Llew's Reviews

After reading so many reviews which proclaimed this book as “unputdownable”, I had to try out this book which caused someone over the age of ten to make up such a useless word. I don’t really get it. It wasn’t bad, but I wouldn’t create any words which make it seem as if I have an IQ under 40 for it.

I’m always a sucker for books with main characters I really relate to. Who would I relate to more than a woman who grew up and still works in a bookstore her father owns? Evidently, a lot more. This book was pretty – meh.

After seeing this one on countless bestseller and bookclub of the month lists, I decided to try it out knowing that such a touted memoir must be one which firmly knotted the old heart-strings.

Walls was the second oldest of her four siblings born to a college educated mother who was hellbent to never use her teaching degree as she was an Artiste and an alcoholic big-idea father. I did not think that any parents would frustrate me more than the mother in the novel, Towelhead (see Book #36) but oh how wrong I was. The children basically starved and lived in incredibly destitue dire circumstances (no electricity, no indoor plumbing, huge holes in the roof over where they slept, little to no food, no medical treatment on serious injuries, having their money stolen by their own parents, being molested by countless people including their own grandmother and uncle, having their father send them up with a man who he knew was going to make sexual advances on his young daughter, etc.) All by an educated couple who if they had put their own selfishness aside would have been able to support their children. In fact, the mother owned land worth over a million dollars which she refused to sell or even live on. Instead, her children starved.

It’s an intriguing memoir to read mostly because the way it is told. There’s no self pity or whining. It’s just laid out there. Of course, what was really sad was that I realized that I grew up with many children who were in same financial cirucumstances as I also grew up in the very rural Appalachian mountains. Unfortunately, I was about as thoughtless as the Walls classmates when it came to their struggle. That’s where the pain really hit for me.

I read the paperback edition, although I’m featuring the hardback cover here. Why? BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO SCARE PEOPLE AWAY WITH AN UGLY FLY. Why oh why did they choose that as the cover when they had a perfectly lovely one to start with? *shudders*

This one is a memoir, but more of a friendship than of a person. Now, other reviews and book descriptions speak of how it is based on Lucy Grealy. However, it really is more of the author’s friendship with Lucy than just one of them. (Although it obviously goes into biographical details of both women.) If you’ve ever had a really close relationship with another female, whether they were missing half of their face or not, it is a book which just seems to emotionally knock you down flat. It’s like a sucker punch to the tear ducts. You’ll love it, girls. Really.

Charles Frazier, author of “Cold Mountain”, has FINALLY written a second novel which also takes place in my beloved mountains. Instead of being set during the Civil War, this is before and during the removal of the Cherokee during the Trail of Tears era told by an orphaned white boy who became the adopted son of an Indian chief, Bear.

And, oh how I adored it.

However, it’s impossible not to like a book where it had John Calhoun giving advice such as this about speaking French:

“But he would pass along a trick he had learned, which was this: you couldn’t go wrong if you pronounced every single word of the language as if it were a child’s euphemism for the private parts.”

And then there is this hilarious gem about messing with outsider journalists looking for a story:

“I told one of the writers that our fields were so nearly vertical we planted our corn with a shotgun and had to breed a race of mules with legs shorter on one side than the other for plowing. And when he asked how we transported the corn down off the mountain, I said, In a jug.”

I’ve always loved smart-ass southerners. Then again, I do come from a long line of them (including John Calhoun for that matter. Although, I do realize I shouldn’t claim that link as he was one crazy racist son of a bitch.)

All the cool kids were doing it.

This was oddly like “The Historian”, only without the vampires and dusty letters. It was told by way of the same strange dips into the past which were supposed to be tension building, but instead the reminscing factor drained most of the suspense away. This is good for people like me though. My heart can barely handle recent pictures of Britney Spears in a tank top, much less the stress of old leather-face stalking the streets in the shadows. And by leather-face I’m referring to Julian Carax in the novel, not of Tara Reid.

Although, I do have to say that I’m a sucker for novels where the main character reminds me of myself and Daniel Sempere does that with lines like, “I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.”

Oh, the marks that being raised in your father’s bookstore will leave on you.

I should smack whoever recommended this book to me. SMACK THEM UPSIDE THE HEAD.

What a fantastic little collection of amusing and well told stories essays. Although I did feel as if I should be a 55 year old man to enjoy them so much.

Also, I did not know that armadillos lived in Louisiana. I guess it makes sense since it’s right by Texas, but I had just never thought of it. I’ve never lived in a world where an armadillo might be my grub-loving neighbor. But that’s ok since I’m fairly sure it’s not something I really want anyway.

Yeah, I read it two years after everyone else but as this novel teaches: Time is completely irrelevant. Unless you’re popping into a place where hunters like to go.

Then … Well, you’re in some trouble boy.

“This is perhaps one of the best books I’ve read about the teenage experience. It’s a brilliant, ruthlessly honest depiction of a young girl just growing into her adult body while dealing with an angry father and a jealous and self-involved mother. It will break your heart and make you flinch. I literally could not put this one down.”– Jarek Steele, Left Bank Books, St. Louis, MO

This is exactly how I feel as well. Well, if you replace “ruthlessly honest” with “explicitly provocative” and then substitute “raging abusive racist” in place of “angry”. Then add on “horrifyingly immature selfish terrifyingly bad mother” after “jealous and self-involved”. Also, instead of “I literally could not put this one down” a “When I was not throwing it across the room, I was slamming this one down only to return to it like a forlorn lover” might work a bit better.

As if I could pass up a book which Kristen said this about:

“Reminded me of Dostoevsky ‘Notes from the Underground.’ The basis of the story is that there is a man who is in a coma and he’s trying to come out of it. Very surreal, existential kind of book.”

Having been underwhelmed by Garland’s “The Beach”, I would have never given him a second chance if it had not been for Kristen’s review. However, Notes From The Underground is one of my favorites so there’s no way I couldn’t take the bait.

There’s not too much for me to add except for that each chapter of the book begins with a black and white illustration (done by Nicholas Garland) which is so dark that a faint version of it can be seen through the page which has it ending each chapter as well. It added to the strangeness of the story, and was excellently executed. The story was quite unsettling, yet once I started it I couldn’t put it down even though I had picked it up with only the intention of skimming it for a second.