Fall Books addenda

In my earlier post, I neglected to mention new works by two stupendous, young(er) writers. Luckily, Michiko Kakutani reminded me with today's reviews of Edwidge Danticat's, A Haitian Tragedy: Brothers Yearn in Vain and Junot Diaz's, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I've been mesmerized by their earlier works, and consider them part of a critical, new wave of writers who tell migration stories that differ from the traditionally positive tales, the success stories favored by earlier generations. Hailing from Haiti and the Dominican Republic, they give voice to the oppression and violence in their home countries, giving us a valuable perspective on the instrumental and hidden role the American government played in propping up corrupt and violent regimes.

At the other end of the spectrum is Penelope Lively's, Consequences, which I just finished and quite enjoyed. It is a quiet, introspective novel looking at the role fate, or luck, plays in a number of characters' lives. A young man and woman meet in a London park, and fall in love. Everything that comes after is linked to that one action. Lively's writing plays to my English major's sensibility, with prose that is both precise and delicate. Here's an example:

"It sometimes seemed to Molly that the library was a place of silent discord and anarchy, its superficial tranquility concealing a babel of assertion and dispute. Fiction is one strident lie -- or rather, many competing lies; history is a long narrative of argument and reassessment; travel shouts of self-promotion; biography is pushing a product. As for autobiography . . . And all this is just fine. That is the function of books: they offer a point of view, they offer many conflicting points of view, they provoke thought, they provoke irritation and admiration and speculation. They take you out of yourself and put you down somewhere else from whence you never entirely return... The surface repose of a library is a cynical deception."

That's a great example of why I love reading British women writers. It links the worlds of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf and lots of others with the present day -- both the subject matter and the writing style. The members of my writing group spend no small amount of time discussing these "internal" novels, which are classified, frequently and dismissively, as "women's fiction". Meaning the type of fiction women write, but also describing a whole genre in which emotions figure prominently and the focus is on a woman's world. It's tone is quiet and domestic, rather than gregarious and action-packed style of men writers.