Off Course by Michelle Huneven

 

I liked it but didn't love it. The protagonist - a 29 year old economics scholar finishing her dissertation at her parent's mountain cabin in northern California - grated on me after awhile. She's in love with an older blue-collar married man, a cabinet-maker, and the relationship seems contrived. The close writing about the natural Sierra landscape is quite beautiful throughout, though.

Poems by V.R. Lang

Excellent and interesting New Yorker piece on forgotten American poet Violet Ranney "Bunny" Lang (forgotten by the academy, I guess, as I never knew her work to begin with.) 

(A débutante, a burlesque dancer, and a poet, the shape-shifting Lang—who died at thirty-two—wrote some of the most aching, entrancing poetry of the twentieth century... - The New Yorker)

Born in 1926, died in early 1950s, socialite, in the Frank O'Hara orbit of New York poets - she reminds me of Medbh McGuckian somewhat, the obscurantist Irish poet. 

The Suicide

by V.R. Lang

Shocked that she missed the footbridge! She cried out,
But no later than the water she fell in and drowned in;
God help me, they tell us she shouted, but she had no sovereign --
No one at all to order her out of the water.

Now the animals have charted the land for their reasonable holiday;
All have appointed this time to be there to see them.
Photographers capture each other -- the carnival quickens!
The spectres, the hawkers, the talkers, the damned are all there.

At the Meeting of Two Families
by V.R. Lang

Who were the assasins that came to get you?
Six of them coated in black and silently smoking --
Slithering quiet like empty clothes

Alert to the dark, from hangers.
Who were they that came to watch you?
Chewing cigaretts they looked at you, they looked at me.

What in a hay moon hovers and waits like a bag
With a man in it? Why did you make
Your face like a Japanese mask of terror to style?

Limply arranged they waited, just waited.
As always I gave back your terror, I felt it --
I grimaced, aped it, then flashed it to you.

And we stared at each other and back to our inerlocutors,
The bareback riders from kingdom to kingdom --
You knew them, I knew. You remembered.

Why is your dark like a bag with a man in it?
In the moment of panice, hardly anything happens,
But nothing is true. I remembered, I knew.

I cried out, and the light broke. Your family
Pronounced me charming. My love, my love,
We will scratch all over the dusty earth crawling

The way out of dread we've no name for, could not tell.
We will come to dread all we own, as well --
Till you make and weep, till you break the spell.

25 Years
by V.R. Lang

We got through this year and nobody;
We got through this year and perhaps.
On the day of the white crow somebody
Will kiss us and keep us, but this was not this year;
This year is over and nobody; this year is next year now.

    Here is the hole in the wall. Here we peek.
    Here is Chanticleer. We shall do everything but speak.
    We shall bless, address, abuse -- we shall not speak.
    Had we to love or were we at fault? 
    We were confused, affection or assault
    Proved only beasts will eat themselves or anything:
    Let us join hands and dance around the naked king.

This year the creeping itch was apparent in the left hand,
This year perhaps it will sneak to the right, we will see.
The eye shivered at the slack it saw it did not understand;
The white crow never came to kiss us under the pear tree.
Twenty-five are pinching parents, poppy-addled, fed-on-us--
We wept our dusty latter thoughts, we stretched and scrabbled loose.
O! the day of the white crow will come, when it will come it can;
Then shall we shake our sticks, o years, in wicked triumph then.

from "Poems to Preserve the Years at Home"
by V.R. Lang

Tuesday when you opened your eyes your
Room was a cold disaster. Arranged
Around you, its own disorderly life

Took stock of you like a crazy pendulum
Swung over your head like a demonstration
In a science museum, your hands were numb,

All the pieces of you clunb to the bedclothes
Like a broken promise, sorrow sticking to the cracks
Till you sat up and the floor went dizzy.

You did not go near the mirrow, you fed the cat
But it went on weeping, and you had to sit down.
Still all that day you were followed by your

Tall still angels, walking like trees.
You had no choice but to lead them, and twice
You listened, and once, you smiled.

Some days the days for providence we wak
Up taller than the telephone, our eyes more harsh and black,
And even its screaming cannot shock us.

Some days we wake up the Act
Which casts a shadow on the infinite plane
of suggestion, we become our Agents,

Pay our rent and sort the laundry,
Make appointments, go to market,
Lay in stores with strange, beleaguered haste.

Some days our guardian days we
Go gladly into one dimension;
These days our days are not our dominion

But our deliverance, practical and moral.
On these days only motion casts a shadow.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

 

Years since I read this. Struck anew by Flaubert's chiseled detailed style. 

Re-reading in honor of the late great Northwestern Professor Paul C. Edwards, who died on October 15 at the age of 75, of alcoholism and grief. He staged this in the mid-1980s with Alchemy Theatre Company of Manhattan, which I was a member of in its first formative lackluster year. I left group just in time for them to successfully mount BOVARY.

Salve, magister!

After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell

 Slow going and a little aimless, but the story is building in its way. Three generations of women - grandmother, mother, daughter - are slowly revealed in all their damaging passion. I guess.

A New New Me by Helen Oyeyemi

 

Strange concept - a central character/narrator who is a different version of the same person every day of the week. And each version of the narrator has trust issues with the other versions.

Oyeyemi's prose style is unsettling and brilliant - surprising, obscure, eccentric, funny all at the same time.

I'm only up to Wednesday (Kinga-C is narrator) but liking it more and more, after being put off by the Monday narrator's verse for awhile. All will be revealed, I hope.

11/5/2025 - Up to Friday (Kinga-E) now and still confused but trying to complete the journey. Oyeyemi's style is cutting and intelligent, but I don't always follow. Oh well.

Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven

 

Like this very much, complex family love with discovered connections, half siblings, step siblings. Hunever moves back for through time to constantly unsettle us as to what we really know - vs what we thought we knew - about each character.

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

 

Good - great even - but I will admit that all of her Jackson Brodie crime novels blend in my mind, and I usually have no idea which one I'm reading, I'm just worshipping her motion.

This one is set in Scotland/Glasgow during the Fringe festival, and involves the spouse of a corrupt real estate developer, a Russian sex worker, a timid crime novelist, and of course, Jackson Brodie who is as muddled and ineffective and heroic as ever.

The Finishing School by Muriel Spark

 

Lovely, compact, dense as usual. A precocious 17 year old historical novelist squares off with his frustrated, envious private school headmaster.