The Casual Vacancy

Like many who have read and enjoyed the Harry Potter series, I was curious to see what J.K. Rowling's first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy would be like. I was eager to read it, but not excited enough to run out and buy it as soon as it was released. As I waited for my requested copy to come in through the library, I began to grow a little wary. I saw several reviews of the book along the lines of, "it's well written, but nothing really happens in the story and it wouldn't be a big deal if it came from any other author" that my expectations were lowered enough to make me approach the book with caution. But now, after finishing it, I feel confident telling anyone who might be on the fence about reading it to throw caution to the wind and jump in. If you liked Rowling's writing in Harry Potter, I think you'll enjoy this too, even in spite of its vastly different subject matter.

The subject matter of The Casual Vacancy sounds banal enough--a small British village is up in arms when a local councilman dies and a special election is held to fill his seat. For a story that takes place in a tiny geographic world, it's peopled with a huge cast of characters from all walks of life, all finely and realistically drawn, and all preoccupied with their own set of prejudices and conflict, some petty, some not. They view the village's election through the lens of these preoccupations. As a result, we see how the unexpected death of one seemingly ordinary man has a ripple effect on the lives of a widely diverse group of people.

Many other reviews of the book I've read have made the same point I'm about to make, but it bears repeating--The Casual Vacancy truly is for adults and many of its characters deal with troubling social issues that aren't really appropriate for young children. What I think it does have in common with Harry Potter, though, aside from Rowling's skill as a vivid storyteller, is an unflinching views of its subjects. As the Harry Potter series progressed, I recall that critics frequently pointed out the way that those books, in a departure from many other children's books, openly dealt with death and loss in their storylines. The Casual Vacancy is equally open and honest about the flaws of its characters. Every character in the book is obviously flawed, some to a fatal degree. It's an ambiguous world in which the "good" characters can sometimes be difficult to distinguish from the "bad" ones. Yet event the blatantly "bad" characters, as annoying and hateful as can be, are portrayed with nuance and complexity. Although many of the characters and their actions are by no means likable, they're all fascinating. In this way, The Casual Vacancy is both a big departure for Rowling and a book that continues to play to her one big strength--creating vivid imaginary worlds that readers can spend endless amounts of time getting lost in.

Faux-nuts

Living without heat last week turned out to be the perfect excuse to bake a lot as a way of using the oven to warm up my apartment. One of the new recipes I tried out was a Spiced Pumpkin Cookie recipe from the Pretty Delicious cookbook. They turned out to be a very odd little seasonal sweet. After baking, the cookies came out with a very cake-like consistency and never spread out into a flat, round shape. To top it off (pun intended), the pumpkin glaze for the topping turned out kind of sticky and never really hardened into an icing like the recipe promised. I was pretty disappointed and thinking that this recipe wasn't a keeper....until I tasted them and discovered that they tasted like really good, baked pumpkin doughnuts.

Their size and shape even makes them look a little like doughnut holes. They may not be the most photo-worthy of desserts, but if you're looking for a pumpkin-y treat for fall, or if your looking to fool someone into thinking that you slaved over homemade doughnuts, then this is your recipe.

Friday Fancies

It feels good to be back to a regular Friday roundup after the chaos of last week. I still don't have heat or hot water in my apartment so things aren't completely back to normal, but I do feel like I've more or less caught up with things. Now I feel in the mood to pull up a chair with a hot cup of tea and catch up with some things from around the blog world:

(photo taken in Copley Square, Boston)

First, I have to link to this post if only to say, check out the size of those meringues on the counter in the first picture!

Have you guys seen these Goodreads Live interviews yet?

Here's some unique semi-permanent jewelry in the form of a screw cuff bracelet.

On a less frivolous note, there are still a lot of hurricane related stories and pictures floating around the way. For me, the most jaw dropping were these interactive before and after satellite shots of the affected areas.

With 50% of proceeds going to charity, these prints by artist Sophie Blackall are one of the prettier relief efforts I've seen.

And yes, we did get a dose of wind, snow, and slush as Nor'easter came up the coast yesterday (salt, meet wounds). It actually wasn't that bad, though, and these photos take a beautiful view of the storm.

Anyone have any fun plans for the weekend? Or will you be getting a jump start on winter hibernation?

Ancient Light

If any of you are like me and are fans of watching The Voice on NBC, then you'll be familiar with the "battle rounds" of the competition. For any of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, that's the point in the show where the celebrity singing coaches/ judges pair up two singers from their teams who have similar styles and make them sing duets. Whoever gives the best performance gets to move on to the next round. If I were judging a literary version of The Voice, I would probably have to pit John Banville's new novel, Ancient Light, against a novel I read at the beginning of this year, The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Both books share narrators who are older men looking back at pivotal moments from their youth, torn between their memories and their awareness of the unreliability of memory.

In Ancient Light, the older man in question is Alexander Cleave, an aging British stage actor. In the novel's present tense, Cleave is acting in his first ever film role, forging a friendship of sorts with the young starlet who is his costar. During the course of this acting job, Cleave also undertakes the task of recording in his journal the events of an inappropriate affair he had with his best friend's mother when he was a teenager. The action jumps back and forth between these two story lines, mingling in Cleave's more recent memories of the unexpected and unexplained death of his troubled adult daughter ten years prior.

Banville has a very lyrical style of writing that's in full force here and it gives an elegiac quality to the memories that are are dealt with in the novel. As a narrator, Cleave frequently points out bits of memories that he knows are inaccurate, such as the way that he pictures an incident unfolding against the backdrop of a spring day when he knows for a fact that it happened in the fall, or the way that characters in his memory wear very specific articles of clothing that would have been outlandish had they worn them in reality. Cleave often comes across as being bemused or charmed by these tricks of the mind, and is at the very least resigned to accepting them as an integral part of the history he's constructed for himself. This attitude is somewhat different than that of the narrator in The Sense of an Ending. Although that narrator was also very forthcoming about the possible inaccuracies of his memories, he also seemed to be more suspicious of them, and certainly not resigned to accepting them. There's the sense that he thinks he can somehow get to the bottom of his memories and reconstruct the true version of events, which is ultimately played out in the way the plot of that novel progresses.

It's tough for me to decide which treatment of memory I prefer. Banville's might be more beautiful but Barnes's has a certain tension to it that I also liked. If it did actually come down to a head to head competition, I think it would be a real toss up.

(And yes, I did just spend an entire post connecting two Booker Prize-winning authors to a reality singing competition show. You're welcome.)

Visiting The Mount

 When Hurricane Sandy hit, I had just returned from a short trip to Boston, where I spent a long weekend visiting my friend Lara. On that Friday, we drove out to The Berkshires and spent the day visiting Edith Wharton's historic home, The Mount. Of course I snapped a lot of pictures while I was there, if you'd care to see.

Wharton was an avid book lover and collector and the library at The Mount is filled with thousands of books that belonged to her personal collection. There are apparently another couple thousand that are not on display because they are still being reviewed and studied for all of the notes Wharton wrote in the margins. Wouldn't that be a fascinating job to do?

The Mount was sold after Wharton relocated to Europe and it changed hands several more times before being restored as an historical site. Because of that, most of the furniture (aside from the library) in the house are new reproductions and not the original items that Wharton actually used. You might think that this lack of artifacts would cause The Mount to lack a sense of authenticity, but I actually found the opposite to be the case. Because the majority of the pieces are not precious antiques, you can fully wander through the rooms, even sitting down if you'd like. You have the sense that you're experiencing the rooms the way that Wharton did.

Wharton's bedroom was light, airy, and feminine. Her routine was to spend the mornings writing in bed, dropping each handwritten sheet to the floor once she had filled it. She also loved her dogs and made them an integral part of her home, as represented by the small stuffed versions that are strategically placed around The Mount.

I found Wharton's views about decorating a home to be very inspiring, both in terms of her larger ideas about creating beautiful spaces for yourself and in terms of small, specific things, like the way she surrounded herself with books and incorporated them around her home. Books are casually stacked on tables or tucked into nooks and crannies in nearly every room. Touring The Mount made me feel reinvigorated to think about the way I decorate my space and creating some new groupings of books may be an easy place to start.





The grounds were beautiful, too, albeit a bit subdued now that the fall is turning colder. Visible from nearly every room, the gardens serve as an extension of the home and mimic Wharton's preferences for balance and symmetry of form.

The Mount was by far my favorite historical home I've ever toured. It's a must-see in New England for literary and interior design buffs alike.