Much Ado About Loving

February 13, 2013

Much Ado About Loving: What Our Favorite Novels Can Teach You About Date Expectations, Not So-Great Gatsbys, and Love in the Time of Internet Personals by Jack Murnighan, Maura Kelly
Published by Free Press
Publication date: January 3rd 2012

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, two writers with a love for literature take a light-hearted look at relationships based on some of the world’s greatest works of fiction, in Much Ado About Loving. Maura Kelly has written a daily dating blog for Marie Claire and has written for Glamour, Rolling Stone, and Slate. Jack Murnighan has a Ph.D. in medieval and renaissance literature and has written several books on the classics for modern audiences. He has appeared on NPR and written for Esquire on the topic of sexuality and relationships.

The pair covers a number of vital subjects in the romantic world from “Signs You Should Abandon Ship” to “The Seduction Process”. In the section on “Types to Watch Out For” Gatsby’s single-minded pursuit of and love for Daisy is seen by today’s standards as stalkerish. It is also concluded that just because a man treats you nicely but is a condescending jerk to everyone else means he probably really is a jerk and you should beware. To whom am I referring? One of the great romantic heroes of all times: Darcy (gasp!). For the ladies, Jane Eyre is a foolish prig who should have simply accepted Rochester’s offer of escape with him to a life far away. To Kelly’s mind:

When and if you’re lucky enough to find true love, don’t muck it up with mindless adherence to convention. Throw away that list of requirements. Maybe you never thought you could spend the rest of your life with a guy who’s divorced or has kids or has an ex who’s foaming at the mouth—but if he makes you feel more blissful than you ever imagined possible, please go for it.

Of Murnighan, Natasha from War and Peace represents a love and zeal for life that most women would be wise to emulate. When she eats enthusiastically at a peasant banquet he makes this point:

And can I say in passing that when a woman has no dietary restrictions, that’s fantastic. It pretty much signals to me that she is game for things in general, whereas the more things a woman won’t eat, the more I sense she’s going to restrict herself in other domains as well…

While their attitude is light, much of what Kelly and Murnighan are conveying is on the mark. But beyond witty chapter titles (“Jane Erred”, “Moby Dickheads”, and “Coward’s End) and humorous writing there is an in-depth knowledge of the works discussed that keeps the book well away from the dreary plethora of relationship self-help books out there. Instead, there is the opportunity to not only learn a bit more about dating but also to get a cogent synopsis of some of the works they’re discussing. And really, isn’t that better than having to read War and Peace? Trust me it is. Much Ado About Loving is for anyone who loves to read and is looking for love and may be one of the more enjoyable ways to learn about and understand relationships, the opposite sex, and what not to do.

Y: A Novel by Marjorie Celona

January 16, 2013

Y by Marjorie Celona
Published by Free Press
Publication date: January 8th 2013
Genres: Coming-of-age, Contemporary, Debut, Fiction

In my head, late at night, I draft letters to my mother and my father. I say everything I want to say, everything that needs to be said. In my head I am so eloquent.

Abandoned on the steps of a YMCA Shannon is destined to become a foster care statistic. She is an unusual child with special needs due to her mother’s drug use before her birth. By the time she is five she has been with three families including the most recent where the father found her fidgeting so intolerable he squeezed her arm until it broke. She finally ends up with Miranda, a single mother with a daughter Shannon’s age, Lydia-Rose. It is here she will live until adulthood but even with the stability of a safe home Shannon cannot settle. She feels Lydia-Rose’s resentment at having to share her mother and cannot acclimate to school or make friends. She loves her foster mother but is unable to let go of the fears that keep her heart closed. Her desire to find her parents feels like the only way to heal the wound of “Why?”.

I’m just trying to find some way to spend the time. People talk about when you’re young as being full of possibilities, but the uncertainty of it all makes me feel lost and insane. I try to be cheerful. I try to live in the present. But it’s hard.

Y is Shannon’s story, told from her point of view, but it is interspersed with the life of Yula, her mother, up to the point when she leaves Shannon behind. Author Marjorie Celona probes the hearts and minds of both with such dexterity that it’s possible to feel the pain of each without judgment for either. Shannon is a misfit with wild white hair and a lazy eye coupled with a mind that cannot settle down and a mouth that speaks whatever she thinks. Yula is a product of a tumultuous violent marriage and an isolated upbringing on an island outside Vancouver, BC. While only 15 she gives birth to her first child and raises him on her father’s property. By the time she is seventeen and pregnant with Shannon she is not only certain she is unfit to be a parent but questions whether she should even be alive.

A sense of sorrow permeates Y as Celona skillfully portrays the inner lives of not only Yula and Shannon but each of the ancillary characters as well. Ultimately, they are all doing their best even when their efforts appear incomprehensible to others. When Shannon begins her journey she believes she is alone in the world and only through her search does she discover she is not. Y is painful and tender, a realistic look at what family means and to what lengths we will go to have one.

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

December 5, 2012

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
Published by Free Press
Publication date: November 13th 2012

You are an outgoing, ambitious journalist already writing for The New York Post at age twenty-four. Suddenly, you start feeling a little off—no appetite, fatigue, and you’re pretty sure people are talking about you. The physical problems increase as do the mental ones—you know people are talking about you and you can see things that no one else can. Your confidence ebbs and flows and your behavior becomes increasingly erratic. Finally, you have a seizure but even then the medical community is not sure what to make of you as all your tests come back normal. Even after a second seizure one neurologist persists in diagnosing you as going through alcohol withdrawal and the rest lean towards a psychiatric problem. You’re admitted to the epilepsy ward of a respected New York hospital and monitored via camera 24/7 but there are still no answers and your condition deteriorates. If this sounds like a journey into hell, it was for Susannah Cahalan.

Finally, through a test as simple as drawing hours on a clock face, a new neurologist was able to move towards an answer that was confirmed after Cahalan underwent a brain biopsy. She had anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis, a disease so rare that, in 2007, she was only the 217^th person to be diagnosed. In essence her body was attacking her brain and causing inflammation. Like many autoimmune diseases, its cause is still unknown but is thought to be a combination of virus and genetic predisposition. In Brain on Fire: My month of Madness Cahalan recreates her month of madness as best she can, given the fact that she has no memory of that time. Instead, she relies on the copious notes, journals, and medical records of family and professionals.

From here on, I remember only very few bits and pieces, mostly hallucinatory, from the time in the hospital. Unlike before, there are now no glimmers of the reliable “I”, the Susannah I had been for the previous twenty-four years. Though I had been gradually losing more and more of myself over the past few weeks, the break between my consciousness and my physical body was now finally fully complete. In essence, I was gone.

Cahalan’s journalistic skills serve her well in Brain on Fire. She is thorough and self-aware, even about the fact that there was a time when she was completely lost to herself. She covers a lot of territory, much of it medical but, while that is interesting and informative, it is her personal story that is at the heart of the book. There is the descent into madness which is frightening enough but also the very long and slow recovery process. Despite diagnosis and treatment there was no guarantee she would recover completely. It is this painfully personal prose that connects the reader to the author and keeps Brain on Fire from being a dry scientific text. Instead, it is scary, intense, and profoundly human.