Bev Jackson's Reading Page

May 05 The Blessings of Hard Used Angels by John Cottle
John Cottle is a writer whose work is steeped in southern tradition and culture. Richly crafted and deep with emotional and psychological surprises, this first collection The Blessings of Hard-Used Angels is a joy to read.
It's been sitting on my nightstand for many months now, and being too busy, I wanted the time to savor it, having published one of the stories myself, and having read a few of the others as they were being developed, I knew a treat was in store. It was worth waiting for. The characters are unique and all too human, touching the reader with subtle reminders of our own quirky worlds. These are stories with purpose, plot and meaning--the kind of short stories that sit with you like old friends, long after you've finished.
An excerpt from just one of my favorites, Nocturnal Birds:
"She lived in a singlewide house trailer near Arceneaux and supported her sparse existence with various odd jobs, most of which involved caring for the sick. She had brought him groceries and medicine and even done a little cooking and laundry and when he got over the flu, she continued to do the same things for him and he did not complain. Nor did he complain when she came to him one evening and slowly peeled away his blue work jumpsuit and then her own clothing, and took him to bed and lay with him until morning, nor even when she brought her toothbrush and the small box of toilet articles to leave for the convenience of regular weekend visits. As he watched her now through the stir of dust off the concrete floor, bringing the small sack that he knew contained a baloney sandwich and a can of sardines, he did not see the thick flesh that hung from her arms or the coarseness in her skin or the chestnut flush of her teeth, but looked instead upon an approaching comfort--a hard-used angel bearing common blessings--and a smile came up under the grime of his face as she waded toward him through the clutter."

The Blessings of Hard Used Angels
by John Cottle

(Winner of the 2003 George Garrett Fiction Prize for stories.)
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May 05 The Bone People by Keri Hulme
Winner of the 1985 Booker Prize, Keri Hulme's The Bone People was unknown to me until my friend Carol Peters (after reading Maso's Defiance) told me she thought I'd like it. She was right. It was hard for me to put it down.
This astonishing book's author is a Maori who grew up in Christchurch and Moeraki, New Zealand. It is a marvel of language peppered with Maori words and phrases, Maori characters, legends, and dream sequences unlike anything you've ever read. But don't let me mislead you. With all the poetics and lyricism, at the same time, it renders a chilling story of a harsh reality and a society where an acceptance of brutality and hardship is almost commonplace. A people wedded to their ancestors, to the earth and sky, this novel is a tribute to a totality of "lost" truths in a modern world, and to the power of love and loyalty. Hulme manages to take old themes and breathe fresh, and unbelievably moving life into them. And written 20 years ago, they still radiate off the page today.
I give this book my highest recommendation.
From The Bone People a self-description by our protagonist (on meeting a child who has broken into her home):
She wonders how many years. He looks as though he might be, ummmm? She has no idea how old the brat looks. She hasn't ever had anything to do with children.
"Raw fry is vegetables and stuff, like bacon or eggs or fish, all cooked together. It tastes okay."
There's no obvious answer.
"Well," she says after a moment, aware now there is appraisal of herself taking place, "That's all that's going. Like it or lump it."

I wonder if I still look peeculeear?
Heavy shouldered, heavy-hammed, heavy-haired.
No evidence of a brain behind those short brows.
Yellowed eyes, and eczema scarred skin.
Large hands and large feet, crooked only if you look closely.
Everything beautified by me knuckleduster collection.
Today, greenstone water middlefinger; kingfisher glitter of opal ringfinger;
winedark garnet one little finger, turquoise stud the other; and that barred
charredlooking silver hulking hunk of thumbring.
Encased in jeans, leather jerkin, silk shirt, denim jacket, knife at side,
bare footed (Which reminds me, they're cold.)
A right piratical-looking eschewball I suppose I look, but what the hell.

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April 05. Crooked Hearts – Robert Boswell

Just finished reading Robert Boswell’s first novel “Crooked Hearts.” (1987)
I was fortunate enough to receive and publish a short story of his in Ink Pot, Issue #4. We later pubbed it on the LitPot ezine. It impressed me more than any other story we got in 2004. I nominated it for a Pushcart and a BASS, and if you’d like the pleasure, here’s “A Sketch of Highway on the Nap of A Mountain”.
I could hardly wait to get to Boswell’s novels, but due to my time constraints, wait I did. Finally this past month, I started “Crooked Hearts,” his first, and am now a devoted fan of this amazing writer.
The crooked hearts of the Warren family (think Glass a la Salinger) is a quirky, flawed group of characters that are unforgettable. Boswell surprises the reader at every turn as the story moves from voice to voice in a searing composite of secrets, rites, myths, jokes, destruction and love. It’s a triumph in its humanity and depth of spirit and originality. I can recommend it unconditionally.
He is the author of six novels, including "Crooked Hearts," (which has been made into a movie,) “The Geography of Desire,” "Mystery Ride," “Virtual Death” (writing as Shale Aaron), "American Owned Love," and his most recent, "Century's Son." He is also the author of two collections of short stories, "Dancing in the Movies" and "Living to Be 100." He has written the play "Tongues," which won the John Gassner Playwriting Award and was produced by the American Southwest Theatre Company.
Boswell began teaching at New Mexico State University in 1989 and for the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers in 1986. In 2002, he joined the creative writing faculty at the University of Houston. He lives with his wife, writer Antonya Nelson and two children.

April 05. More Die of Heartbreak – Saul Bellow
I finally finished this novel, long unread, sitting on my shelf for many years. It was a chore to get into it because it wasn’t Bellow’s usual, nor was it his best, but get into it (eventually) I did and am glad to report that I enjoyed it. Not at all sure I would recommend it to anyone who wasn’t a writer or who didn’t already love Bellow however. This was an example of a book written purely for oneself, and I got the sense that Bellow must have enjoyed the romp and didn’t give a hoot for critical acclaim or readership.
With a very thin plot involving a French-born nephew who relocates to the Midwest, USA to be near his beloved Uncle Benn, (an obsessed botanist), this book toyed with the cultural and sexual taboos of our generation, and a political worldview without lecturing on politics. We are given two grown men who can’t quite get their romantic/sexual lives under control—two intelligent humanists in the midst of a capitalistic, dog-eat-dog society, with the worst betrayals happening within their very own family--(taking small jabs at Jewish stereotypes and tongue-in-cheek in-jokes about Jewish character, humor and history.) Bellow always has serious themes underlying his humor and jocular characters, and the dance he does between his intellectual principles and his fun-loving characterizations is intriguing..
The counterpoint of East vs.West that this book addresses is set up with the narrator nephew, Kenneth, a scholar of Russian literature trying to extricate his cherished uncle out of a marriage to a finagling, beautiful woman with a rich and greedy doctor for a father. “More die of heartbreak than radiation poisoning” expresses the warring factions of the emotional and spiritual breakdowns of the ‘thinking man’ in the face of capitalistic ‘reason’ and enterprise, politics and marriages of convenience. “I was a phoenix who runs with arsonists!”The personal failures of both the young and older man are used to express Bellow’s viewpoints on a wide range of rants, in a most humorous but peculiar (soapbox, conversational, loose and non-novelistic) way. What impresses is his language, his seemingly effortless monologues (that can go on for pages) ignoring all the ‘rules’ of writing, even to the point of pissing off the reader because not much is happening. Bellow doesn’t care. He has a purpose and a theme and he goes for it. It’s audacious in its blatant lack of appeal. But of course I found it appealing for that reason, and because he crawls under the skin of his characters (and women who play some stereotypical roles, everything from Madonna to whore are also deconstructed and shown to be whole people with all the dark/light complications of mankind) with such compassion and humor that I felt I needed to continue to read in spite of my resistance.

March 05 Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell
A Dangerous Professiion by Frederick Busch
March has been a dismal month of dismantling my business. My literary journal, Ink Pot, and my small independent press are being retired due to a loss of funding by our sponsor. Fueled by the inability to secure distribution conduits to bookstores and libraries, I threw in the towel. It has been exceedingly painful, so my reading has been limited this month to writing and technique books, in the hopes that I can get back to my novel and screenplay and complete the rewrites in 2005. I haven't actually finished either of the books mentioned above, so distracted and busy am I. Plus my very talented cousin, a travel writer, Joseph Yogerst, delivered to me two mainstream novels that he wrote a few years ago -- one a past best seller; and I am slowly getting into a serial killer thriller called "White Tiger." Giving my normal lit reading a rest, sleeping a lot, and going for Escape.

February 05 Girls by Frederick Busch
A tidy little piece of literary writing with a predictable ending, but a wonderfully slow and carefree willingness to get there. I'm most impressed with Busch's presence even though the thought occurred to me that he was trying to write a commercially viable literary work. An amateur writer at my writer's group commented that all best selling books have a murder in them. That sort of made me sad. Because it's sort of true. But this one is a kind of chocolate Lab retriever paced kind of murder...it's just as horrid as real life, but not socked to us in TV headlines. More of a sleepy college town with an undereducated street smart protagonist to reel you in. Sort of literature's answer to Columbo. I enjoyed it.

January 05 Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien
Dammit, there isn't just enough time to tell you how much I loved this book. I'm a woman who doesn't read war stories, and while this is a Viet Nam set tale, it is no war story. It is more a divine possibility. The 'possibilities' in life as present in the mind of Spec Four Berlin make for one of the most gripping and wonderfully literary novels about war and life I've read since Catch 22. It is poetry in the most prosaic prose; it is steam of consciousness without ever being a whit self conscious; it is simply worth reading and possibly re-reading. More than that, it's given me hope for my own novel's flash forward/flash backward schizophrenia, because it tackles present time and former time (if you read it literally) in the smoothest and most acceptable (but not spelled out) fashion which shows me art can attempt anything when it knows who it is. Tim O'Brien knows who he is and he knows who you and I are too.

January 05 Father and Son by Larry Brown
How did I miss reading Larry Brown before this? This is my kind of writer, and I just had trouble putting the book down. Mind you, it's slow and meticulous writing, very Faulkneresque, dealing with rape, murder, all means of mayhem, but beautifully, exquisitely wrought. Simple language but not simple writing. Absolutely transporting. The story of good and evil; the shades of gray in between those two components, and the power of the human spirit. I was enthralled and cannot wait to get hands on the rest of Brown's output. I was deeply sorry to hear that he has died before I knew he lived. A must read for people who love literature.

January 05 A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O'Nan
This was my first experience of O'Nan and I am now very much intrigued with this writer. A short book, a powerfully emotional and sad experience, but a remarkable one about a post Civil-War town hit by diptheria and narrated by the town's undertaker/sheriff/clergyman--a character you won't soon forget. It carried all the balance, music, structure, dialogue, inner narrative, description and plot that a reader could hope for in the most exquisite language and careful insights. I felt that I breathed the very air that Jacob breathed. And it was written in second person present tense, no small feat, to boot. I finished it and wept and paid homage to the skills of Mr. O'Nan in my mind for several hours thereafter. Indeed I am still thinking about A Prayer for the Dying and likely will do so for a long time to come.

December 04 Writing The Breakout Novel by Donald Maass
Yet more advice from a literary agent with a bit more meat and a lot more sophistication than The First Five Pages. No formulas, but good common sense added to literary savvy makes this book a worthwhile read in my opinion. (Since I'm in the middle of a novel, you can be sure I paid attention.)

December 04 The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman
Advice from a literary agent laying out the rules for staying out of the rejection pile. A useful and well written book for beginning writers who ready to hit the market with manuscripts. Most advanced writers know this stuff already, but it never hurts to be reminded that certain rules are not made to be broken.

December 04 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
This is one book I am relieved to have finished. It took me 100 years to read it, at least that was the experience .

It's a beautifully conceived book, (trusting the translation) full of magical realism, surprises, and quirky characters/incidents which one would think would make for a compelling read. However. The characters in this 100 year history of a small town are all named after each other, men and women alike, and it becomes impossible at some point to remember who is who, in spite of a family tree provided on the inside cover.

It wasn't surprising that the men were mostly macho, at war, or wanted to be and the women were crazy or in love. Or both. But the real problem for me was the 'long tell.' The whole book is a narrative that just goes on nonstop with none of the balance of dialogue, inner narrative, or any relief from the tell, tell, tell, tell, tell. It could be argued that this is a style, a way of telling a story in the old mode of sitting at the knee of a storyteller, but for this reader, it became necessary to read in small pieces, so as not to be overwhelmed by the monotony of the style. One had to appreciate the remarkable genius of the author but at the same time to relish the conventions of contemporary American writing where one doesn't feel pushed along by a guest who talks too much and stays too long.

November 04 Heat Wave by Penelope Lively
You gotta love the British. This is the first Lively novel I've read, recommended by a friend who said it reminded her of me. What? The author? The protagonist? The writing? By the time I thought to ask her how it was reminescent, she had forgotten. So I'm left to my own devices. Perhaps because it has a 55 yr. old protagonist (and I could pass in a pinch) who is opinionated and likely finished with romance. (well, I may have a few years ahead of me, you never know). Anyway, it's one of those character based, slow, precise novels where nothing much happens, or when it does, it's so slowly you hardly notice the infidelities, the slippery slopes of marriage, courtships and parenthood. The ending, a bit of a surprise, smacked of contrivance to this reader, but only because I'd been lulled into so much non activity that when something actually happened, it didn't seem believable. Nonetheless, a lovely read and a precision with the nuance, the subtleties of human experience that one might envy.

October 04 The Camera My Mother Gave Me by Susanna Kaysen
Written by the author of Girl Interrupted I was eager to read the scant 157 pages of nonfiction. The back blurb reads "If you have a vagina you know that most of the time it is without sensation...how do your kidneys feel? How does your pancreas feel? Luckily we have no idea how these things feel. The vagina is mostly like a pancreas and feels nothing. If it feels something, it is either erotically engaged or ill. All this is obvious is you have one, but half of us don't. I have one, and something went wrong with it." And that's exactly what the book is about...one woman's journey with some rare disorder of the vagina in an otherwise perfectly healthy grown woman...and what the effects on her life are. It's a quick and fascinating, uncomfortable and humorous, sad and affecting read. It's clean writing and an odd, rather fascinating book.

October 04 Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
This book was sort of a surprise to me. It was truly an exercise in 'voice' because the protagonist, Maggie Moran, is one of those chatterbox, middle aged, well intentioned snoops that we've all met in life, and for 2/3rds of the book, she chatters. It starts to hit a nerve about a third of the way in, and then Tyler's smart enough to switch POV to the dour husband, part Cherokee, who is a model of old style, noncommunicative, do or die, faithful to his wife types that we all think we'd like to marry until we read something like this. In a way, this prattling, seemingly light weight story of a family was darker than a lot of lit noir, because it left me feeling cynical, hopeless and repulsed by America. A state I find myself in too often these days. Why American? Because the characters seem to be modeled after and on the very senseless values imposed in our country, the unsupported artists, the get-a-9 to-5 and be respectable or die kind of mentality that prevails, smothering any kind of real familial support or love. And the codependence of women on their children. It all seems like a bad dream we've all had before . That takes nothing away from the superb transitions and seemingly effortless writing feat that this book represents. Tyler's a pro and one glides through the work as though on indoor ice. But Nah. It isn't my idea of a satisfying read. Only a small trek into a reality I already know too well. Or maybe I'm just having a bad week or two.

October 04 Negotiating with the Dead by Margaret Atwood (A Writer On Writing)
I'm a fan of Atwood (what I've read to date anyway, there's a pile of her novels waiting for me at my bedside) so it pains me to say that this is one of the most boring books I've ever picked up. I have not finished it because it is too dull to justify reading on. It is supposedly based on a series of her lectures, (but without the corny jokes, she assures us), and outlines her biography in the beginning. It is written well, and in no short supply of intelligence, research and appropriate quotes. This book was a gift from a dear friend of mine whose taste is impeccable. I would wager she's never read the book. One could only wish that Atwood had left in her corny jokes.

October 04 Scraps by Jim Boring
Had the privilege of doing a first draft edit on Jim Boring's new novel "Scraps," a scrappy cops-gone-wrong story set in Chicago with lots of authentic voices, goons, philosophical probes, and Catholic consciences--to say nothing of giving
"The Sopranos" a run for their money in the sex/violence/surprises/humor twists. I'm eager to see the rewrite on this baby. It's a page turner and Jim has a keen ear for the right voice.

October 04 Moby Dick by Herman Melville
I finally finished the fish story. A whale of a tale, to be sure. I'm glad I did finish it, though I confess it was a true undertaking. But I really had a keen need to know if the fish died or not. I was thrilled that Moby Dick won. I think Moby Dick must always win in the long run, if not always in literature. It ended abruptly, and Ishmael's fate was briefly covered in one or two paragraphs. I was very grateful to have read "Ahab's Wife" so that his return to society was clearly written in a way that satisfied me utterly. (titter).

There is something about this classic that convinces me that Herman Melville was poking fun at his reader. There is an arrogance and indulgence in the material that I can't help but think is born out of superiority rather than creative energy. Creative, it most certainly is, but mixed with an amazing disregard for holding a reader's interest or attention. It is as much a scientific undertaking (a recording of natural scientific data) as it is adventure tale. It is as much a spoof on the mores and superstitions of his time as it is a philosophical diatribe against injustice and various segments of society.

All in all, it is a confounding and thoroughly disagreeable piece of work to me, but one which I am grateful I suffered through because I feel that my own closed doors and bias were prodded open to new ways of seeing things. The dissection, piece by piece, of a whale--inside and out--proves to be more relevant than much of what we hold dear in our own trivial lives. I feel trapped in the whale, like Noah, now to be forever familiar with the revenge and the madness of mankind, and the power and nature of all living things.

September 04:Moby Dick by Herman Melville

See notes below on Ahab's Wife, my reason for even picking up this book. Oh. My. God. I had NO idea what I was getting into, and to tell you the truth, I have not quite finished it, but I shall, you can be sure. I am deeply troubled by this book but not in any expected way. I thought to be reading a very transparent morality tale, from which all sorts of metaphorical and spiritual gobbelygook has been gleaned over the decades. But I didn't have a glimmer of the tangled webs our Herman has spun. I vacillate between absolute HORROR for the poor whales and their incredible pain and absolute awe of Melville's mind which has punched at this subject of whaling in ways that I think only someone a bit mad and terribly genius could even imagine to do. It is clear now why people call it a classic. Ha! An understatement. It is a one of a kind, rare, odd, strange, infuriating piece of writing which makes me want to destroy Mankind and at the same time revel in the incredible power and beauty of man, beast, earth and sky. It's a roller coaster ride, but one taken through the froth of oceans of blood, cruelty, men both rank and evil, wild and civilized, rich and poor--united in an industry that is merely a metaphor for all of mankind's nature--all of us beasts, none of us as worthy as one splendid, magnificent Sperm Whale. While at the same time, ingenius, incredible and brave, truly insane to think of men in tiny boats battling Goliath. Or Hitler. Or God. It's madness, this world, and Melville uses nuance and humor, science and parody, tradition and satire to subtly weave a mockery, a finger jutting out that unfailingly circles round to point at ourselves, the joke is on us. I'm not sure I'll recover from it. More to say after I'm done. There is no god, that is clear.

September 04: Saul & Patsy by Charles Baxter:

Recommended to me by Carol Peters, and an author I hadn't read before, I eagerly dug into Saul & Patsy. Baxter is a talented writer, one of those professionals that make literary work look easy. His characters are quirky, very real, and yet move through the story in odd inner narrations that kept me rather at a distance as if I was sitting with the author, looking on at the scene, instead of being a part of it. Things are mysterious, just a little obtuse, often humorous, but everyday in every way which makes it all the more interesting. Somebody dies, but life goes on. And the 'Jew in the Midwest' scenario (Saul's struggle with his perceptions(real and imagined) of anti Semitism around every bend) peppered the quiet action with yet another layer of quirky and unexpected turns. I liked this book a lot. I plan on reading more of Baxter. But I'm not sure I didn't put it down and wish for more. I would recommend this book only to people who love literary novels.

August 04: Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund:
This book was sent to me by Terri Brown-Davidson. I had never heard of it, and I had spent my youth skillfully avoiding Moby Dick. A daunting 668 pages made me hesitant to pick it up given that I wasn't keen on reading old fashioned literature when piles of contemporary books awaited. But my curiosity and Terri's generosity got the better of me, and am I grateful. This novel was an extraordinary feat. As the female counterpoint to Melville's classic, it was an epic in its own right, written in such an enjoyable, exciting and intelligent style that upon finishing it, I immediately ordered a copy of Moby Dick. It's old fashioned and literary but full of cleverness and wit and pulsating with adventure. A page turner in the highest, most researched sense of the word. And fun! I would recommend this book to anyone.

August 04: Careful! by Richard Madelin:
Richard Madelin is a writer whose work I've published, whose stories I've read with fascination, and who's one of our finest new talents. It was with glee that I bought Careful! as soon as I heard the good news that it was released. True to his other work, this novel is both fresh, unique and full of the kinds of literary risks I've learned to expect from Richard. Its protagonist is an 'in your face' kind of character; totally different from anything else of his I've read and it's searingly painful and sad and dark and funny all at the same time. Madelin is a writer's writer, and I hope to read many more of his novels to come. This first one out is a most tantalizing indicator of a career to be followed.