books wot I have been reading

[mamajoan]

mofic started up a bookclub for members of the parenting group to which we both belong, and I decided to join. Once I got over the feeling that a bookclub is something "soccer moms" do ;) it seemed ideal -- we get a whole month to read the book (and busy though I am, if I can't read even ONE book in a month, something is REALLY wrong) and then the discussion is all online, which is a lot less "pressure" than having in-person meetings.

So we started off with this book called The Namesake, which unbeknownst to me because I'm totally out of touch with such things ;) is the basis for a movie currently playing in theaters. I went into the book knowing absolutely nothing about it except that the author is Indian and there's a picture of a man on the cover and that it takes place at least partly in this area (Boston/Cambridge).

Well, I liked the book okay. I didn't love it, but partly I think it's just not my genre of preference. I'm not big on this "chronicling the life of a person/family" type of book. I like books to have more of a, for lack of a better word, "point" to the plot. This is probably why I mostly read science fiction and mysteries, rather than just "straight" fiction: I like books where Stuff Happens. Not just books about people living their lives. (Granted The Namesake does have some overarching themes, like about the main character's struggles with the thing to which the title refers, and about the whole Indians-in-America thing. But that's not really what I mean by Stuff Happening.)

Anyway, as I was thinking about the book, I realized that there are a few big ways in which it doesn't hold up to my consciously feminist "style" of reading, and that largely explains my dissatisfaction with it.

For starters, the book fails the Bechdel Test. If you're unfamiliar with it, here's the comic strip that introduced it. To sum up, Alison Bechdel, creator of the comic "Dykes to Watch Out For," puts forth this rule for evaluating the woman-friendliness of a piece of media (in the strip it's a movie, but easily applies to books as well). To pass the Bechdel Test, a movie/book must: a) have at least two women in it, who b) have a conversation, which c) is not about a man.

Well, The Namesake certainly has a number of female characters, but I can't really think of a point at which any two of them have a real conversation, so the book fails on point (b) and thus of course never even makes it to point (c). And that's a problem, because, although the Bechdel Test doesn't of course cover everything, it's a pretty good litmus test, and does expose things.

I think the biggest problem I had with this book was one of poorly-managed expectations. The book opens on a woman, in her kitchen, pregnant (yes, and barefoot!), cooking herself comfort food. Within the first page or two, she goes into labor. It goes on to describe the day she first met her husband, and then jumps back to the "present" to resume describing her arrival at the hospital and the continuation of her labor. All of this gave me the impression that this was to be, for lack of a better term, a woman's story. Unfortunately, this is not the case. At essence it is a man's story, the story of the aforementioned woman's son. Maybe I should have guessed this by the fact that, although the labor itself is described, the actual birth is not. We skip in mid-labor to the husband, sitting around in the waiting room (this is the 1960s), remembering his own past, and then summoned to come and meet his son.

And the entire book is like that, really. It gives tantalizing glimpses or hints of the women's lives, suggestions that maybe it's going to start being about them, but basically, it isn't. The women in the story are, in essence, peripheral to the men, and this is something I hate most about any book anywhere.

Don't get me wrong, the book isn't one long stream of misogyny or anything like that. No, in fact, many of the female characters are treated quite well, given rich backstory, drawn sympathetically, even lyrically. But when you get right down to it, they aren't the story. And that, given my initial impression, is what bothers me.

Probably if I had had different expectations, it might not have bothered me as much. Probably if I had paid more attention to the front cover of the book (on which the only person is a man) and less to the opening pages ... or perhaps if I had considered the fact that opening with a pregnant woman going into labor is not really opening with a "woman's story" but with the story of the child. Maybe that's my problem: reading it as a mother, beginning the book with a woman's transition to motherhood, I assumed that it would be a story ABOUT that woman as a mother. Maybe I was also influenced in that by the fact that mofic recommended this book specifically to a group of mothers. In any case, it's a cautionary tale on managing expectations. ;)

There are issues I have with the construction and writing style as well, to be sure; the way the action jumps around in time, often several times in the span of a few pages, which is confusing and clunky. The present-tense narration doesn't bother me too much, nor does the semi-frequent switching of POV, but when you put all those things together they do start to feel problematic. The writing style itself is what they call "lyrical" and it's certainly beautiful at points, a very lush way of describing people and places and experiences, but that also tends to bog down at times. Yet, all those things are marginal to the other stuff I've already talked about. The "craft" problems might bother me more if there weren't as many "story" problems overshadowing them.

So, to sum up, I'm glad that I read it, even though it wasn't really my cup of tea and I had a fair number of issues with it. It was still good to check out something so different from what I usually read, and it certainly gave me some food for thought and I'm definitely looking forward to the discussion. And now I'm debating whether I want to see the movie. I can see several parts in the book that a moviemaker might choose to emphasize, which would make it even more obnoxious to me (but more palatable to American moviegoers' tastes). heh.

And now I'm back into my comfort zone, reading Lois Bujold's The Hallowed Hunt, about halfway through it now and enjoying it well enough although some parts of it really sound all too familiar (i.e., recycled -- with deepest apologies to the beloved author). But then, Lois's recycled is still better than 90% of the other sci-fi on the market today, so no worries! ;)

Have I mentioned lately how nice it is that my new commute gives me a few minutes each day to actually relax and read?? OMG.

Comments

[mofic.livejournal.com]

I love the Bechdel test! I'd never heard of it before. ::begins bragging:: I'm *in* a Dykes to Watch Out For cartoon! ::ends what turns out to be really pathetic bragging:: I'm thinking of movies/books I've seen lately and whether they meet the test. Hmmm, not so much.

Funnily enough, what first appealed to me about Lahiri (I read her short stories first) is how convincingly she writes a male POV, something I think a lot of women writers can't do well. Anyway, I look forward to discussing the book with you, and the rest of the crowd, and I'm sorry if I misled you on its content.

I need a "Books and Reading" icon.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that you had misled me! And certainly there is plenty of parenting-related stuff in the book for us to discuss. And probably if I had even read the back cover I would have realized it wasn't what I might think.

I was just thinking when I wrote this post that I need a books/reading icon! I could swear I used to have one but apparently now I don't. The closest I have is my Shakespeare icon, which isn't really relevant.

[mofic.livejournal.com]

Well, I didn't mean misled in some nefarious way. Anyway, if Leah keeps to plan the next book is Science Fiction. I'm not sure, though, that it passes the Bechdel test.

I uploaded the one reading picture I had on my work computer, to create a books and reading icon. The Shakespeare one gave me a laugh.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

ok, now that I'm home, I made an icon of an old reading-to-Isaac picture. :)

[mofic.livejournal.com]

Very cute picture!

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

The Hallowed Hunt does the same kind of bait-and-switch that you describe for The Namesake, which was my problem with it (the Bujold).

[mofic.livejournal.com]

Oh, and how do you know Shelli and Narda? I can't imagine there are two Shelli-and-Narda couples, but do they have a daughter named Malka?

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

Yes, they do, and yes, it would very surprising if there were two couples with those names, LOL. I know them from ttc circles.

[thinking-lotus.livejournal.com]

I didn't want to read The Namesake because I read part of it in the New Yorker and it was lyrical enough there, thankyouverymuch.

Also my tastes in fiction are extreme. I don't even like Louise Bujold. But I do like Will Self and Natsuko Kiritani (in translation). Also Haruki Murakami, even though he IS a NYer author.

I'm no fun in a book group, I can't even be arsed to say WHY I don't like things.