Book Review: Wifey

Wifey

Judy Blume

Berkley Trade

304 pages

Judy Blume was one of my all time favorite authors as an adolescent.  I started off with the Fudge books and as I got older, moved onto Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret and Deenie.  However, there it stopped.  I was aware at some point that Blume had written a few adult books, but I never read them.  Maybe I was afraid that Blume wouldn’t be able to reach an adult reader.  But then I found the Shelf Discovery challenge, hosted by Julie at Booking Mama, and one of the books mentioned in there was Wifey.

Wifey is the story of Sandy Pressman; a younger mother dealing with the monotony of marriage during the 1960s.  She is married to Norm Pressman, a straight laced guy that is difficult to talk to and who prefers sleeping in his own twin bed.  It’s summertime and Sandy ’s two children are away at camp, so she is alone all day while Norm is at work.  She attempts to involve herself in the country club, but becomes more and more distant as the summer goes on.  She is unhappy in her marriage and eventually strays numerous times (some of the men she chose to bed really shocked me due to Sandy ’s lack of boundaries), most notably with her old flame.  Wifey is mainly about Sandy ’s exploration of her marriage and sexuality and how she comes to terms with the life she chose for herself.

This book is much more sexually explicit than I would have imagined.  Obviously, when you’re dealing with a marriage, sex is going to be an important factor.  It seemed that most of Sandy ’s issues with Norm were related to sex.  I think for Sandy , the lack of sexual satisfaction just kept eating away at her until she was unable to finding any positive aspect with her marriage.  She went through quite a few sexual encounters over the summer that Wifey focused on, and she realized that having an erotic relationship with other men didn’t feel that void that she had in her marriage.  Once she got her that aspect of her marriage worked out with Norm, it seemed like everything else in her marriage fell into place.

The time period had a lot to do with why Sandy felt trapped and had such problems with her marriage.  Much like Blume herself, she was pressured into marrying young and having children.  She never really got any freedom, sexually or otherwise, so as her marriage got more and more routine, she became listless and was infected with “the grass is always greener” syndrome. In that respect, I feel like Norm took the brunt of the blame.  He wasn’t a particularly likeable character—very dry and one-dimensional—but I have a feeling that was just Sandy’s perception of him at the time and didn’t necessarily reflect what type of person and husband Norm was.

I would say Blume’s adolescent tendencies shine through—Wifey is maybe a bit more simplistic than other novels dealing with the same subject matter.  At the same time, it made the book much more readable, so it wasn’t a detractor at all.  I read the entire book in one sitting and was completely engaged the entire time.

For the most part, I really enjoyed this book.  I think there were parts that were a little too raunchy, but I keep asking myself if I was just put off because of who the author is.  If it were an author I were unfamiliar with, would the sexual scenes still bother me?  Probably not.  If you are a fan of Judy Blume, you can’t miss this one.

Stop on over at BermudaOnion’s Weblog to enter her Judy Blume/Shelf Discovery mini challenge.

Other Reviews:

Crazy-for-books.com

You’ve GOTTA read this!

I borrowed this book from my local library.

East of Eden: Part II

As I mentioned before when I reviewed section 1 two weeks ago, I plan on reviewing the book in quarters, as that is how the book is divided up for discussion over on the Classic Reads Book Blog.  A quick aside on that method of reviewing—I have had a lot of people ask me how I manage to read such as great book in chunks as opposed to straight through.  As far back as I can remember, this is the first time I have gone about reading a book in this manner, so I was quite skeptical too.  You see, I am always hesitant about picking up long books.  As some of you may know, Anna Karenina has been my nemesis for years for that very reason (although I hope to tackle it in 2010).  Especially now that I have a book blog, I feel like I don’t have the luxury of reading such a long book straight through and, therefore, having less reviews for a few weeks. But when I heard the Classic Reads Book Club was featuring East of Eden, I decided to go for it.  And I thought I might as well break it up into quarters and see how it worked for me.  Obviously it’s not ideal, but for someone like me, who can get fidgety if it takes me over a week to read one book, I think it’s a good solution.  I plan on trying it again with the aforementioned Anna Karenina!

But anyway, back to the reason we’re here—part II of East of Eden.  Because I am dividing the book up into sections, the reviews will be more detailed and, therefore, may contain spoilers.

Here’s a quick synopsis: We left off with Cathy recovering and finding her way into Charles’ arms.  Part II then begins with Adam and Cathy moving to the Salinas Valley in California .  Cathy discovers she is pregnant (turns out with twins!) and she immediately tries to remedy the situation by aborting the fetus with a knitting needle.  Adam, meanwhile, is beside himself with happiness and is stopping at nothing to buy and fix up an old estate to pass down to his heirs.  He is, unbelievably, head over heels with Cathy, who really does nothing to advance his admiration; in fact, the neighbors find themselves suspicious of Cathy straight off, although they can’t quite put a finger on the problem.

So the babies are born, and what does Cathy do?  She up and leaves Adam, but not before shooting him in the shoulder first.  Cathy flees, and although the police sergeant quickly discovers her whereabouts, she pretty much disappears for good as far as Adam is concerned.  So what does Adam do without his wife?  He becomes a hot (moping!) mess.  He lets his home fall into disrepair and goes for over a year without naming his two sons.  To the point that pretty much any reader would want to step through the page and slap some sense into him.

Meanwhile, Cathy has gone back to her old profession—whoring.  She finds a whore house outside of town and immediately becomes the favorite.  The madam, Faye, begins to see Cathy as her own daughter and eventually wills her fortune to Cathy.  Knowing Cathy, you are likely able to see where this is going . . . she begins to subtly try to off Faye, and is eventually successful.

Section II ends with Cathy mourning Faye’s death and Adam naming his sons Caleb and Aaron.  As far as Adam goes, he finally seems to be over his grief and starting anew.  He had refused to see Cathy for who she really was during their marriage, instead preferring to see her with rose colored glasses.  I think the shock of having that image shattered was too much for him to bear for a time, but he had finally rounded the corner and seemed like he was in a better place.

Cathy is same old Cathy.  Last time I said that I liked her character the most and that has not changed at all.  It is not due to the fact that I am a masochistic, homicidal maniac, but rather because I find her the most fascinating character.  For awhile there I was fooled for a bit, thinking maybe she had changed once she got to the whorehouse.  The manner in which she treated Adam was reprehensible, and I figured her sweet behavior to the girls in the whorehouse was a guise, but I thought I saw a glimmer of change when it came to her relationship with Faye.  Instead, it eventually became clear that Cathy is such a great con woman that even to me, who already knew her past and how she behaves, that I believed she had made some type of transformation.

I am now past the point of believing that Cathy can ever change.  Is she inherently evil?  I’m not sure I know enough at this point to make a judgment call on that one, but I look forward to the second half of the book, because I’m hoping that will become clearer the more I read.

So how did you feel about Cathy?  Did you find her fascinating or just downright evil?

Check back here on February 22 for my thoughts on part III.

Sunday Salon

I’m sure I am not the only one snowed in right now.  So much for spring coming early this year!  We got an absolute ridiculous amount of snow over the course of Friday and Saturday.  So much so that my boss sent me home from work at noon Friday.  I decided that was the perfect opportunity to lay in bed and read.  I kid you not when I say I read all afternoon Friday and pretty much all day yesterday.  It was heavenly!

So this week I read the following:

-finished The Gathering, by Anne Enright

-read the second portion of East of Eden, by John Steinbeck

-Eating the Dinosaur, by Chuck Klosterman

-Wifey, by Judy Blume

-half of Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts, by Penny Colman

Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts is my first DNF in awhile.  I liked it at first–it is a history of burial.  After reading a book on New Orleans cemeteries, I decided I wanted to delve deeper into the topic of cemeteries, burials, etc.  So I checked this book out of my library.  And there was some good stuff in there!  It talked about being buried alive (can you imagine?!).  One man even had his tomb rigged with a buzzer to the caretaker’s cottage in the event that he woke up after being buried.  The buzzer never rang (except for one false alarm) and has since been disconnected.

So what happened, you may ask?  Two things.

-The book went off on too many tangents.  I am not interested in burial since the beginning of time.  This is my problem, not that of the author really, but I think it could have been organized a bit better.

-It wasn’t very well researched.  There were no resources noted and the author included a lot of things she heard from other people.  Meaning she would describe a burial place that her friend saw.  It just didn’t seem viable.  Which leads me to my biggest problem . . . I actually found an instance where the author was dead wrong.  It had to do with New Orleans cemeteries.  Twice, she noted that burials in New Orleans take place above ground because of flooding (this is a common fallacy, and it may be partially true, so I could have forgiven that) and she went on to say that all burials in New Orleans take place above ground. This is completely false.  There are quite a few cemeteries in New Orleans that are almost 100% underground burials.  At that point, I decided, since I know little about burials, that the author could be bamboozling me on some other points as well.  So I gave up.

I am very happy to say, however, that I finished books for two separate challenges this week!  I finished The Gathering towards the beginning of the week, which counts towards The Complete Man Booker Challenge.  And then I read Wifey, for the Shelf Discovery challenge.  I finally feel like I am making the tiniest bit of headway towards my current challenges!

I don’t know how much reading I’ll get done today, since all my household chores fell by the wayside the past two days as I read myself into a stupor, but I hope to start The Women, by TC Boyle, before the day is through.  I hope everyone else has a wonderful Sunday!

Book Review: The Guinea Pig Diaries

The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment

AJ Jacobs

Simon & Schuster

256 pages

I have been a fan of AJ Jacobs since I read The Year of Living Biblically.  I then read The Know-it-All, which was almost as good.  So, you see, I had high hopes for The Guinea Pig Diaries .  .  .

Publisher’s Weekly describes The Guinea Pig Diaries as  “experiments in living”.  On a whole that sounds pretty interesting to me.  And then I read the Table of Contents.  “My Life as a Woman.”  “I Think You’re Fat.”  “What Would George Washington Do?”  I was intrigued.  I figured the book had to be a laugh riot.

I was immediately let down.  The book opens with “My Life as a Beautiful Woman”.  Which begins with a picture of Jacobs in woman’s clothing.  Obviously I assumed that the “experiment” involved AJ Jacobs in drag.  Unfortunately, it was much more demure than that.  Jacobs basically ran his nanny’s web dating page on her behalf.  So yed, he adopted the guise of being a woman but not in person.  Where’s the fun in that?

There was no single essay or “experiment” that was bad.  It was just mediocre.  Most all of the essays had their moments where I was laughing aloud, but I can’t think of a single one that didn’t get boring at some point.  I admit, I was moved by “Whipped” though.  What girl doesn’t dream of having the man in her life cater to her every whim and wish.  Of course, when I mentioned that chapter to my fiance, he scoffed at Jacobs and said the whole thing was “ridiculous”.

Another issue I had was the format of the book.  It was very disjointed–there was little cohesiveness.  Most of the “experiments” detailed in the book were from Jacobs’ work with Vanity Fair, meaning they were all stunts he pulled years ago for articles he was working on for the magazine.  So it seemed to me like the idea of The Guinea Pig Diaries was a compilation of all the crazy, out-there stuff he did while at VF.  Which could have been a great idea, but it just didn’t work for me.

I would recommend Jacobs as a wonderfully humerous author, although this isn’t the book where his talents are best displayed.  If you haven’t read Jacobs, I would recommend reading either of his other two books as opposed to this one.

Other Reviews:

Ms Bookish

The Book Lady’s Blog

Books and Movies

Nose in a Book

Devourer of Books

I borrowed this book from my local library.

Book Review: Lit

Lit

Mary Karr

Harper

400 pages

I am not a fan of modern literature.  I don’t read it by choice, so I haven’t read any since college.  So I am not at all familiar with Karr’s poetry.  Years ago, by some chance, I came across her first two memoirs, The Liars Club and Cherry.  I am guessing the whole “coming of age” backdrop is what convined me to give them a try, but it’s been so long I can’t say for sure.  Whatever it is that enticed me, I wasn’t let down.  Both of Karr’s previous memoirs were phenomenal, and I practically inhaled them.  So when I heard about Lit, I knew I couldn’t pass it up.

Lit begins in Mary Karr’s late teen years and continues on through her marriage and the birth of her son.  Karr eventually is overcome by her alcoholism and must face her addiction while also dealing with her failing marriage.

The union between Karr and her husband, also a poet, was one of the most interesting aspects of the book, as well as one of the most infuriating.  The chasm that continued to grow between Karr and her husband was hard to swallow.  They both seemed to give into the space that was enveloping them.  Oftentimes tou hear couples say that they just “grew apart”, and nothing could be more fitting in this instance.

I also was very interested in Karr’s foray into organized religion towards the end of the book.  She had been very unsure about churches and their traditions up until her son asks to go to church out of the blue.  Karr indulges her son but brings along her book to every church service to occupy herself, until one day when she becomes enthralled with the mass in a local Catholic church.  As someone who has recently converted to Catholicism, I was able to relate a lot to what Karr found appealing. 

I enjoyed Lit–I wouldn’t say it lived up to Karr’s first two memoirs, but it was still a worthwhile read.  I think the whole idea of a memoir on alcoholism is a little old at this point–Dry and A  Million Little Pieces have already worn that path for me–and I think that’s what caused Lit to be a tad lackluster.  Karr is a strong, virtuous woman and her journey through alcoholism is an inspiration, but at times I got bored. 

Other Reviews:

Bookin’ with Bingo

Killin’ Time Reading

I borrowed this book from my local library.

Sunday Salon Continued

So I dropped the ball yesterday.  Majorly.  I had promised to announce the winners of my giveaway in yesterday’s Sunday Salon post and it completely slipped my mind.  So, without further ado, the winners of The Book of Fires, by Jane Borodale, thanks to random.org, are comments # 1 and 6!

Congratulations Fyrefly and Just Mom.

If you would be so kind as to send me your mailing addresses, I’ll have the books sent out ASAP.

While we’re at it, I should go ahead and do a wrap up post for January, since I forgot that as well.  I read the following books in January:

1. A Certain Slant of Light, Laura Whitcomb

2. Letter to my Daughter, Maya Angelou

3. Life as We Knew It, Susan Beth Pfeffer

4. Lit, Mary Karr

5. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton

6. Girl in a Blue Dress, Gaynor Arnold

7. The Guinea Pig Diaries, AJ Jacobs

8. The Book of Fires, Jane Borodale

9. Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, Beth Hoffman

10. New Orleans Cemeteries, Eric Brock

For whatever reason, I had been under the impression that I had only read 8 books.  10 books in a month is pretty good for me.  Ideally, I would like to read more, but I’d say every book blogger wishes they had even more time for reading.  My favorite book of the month was probably Girl in a Blue Dress, by Gaynor Arnold, so watch out for that review in the coming month.