Criterion's Room Tone

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/8029-room-tone-2022 

 

Everyone maintains the required silence but one.

FFB: THE HUSBAND'S SECRET, Lianne Moriarity

At heart this is a domestic novel set in Australia. But Liane Moriarty was clever enough to put enough twists and turns to keep a reader who likes suspense engaged. It entwines several women and their respective families, all connected to the same school, and gives them stories rich and complex enough to allow them interact on several levels. They also all seem to eat pavlova for dessert a lot. Never have had it, you?

Of course, the very title seduces you.

One character, mother of three girls, and a woman who prides herself on being on top of things, finds a letter addressed to her from her husband with the warning it is not to be read until after his death. What she does with this letter forms the first part of the novel. But we also having a grieving mother about to lose her beloved grandchild in a move to the US,, and a marriage threatened from an odd angle.

The stories are all interesting enough to keep you turning pages in the second half of the book. And the first surprise is not the only one.

The strength of the book lay in its "what-ifs." The repercussions of human behavior, often the actions that occur without thought or notice,  is at its heart. I have read BIG LITTLE LIES by this author too. Also APPLES NEVER FALL. She is extremely prolific. 

 

Short Story Wednesday: I CANNOT TELL A LIE, EXACTLY, Mary Ladd Gavell

 

From the back cover. "When Mary Ladd Gavell died in 1967 at the age of 47, she had never published a story." At her death, she was the managing editor of the journal, PSYCHIATRY, which published one of the stories in their journal. They recalled her scribbling during her lunch hours. John Updike  included it in the BEST STORIES OF THE CENTURY. The stories in this collection are wonderful. Original, succinct, unusual. "Rotifer" is the one Updyke chose but he could have chosen any of them. I loved "The Swing" where a mother is able to revisit her son's youth at night on the swing he played on. 

TracyK

Todd Mason 

Casual Debris 

Jerry House 

 Kevin Tipple

Monday, Monday

 

We were so lucky to have Megan's airplane make it in before the floor fell out here. So nice to spend some time together, watching old movies on Criterion, watching the Sr. doc about Robert Downey Sr.  on Netflix, having four restaurant meals-all turned out well. Got two new books: Shrines of Gaiety, Kate Atkinson and The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty. It was too cold to be outside at all but my building has a gym, which Megan used. 

I am afraid to hear what George has been going through in Buffalo!

How about you?

Favorite Podcasts

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS

FILMSPOTTING

POD SAVE AMERICA

POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR

THE NEW YORKER RADIO HOUR

THE WATCH

FRESH AIR

(Washington) POST REPORTS

THE NPR POLITICS PODCAST

DETROIT TODAY/DAILY DETROIT

WTF (Marc Maron)

BAGMAN (Rachel Maddow)

BBC BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Runners up THE TREATMENT, THE NEXT PICTURE SHOW, FILMS TO BE BURIED WITH, THE BOOK REVIEW, ALL THERE IS (Anderson Cooper)

Ten Favorite Movies of 2022

Probably several of these would not have been on this list on a more normal year. But you work with what you have....

In no particular order

Tar

Mothering Sunday

The Banshees of Inisherin

Armageddon Time

Causeway

Top Gun: Maverick

The Fabelmans

God's Country

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Good Luck to Leo Grande

Runnersup: After Yang, The Wonder, The Glass Onion, Bad Axe

Ten Favorite Books of 2022/Short Story Wednesday

Mothering Sunday, Graham Swift

Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan

Foster, Claire Keegan

Deer Season, Erin Flanagan

The Lost Daughter, Elena Ferrante

Ghost Light, Frank Rich

Taste, Stanley Tucci

Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrel

Life's Work, David Milch

The Sacrament, Olaf Olafsson

 

Kevin Tipple

TracyK

George Kelley

 

`

Ten Favorite TV Shows of 2022

 

THE BEAR

BETTER CALL SAUL

WHITE LOTUS: SICILY

ABBOTT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

ATLANTA

RESERVATION DOGS

THE DROPOUT

HACKS

SEVERANCE

BARRY

 

RUNNERS UP: PACHINKO, BETTER THINGS, FOR ALL MANKIND, SOMEBODY, SOMEWHERE, ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING, THE STAIRCASE, THE HANDMAID'S TALE, MO, ROTHANIEL, THE LAST MOVIE STARS

What about you?

Monday, Monday

 

 Go Lions!

Gray skies, lake effect snow. Who wouldn't want to live in Michigan in the winter? I have become quite worried about falling so I will not get out much in the next weeks.

WHITE LOTUS finished strongly. By the end, most of the characters had been allocated at least a bit of humanity despite being driven by unfulfilled lust and jealousy. The entrance of Tom Hollander, midway through, certainly injected more energy into the plot.

I am very bad at watching SLOW HORSES, why do spy dramas not hold my interest more.? I have no instinct for the genre, I think. Although FLEISHMAN IN TROUBLE doesn't draw me in much either. I am watching the old series DALZIEL AND PASCOE on Kanopy. Reginald Hill is missed.

The Saul Bellow doc on PBS did not put him in a very good light. Phil loved his novels.

Speaking of books, have enjoyed FOSTER (Claire Keegan) as much as SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE. And apparently there is a film adaptation of FOSTER already. It is called THE QUIET GIRL and it is winning awards in Europe. Also enjoyed LEONARD AND HUNGRY PAUL, a very sweet book about two misfit men in their thirties who prove a quiet, kind life yields its own rewards. Saw WHITE NOISE-a strong first hour and an interesting performance by Adam Driver but the last half was pretty bad. 

How about you?

FFB MILDRED PIERCE, James Cain

MILDRED PIERCE is different from Cain's other work in that there are no murders, no crimes at all. It's a portrait of a woman in the years during the depression trying to support her two daughters and find some happiness for herself.

She turns out to be very good at supporting them financially, and she parlays her skills for pie-making into a small restaurant chain. She is less successful in supporting her family in other ways though and allows her unbridled love for her older daughter undo everything.

The men are not admirable; no one comes off very well. Economic distress may have a hand in this, of course. This book provides the reader with a good portrait of life in southern California during the depression. These are not the same people we see in THE GRAPES OF WRATH, of course. But they struggle too.

One of the biggest fascinations for me was how Cain laid out the details of life for Mildred Pierce: how a restaurant is run, how a waitress learns her craft, how people dress, decorate their homes, all of these things. And it also has four strong women as characters. Pretty unusual. It's the men who are weak in MILDRED PIERCE.

Mildred is one of the more enigmatic characters in fiction. Was she a monster herself? Did she turn the people in her lives into monsters? Would Vida have been the way she was if raised by someone else? Certainly Mildred's admiration for Vida's worst flaws, traits she saw as fine and noble rather than cruel and superficial, allowed them to flourish. Validated them. Would she have lost her husband had she provided him with more emotional support? These are the questions that make this book work so well.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for those who like dark characters.

Short Story Wednesday: John O'Hara Short Stories (by Deb Pfeiffer)

(from the archives)

The Collected Short Stories of John O’Hara, selected and with an introduction by Frank MacShane (published in 1984). Deborah Pfeiffer

John P. Marquand and John O’Hara were the pre-eminent chroniclers of American life in the first half of the 20^th century; and, in a way, their bodies of work describe the tension that existed between the privileged WASP class of Marquand’s world and the second-generation of (predominantly Catholic) Irish, Italian, German, and Polish immigrants who came of age before World War II and about whom O’Hara wrote so perceptively. O’Hara’s characters may not be able to get into the “right” schools or join the “right” clubs, but with their strength and drive they bring a vitality that two hundred years of entitlement has leeched out of Marquand’s characters. If you read O’Hara’s and Marquand’s work side-by-side, you’ll see much of the American assimilation saga played out there on the page.

Unfortunately, if John O’Hara is remembered today, it is as the writer of sexy 1950s blockbuster novels such as BUTTERFIELD 8 and RAGE TO LIVE (both of which were made into indifferent movies). But John O’Hara’s real métier was the short story. For over fifty years, starting in 1927 and ending just before his death in 1970, the prolific O’Hara published more than 200 stories in the New Yorker alone (not to mention many more stories that appeared in other publications); in fact, O’Hara was, in large part, responsible for shaping what we now consider to be the classic "New Yorker short story.”

The stories in this collection represent that half-century span, the first was originally published in 1927, the last in 1966. They range in length from a couple of pages to novellas. These are not stories with twists or surprise endings; they are character studies of people defined and limited both by their own choices and by social factors beyond their control. Outcomes proceed organically from the interactions of characters and the fundamental underpinnings of their personalities. Many of them are set in and around the fictional town of Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, and are narrated by Jim Malloy, the local doctor’s son, a fictional stand-in for O’Hara. A few others are set in New York or Los Angeles. One of the best of the L.A. stories is “Nautica Jackson,” about the devastating revenge committed by a woman who discovers her husband is having an affair with a movie starlet.

My favorite story in this collection is “Imagine Kissing Pete,” which explores thirty years in a mismatched marriage. Bobbie marries Pete on the rebound in 1929; friends assume the couple will soon divorce. But the Depression hits, there isn’t money to divorce, then the children come, and the couple remain married through ups and downs, separations, the Depression, downward mobility, hard times, the war, and eventual post-war prosperity. This is not a happy marriage—there’s heavy drinking (every O'Hara character seems to easily consume a fifth a day), casual (and not-so-casual) infidelity on both sides, anger, recriminations, and physical violence, but the marriage endures. The story ends with Bobbie and Pete attending the graduation of their youngest child from an Ivy League school in 1959.

The last story in the collection, “We’ll Have Fun,” is one that I wished would continue and have a happy ending for the main character, a hard-drinking Irish-American named Tony Costello. Costello loves and understands horses, picking up odd jobs from horse owners when he can and spending all of his money on alcohol But horses are on the way out; the rich owners who used to employ Tony are now buying automobiles; stables are being converted to garages; blacksmiths are closing their businesses. Then Tony helps a well-to-do woman who has inadvertently purchased a very sick horse. At the end of the story, Tony and the woman are planning a horse-buying trip together. Tony—despite his faults—is so committed to his love of horses that I was hoping he would be able to squeeze a happy ending out of his life. O’Hara promises no such thing, wisely ending the story before Tony’s drinking and haphazard lifestyle ruin another opportunity for him.

It’s unfortunate that O’Hara’s short stories are not more widely-read today. In their subtlety, range, social awareness, and precise dialog, they are a match for any of the more popular anthologized short stories of the last century. Anyone looking for reading material that is both entertaining and meaningful would not go wrong picking up a volume of O’Hara’s short stories.

George Kelley

 Kevin Tipple

Monday, Monday

 One of the best books (or novellas) I have read in a very long time. I listened to it via Hoopla and the reader was sensational. 

Also reading and enjoying THE SHADOWS WE HIDE by Allen Eskens. 

Saw THE FABLEMANS, which was very good. I think this was a terrible title though. I am not sure what would have been better. Michelle Williams gives a knockout performance. There were fifteen people in the audience. Movies will only be made for TV very soon, I guess.

On TV, THE WHITE LOTUS, VERA, SLOW HORSES, MY BRILLIANT FRIEND. 

It is cold but no real snow yet. May that continue. The winter darkness has already gotten on my nerves. We can weeks without sun here. 

How about you?

FFB:THE DAMNED, Andrew Pyper

 

THE DAMNED, Andrew Pyper

I was attracted to this book in my search for a ghost story and because it is mostly set in the suburb next to mine: Royal Oak. MI. Although there is technically a ghost in it I would classify it as a horror story more than a ghost story.

In order for the story to work, you must embrace the idea of a child born bad. I was never quite able to do this so that somewhat impeded my enjoyment of the book.

Twins are born to a family. From the beginning the girl is trouble although just how is never much discussed until the ending. Both almost die at birth and are brought back. At age sixteen, both die again in a fire and this time only the boy is saved. He has always been haunted by his sister in life and now in death, things don't change much. His ability to have a normal life is stopped at every turn.

This was a very well-written book and the setting was interesting for me. Pyper made good use of both Royal Oak and Detroit. But his sister never came to life for me-either alive or dead. There were lots of good plot twists in it, lots of great detail. But I guess I needed someone who didn't slip though my fingers every time I tried to understand her. Her name was Ash and that about sums up her presence.

(first reviewed in 2015)

First Wednesday Book Review Club: THE BLUEST EYE, Toni Morrison

 

My book group decided to choose a banned book for our November choice. THE BLUEST EYE is certainly on of the most of ten banned books. We read BELOVED years ago and had always meant to read another book by Toni Morrison. 

This was Morrison's first book and I can't imagine there are many stronger first novels. She tells us in the Forerward that the origin of the story lay in a conversation she had with another student when she was in elementary school. The little girl told her she wanted blue eyes. As Morrison thought about this, she was repelled by the idea. She saw the statement as "racial self-loathing." In America, beauty is measured against the dominant white race. How could a black child, especially a girl, have any self-esteem if they were constantly told they could never be beautiful or worthwhile because of the color of their skin.

Percola Breedlove prays every night for beauty, which she defines as blond hair and blue eyes. Possession of these attributes will help her to fit in with her classmates. This is a novel not easily summed up in a few paragraphs. Percola has even more indignities thrust upon her over the course of this story. The writing in this novel is exquisite, lyrical, enriching. The first few chapters make the book seem more difficult than it is. It settles into a manageable read although a shocking one. Set in Lorain Ohio, it might as well be the Deep South of a hundred years earlier. A truly amazing book.  

For more First Wednesday Book Reviews, visit Barrie Summy.

Short Story Wednesday: THE NEW YORK STORIES OF EDITH WHARTON: "Mrs. Manstey's View"

 

"Mrs. Manstey's View" was Edith Wharton's first published story. Although I've read several of Wharton's novels, I have not read many of her stories. This one, written at age 29, is already masterful. Although it may seem dated in its style and language, it is a slight flaw that in no way ruins a story.

Mrs. Manstey, an elderly woman, sits at her window, which overlooks several backyards, most of the day. She is content with this life--so content, in fact, that when visitors come it is hard for her to look at them instead of the Rear Windowish view outside. 

Her landlady informs her that their next door neighbor is about to build an extension on her house that will block Mrs. Manstey's view. Mrs. Manstey gathers herself up and goes to see the woman and offers her money to stop construction. It is half of all the money in her bank account. The woman agrees to consider the offer and promises not to allow the construction to begin the next day. But, of course, it does. Mrs. Manstey deals with it in the only way she can think of. 

Now I am an elderly lady that looks out my window from time to time. What I see though are high-end car dealers, a Walgreens, and a gas station. Also trees that make a nice green cover part of the year. There is nothing blooming though and no servants to watch preparing meals. If I had rented an apartment on the other side of the hallway, I would have a very different view, more small town and less urban.

TracyK

George Kelley

Neer

Monday, Monday

 Two great movies via streaming services. The British magazine SIGHT AND SOUND ranked Jeanne Dielman as its number one movie, moving Vertigo to number two. They rank one-hundred films. Other changes added more movies from female and black directors and two animated movies. 

What movie would you put number one?

I watched Jeanne Dielman. At three and a half hours, it was long. It detailed three days in the life of a mother and her son. I'm sure it's not for everyone, but I thought it was fabulous. I don't mind watching people live their life though. Or read about it. 

I also watched the new version of Lady Chatterley's Lover on Netflix, which I also loved. 

Haven't seen that much sex in a movie in years. It was well-acted, directed and beautifully filmed.

Reading Mrs. Dalloway in preparation for seeing the opera streaming from Lincoln Center next Saturday. 

Celebrated Kevin's 16ht birthday. Impossible to believe. 

What about you?

FFB: IDENTICAL STRANGERS, Elysse Schein and Paula Bernstein (2007)

 

 

Jeff mentioned this book on here not long ago. I have always found "twins" an interesting subject. I know two sets of female twins. One identical, one fraternal. I have never known a male set of twins.

The same adoption agency that played the villain in THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS (Netflix doc) were involved in the adoption of these twins too. In their mid-thirties, Elysse and Paula learn of each other's existence. They quickly meet and their immediate elation is a feeling that comes and goes for each of them as they try to adjust to what they've lost by the separation and what they now have. Both women have had issues with mental illness, mostly minor but impactful ones. One has a husband and two kids (eventually), the other lives in Paris alone. One is more eager for a close relationship. There are similarities-they both have been involved with the film industry, but also differences. The two then try to find their birth mother and learn what happened to her--why she gave them up. An interesting book with its disappointments and successes.