Sunday, May 25, 2014

Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China

I'm sure Riding the Iron Rooster was a better book when it was written in 1988 than it is today. The Iron Rooster is a Chinese Train, one of dozens that Paul Theroux travels in as he criss-crosses China for months on end seeking to better understand the country in the late '80s. His adventures are amusing, but rarely more, and his descriptions of China are now so dated that it's hard to see beyond that. I actually found his stories from the Soviet bloc, then in its final throes, though few knew that at the time, to be more interesting than many of his dispatches from China.

I much preferred Paddling the Pacific and Hotel Honolulu (read in the pre-blog days) to Riding the Iron Rooster and, honestly, likely wouldn't have finished it at all if I'd had anything else to read on my way to Japan. Final verdict: only the most serious Chinese history and/or rail travel lovers need apply.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

The Summer Girls

The Summer Girls is the quinessential beach read. It's 377 pages, but reads much faster. Each character, and there are no more than a handful, is distinct, the plot moves quickly, and it's even set at the beach.

Dora, Carson, and Harper are half-sisters who have not seen one another for the better part of a decade until their grandmother summons them to her lowcountry house, Sea Breeze, to celebrate her 80th birthday. Dora, the oldest, is in the midst of a divorce and uncertain, at best, how to handle her autistic son. Carson has recently broken up with her boyfriend, lost her job, and is a borderline alcoholic, while Harper is spinning her wheels as her ice-queen-mother's personal assistant at a New York City publishing house. Different mothers, different lives, and now way too much togetherness.

I bought what Mary Alice Monroe was selling for roughly 300 pages. The last quarter of the book, though, sort of fell apart for me. All of the storylines save Carson's seem to vanish, and hers goes from improbable to utterly absurd. In the end, I just wasn't a fan.


Friday, May 2, 2014

The Road to Yesterday

I have already written of my love affair with the Anne of Green Gables series and of course earlier this year I read L.M. Montgomery's Chronicles of Avonlea and Further Chronicles of Avonlea, so I seem to be on a bit of a Montgomery kick lately. The Road to Yesterday did not disappoint - a series of short stories, each centered around a family known to the Blythes but never quite measuring up to them, this is a quick read. For the most part it is all sweetness and light, at least in as much as stories so densely populated with old maids and orphans can be considered as such. (It is also not entirely surprising that Wikipedia notes, "For a woman who had given the world so much joy [life] was mostly an unhappy one." I suppose Montgomery knew of what she wrote.) Even so, there is no shortage of happy endings for characters she takes such pains to create.

By and large, there's not much substance to The Road to Yesterday, but I mean that in the best possible way. This is escapism reading. Montgomery has a gift for transporting her reader where she wants and with whom she wants and I felt myself fully drawn into the homes and lives of these lovely characters. Anne, her husband Gilbert, and their children are so artfully woven in that the reader doesn't realize that Road is, in many ways, simply a continuation of the Anne series, told from different viewpoints, but mining much of the same ground. This is a delightful little read for anyone who has ever thrilled at Anne's adventures or been entranced by her world.