to be made. In the end I do think there is a problem -- he is very convincing on this point -- but it's hard to see any way out. Maybe it's just the optimist in me, but I would like to think there is some way to improve the current state. Unfortunately, I'm afraid it's not very likely.

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