bone

bone, by Fae Myenne Ng. (Harper Perennial imprint, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, 1993 ed. $12.50 paperback, 194 pages)

Verdict: Worth reading
If: You've ever lost a loved one and you're not racist

This is what a (properly-written) grieving novel looks like. Without denigrating Ms. Ng's incredible voice as a Chinese-American author speaking of her own culture and its concerns, this novel transcends any attempt at cultural pigeon-holing. Her prose is exquisitely crafted. The novel's structure is perfectly balanced. Ng introduces her characters piecemeal, allowing the reader to become involved on a personal level; you feel as though these characters are your neighbors, or possibly your friends. As Leila, the oldest of three sisters, considers the suicide of her younger sister, Ona, the reader is invited to participate in the grieving process with her. We can feel her disenchantment, her anger, and her feelings of helplessness. As she tries to hold her family together, we are shown why these people matter to her. They are complex, troubled characters like any real human being is, but they are also sympathetically crafted. We want them to be successful. This novel allows and invites any reader of any background to consider the troubling process of grieving. Also under scrutiny is the family dynamic present in many homes where so many disparate personalities are glued together regardless of how they try to separate themselves from each other. This brief review certainly does not do the novel justice, so here's a brief excerpt (from p. 102):

"After Mah left, Leon suddenly stopped talking about Ona. I thought he'd been happy the last ten days because Mah hadn't been around reminding him of Ona all the time. I thought he'd forgotten about Ona for a while, I thought that was why he looked so happy, he was drunk with forgetfulness. I thought I'd forgotten: with Mason. Nina thought she'd forgotten, with her new guy. Mah wanted to forget, with her gold mine of gossip. But nobody'd forgotten about Ona.
"And here was proof: Leon's altar. He'd found a way to live with his grief. I could hear him say, Side by side, the sad with the happy."

Skip this novel if all you are willing to know about Chinese-American culture comes from a fortune cookie. Skip this novel if you don't want an authentic interaction with hard truths. But if you feel that reading can help you live a considered life, then don't pass this one up.

Also, check this out: http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/ng_fae_myenne.html

The Wee Free Men

The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett. (HarperTrophy, $6.99 paperback)

Verdict: Worth Reading
If: You have a sense of humor

This book is simply a delight to read. Roughly, the plot involves Tiffany Aching saving her annoying little brother from the wicked Queen of the Elves, with bellicose pictsies and other partners at her side. If you've a taste for fantasy, pick this up. If you have a low tolerance for puns, though, you should probably skip it. This is technically a YA novel, but there's no reason that adults shouldn't enjoy this as well. Pratchett's writing is spot on and I loved his puns (the heroine's name alone provides many of them). For people who care about such things, this book also teaches valuable lessons about acting responsibly and finding strength in one's self. It really is a great book.

Incidentally, the copy pictured here has different cover art than mine does. The cover art pictured here is quite a bit creepier than mine, but don't let that put you off the book at all. It's a fun book, not a creepy one.

http://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/

Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral

Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral, by Kris Radish. (Bantam Books, $11 paperback-- my copy was, anyway.)

Verdict: Not Worth Reading
If: You have a brain

From the title, and the fact that this author has two other best-selling novels, I expected this book to be funny and exciting and something I would really enjoy. I expected it to be something like Nick Hornby would write, if he were a postmenopausal American female. What I got instead was Max Lucado for adults. Traveling Funeral is a motivational speaker wrapped in a book cover. Radish's characters spout pop psychological drivel to each other and very earnestly find meaning in every single speck of dust they pass. As a fictional demonstration of productive grieving methods, I'm sure it's excellent. As effective fiction, it tanks.

Why? Because Radish makes the crucial mistake of not including her audience. The novel revolves, obviously, around the death of Annie Freeman, a friend to many different women. The traveling funeral brings them together as they scatter her ashes in spots that were important in Annie's life. They swear a lot, and drink a lot, and cry and hug a lot. Ok, people do that, whether they're grieving or not. But guess what? I, the reader, don't know who Annie Freeman is or was, and by the time Radish gets around to actually showing me, I don't care, either. Radish presumes that because I've picked up the book, I'll read the whole thing. She presumes that having six other characters say that Annie Freeman was a wonderful human being means I'll agree. Radish asks her readers to feel emotions she hasn't earned.

Meanwhile, she assaults her readers with very fanciful paragraphs that mean nothing and interrupt what little movement the novel has. Take this excerpt (with apologies): "It did not happen overnight. It was not easy. It would never be forgotten or forgiven. Annie fell into the arms and heart and talents of Laura and her women's center and its many causes and concerns. it was an embrace that transcended the incident when they first met, an embrace that blossomed into friendship, fine love, and passed the test of time and place that often triggers a distance that makes friendship cloud and forgotten." Do you think it sounds nice? How about for 331 pages? Because every other paragraph is like this. This is telling, not showing, and anyone who's ever taken freshman writing should know better than to ever write a paragraph like this, much less an entire novel of it, much less publish it. It makes me wonder what she handed her editors to begin with if this is the result of their best efforts.

In addition to lack of talent and concern for her craft, what this sort of writing demonstrates is that Radish has included a lot of herself in this novel. Like bad poetry, Radish's novel seems to draw on genuine emotions that are the result of actual experience. And I am all for people writing down their experiences and trying to express what they feel. But for pity's sake, don't publish it. Publishing this novel is the equivalent of going out with your skirt tucked into your pantyhose, and Radish clearly lacks the good girlfriends she attempts to celebrate in this novel-- that is, the ones who would keep her from embarassing herself.

What I do sense from this novel is that whoever this Annie Freeman was, she was important to a lot of people. Sure would've been nice to see her and to know her myself, rather than having to rely on second- and third-hand accounts.

http://www.amazon.com/Annie-Freemans-Fabulous-Traveling-Funeral/dp/0553382640