My new favorite book: A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

My new favorite book is a book I read for my book club, A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick. The edition I read is the special book club edition and has book club discussion questions and an interview with Goolrick. I found the interview with Goolrick fascinating. He said that Ralph and his mail-order bride are both based, in different ways (obviously?) on him and I would guess that that hint of autobiography in the action and characterization is part of what gives this book its power, and well as Goolrick's mastery of structure, action, and style.

I like this book because I feel that there's a lot of rich psychological insight, both in what the characters say and how they see their world. Something that Ralph says was also identical to something my father said once; I also feel that it's more true to the nineteenth century than some other historical fiction I've read lately (although perhaps not very) and it's brilliantly plotted. The action is compelling, and it moves fast. It's almost true that to say that I did not put the book down once I started it: I read the book in one evening.

The bare skeleton of the plot is that a wealthy man in nineteenth century Wisconsin advertises for a wife. I suspect there are quite a few books that have that basis plot outline. Goolrick does so much with this. I don't want to spoil the ending for you in case you haven't read it but I'll say that the plot offers some twists that I didn't anticipate, and offers characters that are passionate, desperate, self-contradictory, capable of change and incapable of change, in a narrative that is full of drama -- that doesn't seem contrived.

It is an ideal book to be made into a movie and I read that the rights had been sold to Columbia Pictures. For those of you who have read the book, who do you think should play the leads? One writer suggested Bette Davis and Claude Rains and that should give you some indication as to the incendiary nature of this novel.

Squirrel Meets Chipmunk by David Sedaris

Something funny is always welcome, and Sedaris is known for his comic writing. I looked forward to reading this book because I thought it would short, funny and very hip. (I hadn't read much Sedaris before this; I'd read part of Dress Your Family in Coruroy and Denim.) But if you think you'd like to read Sedaris, I strongly recommend "Santaland," the story of Sedaris' stint as an elf in Macy's "Santa" department.

It's a collection of short stories that might be described as up-to-date fables. While Sedaris said that he did not think most of the stories had "morals," like Aesop's Fables, my take is different -- I thought that all the stories were really written with a very strong point of view about modern life.

This is book is described as a "modern bestiary," so it might be worthwhile to explain what a medieval bestiary, of "book of animals" was (part entertainment, part moral instruction).

The Canadian website "bestiary.ca" offers the following explanation:

In the Christian west, it was commonly believed that the natural world, the so-called "book of nature", had been arranged as it was by God to provide a source of instruction to humanity. This idea was based, at least in part, on biblical verses ..Animals were said to have the characteristics they do not merely by accident; God created them with those characteristics to serve as examples for proper conduct and to reinforce the teachings of the Bible. As the pelican revives her dead young after three days with her own blood, so Christ "revived" humanity with his blood after three days in the grave. .. ..All of Creation was said to reflect the Creator, and to learn about the Creator one could study the Creation.

I think Sedaris presents these stories for our edification in only a tongue-in-cheek, thoroughly post-modern sort of way. His gaze is unflinching and unsentimental; his satire of human nature and human conduct is strong.

My favorite story in the collection was the one titled, "Squirrel Meets Chipmunk." The squirrel and chipmunk have a wonderful romance until they run out of things to talk about and the chipmunk's family insists that she break off the relationship. Years later, she associates her vague memory of their courtship with the regrets she has about any beauty she failed to appreciate. It's one of the gentler stories.

"The Grieving Owl," also interested me greatly. The title character is an owl who grieves for his lost mate; he explains that he's given up telling folks about his loss because, as one seagull pointed out, that story of loss "is a real buzzkill." The owl captures prey (a rat, for instance) and insists that they answer his questions because the owl has real curiosity and a real thirst for knowledge. Because the owl has been associated with wisdom ("wise old owl, a symbol for the Greek goddess Athena), that makes sense in a traditional way. But there's plenty to offend, disturb, gross out and amuse in this story.

True Confessions - I'm reading Michael Caine's From Elephant to Hollywood

Billingsgate Fish Market Image: Tom Curtis / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

From Elephant to Hollywood is, I shamefully admit, just the sort of thing I like. Michael Caine's memoir is literate, thoughtful, more than a little sentimental, thoroughly respectable, without a harsh word for anyone but a few charmingly self-deprecating anecdotes.

Caine is actually the author of two other books, What's It All About, about his earlier career and Acting in Film, meant to explain what he knows about naturalistic acting for the camera. On Amazon, I see that it is paired with other acting technique books which I take to mean that actors read it to improve their technique.

Michael Caine is a storyteller and I greatly admire his interest in literature -- no surprise, really, because after all, I like that sort of thing too.

The enthusiasm he shows for his friends, his family, and the people who have helped him in his career is winning and probably a good template for anyone who wishes also to be successful.


I have read the first half of the book and the end of the book -- as I often do, I lost my place and somehow lost a big chunk of the middle. Having read the end of the book, I am startled to discover how many of his recent films I've seen: Sleuth, as directed by Kenneth Branagh, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Inception, The Prestige, Children of Men, The Quiet American, and Miss Congeniality.

One of the anecdotes I enjoyed most was the story of how he met his wife. It's a charming story that conveys both the storyteller's sense of himself as the darling of the gods and his immense good fortune to find a much-loved wife. One thinks of Homer.

His description of his father helped me to understand my own world. Although his father lived through the voting in of Labour after the war and the new opportunities for health care and education provided by Labour, his father remained unchanged in his firm belief that no one could help him. I found Caine's explanation of that psychology very helpful to me in trying to understand my own life; and I see that Caine presented a huge contrast to his father in his belief in the possibility of becoming a success.

Caine is a fine storyteller, and he tells a story so perfectly shaped I'm almost embarrassed to repeat it. Caine's father worked as a porter (I think) at the Billingsgate Fish Market on the north side of the Thames, the site of a centuries-old fish market. In 1982, the market was relocated to Canary Wharf and the Victorian building housing it was converted into a banquet hall.

There, Caine subsequently attended a party given by a wealthy friend. The strangeness of the journey that led him to be present at a luxurious party in what had been his father's workplace struck him and he shed a tear. Princess Michael of Kent asked him if he was all right and he told said it was only that his allergies were acting up.

At the end of the book, Caine offers a list of ten favorite films. After reading this list, I checked out No. 10 from the library because I'd never seen it and I did think it was wonderful. I love that even with his list he's giving a mention to something fine and helping to ensure it will find an audience. In reverse order then, his personal top ten favorites are Tell No One, the 2006 French thriller (distributed in the US by Music Box Films, a local company), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Gone With the Wind, All That Jazz, The Maltese Falcon, Some Like It Hot, Charade, On the Waterfront, The Third Man, and Casablanca.