They don’t teach us that when we’re kids. When we’re little, the routine is a big part of our existence and we rely on it as much as we chafe at its boundaries: on weekdays we wake up and get dressed for school, following a specific route from home to class and back; we meet who we’re supposed to meet when we meet them and homework is done on the dot. We have a prescribed dinner time, family time and bedtime and our birthdays arrive on schedule every year. During adolescence we fight to tear up the schedule and we become adults when we realize how our parents fought to keep the reality of change from impinging on our routine. Adults know the only constant in life is change and to survive they must learn to adapt. Sometimes in the process they make mistakes but that’s a part of learning to adapt. This is the undercurrent of Elisabeth Egan’s debut novel, A Window Opens, and her heroine, Alice Pearse, starts the story understanding the need. As a veteran of the sandwich generation she’s a mom to her children and a daughter of parents who all need her at the same…
Sometimes you just get lucky. I believe that. About six months ago I started this column, writing about books I’d come to love dearly and early on, I praised Shirley Jackson, a writer that almost seemed forgotten. My mother had loved her work and introduced me to it at an early age. That was lucky because, in those days, Jackson’s work (with the exception of one story) wasn’t reprinted. At that time, Jackson wasn’t often remembered in literary circles and when she was the discussions were limited to her supernatural or psychologically disturbing tales. The author also wrote a lot of well-crafted stories about family life but these were given less weight because a)they were funny or b) they were “chick lit.” Of all of her works, these looked like they had the least chance of getting back into print. Except, now they are. Ms. Jackson’s books about life with one husband, one sheep dog, four children, 10,000 books and innumerable cats are back in print. Life Among the Savages follows two parents and their two young children from a New York City apartment to an old Vermont house with Pillars in the Front and ends with the arrival of…
Okay, I know it’s close to Mother’s Day but there’s something about Fathers and Daughters. God knows, I adored mine. He was funny, smart and bullheaded, just the kind of man to indulge a mischievous daughter who didn’t want to obey her mom. Yes sir, I think my father was brilliant but a lot of girls feel that way about their dads.. Adela Rogers St. Johns certainly did and she captured that father-daughter spark in her biography, Final Verdict. Of course, when she said her Old Man was brilliant the rest of the world agreed. Earl Rogers may still be the greatest trial attorney that ever entered a courtroom. It’s funny but no one remembers Earl Rogers these days. Mention Johnny Cochran or F. Lee Bailey or Gerry Spence and legal heads will nod. Talk about Bill Kunstler or Clarence Darrow and some history mavens will admit they had skill but they point out these guys lost as many cases as they won. Talk about the man who Perry Mason was based on and you’ll hear “Perry who??” Well, such is the nature of fame. Still, in the first half of the twentieth century, if you were charged with murder…
Adolescent friendships are unique: The close friends we make as children almost become part of our family, watched over equally by supervising parents, teased or ignored by resident siblings. Glad to be included, they become part of the whole and accept conditions without thought or judgement. On the other hand, our adult friends find us as self-sufficient beings, with loosened family ties. Only the friends of our adolescent years perceive the context of our family’s past and the adults we will become. More observant than young children, they witness the stresses in these families they know and, being teenagers, they sometimes judge, although they rarely blab about what they learn. Self-conscious and plagued by hormones, most teenagers prefer to keep secrets. These are the undercurrent themes of Bittersweet, Miranda Beverly-Whittemore’s new novel about identity and lies. Mabel Dagmar is her narrator, a working-class girl dependent on scholarships for her college education and the opposite of her roommate Genevra Winslow, the assured descendent of a wealthy, Eastern family. To Mabel, the Winslows exist in rarefied existence of Ivy League schools, named summer cottages and the kind of confidence that only comes from generations of independent wealth and she joins Ginevra for…
Every adult who was once a kid reader has some books tucked away in his/her soul. These stories are usually hidden quite well but they still guide the adult. The history professor won’t talk about the book of ghost stories that got his attention in grade school but it stimulated his first interest in the past. The attorney may speak of hornbooks and precedents instead of the copy of Katie John that stayed with her through fourth grade but the fictional heroine is still there. And the old woman dozing in nursing home’s day room listens as child read about Pooh and Piglet and reacquaints herself with the citizens of Hundred Acre Wood who led her to a lifetime of reading. The books we love as children incorporate themselves into our being and we carry their ideas with us through life. I realized that today when I found an old friend, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Decades had lapsed since I last read the story but I wasn’t just seeing something familiar. I found the lessons I’ve been living by for years. A little background: Claudia Kincaid makes the ultra-sensible decision to run away from home,…