Words and Pictures

Fine Just the Way It Is is Annie Proulx's third collection of Wyoming stories.  There are nine stories in this collection, and as usual, most of them concentrate on depicting the hard life of ranchers, politicians and cowboys, and the arguably even harder life of their wives.

As always, Proulx gives a subtle build up in each story, and then hits the reader with a punch right where it hurts.  Drama and a large dose of irony collide, sometimes peppered with a little humour.  Occasionally she depicts real flashes of happiness in her characters' lives - such as when Archie and his young wife set up home in 'Them Old Cowboy Songs' or when young Dakotah feels a rush of love which she never could have imagined when she has a baby in 'Tits Up in a Ditch'.  But although these moments of happiness are not generally expected to last long (at least not to any reader familiar with Proulx's writing), events still manage to surprise with the way that they seemingly come out of the blue, although on reflection they were probably always inevitable.

Two of the stories are comedic, and are actually set in hell, where we meet the devil - a mischievous but charismatic character, who travels around in a golf buggy and devises a plan to make life more interesting in certain areas on earth.  In another story, a woman wants her grandfather to tell his life story for posterity, but he fails to convey what he actually feels.

Annie Proulx's writing is always very 'clean' - she never uses spare words, and indeed they are not necessary, because she has the ability to transport her reader to the landscape in which the story is set, in just a few words.

I preferred this book to the first collection of Wyoming Stories (Close Range, which featured the love story Brokeback Mountain), but didn't enjoy it quite as much as the second collection (Bad Dirt).  Overall though, I would certainly recommend this book to other readers, and would actively seek out more of Annie Proulx's writing.

This is the story of Liesel Meminger, a young girl in Nazi Germany, who having watched her family disintegrate, is fostered by the kindly Hans and Rosa Hubermann.  Liesel sees the atrocities committed in wartime, and sees the best and worst that humankind has to offer.  Hans is the father who takes care of her and teaches her to read - a gift that will be her salvation and the comfort of others.  Rosa is the coarse but warm hearted woman who fiercely protects her family.  During Liesel's story, we meet a whole cast of characters - Max Vandenburg, the Jew who is hiding from the Nazis and just hoping to survive the war; Rudy Steiner, Leisel's neighbour and best friend; Frau Holtzaphel, the Hubermann's next door neighbour; and Adolf Hitler, who while never actually appearing as a character in the book, certainly looms over the whole story.

The book is narrated by Death himself, who is a surprisingly thoughtful and compassionate storyteller.

To put it bluntly, this book is fantastic.  It is apparently aimed at young adults, but I think this is a book that adults of any age would and should get a lot out of reading.  The story completely immersed me in wartime Germany and in particular, Lieisel's world.  The characterisation by Markus Zusak is terrific.  Although there is a fairly large cast of characters, each and every one is beautifully drawn, and I felt as if I knew them personally.  They were utterly believable, and I cared about all of them.

The book held my attention through every page - I never once felt bored.  Death is an interesting, sometimes even amusing, and always thoughtful narrator - he reveals snippets of what happens to certain characters before the events actually occur, but despite this, when such things do actually happen, the impact is not lessened in the slightest.

As the vast majority of characters are German, the reader sees the war through the eyes of German citizens, and shows them as individuals rather than the collective nation which wartime Germany is often viewed as.

To sum up - occasionally, I come across a book which I want to tell all of my friends about.  I feel as though I want everyone I know to read it.  This is just such a book.  Very highly recommended indeed.

Night club singer Benna Carpenter lives in a flat across the hall from Gerard Maines.  Gerard is in love with Benna and suffers when he hears her bring other men home at night.  Or Benna is an aerobics teacher who was Gerard’s lover for nineteen months.  Or Benna and Gerard live together in a house and hold a yard sale with Benna’s friend Eleanor.  Or Benna is a poetry teacher dating a mature student, whose best friend is Gerard, a pianist who aspires to be an opera singer…

There are a few things we know about Benna.  She is delightfully clever and witty, and makes some wonderful plays on words (”All the world’s a stage we’re going through” being my favourite example).  Gerard is her best friend, whatever other form their relationship takes.

With Benna as narrator, this book weaves in and out of her real life and her fictional life, until the reader is no longer sure which is which.  But when reality suddenly bursts through with a vengeace, the safety net that Benna has built for herself with her fantasies, suddenly snaps.  It is an unusual narrative, and one which took some getting used to – however, it was well worth the effort, as eventually the words flowed freely and I felt able to immerse myself in whatever world Benna was inhabiting at the time.

Despite the fact that so much of this novel blurs the lines between fiction and reality, Benna is an extremely well rounded character, and I found it easy to believe in her.  It is clear that she feels that something is lacking in her life, and doesn’t know how to find out what it is, or how to do anything about it.  Instead, she invents alternative realities which are all too easy for her to retreat into.

I don’t want to say much more about the plot of this book, because I feel that to give too much away would be to do a great injustice to anyone planning to read it.  I will say though that I thought it was a thought provoking book with a heroine who – ironically because of the fiction she creates for herself – was very believable.

The writing flows easily and I found constantly myself thinking “I’ll just read a few more pages.”  It’s a quick and easy read, but certainly not lightweight.  Highly recommended.

Paul Sheldon is an author, most famous for his collection of stories about Misery Chastain, a heroine loved and adored by many.  But Paul is sick of Misery and wants to concentrate on other novels, so he has killed off the character.  But then he crashes his car in a snowstorm in a part of the USA that he is not familiar with.  He would have died had he not been 'rescued' by Annie Wilkes, who describes herself as his (and Misery's) biggest fan.  Annie is furious that he has killed off her favourite character and demands that he write another novel, where the heroine is brought back to life.  And what Annie wants, Annie gets...It doesn't take long before Paul realises that Annie is dangerously unstable, and now, instead of writing for a living, he is writing for his life.

I really enjoyed this book.  For most of the book there are only two characters - Paul and Annie - which gives it a claustrophobic atmosphere.  There is also real tension within the pages - I found myself holding my breath while reading on as quickly as possible in order to see what happened next.  Annie is a terrifying character, and also a rather pathetic man.  Paul is our hero of sorts - although he is clearly portrayed as a somewhat selfish man, who is forced to draw on reserves of strength he didn't know he possessed.

Although there are just two main characters, it was plot that really kept the book rolling along at such a quick pace.  It was established very early on that Annie was deranged (although the extent of her madness does not become clear until later).  It was also clear that she was able to out-manoeuvre Paul in all imaginable situations.  The reason that this book was so hard to put down was to see just how (if at all) Paul would escape this woman.

There are excerpts of 'Misery's Return' - the book which Annie forces Paul to write - included in the book.  This was perhaps un-necessary (I only wanted to know what happened to Paul, not to his most popular character), but it did not detract from the main story at all.  I always think the scariest stories are ones which you actually believe could happen - as is the case with this one.  Very highly recommended to fans of the genre.  However, due to some of the graphic violent scenes, it may not be suitable for some younger readers.